Obese!?!?!?

i know awful isn't it. i'm 175 and 5'4". according to the bmi calculator under tools here on mfp, i am obese over 174.8
i am hoping to break that when i weigh-in this coming week. strange as it sounds i am looking forward to merely being overweight (it has been years)

At one point in tme, before I last let myself go, I was running half marathons, my blood pressure was borderline low, my resting pulse rate was less than 50, my cholesterol was perfect. My BMI said I was obese.

I was right where you are when I started. I thought..."Dang...50 pounds....no way!!" Then I met Tamtastic who was inching towards 100 lbs lost........just watching food, logging and exercising each day. I thought if she could do it so could I!

I lost 1/2 to 1 pound a week.......36 pounds total!! BUT more than that, I felt healthy and happy with myself. No longer the fat mom sitting on the couch scarfing down an entire pizza........no now I am the healthy mom that makes hummus and carrots!

You can do this.......1 pound at a time!!

BMIs are complete and utter nonsense. Recently it was determined that this guy and three of his team-mates are obese, and the whole rest of the team are overweight. Some of the most conditioned athletes on earth.


Obese?


Overweight?

My daughter is 5'11" and 265 her BMI is 34 she's a weight lifter so it also depends on muscle mass it weighs more than fat. They checked her bmi in the water

BMI is useless. Two of my extremely slendar and athletic children are very muscled (my 9 year old boy and my 13 year old boy don't look terrible different from the dudes in shown in their underwear above. If they weren't going to be so short, I'd sign them up to be fitness models.)

The school nurses weight them at school and I've recieved notes from school that one boy's BMI is close to overweight and the other's is close to obese. When in reality, their peditrician says that he knows of long distance runners who have more body fat than my two younger sons.

There are people who are "proper BMI" who are quite unhealthy.

Even my son who isn't lean right now , will always weigh more than the proper BMI due to dense bones.

I'm 5'4" and my hoped for end weight is in the low 160s because that is where I become a size 10 to 12.

I have determined that those fat% measuring gizmos (the "scales" you stand on and handles you hold that measure current through your body) are equally useless for many people.

I compared two measurements 9 weeks apart...

I had dropped 2" on both my chest and stomach (the two areas I carry some fat) and my weight had dropped 4.5 kilos. Apparently my fat% had risen slightly (bummer, my stomach rolls I lost weren't fat. I want them back!) but .. the nonsensical bit, my lean muscle had dropped over 4 kg! If someone's muscle mass dropped that much in 9 weeks they would not be pushing weights harder, they would probably be in hospital!

I had been sucsipcious from word go, because my calliper tests gave about 13% (that seemed a wee low first time) and the machine gave about 24% which intuitively seemed way too high. I mentioned it to friends at the gym and they burst out laughing. All of them who have some knowledge of their own fat % feel I'd be mid-teens maximum.

And I now think the algorithms used by those machines are only slightly modified BMI algorithms, because no matter how much leaner I get, the measurement is suspiciously similar to my BMI (which is wrong because I tend to a muscular build). That explains why they ask for age and height which is illogical if it knew very much at all about my body composition.

So I researched the whole thing and what I started discovering was almost beyond belief. When various brands were independently tested, their ability to even measure electrical impedence (theoretically the whole basis of how they function) was wrong by up to 40%! That is simply ridiculous! And the more I looked at anecdotal stories, the more I saw a pattern similar to BMIs. Really cut guys with probably <10% body fat were getting readings of up to 15% higher! What the hell is the point of selling a device that shows readings to 0.1% precision when they are wildly inaccurate to start with? It is a scam.

I agree that the BMI is really a useless tool and too generalized to do any good. I feel fitter and healthier now than I was 80lbs lighter (10 years ago and within my healthy range) and I know looking at myself and bone size height etc I should only be overweight not obese, yet I am also classified as obese. Not to mention my cardiovascular health is way better than it ever has been.

Those men in their underwear are FANTASTIC......I wish all the overweight men I dated/know looked like that! LOL

BMIs are complete and utter nonsense. Recently it was determined that this guy and three of his team-mates are obese, and the whole rest of the team are overweight. Some of the most conditioned athletes on earth.


Obese?


Overweight?

these pics made my day!!!

Yes, Thank you for this!~
And on topic ~ I completely agree that BMI results are less reliable than say.. body fat percentage?

I have determined that those fat% measuring gizmos (the "scales" you stand on and handles you hold that measure current through your body) are equally useless for many people.

I compared two measurements 9 weeks apart...

I had dropped 2" on both my chest and stomach (the two areas I carry some fat) and my weight had dropped 4.5 kilos. Apparently my fat% had risen slightly (bummer, my stomach rolls I lost weren't fat. I want them back!) but .. the nonsensical bit, my lean muscle had dropped over 4 kg! If someone's muscle mass dropped that much in 9 weeks they would not be pushing weights harder, they would probably be in hospital!

I had been sucsipcious from word go, because my calliper tests gave about 13% (that seemed a wee low first time) and the machine gave about 24% which intuitively seemed way too high. I mentioned it to friends at the gym and they burst out laughing. All of them who have some knowledge of their own fat % feel I'd be mid-teens maximum.

And I now think the algorithms used by those machines are only slightly modified BMI algorithms, because no matter how much leaner I get, the measurement is suspiciously similar to my BMI (which is wrong because I tend to a muscular build). That explains why they ask for age and height which is illogical if it knew very much at all about my body composition.

So I researched the whole thing and what I started discovering was almost beyond belief. When various brands were independently tested, their ability to even measure electrical impedence (theoretically the whole basis of how they function) was wrong by up to 40%! That is simply ridiculous! And the more I looked at anecdotal stories, the more I saw a pattern similar to BMIs. Really cut guys with probably <10% body fat were getting readings of up to 15% higher! What the hell is the point of selling a device that shows readings to 0.1% precision when they are wildly inaccurate to start with? It is a scam.

Thank you for saving me $159 plus shipping and handling!! I love you!:drinker: