Calculate Your BMI Here; How Many Of Us Are Underweight...?

Alan,

They don't use driver's licenses. The CDC phone surveys 10,000 people in each state (which yes adds problems since people lie/don't know about their weight and height so actually they know the numbers are skewed in a direction making the USA look thinner (yikes). This has been verified in studies in which they actually weigh and measure height of people and a rise in obesity/overweight is seen.

That said, BMI is useful in individuals as an initial screening in the same way BP and cholesterol is. If you see a problem in any of those measures it is a quick and dirty means to move onto further investigation. Go out check a random group of 10 people at work and see how many of them have a dead on BMI, it'll be many of them. I regularly check body fat % on people and the BMI most always correlates closely to their body fat%.

At my school, BMI is used to as the gold standard by which to judge whether a person is "too light" to run anymore. The magic figure is 18.5. If a person drops below 18.5, that's it - they're done.

Wow. That is frighteningly short-sighted. And you end up losing your best runners. Now they need to remove any football lineman who measures as overweight on BMI and your school will lose in every sport ;)

however wrote:

At my school, BMI is used to as the gold standard by which to judge whether a person is "too light" to run anymore. The magic figure is 18.5. If a person drops below 18.5, that's it - they're done.

Is it a bad sign if you start ripping the ass out of your pants?

Or is it just poor workmenship.

At my school, you can be as heavy as pick up truck and that's cool. We have trainers in their mid twenties who weigh well over 230 pounds - mostly fat, as they don't exercise - and they are the ones who identify eating disorders.

Anorexia is a serious and dangerous condition. But at my school we are approaching the point where "skinny" is grounds for counseling at minimum and prohibition from sport participation a real possibility. I would say that 1/2 the finalists of the women's 5k/10k at the Olympics would be banned from our teams based on what is perceived as unhealthy low weights.

I'll admit that weight loss can be a slippery slope and some clear lines of demarcation would be helpful to discern thin from underweight. But what might the proper lines be? How can we tell the difference between someone who is very light versus someone who is too light?

This scale is so incredibly inaccurate it's not even worth doing. It doesn't take into account body type or muscle. My dad is 6'2 205 lbs and his doctor looked at this chart and told him he is obese and needs to weigh 185 lbs. When he was a fit college wrestler cutting weight he was 190 lbs. Even now at 205 lbs he isn't really fat. He has real wide shoulders and is just a big guy, definitely not obese.

I know obesity is high now but this scale definitely makes it look higher than it really is.

We've been over this

woohoo 25.8!

my mom says i'm just big-boned....

however wrote:

I'll admit that weight loss can be a slippery slope and some clear lines of demarcation would be helpful to discern thin from underweight. But what might the proper lines be? How can we tell the difference between someone who is very light versus someone who is too light?

The problem with lightness is that underweight is a helth problem when people have some kind of wasting disease, anorexia, zero muscle mass, etc. but clearly very lean, fit people will look underweight but often be really healthy. This is one of those groups BMI fails to accurately assess. As always, use BMI as strating point and then use more sophisticated tests to determine if the BMI is accurate.

I don't think most thin runners have a underweight problems and I think your school is just BEGGING for a discrimination lawsuit by kicking people off the team. And it's ludicrous that they will say they are concerned about anorexia based solely on BMI.BMI doesn't measure anorexia; it measures weight status. Eating disorders are psychological problems not dietary or weight problems. Sometime they manifest themselves with low weight but usually not. Bad call by your school and I hope someone gets a lawyer to remind them of this really soon.

Whoa, my wife hit 38.2

I'm not exactly skinny either at 24.4.

[quote]not quite skinny wrote:

Whoa, my wife hit 38.2[quote]

Well then, she must be a lineman in the NFL 'cause BMI is useless ;)

18.3

5'7" 117

BMI=16

Bugger all this!

I’m off to McDonalds - I don’t want to die young!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/08/nfat108.xml

im 16.5 woot woot

do you feel healthy?

Keep in mind....the BMI scale everyone knows is for ADULTS. There is a BMI scale for children which has a much lower norm. Also keep in mind that males don't reach peak musculature until their early/mid 20s.

Alan