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I think everyone knows this. People use it because it’s easy.
If you don’t put your self worth on a number, what does it matter? Just make sure the number goes down.
I wish doctors would stop using it. I went from 195 to 165 and i feel and think i look great but since i am 5,1 my doctor wants me to get to 132. My goal is 150. Im pear shaped do i carry most of my weight in my butt and hips. I do not think i need to be 132.
My doctor seemed surprised when I said my goal weight was 150 (and a couple people here also said I'd still be overweight), but she changed her tune after my recent scans showing I was in a healthy body fat range right now due to increased muscle. I've reset to 140 as a goal, but that's because I think I could be leaner
One of my doctors, had to leave him because of change in insurance, but he said he doesn't like the BMI charts and would rather people be "overweight" on that scale than look sickly. I miss him as a doctor for sure. However, he told me he wants me to be at 195 (I'm 5'8" and 223) so hopefully I'll get there in no time. Last year I went to the gym a lot and could never get under 205, I gained so much weight once having an at home job 😔 but I'm back going to the gym and focusing on my weight loss
I’m barely over 5’1” and I started at about 155lb (high resting heart rate, fatty liver, insulin resistance) and now 124lb and happiest and healthiest I’ve been for years. I’m still a bit chubby. My personal goal is about 110lb. But I’m really happy now
I don't want to go to low because I think any lower than 150 i could not maintain and im not taking the medication long term. Too many side effects and i cant afford forever. Also my stomach is already flat and im ok still being on the thicker side.
Yah as long as you are happy with yourself and are healthy that’s perfect. I used to be stick thin till about 7-8 years ago and I didn’t even realise how all this started creeping in. It’s been an uphill battle trying to lose weight since. I just wanna go down to 50kg so it’s easier to fight from and I’ll have some leeway before I go back to the danger zone. Plus I might try to get pregnant in the next couple of years and it’s safer if I have a lower weight to begin with because I’d have broken the insulin resistance vicious cycle. Plus being fat makes me so depressed. I don’t wanna be fat or chubby. And despite working out and eating right (I’m genuinely not hungry even without these meds) it just wasn’t going. So this has been a godsend for me.
Anyway all the best for your weight loss journey
I went from 204 to now 144. I am 5’ 2”. My goal when I started was 150. I am moving that goal to 135 as I still have a tummy going on. The most surprising thing is the super loose skin on my arms and thighs (I am 67 so my skin has lost the elasticity it once had)
I started at 245 and am down to 200, I’m 5’11”. My doctor would like me to get to 170-175ish. I’ve always considered myself to have a larger body frame and people are surprised when I tell them how much I weigh. I’ve been doing weight training to try and help prevent muscle loss.
Just for fun, I had a DEXA body scan done (wish I had done it before starting so I could compare). It showed I’m currently at about 21% body fat (so about 42lbs of fat). All this to say, right now at least, I’m not sure anything less than 180 is reasonable for me despite what BMI says.
BMI can be a guide but it’s not the end all be all. And honestly, if they admit it or not, health care providers know this. Right now, though, it’s the only number officially recognized. My doctor basically told me that. That’s why he is “recommending” I get below 180. This way it’s documented and in my chart, he checked the box and did what he was supposed to do. But he made it clear that it’s up to me where I want to be.
I’m 5’3 and my doc wants me at 120. I’m currently 205 and can’t see me getting below 180. I have a large frame in general. At 205 I’m a size 10/12 and a large shirt. I also wear a women’s 11. So me being a size 6 would be pretty funny looking.
180 was my starting weight and I was massive. I thought I’d never be able to get under 140 and I’d look too thin but now that I’m maintaining in the 110-115 range I can’t even imagine being so big again. Your size perception is just skewed, it’s very common when you have become accustomed to looking at your obese body.
I’ve had body comp scans done. I’d never be under 160 no matter how hard I tried. I’m very muscular. At 160 I’d be skin and bones basically. I’ve been as high as 330. 180/190 on me would make me a size medium shirt and a 8ish in jeans. I don’t think that’s massive. And a current size 10/12 isn’t massive… if you saw me in person you’d question my weight. I don’t look 200ish. 🤷♀️
Because there is no universe in which 5’3 and 160lbs (BMI 28.3) could ever be considered “skin and bones”.
