Why We're Saying Bye to BMI

When it comes to your health and happiness, Good Housekeeping is committed to providing the most relevant and reliable information. The more we've reported on body mass index, a widely used but flawed measure of health, the more we've grown to see that there are more accurate and less stigmatizing indications of overall health to include in our coverage. To understand - and to learn what these are - read on.

- KAITLYN PIRIE

It's all but impossible to see a doctor without hopping on the scale and being told your body mass index (BMI), a number calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared. The concept originated in the 1800s as a way to categorize the population by weight, says Amy Lee, M.D., an internal medicine physician and weight specialist in Southern California. People are “in a range of 'underweight,' 'normal,' 'overweight' or 'obese," she says. As benign as that may sound, many experts are realizing that there are real problems with the measurement and that the way it is applied can do more harm than good. The issue is complex, but here are just a few reasons:

"Overweight" is not a synonym for "unhealthy."