Body Fat Percentage or BMI?

I guess because weight by itself is an even worse indicator?

I wish there was something that worked in any case. I worked my ass off for almost a year, and was clearly healthier in every way except that my weight went down maybe 8 total pounds.

It’s cheap, it’s easy, and for the typical sedentary white person it’s not too far off.

But check out

A study published by Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 2005 showed that overweight people had a death rate similar to normal weight people as defined by BMI, while underweight and obese people had a higher death rate.[37]

There are other studies mentioned there, with a variety of results, but i stick by my statement that the “overweight” category had more to do with esthetics then with health.

(Note that Asian nations that use bmi use lower values. Healthy sizes and shapes vary by ethnicity.)

BMI has been around for so long that you’d think they’d just shift the bands around so that “overweight” actually reflects an increase in mortality

yeah, likely does both. mine doesn’t do bmi. it does weight and body fat %, but i never actually put my information into this new one to get a body fat % read since I know these scales are notoriously unreliable for body fat %.

So there are a few problems with this:

  1. People with eating disorders have a distorted view of whether or not they look fat. This sort of suggestion is not helpful.

  2. Some people can lose weight by dieting, but for a huge % of them, it is not a sustainable weight loss. Most will gain back more than they lost over time. Losing and gaining back weight is probably worse for your health than just being a little overweight.

  3. “So just keep it off.” If you’re one of those people who can do that without obsessing over every single thing that goes in your mouth, count yourself privileged. If you’re not, and you try, you’re on your way to an eating disorder.

Pick your poison. I’m finished judging myself by someone else’s standards.

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what? I don’t think I really have a traditional woman’s body. My hips are extremely wide due to bone structure. I think this might skew things. wide hips are not a health risk.

why should I look for a reason to feel bad about myself when my weight is fine? seems silly. I know that for myself I can’t get to the high end of the normal weight range for my height or I start to look fat due to where I store fat, but if my BMI is on the low to mid normal range, why would I go looking for a whole other metric? What do I gain out of this?

Also, taking those measurements is very confusing. I really don’t know where to put the tape measure on my hips. Stepping on a scale otoh? easy. Step on scale. Look at number. the end.

What I’ve gathered from this chart is that I must get taller somehow.

there’s always lipo

But can they get up in and around my organs?!

This just in - the scale just told me I’m currently 34.9% BFP, so only a little obese. Like “put that Krispy Kreme down” obese, not “probably gonna die if I get COVID” obese.

No. In fact, it could make it worse, because fat cells don’t regenerate, but the fat needs to go somewhere. If it can’t go to the places you did lipo on, it’ll start to creep into your organ fat.

Are you… are you that doctor that once tried to make me cry because my cholesterol was too high?

No I’m just a vain gay that spent a lot of time researching how to reduce BFP while building muscle.

my mother only gains weight in her stomach. her legs are sticks. she has pretty much no hope of having a good body fat percentage unless she’s underweight.

i thought my fat thighs made me better, but not a fan of that formula where pretty sure my hip measurement would work against me which both includes my upper thighs and my wide hips. so i’m simply not gonna do the measurement.

if that’s the case, then lipo is for her. it’s the only way to target your BF.

she did a less invasive form of lipo once. it came back i think or came back in a place like right near it. it wasn’t traditional lipo though.

I think this is pretty well documented. Being a bit overweight isn’t very correlated with mortality or health issues. Being significantly obese is of course.

I wasn’t really claiming that everyone should diet. I was more claiming that I don’t think that either body fat percentage using some weird formulas or bmi are totally the best gage of health. in the end, we’re all gonna die. if you’re a little overweight, live your life. it doesn’t matter.

Lipo doesn’t make you taller. Really, you should read up on it.

The correlation between exercise and health is WAY stronger than the correlation between weight and health. Work your ass off, feel healthy, and don’t worry that your BMI is a little high. Learn to love your body, especially if you can keep it healthy.

And if you can’t keep your body healthy (unrealistic for a lot of people) then love yourself in other ways. There are plenty of cool people out there who are stuck with crappy bodies.

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