BMI and mixed ethnicities...

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tannyasawyer
tannyasawyer Posts: 106 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm currently very overweight (5 ft 7 and 197lb) and so far am doing quite well at losing. I'm getting to a stage now where I'm starting to try to figure out roughly what my ideal weight sound be for my frame, which is where I really get lost!

I am mixed race (part British, part Jamaican) and have always had a slim build. Even at my biggest, my wrists, fingers and ankles were always slight. Back in college, I wore a UK size 8/10 (US size 6/8) and must have had an awesome metabolism - could eat whatever I wanted with no weightgain. Despite being so slim, I weighed between 10.5 and 11 stones (between 147 and 154lb) and was just over 5 ft 5. I once had someone come to me and say "wow, don't your parents feed you?!", which really made me look at how slim I was. Funnily enough, 154lb for for someone of that height (as far as the charts go anyway) is counted as overweight.

I'll likely never get down to that weight again, and, quite frankly, really don't wish to be that skinny again, so am trying to find out if there's a way I could get a better calculation of what I should be aiming for. I recently asked a doctor about BMI and how accurate it is for mixed ethnicities and was told "BMI is BMI - it makes no difference..." Can that be correct? If I bring my weight down to what it should be 'officially', I'll be too skinny. If I bring my size down to what looks 'right' to me, I'll still be overweight. Both will impact on my health, I guess... :grumble:

Ok, whinge over! Have been running this through my head a lot recently and wondering if anyone can come up with (or point me in the direction of) some decent information or answers...

Replies

  • mensasu
    mensasu Posts: 355 Member
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    One reason you can be skinny and weight a lot is if you have muscle instead of fat. Was that you in college? Were you very active and athletic? You don't have to be bulky like a body builder either to have muscle, just well toned. If you have a picture take a hard look to see if that was the case.
  • tannyasawyer
    tannyasawyer Posts: 106 Member
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    I did have a good amount of upper leg muscle, not immediately visible (well, certainly isn't now!), but it was there. I didn't do sports, but walked a lot and was fairly active. Upper body, OTOH not so much, thanks to shoulder surgery, so had been told I couldn't lift weights. Paying for that now, stupid flabby arms... :grumble:
  • Ruthe8
    Ruthe8 Posts: 423 Member
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    BMI was designed to be used for populations, not individuals. It isn't meant to be accurate for individuals, so stop trying to use it.
  • tannyasawyer
    tannyasawyer Posts: 106 Member
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    BMI was designed to be used for populations, not individuals. It isn't meant to be accurate for individuals, so stop trying to use it.

    Agreed - really have had enough of BMI. However it keeps being dragged up because of various medical things, gym, etc. So just trying to find out what is best for me, but not sure which I should settle with - 'approved' weight or 'approved' size.
  • lauraniwa
    lauraniwa Posts: 131 Member
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    BMI tends to be most accurate in white males with a light to sedentary lifestyle. Generally speaking it has been shown to classify people of african american descent as "overweight" and people of asian descent as "underweight". It's also not the greatest for women either, or for people who are active, especially weight lifters.

    But it's not a bad estimation tool - which I guess is all it was ever meant to be really. If you're going to use BMI as a health measure I'd also track body measurements and scale weight too. Put altogether they can paint a pretty good picture of health.

    If you really are concerned about your body compisition I'd say getting a DEXA scan would be the way to go.
  • tannyasawyer
    tannyasawyer Posts: 106 Member
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    If you really are concerned about your body compisition I'd say getting a DEXA scan would be the way to go.

    Thanks, lauraniwa. Have never heard of this before, will have a look at what this is.
  • Martina_Who
    Martina_Who Posts: 172 Member
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    I think BMI is a terrible tool and I only loosely follow it!
    I know a lot of people including many medial practitioners think so too!

    Dont beat yourself up about it and dont ever let some crappy doctor tell you that BMI is the best thing since sliced bread!

    Also fyi there are 2 sizes of a difference between UK and US sizes. A size 10 in the UK is a 6 in the US!
  • emmalene1984
    emmalene1984 Posts: 137 Member
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    BMI is not worth stressing about if it doesn't work for you, like the other posters have said, there is somewhere, i think on the NHS website or just google it, a way of determining over/underwieght etc by measurements which is said to be much more accurate, and this determines your risk factor of developing problems such as heart disease etc, something to do with the ration between hip to waist measurements or something. good luck. :-)
  • 2hobbit1
    2hobbit1 Posts: 820 Member
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    I would look at body fat% as a mark to follow rather than BMI - if your body fat is in the healthy range then I would put more weight on that, if it is not then work to bring it into a healthy range.

