The Body Mass Index (BMI) is a measurement in today’s standards of health and obesity. But, how accurate is it? Should it be solely relied on? You go to the Doctor and your BMI is measured and you are told you are overweight or worse, towards the top end of obese. Did you know that according to the calculator I fall into the very top end of the overweight category and so just under the border of obese? If you have measured your BMI or you’ve been told you are nearly obese, you must consider these factors first…..
THE HISTORY OF THE BMI
A Belgian dude called Lambert Adolphe introduced it in the early 19th Century. He was a mathematician not a Physician yet he produced this formula of the calculation of someone’s height to weight ratio to determine their bodyfat to give a quick and easy measure of obesity in the general population. BMI= weight in kg/heightm2 The problem is, his data was only collected from white European men, to determine the ‘ideal’ European man. Apparently, he never even meant it to measure an individual person’s overall health and wellbeing, rather a snapshot into a population’s overall health. He delved into looking at the population average, not individuals. Health insurance companies in the 1900s used this method to determine a person’s coverage, meaning they could refuse cover for individuals very overweight. Yet over 200 years old, why are we still using it to measure whether someone is classed as underweight, overweight or obese? Why is it the baseline to determine how lean or how obese an individual is? Is it all that accurate?
EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH BMI
· The cutoffs were based on a very different time period (1900s) and on the ‘ideal Caucasian man, so doesn’t consider someone’s gender or ethnicity eg China and Japan today have defined ‘overweight’ lower than the US
· It doesn’t consider muscle mass or distinguish between bodyfat and muscle mass and everyone knows that bodybuilders with loads of muscle mass can actually fall into the ‘obese’ category, therefore, weight shouldn’t be the only indicator of bodyfat (may I remind you I fall in just under the obese category and the very top end of overweight?)
· It doesn’t consider factors such as sex, age, genetics and lifestyle
· Its boundaries and labels are too sharp
· It doesn’t consider body measurements eg around the midriff which is a good indicator of obesity
· It shows that people in the medical professions are choosing the cheaper options to measure obesity levels rather than more effective methods such as the DEXA scans
· It assumes one size fits all, which is not the case, everyone’s body makeup is different
· It doesn’t consider visceral fat (fat around organs) which is very harmful yet that person can have a good BMI but be more at risk health wise than others of higher BMIs
· Other factors that determine someone’s health are not considered eg activity levels, relationship with food, eating habits, eating disorders-again, other factors that determine someone’s health
WHAT ARE BETTER INDICATORS OF HEALTH?
· A good resting heart rate
· Cholesterol level
· Blood sugar level
· Blood level
· General fitness-how active you are
· Waist circumference
· Body fat percentages against muscle mass percentages-check out getting a DEXA scan
· Checking how comfortably your clothes fit
· Progress photos
· Quality of food
· Alcohol intake
· Whether you smoke
· How you feel generally
· How often you get ill
Just to sum up, one number on a scale created during the 1900s should not determine the health of an individual person, certainly not the BMI that fails to consider muscle mass and therefore puts most athletes into the overweight or obese category. It DOES NOT MEASURE YOUR FAT %!!!
The fact is, if you have a good diet and you train regularly, you’re giving yourself the best possible chance to live longer. You can usually tell from looking in the mirror whether you are morbidly obese or not and of course that is not healthy at all. Thinking beyond aesthetics, if you are very overweight, than you are narrowing the cells to which blood runs through to and from your heart. Too much bodyfat and you are increasing your chances of heart attacks, diabetes and cancers.
Do you always need a BMI to tell you if you are very overweight or obese? Isn’t that pretty obvious anyway from the naked eye? But, putting a label on someone may or may not even be effective. You have people in life that want to change habits for their health, but others that are told they are very unhealthy by doctors, but couldn’t care less. I know people close to me who have been told on numerous occasions by doctors and nurses that they are going down a slippery slope and unfortunately, has not made a blind bit of difference!
Longevity, eating well and training regularly are more important than just a number on a 200-year-old scale.
The question is, which person are you? Me? I will continue to eat well and train well and ignore that I’m touching borderline obese….
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