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Fat Acceptance Movement
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sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
Isn't there an appeal procedure? When I was in the military, I had muscular coworkers who regularly went in the dunk tank to show their lower than expected body fat trumped their BMI. I believe the first appeal was via tape measure.1 -
Did you think his comment was classy?ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
The creator of the concept of BMI said that it was ONLY useful to measure population trends and was NOT an acceptable measure to diagnose individuals.
And the creators of Viagra originally said it was only to treat HBP and angina.
I assume you have a point other than to demonstrate a very poor understanding of logic.
Classy Rob. (And yet still obtuse)
The Viagra analogy had no relevance. Is that obtuse? I don't think so.
BMI is not diagnostic on an individual level. It is a measurement used at the population level.
The fact that you do not see the relevance does not mean that the relevance does not exist.0 -
The people I know who are in my age group (seniors) and morbidly obese have ALL had knee and/or hip replacements as well as diabetes, etc. I think "Health At Any Size" may be hard to maintain over the long haul.
Well, I am also a senior and I am not morbidly obese, or fat or just plain obese. I never was. I am 102.6 lbs and I do have knee problems and in need of a replacement. It was not the weight that damaged my knees, it was the wear and tear of playing racketball, tennis, karate, kick boxing and dancing. OA in the joints can affect everybody regardless of their weight.
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jofjltncb6 wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
The creator of the concept of BMI said that it was ONLY useful to measure population trends and was NOT an acceptable measure to diagnose individuals.
And the creators of Viagra originally said it was only to treat HBP and angina.
I assume you have a point other than to demonstrate a very poor understanding of logic.
My refusal to explain the parallel in a manner that you would understand (although I'm quite confident that others got it) has no bearing on my grasp of logic...
...especially since it was an analogous observation that the creator of something doesn't always get to dictate it's use or misuse and not some tenet of logic.
(Dammit. I guess I explained it anyhow.)4 -
sunnybeaches105 wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
The creator of the concept of BMI said that it was ONLY useful to measure population trends and was NOT an acceptable measure to diagnose individuals.
And the creators of Viagra originally said it was only to treat HBP and angina.
Except its use for ED was found to be appropriate whereas using BMI for health insurance will punish individuals for building lean muscle mass.
Which is why these programs keep adding exceptions to their (originally flawed) application of it...(something I've experienced as an "overweight" individual with BF% in the teens. /humblebrag)
But we digress. The question is, is someone who is obese healthier than that same person if they were not obese (all else being equal)?3 -
Did you think his comment was classy?ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
The creator of the concept of BMI said that it was ONLY useful to measure population trends and was NOT an acceptable measure to diagnose individuals.
And the creators of Viagra originally said it was only to treat HBP and angina.
I assume you have a point other than to demonstrate a very poor understanding of logic.
Classy Rob. (And yet still obtuse)
The Viagra analogy had no relevance. Is that obtuse? I don't think so.
BMI is not diagnostic on an individual level. It is a measurement used at the population level.
What bearing does the categorization of my comment as classy or not have on whether or not yours was classy? And you're questioning *my* understanding of logic? (And this time, unlike previously, we actually *are* dealing with logic.)2 -
ArmyofAdrian wrote: »
Did you think his comment was classy?ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
The creator of the concept of BMI said that it was ONLY useful to measure population trends and was NOT an acceptable measure to diagnose individuals.
And the creators of Viagra originally said it was only to treat HBP and angina.
I assume you have a point other than to demonstrate a very poor understanding of logic.
Classy Rob. (And yet still obtuse)
The Viagra analogy had no relevance. Is that obtuse? I don't think so.
BMI is not diagnostic on an individual level. It is a measurement used at the population level.
The fact that you do not see the relevance does not mean that the relevance does not exist.
Guess I should have kept reading before responding. Would have saved me some tiny keyboard typing.2 -
sunflowerhippi wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
I would be an example... even with a 27% body fat...
I'm confused. 27% body fat is better than, say, 33%, but it isn't exactly the stuff of Adonis. So in this case BMI and body fat % would actually both confirm that one does not have to lose muscle in order to drop weight or BMI categories.5 -
kshama2001 wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
Isn't there an appeal procedure? When I was in the military, I had muscular coworkers who regularly went in the dunk tank to show their lower than expected body fat trumped their BMI. I believe the first appeal was via tape measure.
Depends, and I don't count on insurance companies to be fair.
That said, mine is okay on this issue in that they call out people with overweight BMIs + bad waist to height ratios OR obese BMIs. Still tough for a muscle-y guy (quite unusual for a woman to be obese by BMI and not have overfat bodyfat), but perhaps there is an appeal process.
My understanding is that there are limits on how it affects insurance negatively anyway: http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fswellnessprogram.html1 -
Yeah BMI is pretty much useless. I'm at the lower end of over weight according to BMI and I am 6'0", 33 inch waist, and washboard abs.