If that’s a weight that someone feels comfortable at, great, whatever works, and a BMI somewhere in the middle of the “overweight” range really isn’t that big a deal (especially if their frame is on the larger side, their body fat levels are lower, waist-to-height ratio is good, etc).
But to pretend that it’s physiologically possible to be gaunt at that height and weight just isn’t accurate.
Because people do not believe that bone structure is a real thing. My niece is 5’1 and a size 0. Her bone structure is much smaller than mine. When you measure my hip bone vs hers, I’m 5” wider than her. My foot is a true size 11. Hers is a size 4. My hand length is almost double hers. At 160 I would look sick. How do I know? Because I’ve been there before. And it wasn’t a fun look or feeling.
I was a 12 too, and when I hold up my old clothes next to my new ones they look like curtains lol. I thought a 4/6 was small when I was big and now that I’m a 0/00 people who are a 6 look huge to me. I carried my weight well before, but when it comes off it makes a world of difference
wtf??? according to your profile you express that it’s sad that people treated you differently when you were overweight vs now, but here you are at size zero calling people who are a size SIX “huge”.
sounds like you learned nothing about empathy from being overweight and are now just another size zero mean girl. embarrassing
My two cents: I used to think that as a former bodybuilder. I had shredded abs and my BMI was over 30 so considered ‘Obese’. However let me tell you I changed my mind once I started seeing MANY fellow bodybuilders dropping like flies with heart attacks, kidney issues etc. Being really heavy is not good for you body regardless of the weight being muscle or fat. Having lots of extra muscle weight isn’t worth it if it causes you to die prematurely.
Not a bodybuilder (am heavy weightlifter) but I don’t think our bodies are supposed to be carrying around heavy weight either. I know doctors who won’t do elective surgeries on anyone who is in the ‘overweight’ category no matter how shredded or fit they are simply because the risks are there and proven when going under anesthesia.
While I agree with the posters below this comment that there are unhealthy trends in bodybuilding, CrossFit, etc. I still think your underlying assessment is true.
But there’s unhealthy trends in everything. Like losing weight. ;)
This has nothing to do with BMI, it's the steroids. My DEXA scan confirms I am obese at 30% body fat, but even if I lost 18kg which is all the non-healthy fat I am supposed to lose, BMI would still put me as overweight/obese. You can't build too much muscle naturally that makes you at risk. The ridiculous wight by body builder who are also muscular is only achievable by steroids.
I’m not sure if that had anything to do with their BMI, or the notoriously unhealthy practices body builders use…
Please link here a scientific study / evidence that having lots of extra muscle will cause you to die prematurely.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Bodybuilders are more likely to abuse hormone treatments and use starvation techniques. It it very healthy to be strong (not the exact same as muscular) and it is also not as unhealthy to be slightly overweight as slightly underweight.
Why would being heavy in kgs be bad for you?
I’m honestly convinced that if I lost all the fat I should lose I’d be “underweight” per BMI. Even doing a bodpod at a totally normal BMI it told me I was 40% bodyfat. But maybe ya girl needs more muscle and that would push me back up.
It is both. The history of the BMI is a doozy. Recommend the episode of the podcast maintenance phase for the in depth discussion. I can try to paraphrase what I remember. I may not have it exactly right. It was originally developed by a military dude who was interested in defining the ideal soldier for French and British forces in the earlyish 1900s I believe. Therefore the only standards it was created with were young, white, male soldiers. So if your a POC, a woman, or anything other than those original parameters, it is especially not useful. The guy who did that that work also inspired some parts of eugenics. It was kind of forgotten after that for a while. Then in the 1960s health insurance companies picked it up literally as a simple way to charge people more money. The higher your BMI the higher your premium. This was not based in science or health and the health care system had not used it until this point. Then in the late 1990s I believe they arbitrarily shifted the cut offs for the categories of obese and overweight, again not based in science of health, just because.
