Shall I ignore my BMI
Replies
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BMI is a pretty good indicator for the majority of folk to go by. You say you don't know if you can reach a healthy BMI, well you wont know until you try
All the best. 3 -
Just wanted to know if people in general try to reach a BMI goal. My goal is to reach 80kg for 175cm (currently at 81.6kg), but the BMI calculator says that i would still be "overweight", and ideal weight would be 75kg, I don't know if I could even reach that, and I don't think that I want to lose that much weight. Is BMI calculation overrated?
The BMI scale works well for me. My best weight is when I'm in the lower half of my normal BMI range.
Maybe you just can't imagine yourself there yet ... but when you get closer you might.4 -
Just wanted to know if people in general try to reach a BMI goal. My goal is to reach 80kg for 175cm (currently at 81.6kg), but the BMI calculator says that i would still be "overweight", and ideal weight would be 75kg, I don't know if I could even reach that, and I don't think that I want to lose that much weight. Is BMI calculation overrated?
I think bmi is a good guide but you have to consider your own experience.
I feel best around the middle to top of the bmi range. However, I still feel pretty good 10 lbs overweight. I still plan to get into the healthy bmi range.
Evaluate as you get closer. If you are losing weight for health reasons talk to your doctor about it.0 -
BMI can't differentiate between fat and muscle since it only takes into account height and weight. If you have a decent amount of muscle it will be inaccurate; according to my BMI I'm overweight (26.62), but I'm objectively not.
Bf% is a better indicator to go by.5 -
Just wanted to know if people in general try to reach a BMI goal. My goal is to reach 80kg for 175cm (currently at 81.6kg), but the BMI calculator says that i would still be "overweight", and ideal weight would be 75kg, I don't know if I could even reach that, and I don't think that I want to lose that much weight. Is BMI calculation overrated?
I use BMI for guidance but also take into consideration BF%. My typical maintenance weight is about 180 Lbs at 5'10" which puts me at about 6 Lbs overweight as per BMI but at that weight I'm at a totally healthy BF% but not super lean...like 12-15% BF which is fine by me.
I'm not a body builder by any stretch of the imagination, but I am an active guy and I workout and train regularly. I don't think it's unusual for active males with some muscle mass to be slightly overweight or at the high end of the BMI scale.
I imagine I could get down to 170 and be super lean...sub 10% and have poppin' abs, but I just don't have that kind of dietary discipline. No gut or love handles is good enough for me aesthetically speaking.0 -
BMI is one data point that should be considered along with a lot of other data points. It tells you one thing about your health, but that's it. I don't know that I would flat-out ignore it, but I wouldn't give it more consideration than other important metrics either.3
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GlorianasTears wrote: »
you probably have a large body frame . I have a large frame as well and if i see rib cages in my opinion thats a red flag that you need more fat.smnovosad1 wrote: »I had trouble when looking at my BMI. For me (5’5” female) my normal range is 111-149 lbs (huge, eh?). I look fat in the 140s so I set a goal of 115 — I figured that is safely in normal weight and far from where I look fat. Well, I dieted and got down to 121 lbs. I was way skinny. I’m muscular, and you could see every muscle but my chest looked weird — you could prominently see all the ribs. And I stopped menstruating. I saw my GP and he said I didn’t have enough fat to support a menstrual cycle — and I was 10 lbs above underweight! I think I look best at 125-130 lbs.
I sort of disagree about the rib idea - though I agree that's a sign one needs to give serious thought to resetting goal weight higher.
Ultimately, though, fat distribution also differs between individuals. Personally, I get a bit of rib visibility while there's still fairly generous lower body fat rolls and blobification. Continuing loss after that stage depleted lower body rolls'n'blobs, but didn't noticeably affect upper body at all.
I'm not a fan of the frame size "calculators" either - they can mislead. They usually work off wrist/elbow measurements, when what really makes a difference is bigger body parts like ribcage, pelvis & shoulders, plus non-fatty breast tissue for women.
Unfortunately, it's hard to measure those parts while still over-fat. (The effect on "ideal weight" is not so much the weight of the bones themselves, but rather the weight of the geometrically greater skin, muscle, and connective tissue it takes to wrap that larger spatial volume.)
Here again, my skepticism comes from my personal experience. Because I have mysteriously huge hands - I'm talking size 10 ring finger on 5'5", 120lb female - big arms, big head, wide shoulders, the wrist and elbow measurements make "calculators" claim I have a medium to large frame.
Not true, because the rest of me is built like a 14-year-old boy (despite being a 62-year-old woman
): Narrow hips, no booty (despite some muscle), literally no breasts (post mastectomy) = small frame, in the important respects. A weight around 120 (BMI 20) looks good and feels great on me. A similar height woman with an actual large or even medium frame - wider hips, larger breasts - would be skeletal at that weight . . . without even getting into the question of major athletic muscularity.
This is why I argue for making an initial goal-weight guess, and monitoring how one feels/looks as that approaches (as in my earlier post in this thread, above).7 -
You're pretty close to where your original goal was. Are you happy here? Once you hit 80, what are your plans? Are you going to go back to old ways or have you made enough of a lifestyle that you can maintain at 80?
I used the high end of normal BMI for my initial target weight. Since puberty, I have been either overweight or obese, and have no idea what a "normal" bmi will look or feel like, for me. Once I hit that 145lbs I will start recomposition, so it won't really be over.
