Ever wonder what the Body Mass Index looks like in real life?

[pecunium]

Well, you can take a look at Illustrated BMI

Apparently, I think "overwieght" looks hot, and "obese" is pretty good looking too.

(edit... I have a BMI which ranges from 16.6 to 17.8)

Comments

[ashiegrrrl.livejournal.com]

My BMI is 29.2, only .8 from obese. My body fat is 28%, which is well within the "acceptable" range. The BMI calculations are way off for almost everyone I know.

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

Even people with very low body fat percentages can be classed by the BMI as obese if they have a lot of muscle and/or have a large bone structure. That's why the BMI is BS.

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

It was kind of cool how clear that was from the pictures.

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

Yep, very much so.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

See, and what's shown as "normal" I would be inclined to label "undernourished"... I mean, BMI is so useless as a measure to begin with (no differentiation between fatty and lean tissue, for instance) without guideline cutoffs that seem to have been set by Hollywood glamour mags.

-- Steve's on the fattish side, and sheepishly admits it, but when Marilyn Monroe gets classifed as "obese" you know BMI needs to be taken with a quantity of salt sufficent to be hazardous to your blood pressure.

[bodandra.livejournal.com]

I'm like "whatever" as to the BMI ratings.
Here I am, 5'4" and 138 pounds, everyone who has known me since I weighed +200 thinks I have lost too much and keeps trying to feed me.
I am fine, neither over nor under, and I can wear clothing from high school, if I had kept it.

[urox.livejournal.com]

I'm "obese" as well.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Last week on this day, I was normal. This week on this day, I'm overweight.

I'm just sayin'. I doubt my mortality was severely affected by one week with a little extra ice cream, a few brownies and some serious water retention, but, you know, I guess, if the doctors say so it must be true.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yes, but you're sane.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

P.S. My husband and I long ago decided that's the highest compliment we can give someone.

[i-come-undone.livejournal.com]

I can't thank you enough for posting this. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[lexica510.livejournal.com]

BMI, arrgh.

The part that really irks me (and I apologize if I've already ranted about it) is the way people say "oh, those old height-weight charts were bad and inaccurate, but the BMI is different!"

Let's see now, what factors are used to calculate one's BMI? That would be one's height and one's weight (and a constant which is irrelevant to this discussion).

Okay, so the only factors are height and weight?

IT'S A FLIPPING HEIGHT-WEIGHT CHART.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Except reduced to a line, instead of an area, so it gives even less info.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much! I'll be sure to keep that as a reference. :)

Just out of curiosity: haven't there been some studies or metastudies suggesting that the correlation of weight and life expectancy is entirely explained by other known factors?

(My BMI is just about 24 - the userpic photo is from April 17th.)

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

It appears that bone structure plays a huge role in the height/weight relationship and thus BMI. I'm guessing there's potentially only a mild correlation between cardiovascular health and BMI until you get into the obese / morbidly obese range. BMI seems about as useful as, say, the circumference of the left thigh -- as in, there's some correlation with health, but not much.

It seems like there's probably another factor other than BMI that correlates much better with health.

Also, I agree with you... there are plenty of hot overweight/obese girls in the list. :-)

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

If I had to pick a gross physical indicator that would correlate reasonably well with health across a broad spectrum of the population, I'd choose body fat percentage. There seems to be a fairly reliable range for this (differentiated by gender, of course) within which a person can be expected to be generally healthy and above or below which one is more likely to encounter various health problems. And it's not something that will be skewed by one's bone structure, etc.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

That seems to make sense. Is there an easy way of measuring it?

[ferrouswheel.livejournal.com]

hey i know you! (after randomly coming here from a friend's LJ).

body fat is most easily measured using the skinfold technique and calipers at several key points on the body. an accurate measurement requires a immersion chamber or measuring bioelectrical impedence. this and many more methods on the wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Small world. :-)

[auranja.livejournal.com]

Kate Harding is the woman who put together that Flickr set, and here is the piece of writing which has become Internet Famous.

http://kateharding.net/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/

There's research that suggests that it's not fat tissue which causes health problems, it's the dieting that fat people are more likely to do which causes health problems.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Why yes, there are :)

[porysski.livejournal.com]

In the obese ranges, the correlation is also fairly likely to be negative. People with fairly large bone structure who also have low body fat are likely to both be significantly healthier and have higher BMI than those with the same bone structure with higher body fat.