It is not a good indicator for someone in your situation. For around 85-90% of the population that doesn't know what a weight looks like it's pretty decent.2 -
jofjltncb6 wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »PiperGirl08 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
My insurance company warned us that in a year we'd be screened for 5 metrics. And then at 6 months allowed us to take a test run. And then at that one year mark, screened everyone. Those who failed on two or more metrics paid higher premiums. As I recall, the metrics included smoking, waist size, blood pressure, and two others that elude me.
The point being that insurance should be for the unexpected, i.e. those things outside our control. We, the consumer, the insured, should be responsible for those things within our control. And if we're not willing to be, then we ought to pay some price, i.e. have some skin in the game, instead of wantonly pawning off our foreseeable costs on someone else.
Um, fine?
But BMI is not accurate FOR SOME. In general, most people fall under the bell curve for which it is applicable, but when you make it a hard and fast rule for defining coverage, then it does become a problem for those few outliers.
BMI is in fact pretty generous. Most Americans are not Greeks God and Goddesses or Olympic class athletes and it is *not* muscle mass that drives them towards the higher ends of the scale.
Where there are real exceptions, provisions are in place to accommodate them. This is a false argument.
Knowledge of BMI is not enough to be making judgments about a specific individual. It's a very simplistic calculation and while its fine to use for a population because one can assume a normalized distribution, it shouldn't be used for insurance calculations. I've already had one friend who was forced to lose 20 pounds of muscle mass so he could save money on his life insurance premiums. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of being rated myself for health insurance.
The creator of the concept of BMI said that it was ONLY useful to measure population trends and was NOT an acceptable measure to diagnose individuals.
And the creators of Viagra originally said it was only to treat HBP and angina.
Except its use for ED was found to be appropriate whereas using BMI for health insurance will punish individuals for building lean muscle mass.
Which is why these programs keep adding exceptions to their (originally flawed) application of it...(something I've experienced as an "overweight" individual with BF% in the teens. /humblebrag)
But we digress. The question is, is someone who is obese healthier than that same person if they were not obese (all else being equal)?
Agree with you on your first paragraph.
As for your second paragraph. BMI treats muscle mass and fat the same, therefore the answer is "it depends." But, lean and muscular "obese" people aren't all that common, are not representative of the types of people that carry the risks of "obesity," or what Fat Acceptance is about. This conversation on insurance is a bit of a tangent.3 -
ReaderGirl3 wrote: »My husband is 6ft tall and around 190lbs, so just above the normal bmi range. His dad is thin and also has high cholesterol and high bp. Husband's grandfather on his father's side was thin and had heart disease/bypass surgery. My husband did lose a few pounds when this first rolled out (the fines for bmi/blood work then got postponed-they ended up targeting the smokers first). When my husband lost the weight his cholesterol numbers didn't improve (his bmi score did though). So when the next phase starts we'll be penalized for having a medical conditions outside of my husband's control. It sucks but I understand why they're doing it.
As an aside, I had EXACTLY the same experience as your husband. I lost a lot of weight (1/3rd body mass) but my cholesterol went up.
I found that in my case it wasn't how much I was eating, but what I was eating which made the difference. Some folks have great success with LCHF, but I went the other way to whole-food plant-based and had great success, after realizing that I was eating quite a lot of animal fat. My LDL went from 202 to 115. I did it as an experiment for a month to see what would happen to my numbers, but clearly after such an outcome, I still eat this way.
Anyway, back on topic... Sorry for the disruption but couldn't just leave it.3 -
Packerjohn wrote: »Yeah BMI is pretty much useless. I'm at the lower end of over weight according to BMI and I am 6'0", 33 inch waist, and washboard abs.
It is not a good indicator for someone in your situation. For around 85-90% of the population that doesn't know what a weight looks like it's pretty decent.
It is a decent "screener". But it sometimes misses on both sides. It incorrectly identifies some people as obese and overweight; and it misses people who have more body fat than their BMI suggests. In a recent study looking at people >=30 BMI. 95% were obese according to body fat measures. The bigger problem was that there was a large % of people below 30 BMI who were obese by the other measure.0 -
Many people who are young and obese and claim to be healthy don't understand that the risks posed by obesity compound over time. Someone who is 20 years old can probably get by being obese without major health problems, but that same person who has maintained or increased their body weight over their mid to late adult life is at significantly higher risk for cardiovascular disease, some forms of cancer, diabetes, and a multitude of other potentially fatal health problems than someone who has maintained a healthy weight and lifestyle for many years. This is a very well studied fact, one that can't be discounted because one or two individuals are "perfectly healthy" at a high BMI.4
-
dopeysmelly wrote: »ReaderGirl3 wrote: »My husband is 6ft tall and around 190lbs, so just above the normal bmi range. His dad is thin and also has high cholesterol and high bp. Husband's grandfather on his father's side was thin and had heart disease/bypass surgery. My husband did lose a few pounds when this first rolled out (the fines for bmi/blood work then got postponed-they ended up targeting the smokers first). When my husband lost the weight his cholesterol numbers didn't improve (his bmi score did though). So when the next phase starts we'll be penalized for having a medical conditions outside of my husband's control. It sucks but I understand why they're doing it.
