I think any new system would have to take into account the persons activity level and body makeup. Like you said, someone who has more muscle on them would be “hevier” than someone who is inactive. This chart would make that person look overweight when in reality they are in better condition than a person who does next to nothing. To me, this chart is just another thing that makes women feel like they have to fit a specific mold. I mean look at those women who would have been considered “overweight” or “obese” that is ridiculous! You should be healthy but there is much more to being healthy than a number on a scale. There are many other things that should be taken into account.

I was craving black beans for lunch, too, but there was none at the cafeteria 🙁
I don’t know what would be better than BMI, but I agree it’s not great. My BMI says I’m underweight. I’m definitely thin, but I don’t think too thin is right, and I definitely eat a lot and get plenty of nutrients

I think BMI is nonsense, too. It doesn’t take into account a lot of things that matter.

I read some blogs of people involved in the fat acceptance movement. It’s pretty interesting and I honestly love the positivity, you should definitely check it out.

I’ve always thought BMI was BS. As you said, there are many examples that show us that our BMI doesn’t mean much. Right now I’m at a healhy weight. I am not fit though. I’m working towards it. My weight won’t probably change that much but I bet my body will change quite a bit (losing fat and gaining muscle does that 😛 ).

I’m glad you’re talking about these things. I think it’s especially important that the people whose blogs are well known talk about this and let people know that there’s more to life besides their weight.

Caitlin, BMI is used mostly in healthcare fields to assess risk based on weight. The first picture you put up is of a beautiful women, but she does have some extra weight that could possibly be causing her health concerns. BMI was not meant to be an hot-bod scale, the public just turned it into that. As a diagnostic tool it is relavent and practical.

i tend to agree with these statements. disagreement with the BMI is well documented and discussed all over the place. i agree that all the women look fine, but i don’t think the system was intended to label a person based on looks. a high or low BMI does not mean a person has to look obese or underweight. i agree that the system is way outdated, but i’m afraid you’re arguement or main point that you mention at the end of this post shouldn’t focus on the women looking fine. again, i agree with you but this is just my suggestion to improve your argument.

I agree with what you wrote about BMI being a poor indicator of health! Muscle mass, healthy body fat levels, bone structure, etc are going to wildly affect weight. I am at the highest end of “normal weight” according to the BMI chart and people call me “thin” or “petite” all the time! I would much rather be healthy than have a “good BMI”.

I agree with you – I definitely don’t put much stock in it. My husband just got a physical and his BMI told him he was defintely overweight, but if you looked at him, you would think that he was thin. his BMI told him he was overweight even when he was a skinny high schooler because of all his muscle mass. (which i love) 🙂

We just talked about this in my Nutrition Assessment class (I am in grad school to become an R.D.) BMI is more of a screening tool for potential disease risk, but there are many other, better measures. As many people already know, fat around the middle is one of the most dangerous, so women with a waist circumference over 35″(I believe Dr. Oz recommends 32″) and men over 40″ are at an increased risk for cardiovascular and related diseases. Of course, no single assessment tool can predict all risk factors. We also have to consider cholesterol, blood pressure, and other information to get the whole picture. BMI is only a jumping- off point.

I think BMI is most useful for health screenings. It raises a red flag to take a closer look at the REAL factors that impact health most – diet, waistline, weight, lifestyle, activity level, body fat %, etc.

I think it is one tool…of many. All systems used to clasify are going to have pros and cons because you can’t factor everything in. There are measurements that are not quantitative and cannot be captured by any system.

It is a GENERAL classification system. It should be used less than it is and relied on less than it is.

BMI was developed in the 1800s and of course things changed quit significantly since then — it lost it’s ‘usefulness’ a long time ago. Anything not taking body composition into context isn’t going to provide any semblance of accurate results.

I’m really glad you brought this up. I’ve thought about this topic a lot. It’s very difficult to capture health via a generalized formula. It really does come down to the individual, their lifestyles, and body type. For one, people who are genetically predisposed to having bigger boobs, or a “bubble” butt, or carrying more muscle will for sure have a higher BMI, but that doesn’t necessarily make an accurate statement about the state of their health, or even vanity.