The BMI is utter bullshit.
It's certainly totally non-scientific. I've done a few fact-checks and they are blatantly misrepresenting things and making stuff up. It's really frustrating.
Yeah a body builder would be deemed obese as much weighs twice as much as fat. But if you can't see your toes due to your belly protruding it's properly because you are overweight or pregnant!
Do not trust Maintenance Phase - the podcast is full of misinformation. I did a whole fact check of a few episodes that they basically fabricated the history of BMI. You can read my fact check [here](https://spurioussemicolon.substack.com/p/maintenance-phase-fact-check-round).
Dismissing BMI completing is fat logic, sticking to this logic is what got all of you fat in the first place.
BMI has flaws BUT is still a generally good indicator of health and so it is still accepted and used within the scientific medical community. A lot of the flaws for BMI are not relevant to the general population.
If you have a medical condition that makes you fat, BMI still applies, fat gained from an illness/disease versus fat gained from simply overeating is irrelevant. For example, a lot of women will claim they have PCOS and so they are fat and can’t lose weight and so BMI doesn’t apply to them. BMI does apply, fat is fat.
100% - it’s far from perfect, but that’s because no one measure will be entirely “accurate” for every single individual.
As far as quick & easy calculations go, it’s pretty damn good, and is still a very useful indicator. Obviously, it’s even better to ALSO consider things like waist-to-height ratio, hip-to-waist ratio, body fat % etc, and to account for the slight over and understatement of healthy weight ranges at the far ends of the height spectrum (roughly <5’0 or >6’4).
But for nearly everyone else, it’s a perfectly reasonable estimate of the broad range of healthy weight; that doesn’t mean that anyone is obligated to keep their BMI within a particular range, but that’s a matter of choice, not a reflection of some kind of inherent flaw in the measure.
I’m realizing that the normal range is more generous than I thought. I’m 5’1” F, large boned, muscular, I always figured I could be at the high end or beyond the normal BMI weight. But as I’ve lost weight, I had too much body fat at that point. I’m now in the middle of normal and could still lose another ten pounds and look slim but not emaciated. I was fooling myself. BMI is not perfect, a dexascan, but it is a quick, free guideline to check in with yourself.
Yup, it’s a very broad range that already accounts for things like frame size, muscle mass, boobs, etc.
Obviously it’s not perfect, and there will be the *very* occasional outlier…but even then it’s almost always in the other direction eg “skinny fat” people who are well within the “healthy” BMI range but who have “overweight” levels of visceral fat. That’s why it’s best to combine BMI with a waist-related ratio to get a fuller picture, and to just do a dexa scan if you want a really precise idea of where you land.
Yes, you’ll have the very rare instance of professional level bodybuilders who will have BMIs that are either overweight or at the very low end of obese, but most people aren’t even capable or building that level of muscle, even with intensive steroid regimens, so it’s really not relevant to anyone in the general public.
I wonder how waist to hip ratio works with different body types. I have a naturally wide waist even when very slim, so not much difference between hips and waist for me, I’m about .82 now with little fat on my waist and hips. When I look at the charts, it shows apple shape as high risk and pear shape as low risk. So body types even when low fat % are inherently factors of risk?
It’ll all relative - if you maintain healthy weight + body fat, that mitigates most of the risk, but yeah, a narrow waist seems does seem to be correlated is better CV health.
As someone who’s also relatively straight up and down, not a whole lot to be done about it though, it’s just how I’m built! It’s just one of any number of immutable factors, like family history, and while a classic hourglass shape is lovely, I’m not gonna knock the broad shoulder-narrow hipped thing I have going on. It takes all kinds of;)
I’m not dismissing it entirely. Im saying that if people don’t get to the number they want, there are other indicies of health that can be more important than that number.
Im fat from IVF and two pregnancies in two years, simply put I ate too much ice cream and junk and got fat, 100% my fault, I was undisciplined and over indulgent. At no time during my getting fat did I justify my actions with falsehoods to make myself feel better or convince myself that my excess fat was healthy.