As an aside, I had EXACTLY the same experience as your husband. I lost a lot of weight (1/3rd body mass) but my cholesterol went up.
I found that in my case it wasn't how much I was eating, but what I was eating which made the difference. Some folks have great success with LCHF, but I went the other way to whole-food plant-based and had great success, after realizing that I was eating quite a lot of animal fat. My LDL went from 202 to 115. I did it as an experiment for a month to see what would happen to my numbers, but clearly after such an outcome, I still eat this way.
Anyway, back on topic... Sorry for the disruption but couldn't just leave it.
I appreciate the response and pm
1 -
ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »mskessler89 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »jofjltncb6 wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »ArmyofAdrian wrote: »I don't know what definition of obesity you are using, but we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the CDC's definition of obesity: "Weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight for a given height is described as overweight or obese. " A weight that is higher than what is healthy would be unhealthy.
Also, the AMA, The World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists each recognize obesity as a disease. A disease is included in the set of things that are unhealthy.
Of course, the line between healthy and unhealthy is uniform for a height regardless of any other factors? That seems very, very arbitrary to me. The BMI definition of obesity is population-statistical. It's uninformative for any individual.
How can it be arbitrary when it's based on statistical analysis? Anyway, quibbling over the diagnostic criteria doesn't change the plain fact that obesity is unhealthy.
For several reasons. One, BMI does not include sufficient variables to adequately be more than an estimation for an individual. Two, BMI does not adequately cover sufficient populations to really develop an all-inclusive model with the variables it does include (i.e. the model doesn't fit well for Asians as an example). It also does not fit the very short or the very tall. Three, how exactly were cut-offs picked? They have some basis in risk analysis, but what level of risk is considered unacceptable is basically arbitrary.
Basing a criterion on its statistical significance using huge data sets is not at all "arbitrary".
Deciding that a 20.1% risk* is unacceptable whereas a 20% risk* is acceptable is arbitrary. There is no standard for when health risk crosses from 'acceptable' to not.
Also, when dealing with global population and physiological diversity, I'd hardly consider the sampling used to generate the BMI model as 'huge'.
*Not actual numbers, used only as an example.
You arbitrarily pull numbers out of the air then pretend those arbitrary numbers somehow refute the actual statistical analysis??
Totally missed the point, didn't you?
Okay Rob, I'll ignore the AMA, CDC, NIH, and WHO since they didn't clear their statistical methods with you first and because they can't guarantee absolute 100% predictably of outcomes based on risk factors.
Which of these organizations compell you to hold overweight people in contempt?
I need direct quotes on this one.
The funny thing is I don't disagree that obesity increases health risks. But that isn't really what's being debated here.
it is though, isn't it? I mean, no one here is arguing that obese people should be shamed, held in contempt, mocked, etc. The argument is about the inherent increased risks of obesity (and in my opinion, is best contrasted with the same person if they were not obese).
Read all the posts for the person towards which my response was directed.
If the argument was about the inherent risks of obesity the argument would be over.
There are plenty of people on this thread downplaying or outright denying that obesity is unhealthy. Heck that's the entire point of "fat acceptance" and "healthy at any size"; they're trying to sugar coat the issue and ignore the elephant in the room.
I don't believe so. The argument you were responding to was that a cutoff of 25 BMI (or some such) as the line between "healthy" and not is rather arbitrary on an individual basis.
I tend to think that most of the disagreement in this thread is due to people reading things into terms that others don't mean by them. Almost unanimously people have said that denying that obesity is unhealthy is a mistake, and denying that weight loss is a positive goal when one is obese is a bad thing -- those corners of HAES and fat acceptance that say otherwise haven't gotten any support that I've seen.
I don't see the "entire point" of fat acceptance or HAES as saying obesity is not unhealthy. As I (and others) stated above, accepting ourselves while still fat (working on the self-hatred issues) helped us take control and lose weight. And I see a positive element of HAES that even while you are fat you can improve healthfulness by getting out there and getting active. And again, for me, focusing on what I was doing as about "getting fit and being as healthy as I could" was less scary than the idea of trying to lose weight and failing, as I knew I could control what I ate and my exercise choices. And, of course, I also lost weight -- typically focusing on getting fit and healthy will result in weight loss.
