BMI . . . again

I weighed in this morning at 189.2. This is the lightest I have weighed in probably over a decade. A DECADE and I am 26 years old.

I don’t know why I waited all this time to do something about my weight with diabetes running rampant in my family. But I can proudly say that I am no longer OBESE!! That evil and vile word.

A milestone . . .

I have been a big guy my entire life. Growing up overweight was tough, and it seems to be tough on all large people growing up. Maybe you just ate too much, or were depressed, or were picked on, or were bad at sports, or had a lousy dating life because of it . . . whatever the reason or the outcome, being fat sucks. I have been fat my entire life.

Today I have reached one milestone, I had once thought long impossible- while fully dressed, the scale read under 200 lbs. I am looking to the day where I will weigh 175 LBS and I may even change my goal, given the excellent success that I have had thus far and reach for an even lower end weight, but that will come in time.

If I keep up my routine and lose as much weight as I have been in the last several weeks, over the next two weeks, I will hit yet another milestone- having a BMI under 30. As you may recall from my post on body mass index, found here, the NIH and the World Health Organization use a simple calculation based on weight and height to determine if you are obese.
To see your BMI, you can use this handy NIH Calculator. Having a BMI under 30 means that I will no longer be considered obese.

On a side note, I really hate the word obese.

For more information about the World Health Organization's (WHO) definitions of obese and overweight, you can visit their website here.

BMI Update

So, for the fun of it I went back to check my BMI to see where I am on the scale. At 5' 7", my BMI is at 31.7. This says that I am 25 LBS lighter and still obese. I feel lighter, my pants aren't snug and some of my 'large' sized shirts are starting to feel a bit big.

I also wanted to reiterate some of my findings from playing with the BMI Calcualtor:

• My weightloss goal of 175 LBS is right in the middle of the BMI Index 'Overwieght' category.
• 159LBS at 5' 7" is the largest weight that is considered 'healthy' for my height.

 I stick my thoughts that BMI is BS.

BMI . . . Really?

Okay, so the National Institute of Health (NIH) institutes the Body Mass Index (BMI). According to wikipedia, BMI is defined as:

The body mass index (BMI), or Quetelet index, is a heuristic proxy for human body fat based on an individual's weight and height. BMI does not actually measure the percentage of body fat. It was invented between 1830 and 1850 by the Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet during the course of developing "social physics"
Wikipedia BMI Entry 
Guy Who came up with BMI 

Based on this information, this is a 160+ year old formula ((Weight in Pounds X 703)/ inches^2).
This will give you a number (1 - 50+) Based on this number, it tells you if your weight is average, above average, obese, worse than obese or under weight.

Rather than doing the math yourself, you can find calculator here:
NIH Calculator

Using Google, I searched the term, 'is bmi bs?' and had over 6.5 MILLION results. More or less, the BMI is outdated. One of the biggest downfalls of the BMI is that it does not take muscle mass into account. You can be 5'7 and 200 pounds of muscle and still be considered 'obese'. 


While I agree that I am overweight and maybe will even admit to being obese, BUT there is no way that I am on the end of the obese scale. My starting weight BMI is 34.6 and my goal weight (175) is still overweight with a BMI of 27.4.


I think that this should be changed or actual body fat should be calculated in this too.


Just my thoughts and a bit of a rant.