I totally think BMI is very deceptive. I am at the high end of the normal range yet I wear a size 2. I think/hope my muscularity throws it off.
I’m no doc but I think a more accurate portrayal of someone’s overall health would have to include checking cholesterol levels, resting heart rate, BP, insulin sensitivty, etc.

I agree that as a starting point for discussion with health professionals it can have merit. It’s also easy – anyone can enter the height and weight into an online calculator. As someone who has been mostly average to thin, I still disagree with it for determining if someone is healthy or not. Mostly for the athlete argument. I know many male college athletes who are in the prime of their fitness, but are considered overweight by the BMI. Body fat % and waist to hip ratio can be better tools, but those both have their flaws as well. Calculating body fat is hard to do outside a lab setting, and getting someone who knows how to use calipers accurately is hard to find – especially your run of the mill trainer in a commercial gym.

I agree with you; I think the BMI scale isn’t the most accurate weight/fitness assessment tool. I often joke that I have titanium bones because according to the scale my BMI is over 27 and if you saw me in person, you’d know that I’m not overweight. I’m certainly not underweight, but I’m not overweight either. Muscle mass and body frame have to be factored in, in my opinion.
My daughter, who is 7 1/2, is also the recipient of my titanium bones. She’s tall (53.5 inches) and thin, but weighs 63+ pounds. According to the Wii Fit (assuming they use BMI standards), she’s overweight and while she clearly IS NOT, she is bothered by the fact that the Wii Fit says she is.
I can see how the BMI chart can be used in a very broad sort of way, but it’s just not accurate enough to be considered THE ONLY WAY to judge overall weight standards.

I agree! I think it’s a good starting point, but all those factors you pointed out must be considered. I’m 5’10” and weigh ~170-175 lbs, which, according to your BMI chart, puts me at boderline overweight. But, I am muscular with a large frame, a largish chest, and physically fit. So really, BMI doesn’t tell me much of anything about my state of health. Interesting discussion!

That’s totally true! BMI is crap! I took a class called Health and Sports for life and the professor told us that the BMI is the most important thing. I definitely don’t agree.

I agree that BMI is only one measure of health, and I don’t believe it’s always an accurate one. I had a coworker who was classified as obese who was very muscular, fit, and extremely good-looking I might add! 🙂 He does triathlons, is a retired police officer, and is definitely healthy and in shape. I know my R.D. (who I just interviewed and posted about on my blog if you’re interested) would definitely say that BMI is not nearly as important as how you feel. I think that, usually, you know if you feel healthy or not, and that is way more important than any number.

Not a fan of using BMIs. I do some work with patients with eating disorders, and our agency works really hard to encourage local doctors and the university health center to get away from using the BMI system. I was seeing a patient in recovery from ED-NOS (mostly binging and purging, some restricting) last year, and she was told by her psychiatrist that she was overweight based on her BMI. I almost choked someone.

What I do like about the BMI chart is that it takes into account both height and weight. I am very tall (5’11) and often used to feel like I was overweight because my height adds pounds. With the BMI chart I could see that my weight is considered healthy for my height, which is important I think.

I don’t know what a better system would be, but I agree that BMI isn’t that great. There are so many things that contribute to a persons overall health. I don’t think it can be summed up based on hight and weight alone.

I think that BMI has become a “problem” only because of society’s obsession/sensitivity with weight. It is useful as a simple model in the medical field. Certainly other metrics might be more informative (to include body fat % or activity level), but it terms of something that can be determined very quickly and objectively by everyone – most people have access to a method to measure height and weight – it makes sense as an initial screening process. Models are never 100% accurate and can never be applied identically to the entire population, they exist to serve a a guideline.