Back when I was doing two hours of yoga/day, usually followed with 1-3 hours of aikido, my BMI hovered in the 33-36 range (obese). When I got a job which made that hard to schedule, I gained about six inches on my waist and my BMI went down to 29.something (the very top of "overweight"). I assure you, I was not healthier when my BMI was that low.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

So does this mean that you had a lot of muscle (which is dense) that you lost and was replaced by fat (which is less dense)? I assume that for a given height, higher mass correlates to higher BMI?

I suppose it's not necessarily an interesting question because BMI seems close to useless anyway, but I'm trying to understand what you meant.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

I had quite a bit of muscle, and replaced much of it with fat when I suddenly quit exercising. Thus, my weight went down, because fat isn't very dense. Thankfully, my weight is increasing again, as my muscle/fat ratio is once again headed in the right direction.

Mostly, I was just chiming in to agree that BMI is almost totally useless.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

I have the same experience, but in reverse.

Body fat going down. Weight remaining about the same. Body getting smaller. And stronger. I'm happy.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

Thankfully, I have it in that direction also. Once I manage to get back in the habit of regular exercise, it's easy to stay that way -- endorphins are fun!

Getting over the hump to start exercising again after my old job knocked my schedule about so was, however, not fun at all.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Yup - me too.

[elf]

Even "morbidly obese" by BMI alone doesn't indicate any direct correlation to cardiovascular health problems--and "obese" is where a lot of athletes fit.

BMI Calculator

6'1", 228 lbs is "obese."
6'1", 190 lbs is "overweight."
I believe 6'1", 300 lbs is "morbidly obese"--which would be considered fat on most people, but some people are just that big, and plenty healthy.

My husband's 6'2" tall. At 225 (a weight he hasn't kept since his mid-twenties, when he worked tall ships for a living), he looked emaciated. When he was 240--"obese"--he was fit & healthy, & rode his bike about 12 miles/day.

BMI's labels of "obesity" have nothing at all to do with health; they're based on the assumption that a single body shape, scaled up or down, applies to everyone, and any mass that distorts that shape away from its midpoint is bad. (Any chart that claims Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Universe was "obese" should just be thrown out. Did he have a potentially troublesome body size? Sure. Obese? Umm... no.)

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

This makes sense. Thanks for the info.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

For bonus fun, try being female and getting into serious yoga. You likely won't lose weight, but you will get smaller and stronger. And that makes these charts rather frustrating. I am smaller than six months ago, but weigh about the same, plus or minus three pounds. The charts don't really account for that, and it can make a difference.

[thirstygirl.livejournal.com]

ditto me and kung fu- when I was training 20+ hours a week for my black belt, I was the same weight as now but 2 dress sizes smaller...either way I am still in the 'overweight' category but I was distinctly healthier then.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Yup.

It's amazing to me to watch it happen. I get smaller. Scale doesn't move. And probably if I can keep the muscle, I will just stop fussing about the weight. I like muscle.

[yuripup.livejournal.com]

This is why when you start a serious exercise program you don't just do weight, but use a tape measure too. The changes on the tape are usually even more dramatic than those on the scale.

[mesoterica.livejournal.com]

That is fascinating.

[laurel]

Just in case you aren't aware, that's part of the BMI Project at Shapely Prose. They're still happy to add more photos to it, last I heard.

[laurel]

Okay, maybe they've stopped accepting photos. Not sure, haven't been reading Shapely Prose or any blogs with any regularity.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I sent a message asking if a photo of my naked self, from the rear, needs editing.

Because, when dressed the nature of my build is lost. I think I am bordering on skinny to the eye, I have been told this is wrong.

[delicata77.livejournal.com]

I love this project.

Thanks for linking it!

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you, I like men in all sizes too.

I study belly dance and I have noticed that its very hard to be a belly dancer unless you are "overweight" or "obese." I know a couple decent ones who are "normal" weight but I am sure its much harder for them.

Hi T! Its Susan from the ASML. I saw you on Etoile's blog and followed you back, lol! Small world.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Hey... Etoile's?

It is a small world, and welcome to one of my pieces of it.

I do, every so often, lurk ASML, but it more energy than I have to keep up, esp. with the various levels of heat.

Though I do find I miss it sometimes.

[(Anonymous)]

the bmi is inaccurate but those people do not weigh that much. there are so many women on there who smaller than I am in every visible way who weigh 20 pounds more than me. I'm 6'1 185 and have quite a bit of muscle. http://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/1462326127/
do you honestly think the woman in this photo weighs 200 pounds. no way.

YOUR ONLY CHANSE

[xepomydia.livejournal.com]

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