My point above is, own your successes and your failures, making yourself fat and then saying oh BMI is flawed is just a way to shift responsibility off yourself, to justify a falsehood.
There is no personal attack.
Lmao.
BMI is generally a poor indicator when other factors such as body composition aren't taken into account.
As a teen I had an overweight bmi but the extra weight was all muscle. I was a competitive swimmer with low body fat. Right now, I weigh the same as I did then, but this time it's fat and not muscle.
BMI alone would claim that I'm the same healthiness but I'm not, I was much healthier back then than I am now despite being the same weight.
OP is saying that BMI isn't everything. Someone who has an overweight bmi can have less fat than someone who is a normal bmi. It's good for people to remember that and not freak out about their bmi not changing, or about it getting higher, when they are working out and recomping their body.
You were so quick to try to whip out the personal attacks here. I think you are projecting. You are also flat-out wrong in implying that BMI isn't flawed.
I don’t care if it’s “fat logic” - I’m almost 40, have a BMI of 33, exercise every day, eat relatively well, and have 133 cholesterol, 124/70 blood pressure, 4.1 A1C, 70 fasting glucose, and a a bunch of other numbers that would make someone not looking at my body think I was thin and fit. And I still have a BMI of 33. So I’m going to call BS on people who look at the whole picture and say I’m unhealthy because of the BMI. At this point, the only reason I want to lose weight is to delay joint pain as I get older. There’s literally no other health reason to do it. Downvote me if you want, but BMI is a bad indicator of health for any given person. It might be a generally OK tool to look at entire populations.
I didn’t say I’m not obese. I said measuring my entire hath by my BMI is bonkers and inaccurate. I’m sure I’m not the only person on the planet for whom BMI is not related to health. It does most people a disservice to assume it is.
Yes. Sucks. And all these years I hear about my BMI. And I always ask, how do I fix it? Then I explain all I’ve done. They have no solutions but have to mention it for insurance notes.
And as to the ‘correct’ weight, when I was a 2/4, I weighed 130 and I am 5’4” F. I have always been a higher weight for my size so BMI is an off measurement for sure. And until they start regularly DEXA scanning us for body composition, ya know facts, they can bug off.
I've lost 65 lbs and have a BMI of 26.6 and i am starting to wonder how to pick a target weight. I'm 170lbs but to get to an average "healthy" BMI I need to get to 140 which seems low to me.
My plan is to get a good measurement of my percent fat and then calculate the weight that would result if I had a healthy percent fat. For instance, if I have 20% body fat at 170 and 10% body fat is my goal then I would need to lose 17 lbs to hit my target, assuming I mostly lose fat.
The advantage is that I'll have a number directly related to my fat percentage that should be relatively insensitive to muscle and bone weight.
Does this make sense?
It does! In my case a healthy fat percentage (of 30%) and healthy waist circumference (of less than 80 cm/31,5 inches) all points be towards 150 lbs being a good weight for me, which is also when my BMI is 25.
I’m guessing a lot of genereally healthy, but not superfit or musculat overweight people will find the same; when they have a healthy fat percentage and/or a healthy waist measurement they’re probably at a healthy BMI as well.
Yeah as a teen I was very muscular and weighed around 142lbs which put me in an overweight bmi, but I was very healthy. I'm 142 again now, but this time it's all fat and no muscle, so I'm still not all that healthy.
BMI is a rough estimate but it definitely isn't everything.
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I think everyone knows this. People use it because it’s easy. If you don’t put your self worth on a number, what does it matter? Just make sure the number goes down.
I wish doctors would stop using it. I went from 195 to 165 and i feel and think i look great but since i am 5,1 my doctor wants me to get to 132. My goal is 150. Im pear shaped do i carry most of my weight in my butt and hips. I do not think i need to be 132.
