For women, the study shows, thin isn’t everything. Those who were slim yet didn’t work out to build muscle still could be quite fatty.
Pivarnik says he worries that some people, particularly young women, may find that pumping iron puts them into the overweight category per BMI, so they skip weight training altogether.
“Don’t worry about the thinness,” he says. “Worry about the working out part.”
You can have a normal BMI and still carry enough fat to make you technically obese (above 32% body fat). Trainers call women like this 'skinny fat'.
So how do you measure health and fitness if you're not using BMI? By checking your body fat percentage - how many of your pounds are made up of fat and how many are lean body mass (LBM):
Quote:
Other experts say they’ve seen this firsthand with clients, and that clearly BMI isn’t the best test for everyone. “I don’t think it’s accurate enough,” says Dr. Kenneth Cooper, founder of the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas.
At his facility, trainers prefer to rely on skin-fold tests that use fat calipers to measure body fat at various points, such as the back of the arm, abdomen and thighs. In addition, they use underwater weighing, a common lab test that determines how much of a person’s body is fat and how much is muscle. Other centers also use a measure called the waist-to-hip ratio, which assesses abdominal fat. Some fat is worse than others, and that around the middle is among the deadliest.
Bottom line: “It’s better to be fat and fit than skinny and unfit,” says Cooper.
I really feel that we need to learn to use as many of these tools as possible. BMI, BF%, scales, pants o'meters, resting pulse, increasing endurance, measurements ... All of them have flaws and no 'one' is good enough to measure optimal fitness or size.
I had a knock-down-drag-out with a physiotherapist yesterday about waist measurement. I'm sorry, I cannot go for anything under 32 inches being right for all women. There are buckets of women who are structurally smaller than me. For them 31 1/2 inches around the middle would be too much, it is for me.
I've always felt that BMI was utter crap. Especially when it "replaced the old out-of-date weight height charts". You know I took the calculator and the BMI and the "out of date" charts and they were EXACTLY the same ranges.
My dh's ex-boss was a competitive triathlete and considered "obese" by BMI. What bunk.
I have a sister-in-law who has always been a "healthy" weight, but she doesn't exercise and eats high fat, low fiber foods with few fruits and veggies. Even though I'm still 30 lbs above my goal weight, I feel that I'm much healthier "on the inside" than she is, due to a complete revamping of my eating and exercise habits (now in place for 8 months). Now I'm just patiently waiting for my outer self to catch up with my inner self!
I also agree that one must take into account all the varying ways to measure the body to get a good picture of what is healthy.
I've been saying the BMI is crap since it came out too. Most nurses I've talked to share my opinion of it. To me, the final nail in its coffin is the fact that the President, who is in the top 3% of men in his age range in terms of fitness, is overweight according to the BMI. It has nothing to do with body fat percentage or physical fitness. It is ONLY a height/weight ratio, and as such is basically garbage. The only thing it's done is make a bunch of women overweight without their gaining an ounce.
As a tutor to athletes while in college, I dealt with this problem. Most of them took the Intro to Phsy Ed class, they were annoyed, even deeply upset when they found out that their huge muscle mass qualified them as "obese"
Most people who are so athletic and so muscular that their muscles put them into the obese category already know that they're in great shape. They work hard for those muscles, and they probably eat very controlled diets as well. Also, most of them are men.
The rest of us, if our body stats put us in the obese category, we would probably be healthier to drop some weight.
That the ratios don't make sense for incredibly fit people doesn't translate to the ratios not making sense for the rest of us.
That the ratios don't make sense for incredibly fit people doesn't translate to the ratios not making sense for the rest of us.
I think you are only seeing half the point here. It's also the people at the other end of the spectrum...those with so called healthy BMI's but no muscle tone to which Meg is refering. You are right. Most heavily muscled folks work real hard and eat for that physique and know that a body fat of 5% for men or 12% for women certainly doesn't make them obese no matter what their BMI.
The person who is in trouble is the woman with a BMI of 23 or 24 and body fat % of over 30. This is not just an academic argument. I've done caliper testing on new gym members who fall into this category. One I remember vividly was overjoyed that she had just reached her Weight Watchers goal weight and was wearing a size 8 jean at 5'5". With her bodyfat at 32%, she was technically obese. I told her she tested as "undermuscled". These are the women who will not be able to carry out simple daily functions by the time they are in their seventies, or even sixties.... Getting out of a chair, opening a car door, taking groceries off a shelf- these seem simple but require strength.
The reality is that unless we work at building and maintaining muscle, we lose it and it is replaced by fat even though the number on the scale may stay the same.
In the 90s, they changed the thresholds for what is overweight, obese etc. It used to be you weren't overweight unless your BMI was 27.something, but now it's 25. So suddenly, many more people "became" overweight... uh, no, the guidelines changed!
I think the measure is pretty useless (though I did celebrate leaving morbid obesity and obesity behind ), but it never was designed to be used as it is, from what I can tell.
Article - When determining who’s fat, is BMI bunk?
), but it never was designed to be used as it is, from what I can tell.
