Although the Body Mass Index (BMI) has traditionally been used as a measure of obesity, other factors like gender, ethnicity, body composition can affect the credibility of BMI. Nonetheless,  it is used as the gold standard to diagnose, categorize and treat overweight/ obesity.

After critical analysis and detailed discussion of the limiting factors this review article concludes that BMI should not be used as the only criteria and that, it should be used along with waist circumference, skin fold thickness measurement and body composition analysis to diagnose obesity/overweight with greater accuracy.

Please click here to read Dr. Chandra’s article from the Journal of Nutrition and Weight Loss.