Obese and proud of it!
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Right but you're bashing the BMI which is a valid simple metric, instead of bashing the companies that are using it incorrectly as some sort of absolute guide line. It should be - if you are over X BMI you get more test/medical whatever.
None of our insurance companies or corporate wellness plans use BMI in that manner. Just because some American companies are using a screwdriver as a hammer doesn't make the screwdriver a terrible tool.
Not only that, but in your pictures above, the left ones at 192 are still in the "Overweight" area which you certainly appear to be in those pictures.
Your "After" shots at 168 are JUST barely into the "Overweight" section which is still possible since you seem to carry fat lower down (love handles, back, visceral fat). You are not the poster boy for an unfair BMI chart. Lose 5 pounds, get your insurance and you're golden.
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Not what you asked , but I suspect you are off at your body fat estimations.0
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Congratulations, you're an outlier. That doesn't change the statistics on BMI.0
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For a "normal" BMI for my height, I'd have to have -1%BF to weigh that amount. My company wellness plan also tells me I need to go on a "low fat diet" still. We're still in the stone age my friend. Luckily, my family doctor is smart enough to approve my BMI and give me credit for it.0
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Right but you're bashing the BMI which is a valid simple metric, instead of bashing the companies that are using it incorrectly as some sort of absolute guide line. It should be - if you are over X BMI you get more test/medical whatever.
None of our insurance companies or corporate wellness plans use BMI in that manner. Just because some American companies are using a screwdriver as a hammer doesn't make the screwdriver a terrible tool.
Not only that, but in your pictures above, the left ones at 192 are still in the "Overweight" area which you certainly appear to be in those pictures.
Your "After" shots at 168 are JUST barely into the "Overweight" section which is still possible since you seem to carry fat lower down (love handles, back, visceral fat). You are not the poster boy for an unfair BMI chart. Lose 5 pounds, get your insurance and you're golden.
Wow...just, wow. I agree that I could be considered overweight in the left side of the pictures (5 lbs from obese?), but you'd be hard pressed to find people that said the right side at 168 is overweight. Those "love handles" you refer to are my hip bones.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Congratulations, you're an outlier. That doesn't change the statistics on BMI.
You mean the statistics that were backed into to come up with a formula, which the developer of said formula stated should never be used to assess whether or not any individual was overweight or obese, but rather was only ever meant to compare populations? You're right, those statistics on BMI have remained constant.0 -
as a former health insurance company IT geek, i can tell you this without the slightest hint of hesitation...
these people are leeches who will stop at NOTHING...i repeat, NOTHING - to suck the last insurance premium dollar from their clients, and will go even further than that to keep from paying anything they can remotely justify denying responsibility for.
does anyone have any historical information on what was an "acceptable" BMI measurement in years past compared to current expectations?
I'm willing to bet that what was a once reasonable number has trended in recent years towards illogical expectations of most of their coverage demographic over the years in order to have a rubric by which to charge more per insured to classify them as fata$$e$.0 -
BMI works well as a warning for most people. The people it's not suited for are the people who already know it's not right for them. I agree that it's only really a problem if an organization uses it to provide or reject benefits without further consideration.
Based on those pics I think you are slightly fatter than the numbers you wrote. Not worryingly fat, but not as low as 13%.0 -
those taps tho
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Way to go fatty McFat fat. How are we supposed to body shame you if you're too proud to accept the insult?
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hamptontom wrote: »as a former health insurance company IT geek, i can tell you this without the slightest hint of hesitation...
Life insurance, not health. (Not that that changes your point, but I don't think they are permitted to use BMI to set rates for health insurance post Obamacare.)
My health insurance company has a fitness program you can join and they actually use a combination of waist/height measurement along with BMI to analyze you and as a result they said I was fine when still overweight since my waist wasn't too wide. But it didn't affect premiums anyway.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Congratulations, you're an outlier. That doesn't change the statistics on BMI.
You mean the statistics that were backed into to come up with a formula, which the developer of said formula stated should never be used to assess whether or not any individual was overweight or obese, but rather was only ever meant to compare populations? You're right, those statistics on BMI have remained constant.
Those and current statistics.0 -
hamptontom wrote: »does anyone have any historical information on what was an "acceptable" BMI measurement in years past compared to current expectations?
From 1998:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/guideposts/fitness/optimal.htmThe federal government plans to change its definition of what is a healthy weight, a controversial move that would classify millions more Americans as being overweight.
Under the new guidelines, an estimated 29 million Americans now considered normal weight will be redefined as overweight and advised to do everything they can to prevent further weight gain. Those who are already experiencing health effects, such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol or diabetes, will be encouraged to lose small amounts of weight -- about six to 12 pounds -- to bring them back to safer weight levels.
The move has been debated for months within public health circles, since the guidelines set the standard for doctors to care for the overweight and the obese. They also address such thorny questions as when diet and exercise alone should be used to shed pounds and when drug treatment should be considered and for whom.
The guidelines use a measure called body mass index (BMI), which takes into account body weight and height to gauge total body fat in adults. Under the new guidelines, people with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are considered overweight. For example, at 5 feet 3 inches, adults who weighed 141 pounds or more would be overweight, while those who are 5 feet 11 inches would be considered obese at 215 pounds.