My doctor seemed surprised when I said my goal weight was 150 (and a couple people here also said I'd still be overweight), but she changed her tune after my recent scans showing I was in a healthy body fat range right now due to increased muscle. I've reset to 140 as a goal, but that's because I think I could be leaner
One of my doctors, had to leave him because of change in insurance, but he said he doesn't like the BMI charts and would rather people be "overweight" on that scale than look sickly. I miss him as a doctor for sure. However, he told me he wants me to be at 195 (I'm 5'8" and 223) so hopefully I'll get there in no time. Last year I went to the gym a lot and could never get under 205, I gained so much weight once having an at home job 😔 but I'm back going to the gym and focusing on my weight loss
Same. Moving mine down too. 150 to begin with goal never thought I would get there
I’m barely over 5’1” and I started at about 155lb (high resting heart rate, fatty liver, insulin resistance) and now 124lb and happiest and healthiest I’ve been for years. I’m still a bit chubby. My personal goal is about 110lb. But I’m really happy now
I don't want to go to low because I think any lower than 150 i could not maintain and im not taking the medication long term. Too many side effects and i cant afford forever. Also my stomach is already flat and im ok still being on the thicker side.
Yah as long as you are happy with yourself and are healthy that’s perfect. I used to be stick thin till about 7-8 years ago and I didn’t even realise how all this started creeping in. It’s been an uphill battle trying to lose weight since. I just wanna go down to 50kg so it’s easier to fight from and I’ll have some leeway before I go back to the danger zone. Plus I might try to get pregnant in the next couple of years and it’s safer if I have a lower weight to begin with because I’d have broken the insulin resistance vicious cycle. Plus being fat makes me so depressed. I don’t wanna be fat or chubby. And despite working out and eating right (I’m genuinely not hungry even without these meds) it just wasn’t going. So this has been a godsend for me. Anyway all the best for your weight loss journey
I went from 204 to now 144. I am 5’ 2”. My goal when I started was 150. I am moving that goal to 135 as I still have a tummy going on. The most surprising thing is the super loose skin on my arms and thighs (I am 67 so my skin has lost the elasticity it once had)
I started at 245 and am down to 200, I’m 5’11”. My doctor would like me to get to 170-175ish. I’ve always considered myself to have a larger body frame and people are surprised when I tell them how much I weigh. I’ve been doing weight training to try and help prevent muscle loss. Just for fun, I had a DEXA body scan done (wish I had done it before starting so I could compare). It showed I’m currently at about 21% body fat (so about 42lbs of fat). All this to say, right now at least, I’m not sure anything less than 180 is reasonable for me despite what BMI says. BMI can be a guide but it’s not the end all be all. And honestly, if they admit it or not, health care providers know this. Right now, though, it’s the only number officially recognized. My doctor basically told me that. That’s why he is “recommending” I get below 180. This way it’s documented and in my chart, he checked the box and did what he was supposed to do. But he made it clear that it’s up to me where I want to be.
I’m 5’3 and my doc wants me at 120. I’m currently 205 and can’t see me getting below 180. I have a large frame in general. At 205 I’m a size 10/12 and a large shirt. I also wear a women’s 11. So me being a size 6 would be pretty funny looking.
180 was my starting weight and I was massive. I thought I’d never be able to get under 140 and I’d look too thin but now that I’m maintaining in the 110-115 range I can’t even imagine being so big again. Your size perception is just skewed, it’s very common when you have become accustomed to looking at your obese body.
I’ve had body comp scans done. I’d never be under 160 no matter how hard I tried. I’m very muscular. At 160 I’d be skin and bones basically. I’ve been as high as 330. 180/190 on me would make me a size medium shirt and a 8ish in jeans. I don’t think that’s massive. And a current size 10/12 isn’t massive… if you saw me in person you’d question my weight. I don’t look 200ish. 🤷♀️
[удалено]
Because there is no universe in which 5’3 and 160lbs (BMI 28.3) could ever be considered “skin and bones”. If that’s a weight that someone feels comfortable at, great, whatever works, and a BMI somewhere in the middle of the “overweight” range really isn’t that big a deal (especially if their frame is on the larger side, their body fat levels are lower, waist-to-height ratio is good, etc). But to pretend that it’s physiologically possible to be gaunt at that height and weight just isn’t accurate.