Please look up the word "arbitrary", then look at the statistical analysis behind the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose obesity. The criteria is anything but "arbitrary". The fact that it cannot single-handedly predict outcomes with absolute certainty does not make it "arbitrary".
These attempts to "spin" obesity guidelines as arbitrary is another example of the denial you claim isn't happening.
If people truly acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy then accepting their own obesity seems bizarre. If they are trying to lose weight, then they can't accurately say they've accepted being fat. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
For individuals, BMI is arbitrary. BMI is used to assess populations on a large scale. You can't use BMI to determine if an individual is healthy, or even if an individual is overfat.
I have always been a "normal" BMI, but at my highest weight, I had a high enough body fat % to be considered obese. According to your argument, I was healthy. Reality is that, had I not lost weight, I would have stayed at higher risk for obesity-related health problems. On the flip side, there's tall or muscular people who get classified as overweight because BMI goes off height and weight alone, not accounting for fat %. Fat % is a much more accurate way of establishing risk in individuals, but according to your BMI-is-not-arbitrary stance, these lean-but-heavy individuals are unhealthy.
ETA: Definition of arbitrary
MATHEMATICS
(of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.
The reason people keep calling BMI arbitrary is that while, yes, BMI has specified values, not everyone who falls into those categories actually ARE what the value specifies. A person with a BMI of 25 will not, by other quantifiable standards such as body fat %, be overweight (overfat and therefore unhealthy) every single time.
Spin spin spin.
I could have lived in denial about the status of my health by saying I was at a healthy BMI and therefore healthy. Or I could use a tool more applicable for individuals instead of mass population, realize my body fat % was too high, and fix it. Yep, all spin there.
BMI is not the best tool for assessing risk on an individual scale. That does not mean obesity is a good state for people to be in, or that anyone here is encouraging people to be obese. That does not mean that the morbidly obese people trying to throw BMI out the window by claiming they're "big-boned" are in any way justified. It just means BMI is not always going to be an accurate indicator of a person's health or body composition. And there are probably a lot more people out there thinking they're healthy when they're actually at risk, especially if that's compounded with other lifestyle risk factors.
BMI guidelines are just that: Guidelines. No one anywhere claimed BMI guidelines are the sole tool necessary to make a determination about overall health. That's a straw-man argument. None of this makes BMI guidelines "arbitrary".
No, but many insurance companies in the US are talking about using BMI as a way to regulate how much your premiums are (if you're overweight or obese, you'll have higher premiums because you are associated with a higher burden of cost for health care expenses). As can be expected, a lot of people have problems with that.
Insurance companies should use the BMI in order to quantify risk, as that is exactly what the tool was designed to do. The reason why people have problems with it is the same reason why smokers were galled at seeing their premiums increase if they continued smoking.8 -
SapiensPisces wrote: »Many people who are young and obese and claim to be healthy don't understand that the risks posed by obesity compound over time.
I find it hard to believe that anyone is really ignorant of this. It's extremely well-known and talked about constantly. I never had any health issues related to being obese -- good tests and all that (I also wasn't obese all that long and was reasonably active at least part of the time). Despite that, of course I knew it was a health risk, and that was one of the reasons I wanted to lose weight (although not my primary motivator).0 -
You know, if people just minded their own damn business, there would be no need for these types of groups.5
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I see this the way I see the pro-smokers' movement (yes, they exist).
I don't shame my loved ones who smoke, don't mind if they smoke around me but that doesn't mean I condone the lifestyle. Similarly, they know how bad smoking is but they don't try to promote it positively and create a culture around it.4 -
You can't be Healthy At Every Size. Both ends of the spectrum are terrible for the body and mind.
I am so very glad that BS wasn't around when I was younger. I was a fat kid (70's fat kid, not today's fat kid) and was shamed for it. As an adult, I am very happy that I was fat shamed. I would have totally fallen for some fat acceptance crap telling me being fat was okay.
There are worse things than being fat, but for the most part how much excess fat we carry is totally under our control. There is something very liberating about this knowledge. I control my fat, it does not control me.
Well I think while fat shaming works for some people but it certainly didn't work for me. I was put down badly by family members and school mates when I was a kid to a point where my self steam was non existent. I grew up hating myself for being "fat" because being fat was "ugly" and no one could love a fat woman. And it only created an eating disorder that got me gaining even more weight. In a effort to lose the weight I would starve myself all day and just eat one unhealthy meal at night and then when I got tired of doing that I would stuffed my face with everything I could find and then I would feel guilty and start over starving myself again... that lasted all of my teens until I was 23 looked at a picture and accepted myself for who I was and realized that I needed to make a change.
I still struggle with self image sometimes, I also gained the weight I had lost but working towards losing it again. But I've learned that accepting and loving ourselves the way we are is the first step to changing in the right direction.4
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