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For Indian men, a normal BMI is 18.5–22.9. A BMI of 23–24.9 counts as overweight, and 25 or more as obesity. Those are the Indian cut-offs set by a national consensus of doctors in 2009, following a WHO review of Asian data. The international chart most calculators use puts normal at 18.5–24.9, so a man at 24 reads normal on a foreign website and overweight in an Indian clinic. The formula is the same for men and women: weight in kilograms divided by height in metres, squared.
Pair the number with your waist. Indian men carry more fat around the middle at the same BMI, so a waist of 90 cm or more matters even when the BMI looks fine. For a man of 175 cm, the normal range works out to about 57–70 kg.
What is the normal BMI range for an Indian man?
The bands used in India are: under 18.5 is underweight, 18.5–22.9 is normal, 23–24.9 is overweight, and 25 or above is obesity. They come from a 2009 consensus statement led by Anoop Misra and written with physicians, diabetologists and surgeons from across the country. The same document sets the waist line for men at 90 cm.
The reason sits in a 2004 WHO expert review of studies from across Asia. It found that a substantial share of Asian adults already had high risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease below a BMI of 25. Where that risk began varied between about 22 and 25 across Asian groups. WHO kept the international chart but listed 23 as an action point, and Indian doctors adopted it.
There is no separate male formula. BMI is weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared, the same for men and women. What differs between men is where their weight sits and how much of it is muscle, which is why the number needs a second check.
What is a healthy weight for your height as a man?
Turning the formula around gives the weight range for any height. Multiply your height in metres by itself, then by 18.5 for the bottom of the normal band and by 22.9 for the top. For a man of 170 cm that is 2.89, so the normal range is about 53.5–66 kg.
Worked through for common heights, the normal Indian range is about 47–59 kg at 160 cm, 50–62 kg at 165 cm and 53.5–66 kg at 170 cm. At 175 cm it is about 57–70 kg, at 180 cm about 60–74 kg, and at 185 cm about 63–78 kg. Anything above the top figure for your height falls in the Indian overweight band.
Take Arjun, 42, a bank manager in Pune who is 178 cm tall and weighs 80 kg. His BMI is 25.2, obese by the Indian chart and only just overweight by the international one. His waist is 97 cm. Arjun is an illustration rather than a patient, but he is a very ordinary Indian man in his forties.
Sources: [1]
What is the best BMI for a man's long-term health?
The largest study of the question pooled 239 studies and more than ten million adults across four continents. To keep illness and smoking from blurring the picture, the Global BMI Mortality Collaboration looked only at never-smokers who were healthy at the start. Death rates were lowest at a BMI of 20–25 and rose on either side.
Above 25, every extra 5 BMI units raised the risk of death by about a third overall. The rise was steeper in men than in women, at 51% against 30% per 5 units, and steeper when the BMI was measured in middle age than in old age. Excess weight in his forties costs a man more than it costs a woman of the same age.
For Indian men the target inside that range is the lower half. A BMI of 20–22.9 sits in the band with the lowest death rates and below the Indian overweight line. Going much below 20 brings its own small rise in risk, so thinner is not always better.
Why do Indian men need a lower BMI cut-off?
Body fat in Indian men tends to collect around the trunk and organs. Chandalia and colleagues in Dallas measured 21 healthy Asian Indian men and 23 white men with the same age and body fat. The Indian men had more fat on the trunk and cleared sugar from the blood about 30% less well, even after allowing for that difference in fat.
A later study in the US compared normal-weight adults from five ethnic groups. Among South Asians, 43.6% already had two or more metabolic problems such as raised sugar, high triglycerides, low HDL or high blood pressure, against 21% of white adults. The risk a white adult carried at a BMI of 25 appeared in South Asians at about 19.6.
This is why an Indian man at a BMI of 24 should not take comfort from a foreign chart. His sugar, lipids and waist are more likely to be off than a European's at the same number.
Does BMI work for muscular men?
Not very well, and the error runs both ways. Abel Romero-Corral's team compared BMI with measured body fat in 13,601 American adults. In men, BMI tracked lean mass more closely than fat. In the 25–29.9 range it could not tell a muscular man from a man with too much fat.
The same study showed the opposite problem. A BMI of 30 or more missed almost two thirds of men whose body fat was in the obese range. Plenty of men with an ordinary BMI carry too much fat and too little muscle, which is common in Indian men who sit all day.
A man who lifts weights four times a week may read 26 with an 82 cm waist and be perfectly healthy. A man who never exercises may read 22 with a 94 cm waist and already have raised sugar. The waist settles most of these arguments.
Sources: [6]
Does the normal BMI range change with age for men?
For most adult men the same bands apply between the ages of 20 and 65. After that the picture shifts. Winter and colleagues pooled 32 studies of adults aged 65 and over. Death rates were lowest at a BMI of about 23–23.9, rose below 23 and only began to climb above 33.
That does not license weight gain in later life. It reflects the fact that thin older adults often have lost muscle or are unwell, and that a little reserve helps in illness. For men over 65 the more useful questions are whether weight is falling without trying and whether strength is holding up.
Sources: [7]
What should a man do if his BMI is above 23?
First, measure the waist midway between the lowest rib and the top of the hip bone, breathing out gently. At 90 cm or above, get a fasting blood test for sugar, HbA1c and lipids, because that combination is where risk shows up first in Indian men.
If weight needs to come down, a modest loss already helps. In the Look AHEAD study of adults with type 2 diabetes, those who lost 5–10% of their weight in a year were 3.5 times as likely to bring HbA1c down by half a point. Blood pressure, triglycerides and HDL improved too, and larger losses helped more.
For Arjun, getting back into the normal band at 178 cm means reaching about 72.5 kg, a loss of around 10%. Much more of it should come from fat than from muscle. A review by Cava and colleagues found that protein and resistance exercise help protect muscle during weight loss. A doctor-led plan built on his blood results can aim for a loss of up to 20% of body weight while keeping that muscle, which suits men who start further above the line.