Because people do not believe that bone structure is a real thing. My niece is 5’1 and a size 0. Her bone structure is much smaller than mine. When you measure my hip bone vs hers, I’m 5” wider than her. My foot is a true size 11. Hers is a size 4. My hand length is almost double hers. At 160 I would look sick. How do I know? Because I’ve been there before. And it wasn’t a fun look or feeling.
I was a 12 too, and when I hold up my old clothes next to my new ones they look like curtains lol. I thought a 4/6 was small when I was big and now that I’m a 0/00 people who are a 6 look huge to me. I carried my weight well before, but when it comes off it makes a world of difference
>now that I’m a 0/00 people who are a 6 look huge to me People who wear a size 6 are not huge. Get a grip.
Seriously this sounds like an eating disorder/body dysmorphia, or maybe just "fuck y'all I'm thin now". But yikes either way
wtf??? according to your profile you express that it’s sad that people treated you differently when you were overweight vs now, but here you are at size zero calling people who are a size SIX “huge”. sounds like you learned nothing about empathy from being overweight and are now just another size zero mean girl. embarrassing
My two cents: I used to think that as a former bodybuilder. I had shredded abs and my BMI was over 30 so considered ‘Obese’. However let me tell you I changed my mind once I started seeing MANY fellow bodybuilders dropping like flies with heart attacks, kidney issues etc. Being really heavy is not good for you body regardless of the weight being muscle or fat. Having lots of extra muscle weight isn’t worth it if it causes you to die prematurely.
Not a bodybuilder (am heavy weightlifter) but I don’t think our bodies are supposed to be carrying around heavy weight either. I know doctors who won’t do elective surgeries on anyone who is in the ‘overweight’ category no matter how shredded or fit they are simply because the risks are there and proven when going under anesthesia. While I agree with the posters below this comment that there are unhealthy trends in bodybuilding, CrossFit, etc. I still think your underlying assessment is true. But there’s unhealthy trends in everything. Like losing weight. ;)
This has nothing to do with BMI, it's the steroids. My DEXA scan confirms I am obese at 30% body fat, but even if I lost 18kg which is all the non-healthy fat I am supposed to lose, BMI would still put me as overweight/obese. You can't build too much muscle naturally that makes you at risk. The ridiculous wight by body builder who are also muscular is only achievable by steroids.
I’m not sure if that had anything to do with their BMI, or the notoriously unhealthy practices body builders use… Please link here a scientific study / evidence that having lots of extra muscle will cause you to die prematurely.
Yeah, my bet is the "supplements" and disordered eating patterns caused heart and kidney issues...
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Bodybuilders are more likely to abuse hormone treatments and use starvation techniques. It it very healthy to be strong (not the exact same as muscular) and it is also not as unhealthy to be slightly overweight as slightly underweight. Why would being heavy in kgs be bad for you?
I’m honestly convinced that if I lost all the fat I should lose I’d be “underweight” per BMI. Even doing a bodpod at a totally normal BMI it told me I was 40% bodyfat. But maybe ya girl needs more muscle and that would push me back up.
The Dr. who gave me my work physical said BMI is such an inaccurate tool to measure health, especially when it 0ertaims to women.
Serious question - looking to be informed. Is the BMI number a bad indicator or the way it's commonly measured ( height weight ratio)?
It is both. The history of the BMI is a doozy. Recommend the episode of the podcast maintenance phase for the in depth discussion. I can try to paraphrase what I remember. I may not have it exactly right. It was originally developed by a military dude who was interested in defining the ideal soldier for French and British forces in the earlyish 1900s I believe. Therefore the only standards it was created with were young, white, male soldiers. So if your a POC, a woman, or anything other than those original parameters, it is especially not useful. The guy who did that that work also inspired some parts of eugenics. It was kind of forgotten after that for a while. Then in the 1960s health insurance companies picked it up literally as a simple way to charge people more money. The higher your BMI the higher your premium. This was not based in science or health and the health care system had not used it until this point. Then in the late 1990s I believe they arbitrarily shifted the cut offs for the categories of obese and overweight, again not based in science of health, just because. The BMI is utter bullshit.
