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To: Drew68
A large-framed person who is 5'8" shouldn't weigh more than 172 pounds. At 265 pounds, they'd have a BMI of around 40 and be considered morbidly obese.

Why parrot a fad idiocy! BMI is BOGUS.

1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.

The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.

2. It is scientifically nonsensical.

There is no physiological reason to square a person's height (Quetelet had to square the height to get a formula that matched the overall data. If you can't fix the data, rig the formula!). Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.

3. It is physiologically wrong.

It makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI. Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves classified as overweight or even obese.

Source: Top Ten Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus


41 posted on 07/05/2010 3:34:02 PM PDT by bvw
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To: bvw

BMI is crap. When I weighed 260, my waist never exceeded 38-40 inches. It doesn’t measure fatness or fitness.


44 posted on 07/05/2010 3:49:59 PM PDT by goseminoles
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