    Waist to hip ratio has been found to be a better predictor of heart risk due to obesity than the BMI scale. And I had recently read somewhere that they are working on a new index that combines the info from both systems to get a more predictive index. Can't find the reference at the moment.
  • thescrumisfun
    thescrumisfun Posts: 355
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    Get a body fat caliper and aim for a healthy body fat percentage - it'll be waaay less stress :).

    http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/ibw/
  • Spartan_Maker
    Spartan_Maker Posts: 683 Member
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    Body fat percentage is the only thing that matters. Implicit in everyone's goal to "lose weight" is losing fat and keeping muscle.
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
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    If you really are concerned about your body compisition I'd say getting a DEXA scan would be the way to go.

    Thanks, lauraniwa. Have never heard of this before, will have a look at what this is.

    for the record, you were given bad advice. shoulder surgery does not equal no weights, it just means you need to find a good physical therapist, take a few sessions, and have them show you what your range of motion can tolerate, and work around any pain instead of avoiding it all together. I also have terrible shoulders (a lifetime of playing baseball as a pitcher will do that) and have pain and impingement all throughout my shoulders. But today, I did a full body weight training session including flys, inclined presses, weighted twists, plyometric push-ups...etc. and my pain, to this day, is very acute with specific ranges of motion.

    If you can't afford a therapist, I can show you some specific routines that you can try (with no weight to see if the range of motion would work for you), just PM me and we can talk offline about it. Or check out my chat room (I made a post about it) and we can chat live about it if you like.
  • love4fitnesslove4food_wechange
    love4fitnesslove4food_wechange Posts: 6,897 Member
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    BMI tends to be most accurate in white males with a light to sedentary lifestyle. Generally speaking it has been shown to classify people of african american descent as "overweight" and people of asian descent as "underweight". It's also not the greatest for women either, or for people who are active, especially weight lifters.

    But it's not a bad estimation tool - which I guess is all it was ever meant to be really. If you're going to use BMI as a health measure I'd also track body measurements and scale weight too. Put altogether they can paint a pretty good picture of health.

    If you really are concerned about your body compisition I'd say getting a DEXA scan would be the way to go.

    HUH? White males? I don't think so. where do you get this information?
  • mondayschildeats
    mondayschildeats Posts: 20 Member
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    I know exactly what you mean about finding the ideal weight for you. I find that not everyone with the same weight or clothing size looks the same. We all carry weight differently diffierent body sizes etc. I remember when I had lost a load of weight and went down to an 8-10. I am 5'5 and was about 11 st 4 and by doctor told me I was still overweight and should have been about 10st 5lb. Which I instantly dismissed because at that weight I looked very skinny and people frequently commented on it.

    With regards to the mixed ethnicities thing I don't think this has much to do with it (I'm mixed myself) I would say its body shape, genetics. I tend not to bother looking at BMI's. I know some people will disagree but I just find them to be a fad or a go to for GPs instead of actually assessing patients individually.

    Anyway thats my 2 cents...
  • mensasu
    mensasu Posts: 355 Member
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    I look at this this way: I want to be healthy. So I will go on a couple of factors - not obese, waist below the diabetes threshold, blood pressure in check, blood work good, joints feeling no stress from my weight and muscles lightly toned. These are my primary factors. Next I want to look good to me and my SO. So a little jiggle will not be a problem to me if I settle on slightly overweight, nor will hip bones be if I settle on lower end of normal. It will be where my health lands me, not where others think I look best.

    As far as the doctors comment about being overweight, did he say he wanted you to lose more or was he just cautioning you that you are creeping up to a health problem? Or was it just a comment? My doctor will tell me where I am, and let me know if it might be affecting my health but by no way is he judgemental when he tells me. He never said lose weight, but he is pleased that both of us are and has even said slow down for health reasons.

    So my opinion - its up to you. You set the reasons for your weight goal.
  • Oishii
    Oishii Posts: 2,675 Member
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    I'm 5'5" and to be a size 10, I have to weigh somewhere between 120-130lb, but I've seen people on mfp with the same measurements, but 20lb heavier. If I were you, I'd aim for a size, rather than a weight, but remember that your body may not distribute the weight exactly as it did when you were young. At 55kg (121lb) I am a size 10, like I used to be, but only because vanity sizing has made a size 10 as huge as my waist!

    As for BMI, the overweight boundary is different for the Japanese, because statistically they get weight-related difficulties at a lower BMI, but I haven't researched other genetic make-ups.

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