Forget BMI

mtb000mtb
mtb000mtb Posts: 69 Member
edited November 18 in Goal: Maintaining Weight
The Body Volume Index BVI has been developed as an alternative to BMI that better measures obesity and predict health outcomes regardless of body composition.

a-simple-and-more-accurate-way-to-determine-whether-your-weight-is-healthy

body volume
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Replies

  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    No android version?
  • Ironandwine69
    Ironandwine69 Posts: 2,432 Member
    BMI tells me I'm fat.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,701 Member
    edited May 2017
    BMI works for me! :)

    I've been within my normal BMI range almost my entire life ... just stepped out of it very briefly 3 times.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    Other than the 10% or so people who are in the overweight/obese range that are truly muscular, I'm pretty sure this new measure and BMI will give directionally similar results.

    You don't have to be all that muscular to be obese/overweight as an average height male and have a 39.9 or lower waist.

    2 years ago at 255 lbs I had a 39 inch abdominal circumference. I'm 71 inches tall.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    stanmann571 wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    Other than the 10% or so people who are in the overweight/obese range that are truly muscular, I'm pretty sure this new measure and BMI will give directionally similar results.

    You don't have to be all that muscular to be obese/overweight as an average height male and have a 39.9 or lower waist.

    2 years ago at 255 lbs I had a 39 inch abdominal circumference. I'm 71 inches tall.

    If that's you in the avatar and it isn't Photoshop, I would say that equals pretty strong/muscular.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    stanmann571 wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    Other than the 10% or so people who are in the overweight/obese range that are truly muscular, I'm pretty sure this new measure and BMI will give directionally similar results.

    You don't have to be all that muscular to be obese/overweight as an average height male and have a 39.9 or lower waist.

    2 years ago at 255 lbs I had a 39 inch abdominal circumference. I'm 71 inches tall.

    If that's you in the avatar and it isn't Photoshop, I would say that equals pretty strong/muscular.

    Yes, it's me, no there's no photographic trickery(well almost none... It was more of a sweep to touch my navel and then recovery to 2 hands vs an extended static hold) IF you look closely you can see a little bit of blur on my hand in motion

    But that's a party trick, and involves mostly balance... vs strength, although there is certainly a core strength component.


  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,149 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    trigden1991 wrote: »
    Just look in the mirror and take an honest look at yourself.

    Is that app available on Android though? :smiley:

    Yes.

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mmapps.mirror.free&hl=en
  • macchiatto
    macchiatto Posts: 2,890 Member
    edited May 2017
    That is interesting; thanks for posting. My husband is one for whom BMI is off. He's been losing weight and does still have a bit more to lose but nothing like BMI would indicate. I also just looked at the measurements we last took for him (he's lost a bit more since then) and waist was 39.75" even though he's now right on the border between "obese" and "overweight" per BMI.

    I don't have time to research this more right now, but anyone know for this if waist measurement they're going by is the narrowest point between rib cage and hips, or belly button level? My belly button definitely migrated lower thanks to pregnancy so now that measurement is pretty close to my hip measurement. :/ BMI is 20.1 now, true waist is 28.5" but belly button level "waist" measurement is right around 35".
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    macchiatto wrote: »
    That is interesting; thanks for posting. My husband is one for whom BMI is off. He's been losing weight and does still have a bit more to lose but nothing like BMI would indicate. I also just looked at the measurements we last took for him (he's lost a bit more since then) and waist was 39.75" even though he's now right on the border between "obese" and "overweight" per BMI.

    I don't have time to research this more right now, but anyone know for this if waist measurement they're going by is the narrowest point between rib cage and hips, or belly button level? My belly button definitely migrated lower thanks to pregnancy so now that measurement is pretty close to my hip measurement. :/ BMI is 20.1 now, true waist is 28.5" but belly button level "waist" measurement is right around 35".

    The standard we use in the military is 2 fingers above the crest of the hip bone. A couple important components are standing upright. and using someone else to measure.. A stepstool is helpful so that the observer can ensure the tape is level. Also, for consistency... the measurement should be at the end of a "normal" exhalation... not an exaggerated one... and we normally take 3 measurements...

    I'm not sure if the medical community uses a different location
  • ferd_ttp5
    ferd_ttp5 Posts: 246 Member
    Ironandwine69 wrote: »
    BMI tells me I'm fat.
    **kitten* this :lol:

  • gym4life64
    gym4life64 Posts: 824 Member
    SezxyStef wrote: »
    Ironandwine69 wrote: »
    BMI tells me I'm fat.

    no BMI does not tell you that...

    it tells you one of a couple thing

    underweight
    normal weight
    overweight
    obese
    morbidly obese

    if it tells you that you are overweight and you don't think so one of two things is going on.

