Attractiveness and Weight - research & BMI
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For the record, neither myself nor SideSteel think that the BMI is a terrible indicator for the average population. There are always outliers, as with anything, and body builders are not the average population. It is more likely to be a reasonable indicator for women as we just do not have the propensity to gain a lot of muscle mass.
It should be remembered that it is a tool - just like the scale is.
However....the accuracy of the BMI to gauge 'fatness' is not the point of the OP.
According to the OP (the post not the person!) ....fat admirers think I am pretty hot....lol.0 -
Well I had had a crappy day but this thread just cheered me up on all sorts of levels. Particularly enjoyed the random spam in the middle0
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Oh mfp, never change :laugh:0
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OP, I totally get the humor of your post so no butthurt here I promise.Bmi = lousy for individual evaluations and very good as a correlation to bodyfat across average populations. Which both Sara and side steel will confirm.
I would have agreed with this statement last week, this post on another thread has made me call that in to question however.
The National Institutes of Heath did a study called: Accuracy of Body Mass Index to Diagnose Obesity In the US Adult Population
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2877506/
Now I admittedly haven't done much research in this field, but um yea, those numbers look a little questionable to me.
I like you - esp after the mean people thread du jour - but, you are also missing the point of the original post.... Which is that attractiveness is somewhat irrelevant to weight/BMI/bf%/ etc. - that there are men who find every body shape or type of women attractive.
Also, on the women's chart under 60 yrs of age) it looks like actual bf% well exceeded BMI - so the study he posted should in fact be quite valid :flowerforyou:
my main concern about the charts is the high number of people in the healthy BMI range whose body fat percentage is above 30. There are only a few women who have a body fat percentage in the healthy range and a BMI above 25... there are no women with a BMI above 30 who have a healthy body fat percentage.... so for women a BMI above 30 = you need to lose fat. BMI 25-30 = the majority of women with this BMI need to lose fat, there are a few exceptions (large framed strength athletes I'd guess... and if more women did strength training then IMO that number would be higher, and there are more men in this category, probably due to a combination of more men being into strength based sports and men being able to gain lean mass more easily than women)... but having a BMI in the 18-25 "healthy" range does NOT mean that you don't need to lose fat/improve your body composition, there are a LOT of people with 30+ body fat percentage in the healthy BMI range ... IMO that's the biggest flaw of BMI. All the people who are lulled into a false sense of security that they're healthy because of their weight, when actually their body fat percentage is above 30 which means they're carrying too much fat.... and it's the fat you're carrying that's the health risk, not how heavy you are. BMI applied with common sense should stop strength athletes being told to lose weight when they don't need to..... however, how is it going to diagnose all the people who have more than 30% body fat in the healthy BMI range?
That said, the use of BMI in a study such as the one the OP posted is not a bad choice. When comparing populations and general trends, BMI is a good metric, as the existence of both large framed and small framed people in the population will average each other out. And this debate about BMI is totally missing the point... the study shows that different men have different preferences... some prefer larger women, others prefer more slender women.... that's what the study is showing... no-one's diagnosing any of the study participants with obesity or saying they have to lose weight or anything....0 -
Amber, if you look at the R^2 values for women under 60 (which was the population for the visuals for the research) the correlation at 0.73 is pretty high ( with very low p values ). T
You'll notice that:
A) not a single women in that scatter plot has a bf% of 20 or lower with a BMI of 25 or higher.
my original post makes no mention about body fat or health. Yes. BMI is not a measure of fat or health. Not the point.
C) BMI is, by definition, a linear correlation of weight and if used in that sense. The title of my thread is attractiveness and weight and BMI includes a direct weight component.
Sorry, I don't really get the point of A). As far as I know women do have higher BF% as men and I thought that for women BF% 12-20% is for athletes, 20-25% is still fitness level, 25-32% is still acceptable. Is this info wrong? You have to consider that women store quite a lot of fat in and around their primary and secondary sexual organs. So, there is really no need for a woman to have a BF% of under 20%, right? A woman with a BMI of 26 might not have a BF% of under 20, but it can still be in a healthier range than the one of a woman with a BMI of 23. Plus, there might be a few female Body Builders that were not tested and for whom that study is not valid. Obviously, female Bodybuilders, that really have a BMI of over 25% and a BF% are rare and not taking them into account is okay, but I guess that with men this might be different. So, could you explain what you meant by statement A)0 -
For the record, neither myself nor SideSteel think that the BMI is a terrible indicator for the average population. There are always outliers, as with anything, and body builders are not the average population. It is more likely to be a reasonable indicator for women as we just do not have the propensity to gain a lot of muscle mass.
It should be remembered that it is a tool - just like the scale is.
However....the accuracy of the BMI to gauge 'fatness' is not the point of the OP.
According to the OP (the post not the person!) ....fat admirers think I am pretty hot....lol.
^ That. Also how U doin?0 -
Tagging so I can read when I get home from work (and actually see the images). Thanks for the link.0
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Amber, if you look at the R^2 values for women under 60 (which was the population for the visuals for the research) the correlation at 0.73 is pretty high ( with very low p values ). T
You'll notice that:
A) not a single women in that scatter plot has a bf% of 20 or lower with a BMI of 25 or higher. my original post makes no mention about body fat or health. Yes. BMI is not a measure of fat or health. Not the point.
C) BMI is, by definition, a linear correlation of weight and if used in that sense. The title of my thread is attractiveness and weight and BMI includes a direct weight component.
Sorry, I don't really get the point of A). As far as I know women do have higher BF% as men and I thought that for women BF% 12-20% is for athletes, 20-25% is still fitness level, 25-32% is still acceptable. Is this info wrong? You have to consider that women store quite a lot of fat in and around their primary and secondary sexual organs. So, there is really no need for a woman to have a BF% of under 20%, right? A woman with a BMI of 26 might not have a BF% of under 20, but it can still be in a healthier range than the one of a woman with a BMI of 23. Plus, there might be a few female Body Builders that were not tested and for whom that study is not valid. Obviously, female Bodybuilders, that really have a BMI of over 25% and a BF% are rare and not taking them into account is okay, but I guess that with men this might be different. So, could you explain what you meant by statement A)
We are looking at a scatter plot of women. and seeing if BMI has some indicator value in predicting body fat %. The point isn't with comparing to men, whether it s healthy, relevant to secondary sexual characteristics or what have you. It's a chart. With data. We are looking at the statistical validity of an R2 for a specific model and discussing that. There might by outliers, and new measure might show (the not so hypothetical body builder with BMI over 25 and bf below 20% - see a special poster in this thread...) someone like that but the statistical value is that one can be 95% certain that the next random measure will not be that outlier.
BMI is useful for these researchers. Clearly making it a goal does not make sense. And even health wise, there are better indicators. I do not only not recommend it be used as a goal, I don't think it's a good measure for clinical research - but a lot of research still uses it as a substitute indicator because it's cheap, easy to do and, surprise, there is no almost no evaluation on the robustness of other fat measures in additional indicator value in clinical research.0 -
Uh. I was tracking with everything and had a grasp of where things were going ... Until ... Secondary sexual organ!?!?! I have never heard of this! How have womens kept that secret? Do I get acces like on our tenth anniversary or something??0
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@wheirdI'm fairly sure that those of us that have posted thus far are aware.
Not posting for your benefit but for the OP, who seemed to not understand that the entire premise of BMI is false and misleading. And hey, I learned that from reading the "Eat, Train, Progress" group info. Sidesteel and Sarauk2sf are very intelligent people and they don't use BMI as an indicator.
@EvgeniZyntxIn general, for a large general population higher BMI means higher bf%.
But go ahead and consider that they where evaluating high BMI body builders if that makes you happy.
This isn't about making you or anyone else happy Bro, it was about educating someone who made an ignorant statement. I knew too many people in the military who actually had a high BMI and had to jump through all kinds of hoops because they were actually muscular, football types but their medical records said they were overweight, so this is a real issue in the world of 'real men'. (And a few pretty High Speed Low Drag ladies, LOL!
I'm sorry, I assumed that you might be teachable? My bad.
Ha! But really, what was the point of your post if not to pass on irrelevant and false 'information'? Sorry if I peed on your parade. No need to get your panties in a wad.
CYA ~ I'm done here.
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Uh. I was tracking with everything and had a grasp of where things were going ... Until ... Secondary sexual organ!?!?! I have never heard of this! How have womens kept that secret? Do I get acces like on our tenth anniversary or something??
DYEmotorboat?0 -
Uh. I was tracking with everything and had a grasp of where things were going ... Until ... Secondary sexual organ!?!?! I have never heard of this! How have womens kept that secret? Do I get acces like on our tenth anniversary or something??
Haven't you heard its our brain? Do you never read Cosmo?0 -
Damnit. I was hoping it would be something useful.
Anyway with respect to the OP . . . I wrestled with it upon first reading because I wasn't sure the point. It's amazing how, when an idea is fairly straightforward and quite specifically stated in few words, I find myself wondering what is must be about because it cannot be about something so straightforward.
But then I remember people, and craziness, and EDs, and "augmentation" and realize that . . . yep, it bears restating.
I'm most curious about those poor women in the union where each group would "settle" for someone of that BMI.0 -
Holy Moses, what I missed over the weekend... EvgeniZyntyx "might be teachable?"@wheirdI'm fairly sure that those of us that have posted thus far are aware.
