Yes, but actually no. I’ll not discuss taste because that’s very personal, but while as a general rule obesity is unhealthy and most obese people should change their habits, the way we define obesity is with BMI, which is extremely inaccurate for very short or very tall people, not to mention bone and muscle density is different for different people, I have always (since at least 13 YO) have been in the obese category, even when I was training daily and could run a few kilometers at around 5 min per km I was obese, even though I looked only slightly overweight, the reason is because I have dense bones and at the time had lots of muscles (which are lots denser than fat). So while there’s a strong correlation between being obese and being unhealthy one should be very careful not to mix the two and assume a 100% correlation or causation effect.
I hate BMI. I am working on losing weight, but I am gaining muscle at the same rate I’m losing fat, so my weight has hardly changed. None of my clothes fit anymore and I am much slimmer, but still considered obese. I’m not even weighing myself regularly at this point. I’m just going by how I look and feel and my clothes size.
Yup, don’t bother too much with BMI, like I said, I’ve been obese all my life, even when I was in better shape than almost anyone I knew and was training and beating people that looked a lot better than me.
If you want to show just how absurd it is, look at the world strongest man, his BMI is 40.7 which puts him as an obese type 3, even now that I’m in the worst shape of my life I’m not in that category.
BMI misses more often in the other direction (skinny-fat), being fit and obese is much less common.
It’s my understanding that the only proven health metric with regard to size is waist to height. Your waist measurement less than half your height? Then you don’t have too much abdominal fat, and it’s the abdominal fat that is a bigger risk to your health.
It’s a general guideline that’s accurate for average people that live average lives, but if you’re too tall, too short, too muscled, have lower or higher bone density, etc it can be very inaccurate. No doctor takes any action on this alone, but it can be a guideline to ask you for blood works or other studies to ensure things are okay. There are better ways to measure body fat percentage, but that requires special instruments and also are usually dependent on where your body stores fat, so you might not have ever done them before.
Yes, but actually no. I’ll not discuss taste because that’s very personal, but while as a general rule obesity is unhealthy and most obese people should change their habits, the way we define obesity is with BMI, which is extremely inaccurate for very short or very tall people, not to mention bone and muscle density is different for different people, I have always (since at least 13 YO) have been in the obese category, even when I was training daily and could run a few kilometers at around 5 min per km I was obese, even though I looked only slightly overweight, the reason is because I have dense bones and at the time had lots of muscles (which are lots denser than fat). So while there’s a strong correlation between being obese and being unhealthy one should be very careful not to mix the two and assume a 100% correlation or causation effect.
I hate BMI. I am working on losing weight, but I am gaining muscle at the same rate I’m losing fat, so my weight has hardly changed. None of my clothes fit anymore and I am much slimmer, but still considered obese. I’m not even weighing myself regularly at this point. I’m just going by how I look and feel and my clothes size.
Yup, don’t bother too much with BMI, like I said, I’ve been obese all my life, even when I was in better shape than almost anyone I knew and was training and beating people that looked a lot better than me.
If you want to show just how absurd it is, look at the world strongest man, his BMI is 40.7 which puts him as an obese type 3, even now that I’m in the worst shape of my life I’m not in that category.
Holy shit that’s wild. Is BMI good for anything, then? Or does it need abandoned?
BMI misses more often in the other direction (skinny-fat), being fit and obese is much less common.
It’s my understanding that the only proven health metric with regard to size is waist to height. Your waist measurement less than half your height? Then you don’t have too much abdominal fat, and it’s the abdominal fat that is a bigger risk to your health.
It’s a general guideline that’s accurate for average people that live average lives, but if you’re too tall, too short, too muscled, have lower or higher bone density, etc it can be very inaccurate. No doctor takes any action on this alone, but it can be a guideline to ask you for blood works or other studies to ensure things are okay. There are better ways to measure body fat percentage, but that requires special instruments and also are usually dependent on where your body stores fat, so you might not have ever done them before.