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A certain amount of fat is essential to bodily functions. Your body fat percentage is simply the percentage of fat your body contains. So, if you are 150 pounds and have 10% fat, it means that your body consists of 15 pounds of fat and 135 pounds of lean body mass (bone, muscle, organ tissue, blood and everything else). The American Dietetic Association recommends that men have 15-18% body fat and women have 20-25% body fat. In short, the higher your BMI, the greater the risk of developing additional health problems. Using BMI to gauge weight has its limitations.
Thus a healthy, muscular individual with very low body fat may be classified obese using the BMI formula. Other individuals to whom the BMI does not apply include: people under 18 or over 65 years, and pregnant or breast-feeding women.
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