BMI for Asians

kermiehiho

Is the BMI scale really accurate for all ethnicities? I'm an Asian female, 5'1", and about 95 lbs, and I've been told to gain weight, that my BMI is too low, etc., etc. But I read that when Kristi Yamaguchi was a competitive figure skater, she was 93 lbs and did squats with 203 lbs. Suddenly I don't feel so bad. Does anybody know the answer to this BMI thing?

pingpong86

I would have thought BMI is the same for everyone, with your weight and height your BMI comes out at 17.5 and anything under 18 is classed as under weight. Ethncity has nothing to do with it.

supercool111

I wouldn't worry too much about BMIs to be honest. They are not really an exact science. You can be a "healthy" weight according to BMI but have an unhealthy body fat percentage or you can be "overweight" but have a low body fat percentage. I hate how everyone is obsessed with BMI.

sneetch

Hey kerm,

BMI is NOT suitable for all ethnicities. If it was, many asians would be offically over weight. BMI does not make any allowance for the size of a persons frame and therefore, slight people (and perhaps races), will be under weight using this system. Athletes and body builders will sometimes find themselves over weight using the BMI scale because the system makes no allowance for body fat versus lean muscle. You can read all about it (and its limitations here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index

burner

maybe use another method of measuring yourself - if as people are saying BMI isn't effective or accurate for all people. I agree with them as if someone ways a lot but is very muscular and lean then their BMI would class them as overweight.

if concerned that you're underweight see your GP - and check other measurements such as circumference of your arms, legs, waist, neck and hips. This will be far more accurate and specific to you.

just an idea - but best option if you are concerned is see your GP and get proper medical advice.

:happy:

SHBoss1673

BMI is exactly what it claims to be. it's your height divided by your weight (squared), nothing more.

BMI should only be used as one of many tools to assess someone's overall health, and it's a very VERY rough guideline.

Certain segments of the population will have skewed results, such as pregnant women, children, and people with high volumes of muscle mass (Like body builders or maybe someone like a football linebacker)

put it this way, I'm 6'2" and 187 lbs (today) and my BMI is around 24.5 or so, yet my body fat is around 10% right now. So by BMI standards, I'm just barely in the healthy range, but by Body Fat % I'm extremely healthy.

BMI should NOT be your only tool to gauge your health, but it can be used as part of an overall strategy. Especially if your starting BMI is extremely high and you have a large volume of body fat. It's still a less subjective tool than straight weight.

OddSquid

BMI is for the average person, not for athletes. Kristi Yamaguchi has to be able to do heavy squats because she has to be able to jump explosively. She would have more explosive strength in her quads and glutes as well as the fast-twitch muscles in those areas, stuff that we regular people won't have.

BMI is only a ballpark figure. I'm a 5'8" male, 150 lb. Asian. While mine says I'm in the "healthy" range, my BF% is still a little higher than I'd like it to be.

kermiehiho

BMI is exactly what it claims to be. it's your height divided by your weight (squared), nothing more.

BMI should only be used as one of many tools to assess someone's overall health, and it's a very VERY rough guideline.

Certain segments of the population will have skewed results, such as pregnant women, children, and people with high volumes of muscle mass (Like body builders or maybe someone like a football linebacker)

put it this way, I'm 6'2" and 187 lbs (today) and my BMI is around 24.5 or so, yet my body fat is around 10% right now. So by BMI standards, I'm just barely in the healthy range, but by Body Fat % I'm extremely healthy.

BMI should NOT be your only tool to gauge your health, but it can be used as part of an overall strategy. Especially if your starting BMI is extremely high and you have a large volume of body fat. It's still a less subjective tool than straight weight.

So, if my body fat and weight is low (5% BF, 95 lbs, 5'1"), what does that mean? I mean, I'm short, so I thought it was normal to be light.

SHBoss1673

BMI is exactly what it claims to be. it's your height divided by your weight (squared), nothing more.

BMI should only be used as one of many tools to assess someone's overall health, and it's a very VERY rough guideline.

Certain segments of the population will have skewed results, such as pregnant women, children, and people with high volumes of muscle mass (Like body builders or maybe someone like a football linebacker)

put it this way, I'm 6'2" and 187 lbs (today) and my BMI is around 24.5 or so, yet my body fat is around 10% right now. So by BMI standards, I'm just barely in the healthy range, but by Body Fat % I'm extremely healthy.

BMI should NOT be your only tool to gauge your health, but it can be used as part of an overall strategy. Especially if your starting BMI is extremely high and you have a large volume of body fat. It's still a less subjective tool than straight weight.

So, if my body fat and weight is low (5% BF, 95 lbs, 5'1"), what does that mean? I mean, I'm short, so I thought it was normal to be light.

5% body fat is extreme starvation for a woman, very bad. Females should be at a minimum of 12%. That percentage would set off giant alarm bells in my head. even for a guy 5% is about the minimum you need to be healthy. In fact, my goal is 8%, and that's very good. For a woman, 5% is dangerously low.

read this, while I'm generally not a fan of Wiki's because the information can be wrong, I read through this wiki and it's pretty accurate in this regard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage

kermiehiho

BMI is exactly what it claims to be. it's your height divided by your weight (squared), nothing more.

BMI should only be used as one of many tools to assess someone's overall health, and it's a very VERY rough guideline.

Certain segments of the population will have skewed results, such as pregnant women, children, and people with high volumes of muscle mass (Like body builders or maybe someone like a football linebacker)

put it this way, I'm 6'2" and 187 lbs (today) and my BMI is around 24.5 or so, yet my body fat is around 10% right now. So by BMI standards, I'm just barely in the healthy range, but by Body Fat % I'm extremely healthy.