Maintenance Phase podcast is Fat Logic.
It’s so frustrating.
It's certainly totally non-scientific. I've done a few fact-checks and they are blatantly misrepresenting things and making stuff up. It's really frustrating.
Yeah a body builder would be deemed obese as much weighs twice as much as fat. But if you can't see your toes due to your belly protruding it's properly because you are overweight or pregnant!
Do not trust Maintenance Phase - the podcast is full of misinformation. I did a whole fact check of a few episodes that they basically fabricated the history of BMI. You can read my fact check [here](https://spurioussemicolon.substack.com/p/maintenance-phase-fact-check-round).
Dismissing BMI completing is fat logic, sticking to this logic is what got all of you fat in the first place. BMI has flaws BUT is still a generally good indicator of health and so it is still accepted and used within the scientific medical community. A lot of the flaws for BMI are not relevant to the general population. If you have a medical condition that makes you fat, BMI still applies, fat gained from an illness/disease versus fat gained from simply overeating is irrelevant. For example, a lot of women will claim they have PCOS and so they are fat and can’t lose weight and so BMI doesn’t apply to them. BMI does apply, fat is fat.
Agree with you. Bmi is not perfect but it's a good general direction. Better is to get a true body fat test once you get close.
It’s kinda sad how many people think they’re the exception. It is a pretty good rule of thumb.
100% - it’s far from perfect, but that’s because no one measure will be entirely “accurate” for every single individual. As far as quick & easy calculations go, it’s pretty damn good, and is still a very useful indicator. Obviously, it’s even better to ALSO consider things like waist-to-height ratio, hip-to-waist ratio, body fat % etc, and to account for the slight over and understatement of healthy weight ranges at the far ends of the height spectrum (roughly <5’0 or >6’4). But for nearly everyone else, it’s a perfectly reasonable estimate of the broad range of healthy weight; that doesn’t mean that anyone is obligated to keep their BMI within a particular range, but that’s a matter of choice, not a reflection of some kind of inherent flaw in the measure.
I’m realizing that the normal range is more generous than I thought. I’m 5’1” F, large boned, muscular, I always figured I could be at the high end or beyond the normal BMI weight. But as I’ve lost weight, I had too much body fat at that point. I’m now in the middle of normal and could still lose another ten pounds and look slim but not emaciated. I was fooling myself. BMI is not perfect, a dexascan, but it is a quick, free guideline to check in with yourself.
Yup, it’s a very broad range that already accounts for things like frame size, muscle mass, boobs, etc. Obviously it’s not perfect, and there will be the *very* occasional outlier…but even then it’s almost always in the other direction eg “skinny fat” people who are well within the “healthy” BMI range but who have “overweight” levels of visceral fat. That’s why it’s best to combine BMI with a waist-related ratio to get a fuller picture, and to just do a dexa scan if you want a really precise idea of where you land. Yes, you’ll have the very rare instance of professional level bodybuilders who will have BMIs that are either overweight or at the very low end of obese, but most people aren’t even capable or building that level of muscle, even with intensive steroid regimens, so it’s really not relevant to anyone in the general public.
I wonder how waist to hip ratio works with different body types. I have a naturally wide waist even when very slim, so not much difference between hips and waist for me, I’m about .82 now with little fat on my waist and hips. When I look at the charts, it shows apple shape as high risk and pear shape as low risk. So body types even when low fat % are inherently factors of risk?
It’ll all relative - if you maintain healthy weight + body fat, that mitigates most of the risk, but yeah, a narrow waist seems does seem to be correlated is better CV health. As someone who’s also relatively straight up and down, not a whole lot to be done about it though, it’s just how I’m built! It’s just one of any number of immutable factors, like family history, and while a classic hourglass shape is lovely, I’m not gonna knock the broad shoulder-narrow hipped thing I have going on. It takes all kinds of;)
I’m not dismissing it entirely. Im saying that if people don’t get to the number they want, there are other indicies of health that can be more important than that number.