I think the concern is that our society has put such a negative connotation on being “overweight” that peple get very defensive/upset when their BMI places them into that catagory. If it wasn’t such a sensitive issue, people would think “well I have a lot of lean muscle and I am eat well and exercise and at my last physical so it really doesn’t matter what the label is” but instead, people get upset about being afficted with a “negative” label.

I definitely think BMI is BS! 🙂 I think the range of “healthy” weight is too small. And, you can never really judge weight by numbers anyway.

my perspective, as a pediatrician (3rd year resident):

it is a useful tool in the pediatric population (which by the way has a special growth curve for BMI — you can’t just use the standard numbers of 25, 30, etc). a lot of parents have a skewed view of what a healthy child is supposed to look like, and it can be easier to talk about an unhealthy BMI than an unhealthy weight. while i DEFINITELY agree that there are limits to the use (i have seen multiple healthy teenage males without an ounce of fat on them in the ‘overweight’ range), if a kid is off the charts (literally above all of the curves, as many of my patients are), it can be a good tool to demonstrate to the parents that there is a health risk that needs to be addressed.

I think the BMI is pretty much BS. It labels Adam (my fiancee as overweight). He is really muscular (hot, hot, hot), because he is an athlete, when you see him he does not look overweight in the slightest! I think “healthy weight” is so individual for everyone it is hard to do it all by numbers. Great post, Caitlin!

PS I voted for you ages ago 🙂

I think all these number charts are bs! I had my body fat percentage checked at the gym and it said I was 33%. I looked up what it meant and it said 33-39% body fat means you are overweight to obese! I’m 5’4″ and 125-128 pounds and by NO means fat or obese! The guy told me he wants me under 30% body fat but I’m not listening to some crazy bodybuilder who doesn’t even have a degree in nutrition. He also told me I need 100g of protein A DAY!

I do agree that BMI is just a number, and one of the factors that would help a person understand what their fitness level is. However, there is no doubt that carrying around extra weight is a burden on your heart, lungs, muscles and skeleton. I don’t think a persons’ weight is an indicator of their virtue or lack of it, but if someone is overweight 20% of their body weight (as I was last year), their blood pressure WILL go up.

It’s better to think in terms of percentages, not pounds. Mindy, with a weight change of 11 pounds, lost nearly 10% of her normal weight! For me, 11 pounds would be only 5%. 5% of Mindys’ weight for me would be about 4 pounds – a big lunch with a liter (quart) of fluid.

I think the BMI is a great tool for measuring weight change in a population–that is what it is designed for. It wasn’t ever meant to assess how fat an individual person is, much less how healthy they are. Health is such a complex thing with so many aspects that I can’t imagine any chart that would definitively tell someone whether they were healthy or not.

I also think it is relied on too much, it was created my a mathematician, not a physician, and many things were not taken into account. There are many other reliable measures of weight and health, which are not used.

I agree that there are plenty of “exceptions” to the general BMI rule, but thats why those people are exceptions – because the BMI scale is generally accurate for the vast majority of people. In this sort of forum, where the women reading and commenting are at least familiar with healty eating and regular exercise, there are obviously more “exceptions” than rules. However, I think that the BMI scale is a good tool for those who are unfamiliar with these ideas and need a general starting point. Realistically, the majority of people in the overweight category are not going to be classified as such because of muscle mass. If you know enough about health/fitness to know that muscle and exercise could affect your classification (and think that it may apply to you), then I don’t think you need to worry too much about the scale in the first place. However, as unfortunate as it is, I think far too many people claim that extra weight is “muscle”. It takes some serious, intense strength training over months to gain even a few pounds of muscle, and someone who is a casual exerciser is not going to be putting on any significant muscle mass, ever, and I think a lot of people fall into that trap. It’s obviously great to exercise and strength train, but it’s extremely misleading to hear “don’t worry about a few extra pounds, it’s probably muscle since you’ve been exercising”. If we take emotion and judgement out of it (meaning not associating weight with anything but facts and saying it like it is), then we can’t just write off the “overweight” category as unfair because someone MAY be the rare exception. Great topic!