"We felt that the record was clear and the risk was there," said Xavier Pi-Sunyer, a leading obesity researcher who chaired the expert panel that wrote the guidelines for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. "We felt that we owed it to physicians and their patients to alert them to this fact, although it doesn't mean that everyone needs to go on a diet."...
The new guidelines, which bring the United States into line with the definition of overweight used by other countries as well as the World Health Organization, are designed to try to reduce the health problems caused by weighing too much, an increasing problem in the United States....
To formulate the new guidelines, the panel spent three years considering evidence from 49,000 scientific papers on obesity and overweight.
The final guidelines are scheduled to be officially released June 17. But the NHLBI released parts of them early after drafts were leaked by reviewers.
The guidelines represent a shift from the definition that has been used by other federal agencies. In past national health surveys, the National Center for Health Statistics has defined overweight as a BMI of 28 for men and 27 for women. Federal dietary guidelines released in 1996 set a healthy weight as a BMI of 25 or below for men and women....0 -
I'm over a bit too.
I'm 12.8-13.1% fat depending on the day
It is a fairly useless measure to people with extra muscle
For everyone else, BMI is a good indicator
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skydiveD30571 wrote: »For a "normal" BMI for my height, I'd have to have -1%BF to weigh that amount. My company wellness plan also tells me I need to go on a "low fat diet" still. We're still in the stone age my friend. Luckily, my family doctor is smart enough to approve my BMI and give me credit for it.
I think you are forgetting that if you lost weight you would also lose LBM so at the "normal" BMI you may be closer to 7-9% BF%. Which is quite low, showing that at 12-13% you would be "overweight" by BMI0 -
I find it interesting that the complaint about BMI is that isn't accurate for people with high amounts of muscle, when BMI is far more prone to problems with not diagnosing people who are fat but have low amounts of lean body mass.
The prevalence of people that have the LBM for BMI to be inaccurate is rather small compared to how many people have a high body fat percentage but are normal weight obese. On top of that, people that know when they are athletic and likely to have BMI not be an accurate estimate. Knowing if someone has low amounts of LBM is rather hard to estimate. And yes, you do get the very rare health professional that blindly tells an athlete their BMI is too high, they must lose weight, but it is generally pretty rare. Hopefully you're going to a medical practisioner who's smart enough to understand the limitations, if not, perhaps finding out the short comings of your doctor is good for your health - I can't imagine what other medical concepts they fail to understand if they can't grasp BMI's limitations. I'd change doctors.0 -
It's a guideline. Guidelines are for the typical cases, not outliers. The vast majority of 5'8" males that weight 200 pounds are, in fact, obese.
If you are an outlier, be happy you aren't one of them. :drinker:
At the point that it's used to dictate health goals fore EVERYONE (ie. insurance rates) it's no longer a guideline, it's a mandate.
Sure, they could do customized testing on everyone, which would cost a bunch more money, and raise rates anyway.
Obladi oblada...
@Mr_Knight it wouldn't require "customized testing"! The navy uses a tape measure method, there's also a YMCA formula based on tape measure. Those are still guesstimates, but much better than BMI. And there are several caliper based ones as well, with as few as 3 measuring spots. You really think that a tape measure or caliper is "customized". I'm not calling for BodPod, hydrostatic or DEXA for the masses, but there's just no reason to continue using blood letting to get the "bad blood" out. I just think we can do better with our level of intellect and technology.
Our health care system went down hill once we stopped using blood leeches for common cures. ;-)0 -
Oh-beast!0
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@McCloud33. You have lost muscle whilst you lost weight. We can see this in the first photo with the black jeans to the four photos in May. Genetically speaking, you carry fat in your midsection. Many of us have to deal with this. The issue I think is you went back to muscle training before you lost all the weight -- murky. You are not obese but based on those May photos, you just look thinner.
I can lift a lot of weight too. I am at a very healthy weight but I am running around with 22% body fat. For someone who walked 9600 miles over the last 4.5 years, this is a bit high.
With all the photos and videos, I have to ask why you have tried so hard to justify your BMI and body here?
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jswede1149 wrote: »@McCloud33. You have lost muscle whilst you lost weight. We can see this in the first photo with the black jeans to the four photos in May. Genetically speaking, you carry fat in your midsection. Many of us have to deal with this. The issue I think is you went back to muscle training before you lost all the weight -- murky. You are not obese but based on those May photos, you just look thinner.
I can lift a lot of weight too. I am at a very healthy weight but I am running around with 22% body fat. For someone who walked 9600 miles over the last 4.5 years, this is a bit high.
With all the photos and videos, I have to ask why you have tried so hard to justify your BMI and body here?
So @jswede1149 ...the only difference between the dark jeans photo and the four photos in the side by side of lighting. They were literally taken within 15 minutes of each other. I doubt I lost "all this muscle" that's so obvious to you in that time period lol.
You're right that I went back to weight training before losing all the weight. This wasn't a decision made lightly though, and my body had somewhat adapted to a much lower calorie diet by the time I stopped in May. I was on a 1600 cal diet, and hadn't last anything in the last 6 weeks of it. And I was thinner in May...but even at that weight bmi had me at over weight.
I'm not necessarily trying to justify my bmi here. It's more that I think it's a bogus measure. Everyone is saying that it's only inaccurate for athletes, but that's wrong. It's also innaccurate for those who have lower muscle mass and higher body fat. It only works for those who are normal muscle, normal fat. I am healthy and fit by nearly any other measure.
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