Not posting for your benefit but for the OP, who seemed to not understand that the entire premise of BMI is false and misleading. And hey, I learned that from reading the "Eat, Train, Progress" group info. Sidesteel and Sarauk2sf are very intelligent people and they don't use BMI as an indicator.
@EvgeniZyntxIn general, for a large general population higher BMI means higher bf%.
But go ahead and consider that they where evaluating high BMI body builders if that makes you happy.
This isn't about making you or anyone else happy Bro, it was about educating someone who made an ignorant statement. I knew too many people in the military who actually had a high BMI and had to jump through all kinds of hoops because they were actually muscular, football types but their medical records said they were overweight, so this is a real issue in the world of 'real men'. (And a few pretty High Speed Low Drag ladies, LOL!
I'm sorry, I assumed that you might be teachable? My bad.
Ha! But really, what was the point of your post if not to pass on irrelevant and false 'information'? Sorry if I peed on your parade. No need to get your panties in a wad.
CYA ~ I'm done here.
I think "I'm done here" is quite the understatement.0 -
Uh. I was tracking with everything and had a grasp of where things were going ... Until ... Secondary sexual organ!?!?! I have never heard of this! How have womens kept that secret? Do I get acces like on our tenth anniversary or something??
Wait! Wut!? *gets in line for learning 'bout womenz*0 -
Lower weight might be attractive to some, while higher weight might be attractive to another group.
Lies.
Please resubmit content to the Ministry of Truth for re-evaluation.0 -
Uh. I was tracking with everything and had a grasp of where things were going ... Until ... Secondary sexual organ!?!?! I have never heard of this! How have womens kept that secret? Do I get acces like on our tenth anniversary or something??
Sorry, bad translation into English. The right word would be "secondary sex characteristics". I was not aware that the term was that misleading as to inspire several replies. Sorry for that0 -
my main concern about the charts is the high number of people in the healthy BMI range whose body fat percentage is above 30. There are only a few women who have a body fat percentage in the healthy range and a BMI above 25... there are no women with a BMI above 30 who have a healthy body fat percentage.... so for women a BMI above 30 = you need to lose fat. BMI 25-30 = the majority of women with this BMI need to lose fat, there are a few exceptions (large framed strength athletes I'd guess... and if more women did strength training then IMO that number would be higher, and there are more men in this category, probably due to a combination of more men being into strength based sports and men being able to gain lean mass more easily than women)... but having a BMI in the 18-25 "healthy" range does NOT mean that you don't need to lose fat/improve your body composition, there are a LOT of people with 30+ body fat percentage in the healthy BMI range ... IMO that's the biggest flaw of BMI. All the people who are lulled into a false sense of security that they're healthy because of their weight, when actually their body fat percentage is above 30 which means they're carrying too much fat.... and it's the fat you're carrying that's the health risk, not how heavy you are. BMI applied with common sense should stop strength athletes being told to lose weight when they don't need to..... however, how is it going to diagnose all the people who have more than 30% body fat in the healthy BMI range?
That said, the use of BMI in a study such as the one the OP posted is not a bad choice. When comparing populations and general trends, BMI is a good metric, as the existence of both large framed and small framed people in the population will average each other out. And this debate about BMI is totally missing the point... the study shows that different men have different preferences... some prefer larger women, others prefer more slender women.... that's what the study is showing... no-one's diagnosing any of the study participants with obesity or saying they have to lose weight or anything....
Lol, first apologies *again* to the OP because it was not my intent to derail to this extent on a topic that I do think bears repeating.
Neandermagnon actually hit the point I was most concerned about with the article I added, which was the probability of a large number of women thinking they're at a healthy body fat when they quite possibly aren't. Although I also have some concerns about the skew towards the healthy end of that chart. I'm thinking in particular of a someone on my FL. She has a history of ED and uses BMI as a marker to help her maintain a healthy weight. I have very little experience with ED so I'm usually not comfortable advising her, but this chart made me immediately think of her because there's real reason for concern that she should NOT depend on BMI to establish that her weight is ok.....0 -
Uh. I was tracking with everything and had a grasp of where things were going ... Until ... Secondary sexual organ!?!?! I have never heard of this! How have womens kept that secret? Do I get acces like on our tenth anniversary or something??
Sorry, bad translation into English. The right word would be "secondary sex characteristics". I was not aware that the term was that misleading as to inspire several replies. Sorry for that
Silliness is all. I just didn't understand and realize (now) that the mammories would be considered such. I thought strictly in terms of genitals because even my inner scientist is a thirteen year old boy.
Long story short, I wasn't poking at you; was legitimately confused and mocking my own ignorance of the concept.0
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