What's your BMI?

[FinallyRetired]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lets-retire When I was in the military the Air Force Times had a huge headline saying the majority of the Air Force members were overweight.

Remember the "fat boy" program? That worked pretty well through embarrassment. Probably don't have it anymore, now it would be the "fat person" program, but it wouldn't have the same effect.

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny You oughta remove that huge blue growth from your wrist. That'd probably put your BMI right back to normal.

that's an old friend from my childhood, just the type of weight ya don't wanna lose.

the weight around my gut is 5 years of guardianship. my brother, having dealt with mom's alzheimer's plus his biz & his 3 kids, has put on even more around the gut yet he was always more athletic than me earlier in life.

love sarah's idea of having body fat professionally checked (i just use the silly machines) and found they do that at the wellness center of my local university. and i get a discount for being a past student. in researching that i also just found this Trade in Your Love Handles for a 6-Pack! which looks interesting:

Quote:

The best type of exercise for reducing body fat is low-intensity, long-duration aerobic exercise

[Zoocat]

BMI doesn't take into account muscle mass nearly enough, IMHO.

For example, in my own experience, when I weighed 150 at age 42 I wore a size 12 pant. Then I unfortunately gained more weight ending up at 185. I went on a strenuous weight lifting and higher protein plan, lost 10 pounds, gained probably 7 pounds of muscle and ended wearing a size 12 pants at 175 pounds. This wasn't really my plan, but it was how my body responded.

From what I understand about physiology, it's really important for aging people to keep the muscle intact and to increase if possible. Since I've been weight training I NEVER catch a cold, and I recover from injuries very quickly. If women, especially, build their muscles they protect their bones as well.

Another point is that culture often determines what we consider a "normal" body shape.

When I was in Tanzania this summer I was very interested to see that the Maasai men are very very thin, but not skinny thin. They have high muscle mass. They would be considered "underweight" by the BMI tables. That's a joke. They spend their days achieving the kinds of endurance feats that we do for sport in western countries. The Maasai women would probably be considered "overweight" in our culture but in Massai culture a woman's round figure is considered attractive. And these women eat the same food that the men do. And they do more of the work around the village. These are strong women. Also, traditionally these people are long lived, unless they get eaten by a lion, gored by a cape buffalo or stomped by an elephant. Now though the young men are going to the city and getting AIDs.

I have to say too that it was a very pleasant experience, as a middle aged woman with a "round" figure, to experience the admiration of and compliments from many Africa men who were much younger than I but who didn't think I was "old" and said I was "very beautiful."

Ok, back to the ole US of A. I know I'm overweight with a BMI of 29 and am working on changing that.

[lets-retire]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SoonToRetire Remember the "fat boy" program? That worked pretty well through embarrassment. Probably don't have it anymore, now it would be the "fat person" program, but it wouldn't have the same effect.

I remember that program very well. I was an annual candidate, due to muscle mass. I called it that up until the day I left five years ago and currently have to work closely with the military people. I must blend in well because every once in a while I still hear the term when the old school NCO's talk.

[haha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oldbabe I have to say too that it was a very pleasant experience, as a middle aged woman with a "round" figure, to experience the admiration of and compliments from many Africa men who were much younger than I but who didn't think I was "old" and said I was "very beautiful."

You may meet American men every day who also think that your womanly figure is very beautiful. They just are not saying it because they are tired of getting kicked in the crotch for mentioning things like this.

Ha

[TickTock]

:kicks haha in the crotch for mentioning a thing like that:

[TromboneAl]

One problem with the word "obese" is that in popular usage, it usually refers to super-kanooper fat people, as in "Whoa, that guy is o-BESE!" The definition used in relation to these BMI numbers is more like "Obesity is an excess of body fat that frequently results in a significant impairment of health."

Common Usage Obese:



Medical usage obese:

[donheff]

I am right on the cusp between "ideal" and "overweight." On a good day I drop down into ideal. On a bad day, or after a meal, I tip over into overweight. Or maybe all that muscle I imagine in my self image is messing up the scale.

[ScooterGuy]

I'm 6' 8" (203cm) tall. At 260 lbs., the BMI says I'm morbidly obese. The BMI indicated that I should weigh about 210 lbs. I haven't been at that weight since my 2nd year in middle school (where I was a skinny 'beanpole', as my old photos will attest).

Without any evidence, I would suspect that a normally-proportioned young lady of Vietnamese or hmong heritage, standing 4' 9" (145cm) and weighing about 90 lbs., would be considered anorexic.

