Don't weight, Measure BMI

DrHDLM

I've noticed that people always concentrate them selfs on weight, i know is the easier way to have an approximate to get to your goals, but i gotta tell you I've learned this the hard way and by becoming a medical doctor plus reading all the books, I've got to conclusions that not many of you know right now. BODY WEIGHT IS NOT THE BEST MEASUREMENT.

First of all you shouldn't weight yourself often, this increases the amount of stress every time you do this and stress leads to greater amount of fat producing hormones in your body. Why do you think that people that live with greater amounts of stress in their lives live less than the ones that are relaxed? it's just because they have lower risk of getting high blood pressure, so they get lower risk of getting any kind of cardiovascular diseases and all the diseases that come along with it. so try not to measure or weight your self more than 2 times per month and i mean come on, you know when you're not doing it right. Why submit your self to that stress? you shouldn't.

The important thing in this subject is to use your BMI as your perfect measurement, not only your weight. Sometimes people don't get this. it is necessary to increase your weight to be able to loose more weight.

By definition an overweight person, is a person that has a BMI above 30 and a morbidly obese is BMI above 40 so you need to try to get your BMI lower than 30. but this takes time, and the best way to do it is to gain weight! !~!@~ wait what?! yes you read right, gain weight, but here's the trick, muscular weight, because what maintains your metabolism up are your muscles.

You can have a lot of fat and very little muscle in your body and not be a heavy person, this is because fat weights less than muscle.
Why do you think that Females can weight less than men, but look heavier?
it is just because they by nature have less amount of muscle than men.

So here's the deal, you have to increase your amount of muscle in order to increase your metabolism, you'll be able to eat more without gaining weight once you reach your goals (remember BMI should be your goal), besides that, it will help you to loose those extra pounds of fat you have faster and it is the best way to loose weight because once you increase your weight in muscle, it will be more difficult to increase it in fat, so you stay at your goal always you have a good metabolism meaning a correct amount of muscle cells working for you.

TrainingWithTonya

I think you mean to measure Body Fat % not BMI. BMI is simply a height to weight ratio (Technically it is weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared) so it is just as inaccurate as the scale when looking at muscle vs. fat. I totally agree though, that the scale is the worst thing you can use to determine health status. If you are seeing decreases in inches (or centimeters if you prefer metric) and body fat percentage, then you are becoming healthier even if the scale and BMI are going up.

DrHDLM

Fat is part of your BMI because is part of your weight and BMI is what determines if you are or not overweight.

As i was saying before i prefer to have more muscle mass than fat mass, i guess you'll agree with me that it is easier for people to get their BMI than the % of fat.

Nobody wants to use a caliper or even knows what it is, but BMI calculations are done easy with a calculator that we even have over here. increasing your muscle mass progressively will lower your Body Fat % if you're doing it the right way

giammarcor

You're certainly more qualified than I am to comment on the medical aspects involved in this, but I can tell you one thing, BMI isnt what hangs over my belt. That's fat. In my case, and certainly I would think most people's cases, there has to be weight loss that goes along with BMI reduction. I can assure you, my BMI wouldn't reduce if I was gaining more muscle due to the amount of fat already on my body. So, I will continue to watch my weight AND my BMI and perhaps at some point when I feel my weight is under control, I'll concentrate more on BMI.

naku

lol this is a hilarious post.

DrHDLM

ok, here's the deal by just check the weight grossly. you will concentrate on loosing weight and that's a problem because you'll eventually stop loosing it or will decrease the rate that you're loosing it and then you'll do either of 2 things, increase your exercise or eat less, and that's a problem, because then you'll start loosing muscle mass, if you loose muscle mass you loose the ability of maintaining you BMR (basic Metabolic Rate) and that makes it more difficult to loose the weight. once you finally reach your goal doing this things, you wont have enough muscle to maintain your weight and you'll start putting it up again, but guess what? it will be mainly FAT.

Stop thinking about loosing weight and think more about the lifesaver you have around your gut, increase your BMR by increasing your muscle mass. you will be able to eat more without putting up weight once you reach your goal

BigBoneSista

I would assume if a person isn't strength training and doesn't care to then BMI would be ok for them. But for those of us that are strength training then going by our BF% would be better. I don't use calipers. I use a hand held monitor to tell me my BF%. I know its not 100% accurate but its better than going by my BMI. If I would solely go by that then I could be in a healthy range but still flabby looking. If I didn't know about BF% & what it means I would think that in order to not look as flabby I should lose more weight and thats not neccessarily true. I could look better just by changing my body's composition which I'm working on now.

My goal is 180. I'm 18 lbs from that and its within my healthy range since I'm 5'11".75 (yes I have a 6' complex but thats another story). But with that 18 lbs lost I will still be flabby so instead of focusing on my BMI & the scale, I am more focus on my BF%.

And to me just like the scale...BMI doesn't really know the difference in lean mass or body fat. We all know that a extremely fit body builder is overweight and sometimes obese according to the BMI chart. For an example....my husband is in the military. By weight and BMI he is out of standards. By BF% he is well within standards. He is 5'8", 211 lbs, with 11% bf.

Just my POV

webbed1

Doc, I appreciate your input here, because it is needed. I will point out the exception; on a BMI scale I am obese, see my signature. But my recent professionally tested caliper reading shows a 9% bodyfat. BMI is adversely skewed for muscular guys.

DrHDLM

You guy's are right, it is absolutely better to use the Body Fat % s, i'm not discussing that.