Yeah, it never gets explained in these headlines that the BMI isn’t a sole indicator of health. It is (or is supposed to be) used alongside professional evaluation to determine an individuals physical condition. Something else to consider: both a 300lb bodybuilder and a 300lb average american fall into the same category for risks of things like heart attacks and knee/back injury. Physics trumps muscle mass so the BMI is a useful risk indicator regardless of subjective ‘healthiness’.

Yeah, a sociologist made it up almost 200 years ago…

So it works “ok” for white guys under like 5’10, but there’s still outliers on either end.

There’s a ponderal/corpulence index that uses better math to work better for taller white people, but there’s still a lot of human variation.

When I was in the military I still failed BMI everytime, even when I had full blown abs. Every time we’d do it there was a slice of people who had to use a different method because we were statistically insignificant.

Which when a sociologist does anything, they just don’t care. They never need to be that exact, which is a good thing because if not they’d never get anything done.

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I wonder if they have actually seen healthy strong people being classified as unhealthy because of their BMI

Technically my BMI has me clasified as obese. I also spend most if my days doing fairly physical work and the last time I went swiming in the ocean I learned that apparently I’m dense enough to sink in salt water. On every other measurement of health (BP, cholesterol, A1C, etc) I always test perfectly. I have no longstanding health issues outside of an ADHD diagnosis. So I would say that I’m an otherwise healthy person whos BMI clasifies them as unhealthy.

Now could I do with losing a bit of fat? Definitely, and I have done it before but even at my absolute skiniest I was still classified as overweight per my BMI despite having basically no visible body fat. Plus the measures I had to take to get down to that weight were also fucking up my other health metrics.

So if you look at the top IPF powerlifters (excluding the uncapped weight class), who are more or less the most heavily muscled group of people in the world who are regularly drug tested, they tend to be a few notches into the “overweight” category.

As I understand the early rungs of “overweight” are not particularly associated with disease. It’s just where risk factors begin ramping up a bit on a population level, but it’s understood that active muscled people who land there have better health outcomes than lighter weight sedentary people

I have, repeatedly.

We know BMI is inaccurate because it was first created ~200 years ago and is a population metric.

Your camel case just exposes your own ignorance - a 10 second search would’ve eliminated your ignorance and hubris.

Only if misusing BMI by applying it to an individual.

Big problem with BPnis it’s a symptom, and understanding the root cause is difficult, at best.

We’ve seen Olympic runners with high BP - clearly genetic.

I’ve been elevated since age 17. Clearly genetic, but docs have been saying the same “you need to change your diet” nonsense for multiple decades. Dude, it’s clearly genetic.