BMI should NOT be your only tool to gauge your health, but it can be used as part of an overall strategy. Especially if your starting BMI is extremely high and you have a large volume of body fat. It's still a less subjective tool than straight weight.

So, if my body fat and weight is low (5% BF, 95 lbs, 5'1"), what does that mean? I mean, I'm short, so I thought it was normal to be light.

5% body fat is extreme starvation for a woman, very bad. Females should be at a minimum of 12%. That percentage would set off giant alarm bells in my head. even for a guy 5% is about the minimum you need to be healthy. In fact, my goal is 8%, and that's very good. For a woman, 5% is dangerously low.

read this, while I'm generally not a fan of Wiki's because the information can be wrong, I read through this wiki and it's pretty accurate in this regard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage

So what do I do to increase it in a healthy way? Just eat more??

SHBoss1673

So what do I do to increase it in a healthy way? Just eat more??

AHAH! I'm glad you asked. It's really not quite that simple. In theory you eat more and you gain the fat you need to be healthy (you can Google essential body fat if you want more information), but in reality, just stuffing your face is a generally bad idea, you tend to gain weight in the worst possible ways.

So while being under fat is unhealthy, gaining lots of fat, quickly, is also unhealthy, so ideally you sit down with a registered dietitian and map out a 6 month plan to gain that 7% body fat you need, but if that's not an option, the basics would be, careful planning of your meals so that you're eating just slightly more than you need to fuel your body at each meal, that way every day, your body adds a little bit more fat onto it's reserves. Do it this way and first of all you don't pack a bunch of fat onto one section, and second, you give your body a chance to adjust to the new reserves. What you'll probably find when you start gaining back fat is a couple of things, better signals from your body about when you are hungry, better skin, hair, and nails, more energy, better stamina and endurance, and more of an ability to eat larger portions of food without wildly fluctuating body weight. Fat helps with all of these things (among others).

kermiehiho

So what do I do to increase it in a healthy way? Just eat more??

AHAH! I'm glad you asked. It's really not quite that simple. In theory you eat more and you gain the fat you need to be healthy (you can Google essential body fat if you want more information), but in reality, just stuffing your face is a generally bad idea, you tend to gain weight in the worst possible ways.

So while being under fat is unhealthy, gaining lots of fat, quickly, is also unhealthy, so ideally you sit down with a registered dietitian and map out a 6 month plan to gain that 7% body fat you need, but if that's not an option, the basics would be, careful planning of your meals so that you're eating just slightly more than you need to fuel your body at each meal, that way every day, your body adds a little bit more fat onto it's reserves. Do it this way and first of all you don't pack a bunch of fat onto one section, and second, you give your body a chance to adjust to the new reserves. What you'll probably find when you start gaining back fat is a couple of things, better signals from your body about when you are hungry, better skin, hair, and nails, more energy, better stamina and endurance, and more of an ability to eat larger portions of food without wildly fluctuating body weight. Fat helps with all of these things (among others).

Thanks for the advice. Is there some category I should increase slightly, such as protein, or increase everything slightly? I've tried increasing the amount I eat before, and I just ended up feeling full and bloated, and I didn't get hungry in time (as a student and teacher, I have a set time between classes I have to eat, so not getting hungry at a set time throws off my schedule).

SHBoss1673

Thanks for the advice. Is there some category I should increase slightly, such as protein, or increase everything slightly? I've tried increasing the amount I eat before, and I just ended up feeling full and bloated, and I didn't get hungry in time (as a student and teacher, I have a set time between classes I have to eat, so not getting hungry at a set time throws off my schedule).

Well, there's really no need to go a lot over on any one meal, I mean adding 50 to 100 calories per meal every day shouldn't cause you to feel bloated, that's like a tablespoon of peanut butter, or an apple, or a serving of strawberries, or some almonds. At the very first maybe it'll feel like you're eating a lot, but your body will adjust, give it time. What you don't want to do is start filling the extra room with junk food or highly processed food.
And no, you don't need to up any one macro nutrient, just increase all of them proportionally as there's no direct translation from macro nutrient directly to fat, all 3 macros go from food to components then are recombined either as fuel, protein, or body fat, how they are broken down is different based on which type it is, but all 3 have the potential to be fat and/or fuel.

firedragon064

You are fine. Most of my asians friends are around 100 lbs. Their body frames/bones are x-small.

SHBoss1673

You are fine. Most of my asians friends are around 100 lbs. Their body frames/bones are x-small.

5% body fat for a woman IS NOT FINE, it's clinically defined as starvation, YES, even with Asian women. It's dangerous and can cause a person serious long term health problems.

kermiehiho

That being said, that measurement is based on some electric current thingy that I did as a part of a health assessment. How accurate are those things? Because one year I was up at 24% and the next, I was at 12%, with no change in weight or diet! And the same sort of variance happened with my sister! @_@

SHBoss1673

That being said, that measurement is based on some electric current thingy that I did as a part of a health assessment. How accurate are those things? Because one year I was up at 24% and the next, I was at 12%, with no change in weight or diet! And the same sort of variance happened with my sister! @_@

they are unstable, you should really go have your BF% tested professionally, I feel like everyone should have it tested at least once. Some may be surprised, just because you don't have a lot of visible fat, doesn't mean your body fat is necessarily low. It's not expensive, and can really tell you a great deal more about your body. Again, if you really are anywhere near 5%, that's a serious issue that needs to be addressed immediately, recommended minimums for a woman is 12%, below that and you are affecting your health. It's no joke, it can cause serious long term issues.