What’s the BMI?
The BMI stands for body mass index. Maybe you’ve never heard of it (you’re lucky). Maybe you’ve heard others talk about it. Maybe your dirty little secret is that you check your BMI on a daily basis and memorize your exact number. Wherever you stand, we are here to inform you that the BMI is not at all what you thought it was.
What’s it for?
The BMI is what the government uses to determine who is considered underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese. I’m not going to do the number break down here (because I don’t want to encourage random bmi checking), but the numbers, according to the government, are meant to determine who is considered healthy and not so healthy.
What’s the problem with BMI?
The BMI uses two things to indicate whose fat and whose not: height and weight. That’s right folks, the BMI does NOT take into consideration things like sex, age (I could stop there), family history, bone density, body fat percentage, muscle mass. And furthermore, the BMI assumes that everyone in the “overweight” and “obese” category is unhealthy based on this narrow definition. Before you get yourself in a huff and start yelling at me through your computer “Don’t you know Obesity Kills?! What in the world are you saying here?!” Let me just clarify that we here at Eat a Cheeseburger are no “experts.” But we can read (as can you obviously) and we do know that the government keeps changing their definition of healthy and unhealthy based on this narrow scale (haha no pun intended). To us, this is problematic. If you are going to tell us that we are all doomed because we are so fat we can’t even see straight, can you at least get your measurements right? The BMI does not account for the two most important indicators of health: diet and exercise. And guess what? There are a lot of skinny folks who stuff their faces with lots and lots of junk food all the time and have no concept of exercise or a healthy life. And there are people in the “unhealthy weight” category who eat right and exercise and yet will never be thin. So what’s up BMI? How do you account for these shortcomings? How can you tell a person they are unhealthy based on weight alone? We here at Eat a Cheeseburger are not so sure you can.
Cheeseburger Definition of BMI: Biased Misleading Indicator. So there you have it, our cheeseburger definition of the week. Just as we have thrown our scales out the window, we have also thrown out the BMI as an accurate measurement of our health. And we encourage you to do the same!
love the cheeseburger definition of the BMI must say this sounds accurate. So we aren’t all meant to be the same size as the person who is the same age and height as us? hmmmmm…..
I agree the BMI is a big joke. A funny tool on my site enables you to see which celeb has the same BMI as you. Good for a laugh because some of the BMI’s are waaaay off.
http://www.notdieting.com/2008/03/im-mariah-who-are-you.html
BMI is beyond ridiculous. It’s much like the height/weight tables concocted by the insurance companies back in the day. They are designed so that insurance companies can charge you more for your insurance by claiming that you are unhealthy based on weight alone. BMI is used the same way. If you have to buy your own insurance, there is a BMI penalty above a certain BMI that can almost double the cost of a premium, even if there are no other indicators of health problems.
Check out Kate Harding’s BMI Project to see just how ridiculous BMI really is. People contribute photos of themselves along with their BMI. The visual disconnect between the physical appearance of the person and their weight category (underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese) is shocking.
http://kateharding.net/bmi-illustrated/
Even the government is fighting about what is an “appropriate” BMI…I believe it’s the CDC that says the current limits are ridiculous.
The only time I have been at a “normal” BMI, I was sick, depressed and consuming only lettuce and alcohol.
Now that’s healthy.
This is quite a hot information. I’ll share it on Twitter.