So I did a little basic research--surprisingly hard to find--and discovered that, in the large sample used to 'norm' the statistics that underly the BMI, there were NO SUBJECTS that registered beyond +/- 2 standard deviations beyond the mean.
Simply put, very tall or very short folks were left out of the calculations. Why? I couldn't get an objective answer to that, but I suspect that the 'curve' fit for the BMI is ogive (that is, "S"-shaped, with non-linear curves at the the ends). In order to have an easily caluculated metric, with no nasty non-linearities in it, such folks were just 'snipped' from the sample, called 'outliers,' & ignored/forgotten.

So, as far as the BMI goes, no giants or midgets need apply.

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScooterGuy Simply put, very tall or very short folks were left out of the calculations. Why? I couldn't get an objective answer to that, but I suspect that the 'curve' fit for the BMI is ogive (that is, "S"-shaped, with non-linear curves at the the ends). In order to have an easily caluculated metric, with no nasty non-linearities in it, such folks were just 'snipped' from the sample, called 'outliers,' & ignored/forgotten. So, as far as the BMI goes, no giants or midgets need apply.

Right.

I suspect the reasons related to lack of sufficient participants to have statistical "power."

As with many things like this, you have to apply a sanity check for extraordinary circumstances. Here another: ideal body weight for men =

110 + 6lbs per inch over 5'

So for 6'8 you have 110+(6*20) = 240lbs

For women it's:

100 + 5 lbs per inch over 5'

I don't know that those have been tested scientifically regarding risk, etc. but they provide a quick rule of thumb corresponding to the upper end of normal body weight.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Is that in "inch inches" or in what guys often refer to as an inch?

[haha]

From the 0 % underweight responders I think we can comfortably assume that our SWRs are providing us with adequate basic nutrition.

Ha

[bright eyed]

my experience is that body shapes/sizes definitely have a regional bent to them.

in Texas, i was the shortest, smallest person at billy bob's honkey tonk (i'm tall for an asian~! 5'6'' darnit!) and everyone had an extra layer all around and were several inches taller in general - similar in wisconsin/minnesota.

my sister lives in ground zero for skinny biatches, in orange county - but i wonder how much silicone weighs and throw's off their bmi?! and they should recalculate everything that's sucked out and add it back in as a per capita average he hehe....her 7 year old niece worries about being fat and is not even close to being in danger...

[figner]

A few years back, I would have been "underweight" according to BMI, though I had more muscle and felt in better shape than now. Just one of those asian chick things I guess.

[novaman]

I'm not sure this BMI is very accurate. I'm 5' 10", asian, and I work out regularly. I weigh 172, which is just on the upper edge of being normal weight. If I were in the middle of the normal range, I'd hve to weigh about 150. I think the last time I weighed 150 was when I was in 10th grade before I started working out.

BTW- my waist size for pants is 32. If I weighed 150 I wouldn't be able to find any pants that fit because the waist would probably be a 29 or 30.

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by novaman BTW- my waist size for pants is 32. If I weighed 150 I wouldn't be able to find any pants that fit because the waist would probably be a 29 or 30.

When I was 5'10" and weighed 130, I didn't have any problem finding pants with a waist 29 or 30. If you get down to 150, you will have no problem finding and wearing pants.

[smileydog]

This ER group is a healthy sampling - I don't think they would be "fudging"

Interesting info from Halls MD

For Adults, the halls.md v2 method uses the following thresholds:

• <LI class=big>"Marginally Overweight" is Body Mass Index values that are higher than a threshold of approximately 24 to 25 kg/m2, <LI class=big>"Overweight" is Body-mass-index values higher than approximately 25 to 27, <LI class=big>"Obesity" threshold is approximately 29 to 32, <LI class=big>"Underweight" threshold is BMI values below approximately 18 to 20.7,
• Each threshold varies by Age and Gender.

The charts below show how these threshold values vary with Age and Gender.

[Sarah in SC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rich_in_Tampa You little devil - when did you do that? Since we saw you? Nice job!

Yeah, chronicled right here on the Wednesday Weigh In thread--I owe it all to 2Cor for his nudge in the right direction! Donald and I lost 60 lbs each, starting this time last year. Just the other day, I bought a tiny (for me) size 6 dress! It is great to be healthy!

The BMI numbers only work for the average person, not too muscular, not too tall, not too short, etc. You could try the Met Life tables instead.
MetLife
be warned, they say skinny is good!

[megacorp-firee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC The BMI numbers only work for the average person, not too muscular, not too tall, not too short, etc.

...so maybe I'm NOT too short then?
'... rationalization is better than sex ... have you ever gone a week without a rationalization? ...' The Big Chill

[SecondCor521]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC Yeah, chronicled right here on the Wednesday Weigh In thread--I owe it all to 2Cor for his nudge in the right direction!

Well, I'm glad somebody lost weight as a result. I was hoping it would be me, but I obviously haven't gotten that far. I actually gained weight up to about 204 but am now working on it again and am back to 192.8 as of this morning. I know if I'm diligent I'll get there.

Congratulations!

2Cor521