What's your BMI?

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

So, dripping wet and no shoes, what's your BMI?

Calculator Here
​

 

[SecondCor521]

RIT,

Your fourth category is wrong. It should be >30 (obese). I'm at 27.7 now and should have voted for the third choice instead of the fourth.

I'm working on mine. I'm down over 10 pounds from my highest weight, but have another 15 to go. I'm going to go give a double unit of platelets (720,000,000,000 of them, donation #69) to the American Red Cross today and get a haircut. That should help a few ounces.

2Cor521

 

[Khan]

From Dec '04 (retirement) to this month:

From 38.1 to 23.9

Yes that was all fat.

I need to exercise some more and raise it a bit.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

RIT,

Your fourth category is wrong. It should be >30 (obese). I'm at 27.7 now and should have voted for the third choice instead of the fourth.

Oops. Thanks, typo fixed.

 

[F-One]

Kahn - that is great. Congratulations.

I was reading the results of a study in the news this week.

BBC NEWS | Health | Be thin to cut cancer, study says

One part that got me thinking about BMI is the statement: "But the study says their risk increases as they head towards the 25 mark, and that everyone should try to be as close to the lower end as possible."

At 20 BMI, I would weigh 138 lb, that seems pretty low. At 18.5, I'd weigh 129 lb, a strong wind would blow me away.

Just seems like this calculation doesn't take into account muscle mass and can be misleading. BTW, I'm at 23.4

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

At 20 BMI, I would weigh 138 lb, that seems pretty low. At 18.5, I'd weigh 129 lb, a strong wind would blow me away.

Just seems like this calculation doesn't take into account muscle mass and can be misleading.

Correct, muscle mass is not factored in. Alas, it takes serious body-builder type muscle mass to throw it off significantly, but it will be a bit off if you are routinely (not extremely) muscular.

There are ethnic variations, too. South Asians develop obesity-related issues at lower cutoffs, while blacks seem to develop these only at a higher BMI, all other things equal.

But the biggest "this doesn't seem right" issue under most circumstances in the USofA is that our "norms" (societal) are way off. Skinny is good.


I'm just under 6', jog regularly, and at 180 I am flirting with "overweight." Hard to believe.

 

[haha]

From Dec '04 (retirement) to this month:

From 38.1 to 23.9

Yes that was all fat.

I need to exercise some more and raise it a bit.

Great achievement!

ha

 

[Linney]

Five years ago I watched as coworkers and relatives started experiencing all kinds of adverse health conditions due to obesity and realized that it would be tragic to reach my early retirement goals only to be saddled with health issues. Megacorp takes away most of my time and energy, but I won't let them take away my health!

Over the course of 1-1/2 years, I went from
30.3 BMI --> 22.2 BMI

I get very concerned as I see ever increasing numbers of coworkers and relatives get heavier and heavier. I used to be obese myself so I have a great deal of sympathy for how hard it is to lose and maintain a healthy weight in our current environment.

--Linney

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I used to drive a little 3 series BMI convertible. Dont think I've seen these other models though.

 

[TromboneAl]

From Dec '04 (retirement) to this month:

From 38.1 to 23.9

Wow, you must be really tall now!

 

[Nords]

Consistently 25-26. It seems the more I work out, the higher my BMI gets.

Here's a Flickr slideshow of over 100 photos of men & women with their BMIs and weights. It puts a lot of perspective into the misuse of this indicator...

 

[Moemg]

If I was wearing 1" wedges I'd be the perfect weight .

 

[REWahoo]

I calculated 25.8, but there is something wrong with the gravitational field in this region of the US, so my actual number is under 25.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

i'm obese at 18% body fat. just wait until i get down to 12-15% bf. for then, however oddly apparently, i'll be even fatter.

 

[Sandy]

22.6

 

[Bigritchie]

Consistently 25-26. It seems the more I work out, the higher my BMI gets.

Here's a Flickr slideshow of over 100 photos of men & women with their BMIs and weights. It puts a lot of perspective into the misuse of this indicator...

Same for me, I am a 26, but the extra weight is muscle.

 

[TromboneAl]

Here's a Flickr slideshow of over 100 photos of men & women with their BMIs and weights. It puts a lot of perspective into the misuse of this indicator...

What do you mean about the "misuse?" There was only one (Jessica in the [-]full body girdle[/-] wetsuit) for which the classification did not seem right to me.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

Clothes hide a multitude of sins. Without them, pleasantly rounded means overweight, at least by BMI. By that criteria, I'd like to be a 23 married to a 26, but that's another topic.