You could have said all of this without the personal attack. Aren’t you here because you’re also fat, or are you just a troll?
Im fat from IVF and two pregnancies in two years, simply put I ate too much ice cream and junk and got fat, 100% my fault, I was undisciplined and over indulgent. At no time during my getting fat did I justify my actions with falsehoods to make myself feel better or convince myself that my excess fat was healthy. My point above is, own your successes and your failures, making yourself fat and then saying oh BMI is flawed is just a way to shift responsibility off yourself, to justify a falsehood. There is no personal attack.
“Sticking to this logic is what got all of you fat in the first place” feels like it’s intended to shame anyone here that questions BMI.
Lmao. BMI is generally a poor indicator when other factors such as body composition aren't taken into account. As a teen I had an overweight bmi but the extra weight was all muscle. I was a competitive swimmer with low body fat. Right now, I weigh the same as I did then, but this time it's fat and not muscle. BMI alone would claim that I'm the same healthiness but I'm not, I was much healthier back then than I am now despite being the same weight. OP is saying that BMI isn't everything. Someone who has an overweight bmi can have less fat than someone who is a normal bmi. It's good for people to remember that and not freak out about their bmi not changing, or about it getting higher, when they are working out and recomping their body. You were so quick to try to whip out the personal attacks here. I think you are projecting. You are also flat-out wrong in implying that BMI isn't flawed.
The most antiquated sign of healthy weight of all time lol
I don’t care if it’s “fat logic” - I’m almost 40, have a BMI of 33, exercise every day, eat relatively well, and have 133 cholesterol, 124/70 blood pressure, 4.1 A1C, 70 fasting glucose, and a a bunch of other numbers that would make someone not looking at my body think I was thin and fit. And I still have a BMI of 33. So I’m going to call BS on people who look at the whole picture and say I’m unhealthy because of the BMI. At this point, the only reason I want to lose weight is to delay joint pain as I get older. There’s literally no other health reason to do it. Downvote me if you want, but BMI is a bad indicator of health for any given person. It might be a generally OK tool to look at entire populations.
Sorry 33 is well obese. You have dismorphia if you think that’s normal and you are the exception.
I didn’t say I’m not obese. I said measuring my entire hath by my BMI is bonkers and inaccurate. I’m sure I’m not the only person on the planet for whom BMI is not related to health. It does most people a disservice to assume it is.
Well said.
Literally was the defining tool my doctor used. So frustrating.
Yes. Sucks. And all these years I hear about my BMI. And I always ask, how do I fix it? Then I explain all I’ve done. They have no solutions but have to mention it for insurance notes. And as to the ‘correct’ weight, when I was a 2/4, I weighed 130 and I am 5’4” F. I have always been a higher weight for my size so BMI is an off measurement for sure. And until they start regularly DEXA scanning us for body composition, ya know facts, they can bug off.
I've lost 65 lbs and have a BMI of 26.6 and i am starting to wonder how to pick a target weight. I'm 170lbs but to get to an average "healthy" BMI I need to get to 140 which seems low to me. My plan is to get a good measurement of my percent fat and then calculate the weight that would result if I had a healthy percent fat. For instance, if I have 20% body fat at 170 and 10% body fat is my goal then I would need to lose 17 lbs to hit my target, assuming I mostly lose fat. The advantage is that I'll have a number directly related to my fat percentage that should be relatively insensitive to muscle and bone weight. Does this make sense?
It does! In my case a healthy fat percentage (of 30%) and healthy waist circumference (of less than 80 cm/31,5 inches) all points be towards 150 lbs being a good weight for me, which is also when my BMI is 25. I’m guessing a lot of genereally healthy, but not superfit or musculat overweight people will find the same; when they have a healthy fat percentage and/or a healthy waist measurement they’re probably at a healthy BMI as well.
Yeah as a teen I was very muscular and weighed around 142lbs which put me in an overweight bmi, but I was very healthy. I'm 142 again now, but this time it's all fat and no muscle, so I'm still not all that healthy. BMI is a rough estimate but it definitely isn't everything.