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BMI is the best measure we have for statistical purposes (i.e., a population) because it's been around for 50(?) years and is what is often used in studies, so you can compare one study to another using BMI.
It's also not terrible for a population because it averages out. But for an individual it is definitely not a good measure because there are way too many other variables that matter.
100% this, plus it's very easy to measure.
For individuals the tg/HDL ratio is promising as a great marker for insulin resistance (lower is better). But it requires a blood test, for academic purposes it's also good because most checkup blood tests have these two markers recorded.
Yes! Thanks, I had started to mention that and ended up with a huge run on sentence and it didn't make it through the editing process. 😅.
I think there is a better one, it's called a mirror. I look at it every day and cry, but there is no question lol
This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
Replacing BMI with BMI2 is fine, but it’s doesn’t change the fact that most Americans are overweight or obese, and the tiny, tiny sliver of people who have a high BMI from weightlifting are insignificant relative to the ~70% that are just plain fat
There's also a lot of people who had essential muscles replaced with fat, thus evading the overweight designation while having an imminent risk of diabetes. This reflects that.
Waist to height is the only proven metric. And the problem with BMI is not that it is overestimating fat, it's that it's underestimating fat because it completely misses skinny-fat people, and the number of those is much higher than the number of jacked overweight not fat athletes.
Add to this the complicating factor that it's really torso fat that is metabolically active and dangerous to your health.
Waist should be less than half your height, you don't even need a measuring tape. Get someone to cut a string as long as you are tall, and see if it can go around your waist twice, with at least some extra length. If so, you are good, probably don't have too much torso fat.
ETA I don't understand why they need that complicated formula, why not just a ratio? The only inputs are waist and height. Never understood the point of squaring height to get BMI either, it's also just a mass to height comparison, why not a simple ratio?
...people...have...waists...that're...half their height‽‽‽‽
I’m a normal sized human.
72inches tall (6’) 32inch waist
I could easily see a fat dude having a 40 inch waist at 6’ tall.
6' fat dude here... 46" I think... maybe only 44...
Oh shoot I conflated wrists with waist😭
Right, you are proportionate, waist to height as a measurement means a 7' tall guy would be healthy with a 40" waist, but a lady (or man) who is 5' tall really does need smaller than 30" to be in shape.
What if your torso is large because your large liver because alcoholism?
Well, it turns out they both tell me I'm a little too fat.
Here's an online calculator
Height selection on metric side has jumps of up to 3 centimeters lmao. Makes me doubtful about the accuracy since I've never before seen that
I'm also pretty skinny and it says my BMI and body fat is great but that I'm too round. I don't even have belly and it is showing me as quite rotund lol. I think there's something fucky going on with my measurements or about inputting metric into the calculator.
E: Tried it again and now I'm out of healthy zone for being too lean. Hmm. I'm not sure if I measured wrong or they're saying I should have a bit of a belly. Which is the sort of medical advice I actually want lol
Height selection on metric side has jumps of up to 3 centimeters lmao.
Too lazy to look, but given 1 inch = 2.54 cm, my guess is the tool is written in inches, and just rounds those values to the nearest whole cm, thus alternating between 2 & 3 cm increments.
Can't tell you how disappointed I am that isn't just a chart of increasingly tubby kittens.
Lvl. 10: “oh lawd he comin’”
For all the time I've been told how bad BMI is, and how it classes top athletes as obese, I can't help but notice how few of those people have the body of a top athlete.
That's because BMI is actually pretty good as a screening tool. It's easy, simple, and pretty damn accurate when combined with an eyeball test. To the extent that it misclassifies people it is far more likely to underclassify obesity than overclassify. The people complaining just don't want to hear it.
That's an extreme case, but the point still stands. For example, right now, I'm pretty fat, because I haven't shifted the weight I gained over COVID. Even though I'm visibly way larger than I was, I'm not much heavier than I was pre-covid, because I've lost a heckton of muscle. It's insane to me that BMI will look at me pre-covid, and look at me now, and say "that's the same picture". Especially because I personally found that the best and safest way for me to lose weight was to focus on getting strong and fit first.