 

[haha]

Many of the women and men classified as overweight seems normal to me; in fact very attractively so in the case of the females. Ditto the underweight men and women. They look normal and healthy. A few fit looking men playing with heir kids looked completly normal to me.

Clearly BMI is a very gross and misleading measure, probably invented to make possible cheap and easy retrospective studies of medical records. Who cares if the studies are useless; at least you get one more listing in your bibliography.

Ha

 

[Linney]

Clothes hide a multitude of sins. Without them, pleasantly rounded means overweight, at least by BMI. By that criteria, I'd like to be a 23 married to a 26, but that's another topic.

And.... I think we've lost our sense of what is normal. I currently weight only a few pounds less than I did in high school. Back then, my mom was constantly after me to lose 10 pounds so I wouldn't be "plump" any more. Nowadays, my coworkers refer to me as "skinny".

--Linney

 

[megacorp-firee]

hmmmm I'm not over weight ... just too short.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

here's the obese, 30 pt bmi me. i look really unhealthy don't i? no wonder the insurance company penalized me for being too fat. by the time i get rid of that gut i'll likely bulk up another 10 lbs as i tend to put on muscle pretty easily having never been quite petite.

 

[Bigritchie]

I don't think you look over weight at all LG4NB.

Look very healthy.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

Clearly BMI is a very gross and misleading measure, probably invented to make possible cheap and easy retrospective studies of medical records. Who cares if the studies are useless; at least you get one more listing in your bibliography.

Bray, G. (a skinny galactically famous obesity researcher) says (with light edits for brevity, references vetted):

• A study of over 100,000 nurses aged 30 to 55 years found that weight loss of more than 5 kg was associated with a graded decrease in the risk of diabetes mellitus . Similarly, in the Swedish Obesity Study, diabetes was present in between 13 and 15 percent of obese subjects at baseline. Among those who underwent gastric bypass and subsequently lost weight, 69 percent with type 2 diabetes were cured, while only 0.5 percent of those who did not have diabetes at baseline developed the disorder In comparison, obese subjects who did not lose weight had a much lower cure rate (16 percent) and a higher incidence of type 2 diabetes (8 percent). Weight reduction also leads to an improvement in insulin sensitivity.

• A prospective study evaluated 28,388 overweight women aged 40 to 64 years: intentional weight loss of more than 9.1 kg was associated with a 25 percent decrease in all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality. In addition, among 15,069 women with comorbid conditions such as heart disease or diabetes mellitus, any amount of intentional weight loss was associated with a 10 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease, a 20 percent reduction in all-cause mortality, a 30 to 40 percent reduction in mortality from diabetes, and a 40 to 50 percent reduction in mortality from cancers related to obesity....

• Weight reduction lowers blood pressure in more than one-half of treated subjects. On average, the blood pressure falls 0.3 to 1.0 mmHg for every 1.0 kg of weight that is lost. Those who maintain weight loss maintain lower blood pressure than those who regain weight.

• Weight reduction will lower serum lipid concentrations and improve glucose tolerance. As an example, two-year data on the subjects who did or did not lose weight in the Swedish Obesity Study found that there was a linear decrease in serum glucose, insulin, and triglyceride concentrations with increasing weight loss. Serum high-density-lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol concentrations rose in parallel with the weight loss. Serum low-density-lipoprotein (LDL) and total cholesterol concentrations did not decrease with weight loss until body weight had decreased by 20 percent.

• Weight loss is associated with a decreased risk of osteoarthritis. In a study of 800 women a decrease in BMI of 2 kg/m2 or more during the previous 10 years decreased the odds for developing osteoarthritis by over 50 percent. This benefit extended to women with a high risk for osteoarthritis due to a high baseline BMI (
  
  25 kg/m2)...

But I do agree with you that to the obesity-numbed American eye, lots of overweight people "look" just fine to me.

 

[FinallyRetired]

I'm at 29 and close to "obese," but that's very hard to believe. I work out quite a bit, am very active, and sure I'm overweight but not couch potato. My ideal weight is 180, what I was in the USAF 20 years ago, and now I'm 200 so I also don't understand how 20 pounds gets me in the obese category. The other problem, I've shrunk an inch since then which makes my BMI higher. I'm sure there are other rants I can think of about this BMI stuff right after I finish my double cheeseburger.