Why I Never Use BMI

When you think fitness and how fit you are what’s one of the first things that come to mind? How many push up or squats can I do?, can I run with out getting out of breath?, What is my BMI?.

Working in the fitness industry I hear these things and others mentioned all the time by people when ever they think about measuring their fitness level. While for the most case a lot of the ways they mention are good ways of measuring fitness and health in general, the one that isn’t is BMI. I know right now a lot of people are think but if it’s so bad why would the military, police, doctors and other services and health Professionals use it all the time to determine how healthy a person is?

Well let’s look at the reasons why BMI is not the best measure of health like a lot people think it is. First of all, time for a little history lesson. In the 1800’s a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist by the name of Adolphe Quetelet come up with the Quetelet index of obesity. His index measured obesity by dividing a person’s weight by their height squared. Later on, in 1972 the Quetelet index of obesity was renamed by Angela keys to body mass index (BMI) in a paper in the July 1972 edition of the journal of chronic diseases. In that same paper keys also stated that “BMI was appropriate for population studies and inappropriate for individual evaluation”. How ever due to the simplicity of the test it became a common test for health professionals and other organisations to use to determine an individual’s obesity/ health status.

The major problem with this test though is that it does not look at the make up of the weight i.e. muscle, bone, fat and so on. It only looks at the weight as a whole and due to this, BMI will regally say a person could be in a particular weight category when in fact that aren’t. For example, take Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson he is 119kg and 196cm tall from that he has a BMI of 31 or classified as obese according to the body mass index. Another example is Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a competitive body builder. When He younger and competing, he was 186cm and weighed 104kg which would give him a BMW of 30, which again according to body mass index would classify him as obese. But I’m sure most people would agree they are defiantly not obese or fat, in fact they have 11% and 7% body fat respectively.

Hence the major issue with BMI you can have two people same weight same height but one has only 10% body fat while the other has 35% body fat but they will both be given the exact same BMI even though the one with 10% body fat has a much more reduce chance of health issue caused be excess body weight t(fat) then the person with the 35% percent body fat.

For a true understanding of your body make up a test such as a DEXA scan is required. How ever for a better quick and simple test you can preform, the waist to hip ratio is a better choice then BMI, while not always correct like with BMI. it is usually more accurate and correct more regularly then BMI at determining a personal general health.

To preform the waist to hip ration all that is required is a measurement for waist and hips to be take then you divide the waist measurement by the hip measurement (W ÷ H). For women, a score of 0.80 or less is normal (healthy) for men 0.90 or less is normal (healthy). Anything over these increases the risk of health problems.

So, to sum Things up, we all need to stop focusing on and stop being worried so much about what our BMI is and focus more on what our body composition is. as it’s your body composition that will affect your overall health a lot more then how tall and heavy you are..

#weight #BMI #Health