BMI for athletic build

FunRun08

First of all I am not a fan of BMI charts, I had a Dr look at her chart and inform me I needed to lose about 10lbs. Not taking into account my 19% body fat (done with calipers) or my resting heart rate or 48, or anything else about my health or life style just based on a chart that she tried to fit me into.

However, rant aside, here is a chart that I found for people with muscular builds, it seems a little more accurate to me, and I wanted to share with any like wise frustrated people who are sick of being in an unhealthy category because they are strong instead of skinny.

http://www.askdocweb.com/bmi4lean.html?weight=175&htf=5&hti=7&answer=23&comment=Desirable

Giraffe33991

Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

rsullivan

I think lumping everyone into one determination of BMI is so wrong. Some of us have hips and there are so many different body types. I know I need to lose weight, but I also know my body will never endure what it would need to get to the recommendations of BMI. Thanks for the link!

cheddarboy

don't use it at all,........ track bf%

alison2429

That's more like it. According to this site my weight is 'desirable'. Yay go me and thanks for sharing this.

bstamps12

I have always hated BMI! As an athlete in high school, my parents were told I was overweight and I may be near obese...I wore a size ZERO at the time and an elite swimmer. While I built a ton of fat on top of my muscles the first two years of college, I know now that as a triathlete, I have more muscle than most people my height and weight and while my BMI is in the healthy range, it's towards the upper end of it and I think it's stupid. Thanks for the link!!

JamesBurkes

don't use it at all,........ track bf%

This. BMI is a ridiculous and arbitrary measure, much like other ridiculous "mass" health recommendations, such as the UK's "Five a Day" initiative (no evidence at all, a number just picked because it "sounded right" and looked zippy on promotional materials) or even the daily alcohol intake of recommended units - again, not based on any evidence at all but decided during a meeting of senior public health officials based on what seemed reasonable. One attendee (Dr Richard Smith) has even admitted they "plucked the figures out of the air."

If they genuinely cared about health, they'd give up these measures and focus on measuring lung capacity, heart rate, blood pressure, body fat percentage etc. But that's all too tricky, complicated and expensive to extend to mass populations hence the existence of BMI - which generally doesn't work.