Why Body Mass Index is Out of Date and Misleading
Most weight charts give you BMI - Body Mass Index - based on weight and height and show you the underweight, normal, overweight and obese ranges for men and women.
As with other calculators, BMI is only a guideline. It's one measure of your health and can actually give a very false impression.
Body fat percentage, blood pressure, resting heart rate, cholesterol and other measurements give you the whole picture.
BMI is really outdated now.
It just doesn't tell you the most important things. It's completely misleading in some cases.
Take a body builder, you (and they) will be shocked to find out they actually come out as 'obese' on a Body Mass Index.
Why?
Because Body Mass Index doesn't distinguish muscle from fat!
Because for their height, body builders will be relatively heavy. BUT, their weight comes from having a high amount of muscle in their body not fat.
On the other hand, if you look back at our skinny model, she's likely to come out clinically obese even on our % body fat, because starvation dieting has robbed her of a lot of muscle, so proportionally, she can actually have high body fat because she has low muscle mass. Isn't that satisfying! Want to calculate your Body Mass Index? Click here for a BMI calculation So you wouldn't look at either the body builder or the skinny model and say he or she is obese, right?
No, of course not! So what tells you that our body builder is in great shape?
Well, you can see his muscles - check out that six-pack!!! And that's because he has very little fat round the tummy or anywhere else.
His muscle mass is high compared to his body fat, so his % body fat is low - well into the 'lean' range - most of us can only strive for normal body fat range, maybe 'athletic range if we push!
Body shape is totally a matter of your % body fat not your weight and not always your BMI.
How come?
Muscle takes up less space than fat!
So reducing body fat and building or toning muscle is the only way to improve your body shape!
As with other calculators, BMI is only a guideline. It's one measure of your health and can actually give a very false impression.
BMI is really outdated now.
It just doesn't tell you the most important things. It's completely misleading in some cases.
Take a body builder, you (and they) will be shocked to find out they actually come out as 'obese' on a Body Mass Index.
Why?
Because Body Mass Index doesn't distinguish muscle from fat!
Because for their height, body builders will be relatively heavy. BUT, their weight comes from having a high amount of muscle in their body not fat.
On the other hand, if you look back at our skinny model, she's likely to come out clinically obese even on our % body fat, because starvation dieting has robbed her of a lot of muscle, so proportionally, she can actually have high body fat because she has low muscle mass. Isn't that satisfying! Want to calculate your Body Mass Index? Click here for a BMI calculation So you wouldn't look at either the body builder or the skinny model and say he or she is obese, right?
No, of course not! So what tells you that our body builder is in great shape?
Well, you can see his muscles - check out that six-pack!!! And that's because he has very little fat round the tummy or anywhere else.
His muscle mass is high compared to his body fat, so his % body fat is low - well into the 'lean' range - most of us can only strive for normal body fat range, maybe 'athletic range if we push!
Body shape is totally a matter of your % body fat not your weight and not always your BMI.
How come?
Muscle takes up less space than fat!
So reducing body fat and building or toning muscle is the only way to improve your body shape!
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