We ran into it a bunch in the Army. As well as the fat over abs phenomenon. Very few of our BMI failures were actually fat. The Army test was really problematic because they measure your waist and neck. So you're simultaneously trying to lose belly fat, build neck muscle, and maintain energy levels for infantry training. Which is just a bit of a nightmare to be in. Meanwhile every week you're running 30-35 miles, putting 15 hours in the gym, and doing 10 hours of field exercise, all on top of any infantry training.
I think it's one of those things you either run into a lot or very little.
I bike and rock climb, I walk long walks and overall in a good shape, not great, not terrible. When the doctors see my bmi without other metrics, they immediately tell me to lose weight and don't take anything else seriously. I missed very serious illness because of that, every symptom I had was thrown into a pile of "your bmi is bad, lose weight", until one doctor was smart enough to check on me for real.
BMI is incredibly oversimplified and gives lazy or overworked doctors easy way out of doing their jobs, which kills people.
It is one of the most widely used health metrics but also one of the most reviled, because it is used to label people overweight, obese or extremely obese.
That's like blaming the ruler for labeling you too short or too tall... Can't we just use the tool for rough assessment, while being aware of its limitations, and be happy about it?
Look at it this way, BMI is a cross section of weight and height. I was considered "overweight" for ages because I just had tree trunk thighs from hiking and weightlifting. Like, less than 16% body fat but told I'm 'overweight' every time I got weighed.
The ruler was fucking wrong.
Nowadays, I'm much more of a fat fuck so the ruler is right now but only just so... I'm still under 25% when using hydrostatic!
i think you’re taking that quote out of context a bit. a few sentences later, the article says
Even physicians have weighed in on the shortcomings of B.M.I. The American Medical Association warned last year that B.M.I. is an imperfect metric that doesn’t account for racial, ethnic, age, sex and gender diversity. It can’t differentiate between individuals who carry a lot of muscle and those with fat in all the wrong places.
“Based on B.M.I., Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a bodybuilder would have been categorized as obese and needing to lose weight,” said Dr. Wajahat Mehal, director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program at Yale University.
so the point they seem to be making is that, while BMI is controversial partly because people like to shoot the messenger, it’s also just not a reliable measurement in a medical context, even as a heuristic. the article also goes into more detail on its other shortcomings as well. the article also indicates how BMI was never intended to be used in a medical context. so, there are plenty of valid reasons for wanting a new metric.
but i do think the sentence you quoted isn’t really doing the author any favors in terms of trying to communicate the central point of the article.
Seems like a lot of the flaws just have to do with the fact that the real metrics you want to use, which would probably be body fat percentage, are hard to measure accurately at home.
Seems like a good idea. Whenever I'm actively bodybuilding, my BMI is always shown as obese, and my weight shown as overweight, despite the fact that I'm 12% body fat. It's annoying, especially if it has an impact on things like insurance costs.
yeah, been weightlifting for years, and the only time the BMI chart says I'm "healthy" is when I'm at my absolute shreddiest. Looking like I'm starving myself to shoot a nude scene in a movie. And I hate that. I know that when I'm at that weight, I may look great, but I'm also at my weakest. So I hate that this chart subconsciously bullies me into trying to maintain some ridiculous 9-12% body fat range, when that's more of a body building competition range.
Interesting. Found a calculator and according to this I'm "very lean" (only just) while I'm overweight (again, only just) using BMI.
Judging by the belly fat I can pinch, I'm gonna trust the BMI
Now tell the doctors because as recently as this year one that I went to was talking about BMI.
It's not doctors that need to know. It's the insurance companies. They wrote the policies that pay doctors based on the BMI metric. Until those policy changes happen nothing will change.
Insurance companies quietly control so much and most people don't realize it.
BMI has been antiquated for like 15+ years, so my guess is it'll change when they die
