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Well, it turns out they both tell me I'm a little too fat.
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?
What if your torso is large because your large liver because alcoholism?
...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...
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.
Oh shoot I conflated wrists with waist😭
Circumference, not width
people have wrists that are 1/6.28⋯ their height‽‽
That's a strong wrist. Too much self-pleasure!
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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.
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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.
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.
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I'm not a top athlete but I do lift weights and according to my BMI I'm .5 under overweight despite my body fat percentage staying in the 15-17 range. I'm not even that big.
The problem is that it incentivizes fat over muscle.
Well it incentivises neither.
I'll admit I was disappointed that I put on weight once I worked out a bit, but there's still plenty of podge to go before I can blame BMI for me being slightly overweight.
It incentivizes fat because it is much lighter than muscle.
OH, come on, I have body close to some professional shot putters or hammer/discus throwers! /s
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.
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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
This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
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.
I'm guessing you're a female? 9-12% definitely isn't a healthy long-term fat percentage for women. Personally I think women look better with a little more padding anyways.
Explain that to the insurance company, that seems to be the relevant problem here.
I am a sphere.
Ready to ponder.
If you're frictionless too, physicists will love you
Especially if he lives in a vacuum.
The hard part will be inelastic collisions
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.
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
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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!
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Says I'm 10%. BMI says I'm 22.5. I think that's a big difference? I'm very tall, thin, but have solid muscle and work out about two hours per day.
Wonder if I'm doing it wrong? I have an athletic build similar to a soccer player, surfer, etc.
It puts me in the average range but close to obese. I have a six pack LOL.
I'm interested in other people's experience with the tool.
Here's an online calculator
It's incorrect, it claims my body fat is 19% when I know for an absolute fact it's 22%.
Much better estimate than BMI innit?
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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