How tall are you?

[miri]

Equally the only people I know who don't think BMI is a joke are skinny fuckers.

There is no statistic to tell a sane person they are or they aren't overweight. You can tell all you need to know about yourself by looking in the mirror. I'd like to lose my belly, and I've changed my lifestyle/diet to do so recently. Even when I do, I'll still be 'overweight' according to BMI. I was 'overweight' according to BMI when I weighed around 14 stone at the age of 17. At that age I was around 6ft and suffering from depression such that I didn't eat properly for the better part of a year. My doctor told me I was underweight and undernurished and generally unhealthy due to skipping meals etc etc. I'll never be skinny due to my body shape. BMI is a crock of shit.

If you're not happy with how you look/feel, do something about it. If you are, what does BMI matter anyway?

 

[Scouse]

There is no statistic

sure*...



*two seconds work...

 

[miri]

As per usual, you ignore everything that doesn't suit your views. What a surprise.

 

[Hawkwind]

Have to agree with Miri, BMI only works if your a certain build, I bet most sports people come out on the top end of the scale. When I was swimming competitively my BMI was in the obese range but body fat was minuscule, even to the point of being classed dangerously low by a GP! How stupid is that?

 

[russell]

Dudes... I only asked how tall you are? Jeez

 

[Chilly]

Have to agree with Miri, BMI only works if your a certain build, I bet most sports people come out on the top end of the scale. When I was swimming competitively my BMI was in the obese range but body fat was minuscule, even to the point of being classed dangerously low by a GP! How stupid is that?

It's not stupid - it just requires you to think for a microsecond before applying it. "I am not a normal body shape due to sports, therefore BMI (which is designed for the majority of people) will not fit me, an outlier.".

 

[Job]

Casual effect of BMI..not convinced at all...just too many overriding factors associated with the lifestyle..how exactly do they reliably isolate BMI from other factors..it has been impossible to prove and the simple fact is that your genes are by far the most important...I expect in the next twenty years they will find all this research to be stumbling in the dark.

 

[Hawkwind]

It's not stupid - it just requires you to think for a microsecond before applying it. "I am not a normal body shape due to sports, therefore BMI (which is designed for the majority of people) will not fit me, an outlier.".

But for a doctor to say dangerously low and worrying my parents. He actually advised them to feed me high fat foods. Luckily my mother worked at North Hants Hospital and got told by other more qualified doctors it was a lot of bollocks and should just eat a balanced diet.

 

[Trem]

Didn't they have Outlier's in Mad Max?

 

[Hawkwind]

Dudes... I only asked how tall you are? Jeez

Yeah, but it got more interesting

 

[Scouse]

As per usual, I shall ignore the science because doesn't suit my view.

Fixed.

When I was swimming competitively my BMI was in the obese range but body fat was minuscule - but then athletes are obvious outliers and not representative of the vast majority of the human population

Fixed again

Casual effect of BMI..not convinced at all...

Glad you're not a scientist Job as you can't spell causal. But there's reams of peer-reviewed evidence that BMI is a very useful ready-reckon.

 

[DaGaffer]

I'd look ill if I was the "correct" weight for my height. Nearest I've been as an adult (I was a skinny fucker in my teens but I would still have been over the ideal BMI) was when I got back from travelling and I'd been diving nearly every day for three months (best calorie burning regime known to man). I was still 10 pounds over the BMI weight but in photos I don't look well. I felt great, but I didn't look great. Now I'm nearly two stone over the target weight (24 pounds as of this morning) and I'm absolutely fine with that. My brother is hyper-fit, cycles 50 miles a day (or something like that), has about 2% body fat, looks like Skeletor.

 

[Job]

Man I was saying causal in my head and still wrote in wrong..its just my opinion..based on years of experience watching these statistical investigations unwinding as we gain more insight..also they mean nothing whatsoever to the individual..it merely gives health professionals rough guidance directions...people die of heart disease on a daily basis without any risk factors and tens of thousands show no signs even though they have them all...targetting what ACTUALLY causes it in individuals is the cure not saying more red cars are in accidents..so lets make them orange.

 

[Scouse]

I'd look ill if I was the "correct" weight for my height

It's a feature of living in a relatively "fat country" m8. When I was my ideal weight (about 8 years ago) I got people saying "you look really gaunt" and "have you been ill?" - I actually had - I'd come back from India and been ill for a week, dropped a stone and weighed a bit under 12 stone. Had about 10% body fat. However, I was still in my healthy weight range.

