Note that the data is skewed by this article's focus on adult males and females. Here's how many men and women we estimate maintained that BMI or below in 2022: BMI 17.5 or Below in the US, Estimated

To be careful, we will call our division 'maximum BMI of 17.5'. However, one of the diagnostic criteria for anorexia is (or was) a BMI of 17.5 or below. Neither is anorexia the only eating disorder that causes low BMI. Please note that BMI is not the only criteria for the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa, nor does a sufficient BMI rule it out (consult a doctor to be sure). The CDC splits BMI into 4 categories for adults:Īpplying the CDC guidelines to male and female BMIs in the United States, here's the estimated breakdown of BMI categories: American BMI Category Over a large population, body composition, diet, and exercise habits even out making classifications by BMI broadly useful. While it has failings on an individual level, BMI is an excellent indicator for health status on a population basis. Healthy and Non-Healthy BMI Distribution for Men and Women Here are some selected breakpoints for men and women at various percentiles: Percentile At the extremes is where we see a divergence: men had higher BMIs at the lower percentiles, and women had higher BMIs at the higher percentiles of the BMI distribution. Selected BMI Percentiles for Men and WomenĪs we mentioned in the introduction, men and women had BMI distributions which reasonably matched near the center of the BMI distribution. Average and Median BMI for Menįor men in the United States 18 or older in 2022, the median BMI was 27.4. In the United States in 2022 among adults, the median female BMI was 26.7. Mean and median varied a bit for women and men in the sample.

BMI Percentile Calculator for Men and Women in the United States Median and Average BMI for Men and WomenĪs we mentioned in our post on the distribution of BMIs for the United States, the adult average BMI was 27.96 and adult median BMI was 27.3.

Use our BMI Calculator to compute a BMI using height and weight as inputs. On this page is a BMI percentile calculator for men and women (for Body Mass Index), 18 years old and older in the United States in 2022.īMI is a height and weight based formula to estimate whether a person has a healthy weight for their height.

Bmi calculator men and women