    You are an outlier or you need to reevaluate what you are seeing.

    BMI tells me I am obese
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    edited May 2017
    gym4life64 wrote: »
    SezxyStef wrote: »
    Ironandwine69 wrote: »
    BMI tells me I'm fat.

    no BMI does not tell you that...

    it tells you one of a couple thing

    underweight
    normal weight
    overweight
    obese
    morbidly obese

    if it tells you that you are overweight and you don't think so one of two things is going on.

    You are an outlier or you need to reevaluate what you are seeing.

    BMI tells me I am obese

    Me too.. I am overfat... when I get to my goal weight I'll still be obese, but I don't think I'll be overfat

    Edited because I wrote overweight when I meant overfat
  • MsHarryWinston
    MsHarryWinston Posts: 1,027 Member
    I'm one of those people that when I'm down around my ideal weight BMI says that I'm overweight even though my body may be really tight and muscular. I just stopped caring what it said. And I mean, does it really matter? I know when I'm fat and when I'm not. Right now I'm fat.
  • pedermj2002
    pedermj2002 Posts: 180 Member
    I may, eventually, get close to "normal" BMI range, but I don't believe I will ever be in it. I'm 6'0.5", which means that my maximum weight should be 182.5lbs.

    To get myself into "fit" shape, my body fat percentage should be between 14% and 17%, which means my non-fat mass should be between 151.5lbs and 157lbs.

    When I had a bodpod scan done back in December, my non-fat mass 183.2lbs, and an overall weight of 233lbs. This means that I would have to lose 50.5lbs, and (of that), 26-32lbs of it would have to be non-fat mass.

    Now, add in that I have always led a sedentary lifestyle before I started losing weight. I'm a computer programmer, we're not exactly known for our willingness to get up and move around. So, my non-fat mass isn't likely to change that much.

    I might get myself down into the high 190 range, but really, that's as far as I expect it will ever go. Losing more than that will probably put me in a danger zone of too little body fat or too much non-fat mass having been removed.

    Physically, I've always been completely ordinary. Nothing special about me. And yet, here I am stating that I am unlikely to *ever* have a "normal" or "healthy" BMI, even if I get myself down to 10% body fat (which is a level that many athletes have a hard time getting to).

    BMI is broken. You might be one of the lucky ones for whom it works, but BMI is fundamentally broken for measuring an individual. Don't use it, don't rely on it. Get actual body fat scans done, or just settle for looking in a mirror honestly, and deciding if what you see is fat or not.

    But don't push BMI. It's not a good tool.
  • VintageFeline
    VintageFeline Posts: 6,771 Member
    macchiatto wrote: »
    That is interesting; thanks for posting. My husband is one for whom BMI is off. He's been losing weight and does still have a bit more to lose but nothing like BMI would indicate. I also just looked at the measurements we last took for him (he's lost a bit more since then) and waist was 39.75" even though he's now right on the border between "obese" and "overweight" per BMI.

    I don't have time to research this more right now, but anyone know for this if waist measurement they're going by is the narrowest point between rib cage and hips, or belly button level? My belly button definitely migrated lower thanks to pregnancy so now that measurement is pretty close to my hip measurement. :/ BMI is 20.1 now, true waist is 28.5" but belly button level "waist" measurement is right around 35".

    For women it's the narrowest point.
  • pedermj2002
    pedermj2002 Posts: 180 Member
    Oh, jeez, I just realized that I was calculating my *maximum* weight according to BMI. That 182.5lbs is a BMI of 25 for me. If I go for the low end, a BMI of 19? My weight should be 138.7lbs. That's laughably implausible for me.
  • RuNaRoUnDaFiEld
    RuNaRoUnDaFiEld Posts: 5,864 Member
    I've always gone by the old fashioned pinch an inch.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    Recall that the BMI formula is just: (Weight in kilograms)/(Height in meters)^2

    Given the incredible simplicity of the metric, I'm always wondering: what do people expect? Of course people who are muscular will appear to have a high BMI. Even when you BMI is 25 or greater, the statistics don't say much about your health.

    Here is a good blurb on BMI:

    https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/

    If you really want to see how BMI compares with DXA (which is the gold standard for measuring percentage body fat) you can look at this paper:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16044176

    The conclusion of the above paper is that BMI predictions of body fat percentage correlate well with DXA, but looking at the data, I see that the DXA measurement could be different from the BMI prediction by as much as +/-10%. In other words, your BMI might predict a body fat of 20%, but yours is really 10% or 30%, which is highly significant. (See below for data from Steinberger 2005).

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