Was reading an article in New Scientist a few months back about exactly this phenomenom. So many people are now slightly overweight that our physical "norm" has shifted - so when we see people who are the correct weight we now mistakenly identify them as underweight.

 

[Job]

Yes..I'm bordering on obese and people say I don't look fat..but if I look in the mirror naked I can see the two stone of flab I'm carrying around.

 

[miri]

Sigh. Was going to write a long post explaining further what I was actually talking about which you blatantly ignored to continue being a trite arsehole, but given it's clear you'll just blindly ignore it as usual I won't waste my time.

In short: Very (genuinely) happy for you that you're pleased with your size/shape and broadly I agree that the ideals of a physical norm have certainly changed, but that certainly does not mean that BMI makes any sense for a lot of people.

As I said before, there's so much more than your height and weight which makes up the overall state of your health. If we're talking purely aesthetically then the only thing that should matter is whether you're happy with how you look and feel.

My girlfriend is tiny - 5'1" and a size 6/8, used to weigh around 7.5/8 stone. She wasn't happy with how she felt/looked (too skinny) and is now around 9 stone. On the BMI scale that puts her pretty close to overweight which is so laughable I can't even begin to explain it.

I'm 6'1" and 17 stone, according to BMI I'm well into obesity. I'm not obese, I'm a bit fat on the belly but that's literally it. I could lose around 2 stone and feel/look better about myself, for sure. However, I'll only start to worry about my weight when I'm actually fat.

 

[Scouse]

In short: Very (genuinely) happy for you that you're pleased with your size/shape

I'm not talking about that at all miri. In the context of this conversation I don't give a monkeys how people feel about themselves. The only fact I'm arguing is that BMI is a useful ready reckon and that science shows it to be so.

People don't seem to want to accept that fact. Those people are wrong.


You can go on about other lifestyle factors, how you feel about your weight, how happy you are etc. I'm not talking about that and if I was I'd be agreeing with a lot of what people are saying. However, the minute you point out that science says that BMI is a good and useful measure in the vast majority of cases people who are carrying a few pounds more than they should start questioning it's usefulness.

At the end of the day people don't like to think they're fat. So they attack the tool, not themselves. I'm defending BMI - because science shows it works.

 

[miri]

Do I look obese to you?

 

[Scouse]

Do I look obese to you?

From that photo you're carrying a few pounds more than you should. I certainly wouldn't call you slim. But then - my opinion of a photo isn't an objective measure of fatness. Which BMI is.

What I would say is that you certainly don't have the build of a physical outlier - so it's extremely likely that BMI is utterly correct in your case.

 

[miri]

I like how when it suits you, you'll point purely to one specific point and call it stone cold truth. I ask you a simple question and you dodge it because it doesn't suit your views.

I already said I know full well I'm carrying more weight than I should. That photo is a year old, I've lost some weight since then. I've adjusted my lifestyle/diet because I wasn't happy with how I felt and looked owing to my weight. However, that wasn't what I asked. BMI says I'm obese. So I ask again: Do I look obese to you?

 

[Trem]

Do I look obese to you?

I will answer that - Not to me, no. You look perfectly normal, you look perfectly in proportion for a Western male. You have chunky legs like me, which is what adds weight and is where you would lose lots of weight if you wanted. To sum up, I would do you.

 

[miri]

Haha. All I'm trying to say is that it's not that simple.

The alternative to BMI is the 'height to waist ratio' which a number of sources I could find via google - medical sites, the Telegraph at a cursory glance - say is a 'much better indicator' than BMI. My heigh to waist ratio says I'm 'ok'. I don't agree with that either. I'm overweight, otherwise I wouldn't have a belly. (36 inch waist as it goes.)

To me all this proves is that all of these things can be used as a GUIDELINE to an extent, but they are not absolutes. How can one say I'm obese and the other say I'm perfectly fine? It's idiotic.

 

[Scouse]

So I ask again: Do I look obese to you?

I did answer your question directly - I said you were carrying a few more pounds than you should. If you want it straight: You look fat, chubby cheeks - you're carrying at least two stone more than you should in my totally subjective opinion.


Not that I care whether you are or not. As long as you're happy. I'm only talking about BMI.



It seems that you and Trem are suffering from the perception thing I talked about - that so many people are overweight in western countries that people's perceptions of themselves and other's weight has been skewed to see overweight people as "normal".

Here's the data in a spreadsheet.

And here it is in an easily digestible format.

One in three adults aged 16-24 were overweight or obese, rising beyond half for those aged 25-34, reaching two thirds for 35-44s and hovering around 72% for older cohorts

72% for older cohorts!


