I thought it was pretty well-known that BMI is a bullshit metric.
A short, thin, but bulky person can have an obese BMI because it doesn’t take into account fat percentage or muscle mass. It’s doesn’t account for diet quality and it doesn’t account for fitness.
A ratio of weight to height tells you basically nothing about your health.
It’s generally considered bullshit. But a large number of people cling to it, even when you point out glaring flaws like every power lifter is considered dangerously overweight.
The main issue is that BMI is just something for professionals to glance at when dealing with hundreds of patients, not a definitive system that individuals should use to inform their own lifestyle decisions. The reason it’s so popular is because it is really accurate for large populations in that context.
But what you actually want to figure out, if you want to evaluate whether you should change your weight or lifestyle, is your body fat percentage. The Navy body fat calculator is accurate to within 3%, but requires you to measure your waist, hip, and neck in addition to your height and weight. Still an estimate, but a much much better one than BMI
I thought it was pretty well-known that BMI is a bullshit metric.
A short, thin, but bulky person can have an obese BMI because it doesn’t take into account fat percentage or muscle mass. It’s doesn’t account for diet quality and it doesn’t account for fitness.
A ratio of weight to height tells you basically nothing about your health.
It’s generally considered bullshit. But a large number of people cling to it, even when you point out glaring flaws like every power lifter is considered dangerously overweight.
The main issue is that BMI is just something for professionals to glance at when dealing with hundreds of patients, not a definitive system that individuals should use to inform their own lifestyle decisions. The reason it’s so popular is because it is really accurate for large populations in that context.
But what you actually want to figure out, if you want to evaluate whether you should change your weight or lifestyle, is your body fat percentage. The Navy body fat calculator is accurate to within 3%, but requires you to measure your waist, hip, and neck in addition to your height and weight. Still an estimate, but a much much better one than BMI