BMI bullshit
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Many of you knew me BC (before cancer). I don't think I have ever really struck anyone as particularly overweight. When I was a happy 200 pounds, my BMI was 27.1. These days I can consider myself lucky if I can maintain 160 pounds, which gives me a BMI of 21.7. According to the BMI experts, I was overweight before, and am normal now. If you saw me now, you would know that that is crazy. I am an absolute rake now, and would LOVE to magically gain 25 pounds. In my case, it's considerably harder to do than the average person needing to lose 25 pounds. I am accepting donations of both pounds and kilograms.
If you do a little research on the BMI, you will find it full of limitations such as inaccuracies due to age, gender, level of fitness, even race and socioeconomic status. So should this be used as a general diagnostic tool for health? The way it is generally presented, I seriously doubt it. I mean, really, I have a normal weight and nothing to worry about? That's rich, cancer or no cancer.
In my experience, BMI is definitely a measurement to take with a big grain of salt, as it only takes height and weight into account. The more muscular one becomes (especially a man), the heavier one will be and the harder it will be to reach the supposed "ideal" BMI.
You have to take a lot of other factors such as body composition (fat %) into account to determine a realistic and healthy BMI for yourself. So yeah, BMI alone (height vs weight) only gives you part of the story.
Definitely agree with lightspeedchick - the BMI is not an accurate measure of health and fitness because it's missing many other components in the puzzle of what it is to be "healthy." Like you, my fitness manager at the gym who was only muscle was considered obese according to the BMI! Crazy. It might be an okay place to start, but that's about it - definitely nothing to place too much stock in. Way to pick up on that (too many people don't know this and live and die by that number; but we're all so much more than numbers anyway!). ;)