Edit:

You look perfectly normal, you look perfectly in proportion for a Western male.

You probably are perfectly in proportion for a western male. It's just that western males are fat.

 

[miri]

I did answer your question directly - I said you were carrying a few more pounds than you should. If you want it straight: You look fat, chubby cheeks - you're carrying at least two stone more than you should in my totally subjective opinion.

And yet you still didn't answer my question: Do I look obese to you?

If you want to talk about a system that gives you a completely decisive, stone cold verdict based on numbers you need to treat it in the same way. The numbers give me a yes or no that I'm obese. You say I'm 'fat' (that's fine btw ), which at least to me is a wildly different thing to being obese.

 

[Scouse]

And yet you still didn't answer my question: Do I look obese to you?

Fuck me. I can't tell just by looking at you. But you certainly look fat. It's quite possible that you are obese, but I'd certainly say you're not morbidly obese.

I'm tall - and at one point I was obese myself. But I didn't "look it". In fact - lots of people said I looked "a little porky" but "not fat".

Face it fatty. If BMI says you're obese, you probably are. But you're so conditioned to living in a world of overweight people, obese people and morbidly obese people - i.e. the majority of humans you see - that you think you're fine. But you ain't.


Edit:
Your argument is far too tied up in your emotions and, frankly, I don't give a monkeys about that. BMI is a tool backed up by objective measurement. And you clearly are one of the people that it's probably bang-on right about.

 

[miri]

Just to prove the point that anyone can google their viewpoint and find a bunch of 'scientific facts' to back it up:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439

http://www.familydoctormag.com/fitness/257-does-bmi-work-for-every-body-type-a-doctor-answers.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/yoni-freedhoff/weight-loss_b_871494.html

The world is full of bullshit. Science I believe in: telling me if I have cancer or not. I'm sure if I went for a full health check up with my doctor tomorrow (even though I don't have a GP actually because I'm never sick) he/she would tell me that I definitely could lose some weight but I'm not obese. I'm actually pretty fascinated to see if any doctor would say I'm obese. I have two friends who are doctors, would love to hear their thoughts on BMI.

 

[Scouse]

Just to prove the point that anyone can google their viewpoint and find a bunch of 'scientific facts' to back it up:

Apart from I googled science, and you googled a load of feel-good-about-yourself websites with bogus experts.

BMI is backed by peer-reviewed science. It works. Man up, accept what you are and feel happy about it

 

[miri]

Fuck me. I can't tell just by looking at you. But you certainly look fat. It's quite possible that you are obese, but I'd certainly say you're not morbidly obese.

I'm tall - and at one point I was obese myself. But I didn't "look it". In fact - lots of people said I looked "a little porky" but "not fat".

Face it fatty. If BMI says you're obese, you probably are. But you're so conditioned to living in a world of overweight people, obese people and morbidly obese people - i.e. the majority of humans you see - that you think you're fine. But you ain't.


Edit:
Your argument is far too tied up in your emotions and, frankly, I don't give a monkeys about that. BMI is a too backed up by objective measurement. And you clearly are one of the people that it's probably bang-on right about.

And yet when talking about a system which deals in 'cold hard facts' you still won't say definitively (which is what BMI attempts to do) whether or not you think I'm OBESE.

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have a negative effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems

The entire point is that there is no hard and fast calculable 'number' to tell you if you're fat, skinny or jabba the hut. You've just said it yourself in a round about way, so thanks for agreeing with me I guess.

 

[Scouse]

And yet when talking about a system which deals in 'cold hard facts' you still won't say definitively (which is what BMI attempts to do) whether or not you think I'm OBESE

Are you retarded? I've answered your question twice now. Obese is a technical definition of an objective measurement - so you need to be measured to find out if you are.

It's not something you "look at" at photo of someone and decide whether they're obese. That's a subjective measurement. I've gone as far as I can honestly and have said effectively "you're fat and may indeed be obese".


I can't tell you if you're technically obese. Kapiche? What I can accurately tell you is that you're far too emo about this subject and clearly incapable of holding a conversation about a unit of measurement.

The entire point is that there is no hard and fast calculable 'number' to tell you if you're fat, skinny or jabba the hut.

The entire point is that there is - BMI. It's backed by peer-reviewed science and it works just fine for the vast majority of humans.

Edit:
Including you.

 

[miri]

I'm the 'emotional' one and you're the one who is apparently so stressed out by someone questioning this system that you resort to calling me a 'retard'. Ok. Clearly you're 'incapable of holding a conversation' about this.