BMI (2)

The BBC website currently has a programme, where you can calculate your Body Mass Index, and compare it with both the rest of the population of your home country, and the rest of the world. At 1.80m and 75kg, I have a bmi of 23, making me thinner than 90% of British males aged 45-59 and 63% of males in that age group in the whole world. If everybody had the same BMI as me, then the world population's total weight would be almost 7 million tonnes less.

Apparently I am most like someone from the Comoros Islands. If I get down to 74kg, then I would be most like someone from the Philippines. After 50km on the bike this afternoon, I was down to 74.2. But it's that last couple of hundred grammes that are the hardest.

Walter Blotscher