Your BMI

When we were in New York City, and took the subway, we knew what the BMT was.

Who ever heard of the BMI--surely Mama didn’t.

Everyone is talking about it, and even Dr. Oz is making it a big deal. It’s your Body Mass Index.

If you are lazy and want to find your BMI the easy way, go to the website of the NHLBI (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute) http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/ To calculate your BMI, merely place your height in feet and inches and your weight in pounds in the boxes indicated and then click on compute BMI.

The BMI categories are:

Underweight - less than 18.5

Normal 18.5-24.9

Overweight 25-29.9

Obese 30 or over

If you are good in arithmetic and want to do the math yourself or do not have a computer, use the following formula: 703 x weight in pounds divided by your height in inches, squared. For example, I am 5 feet 6 inches tall and weigh 152 lbs. So 703 x 152 is 106,856. Squaring (multiplying a number by itself) 66 (my height in inches) equals 4356. Dividing 106,856 by 4356 gives my BMI as 24.53 which is okay but not great.