I think that if you are still doing some sort of activity you love, and eating a nutritionally sound and varied diet, the difference of 11ish pounds is not the end of the world.2 -
BMI can't differentiate between fat and muscle since it only takes into account height and weight. If you have a decent amount of muscle it will be inaccurate; according to my BMI I'm overweight (26.62), but I'm objectively not.
Bf% is a better indicator to go by.
True, BMI is a proxy measure of body fat; so actually knowing your %body fat is much better/accurate. The problem is most people don't know that value; much less do what it takes to get it measured accurately as they progress. So they end up using BMI.
BMI has a fairly strong positive correlation with body fat so feel free to use it as a data point. Interestingly, the few studies I've seen show that if it's going to be wrong it's far more likely to underestimate your % body fat. Of course, if you exercise and build muscle your BMI may trend toward overestimation.
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BMI can't differentiate between fat and muscle since it only takes into account height and weight. If you have a decent amount of muscle it will be inaccurate; according to my BMI I'm overweight (26.62), but I'm objectively not.
Bf% is a better indicator to go by.
People for whom BMI is inaccurate because of muscle mass tend to know that. You don't get to a 27 BMI at 10% bf on accident from one day to another.12 -
My understanding is the BMI is a statistical tool more than anything. bMI Isn’t meant to be a standalone tool to evaluate an individuals health but a way to group test subjects to analyze and evaluate research. At overweight BMI you are more likely to see adverse health effects over time. If you are obese, even more so. For me, making the effort to go from obese to just overweight has been huge psychologically. I am still heavy by pop culture and aesthetic standards but I know that I have statistically improved my chances for avoiding diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers etc. I could still develop these of course but like I said there’s a huge psychological benefit to knowing I’m doing what I can to reduce the risk of incidence.
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BMI is a worthless figure unless you are talking about large swaths of the population. It does not account for any amount of muscle mass and very fit people are overweight and obese by it's standards.7
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CasperNaegle wrote: »BMI is a worthless figure unless you are talking about large swaths of the population. It does not account for any amount of muscle mass and very fit people are overweight and obese by it's standards.
If you look at OP's post, OP isn't in this boat. Like the vast majority of people, OP isn't asking from the POV of a very fit person, but from the POV of a person who has some weight to lose and is attempting to establish a goal weight.
For people who are starting at a point of obesity or being overweight, BMI can be a useful tool -- along with other markers -- to help determine a goal or understand how to minimize health risks associated with excess weight.
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A better indicator for health than BMI is waist measurement, a waist measurement has been proven to be a better indicator of actual health, risk of heart disease and stroke so if your bmi was higher than the normal range but your waist measurement is less than 94cm for men and 80 cm for women your probably perfectly healthy
Waist measurement varies a lot based on the person's overall height, build, etc. an 80 cm waist on a 5'0" woman is going to be much different than on a 6'0" woman. Same with the men. Plus you cannot possibly say whether someone is "perfectly healthy" based on one number, regardless of what it is.3 -
BMI is not overrated, it is simply misunderstood by the general population and thus used an excuse by some overweight or underweight people.11
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It's just one statistic. You can put as much worth into as you wish.1
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BMI is not overrated, it is simply misunderstood by the general population and thus used an excuse by some overweight or underweight people.
I personally have seen way more obese/overweight people claim that BMI isn't accurate due to muscle mass etc than I have heard of very fit people being told to lose weight just because their BMI is too high.
Obviously I'm not privy to everyone's experiences, but I'm thinking that the former is more of a problem than the latter.15 -
Check your waist-hip ratio. If that's good, don't worry about your BMI so much. If you have a reasonably accurate measure of your body fat and it's acceptably low, worry about your BMI even less.0
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To clarify: The waist measurement is supposed to be a ratio of waist to height or waist to hip.
One of my goals has been to hit the height to waist ratio at which health risks are lowered, which is 2:1. I’m 70 inches tall, so I’m aiming for a 35-inch waist (0.25” to go).
I’m also shooting for a normal BMI (14 lbs left). And a generally healthy body fat percentage (done, within an acceptable margin of error for me). And a clothing size out of the plus range (done). And just generally feeling good and athletic (still working on this one). No one metric is sufficient to tell me when I’m done.2 -
janejellyroll wrote: »BMI is not overrated, it is simply misunderstood by the general population and thus used an excuse by some overweight or underweight people.
I personally have seen way more obese/overweight people claim that BMI isn't accurate due to muscle mass etc than I have heard of very fit people being told to lose weight just because their BMI is too high.
Obviously I'm not privy to everyone's experiences, but I'm thinking that the former is more of a problem than the latter.
Yep. I was once one of those. I figured BMI didn't apply to me because I'm an extreme outlier at 6'6", and they say that BMI skews most strangely at extremes in height. When I got down to about 14-15% bodyfat, hey, whaddya know? My BMI currently sits at 23.1 - in the high end of the "healthy/normal" range, but within it. I don't carry the muscle mass of a bodybuilder, but I'm not a stick figure either.
Not saying there aren't outliers, but too many people use it as an excuse when it's not the case. A simple walk through your nearest large throng of people will clearly show that the vast majority of the populace aren't well-muscled specimens walking around at 10% bodyfat.9
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