"Who Are You Calling 'Fat'?!"

For girls who love beauty the clearest standard of body weight (measured in kilograms) is: for boys, height (in centimeters) minus 100; for girls, height minus 110.

"In fact, this formula is only for fashion models," says Dr. Huang Po-chao, Dean of the College of Medicine at National Taiwan University. The standard weight for Chinese adults should be: for men, height minus 70 times 0.7; for women, height minus 70 times 0.6.

However, the changes in height and weight for children and teens are great, and it is hard to come up with a formula. In turn, Dr. Huang has come up with the ideal "BMI" value for Chinese children based on data from a fitness survey done on kids in 1985. BMI means "body mass index" which is the average weight (in kilograms) for a given age divided by the square of the average height (in meters).

From the BMI, Dr. Huang went one step further to get a calculating method for the standard body weight for children and teens: BMI value × height (in meters)平方 = standard body weight.

Take for example an eight-year-old boy whose height is 126 cm and weight 40 kg. What's the standard weight for such a child? Is he already overweight?

From referring to the Chinese children studied by Dr. Huang and using the BMI value chart for youths, we find that the BMI value for an eight-year-old boy is 16. Therefore the standard weight for this child is calculated as follows:

16 (BMI value) × 1.26平方 = 25.4 kg.

From this we can see that our hypothetical little friend is already 15 kg overweight.

Regardless of whether we are talking about adults or children, if one's actual body weight is no more than 10% higher than the calculated "standard weight" (as an upper limit) or 10% lower (as the lower limit), then one's body weight can be considered within the standard range. The real problem is when actual body weight exceeds the standard by more than 20%--then it's time to worry.

BMI Values For Chinese Children and Youths

(Data suppiled by Dr. Huang Po-chao, Dean of the National Taiwan University Medical School)

[Picture]