From 1 to 25 of 36 Comments

1. 1. October 3, 2007 8:57 am Link

   It will be interesting to read all the annoyed comments from viewers, such as “she’s overweight? Are they kidding?” Just as the (absolutely intriging, it seemed to me) blog enry on whether one should weigh the same at 60 as at 20, lots of people will write about “obsession” and “too skinny” and “it doesn’t feel right” and so on and on. Personally, I intend to get back to my 20-year-old weight unless and until I’m convinced via actual scientific studies, that it would be unhealthy. Just because many or most people gain in later life doesn’t mean they’re SUPPOSED to. I think that’s what we have to recognize.

   — Rosemary Molloy
2. 2. October 3, 2007 11:26 am Link

   BMI is just bad. It’s no more accurate than those old insurance height-weight tables, really. I’m a six-foot tall woman with a BMI in the ‘overweight’ category. One of my friends, who is about my height and frame size, tracks as ‘obese’. She runs marathons and lifts weights and swims six days a week, but she’s ‘obese’ because the density of muscle is so much higher than the density of fat that she outweighs me. That’s silly. She’s much healthier than I.

   My BMI actually went up when I dropped a dress size because my density (and therefore weight) increased briefly before I started losing fat to balance the muscle gain from working out.

   Whether someone is ‘too fat’ or ‘too skinny’ should be a discussion with one’s doctor, based on things like medical history, personal health issues, ability to pursue desired activities, and lifestyle habits. Magazine covers and magic bullet numbers are a bad way to make health and diet decisions.

   — Rowan
3. 3. October 3, 2007 11:30 am Link

   I have seen what the body types look like in the rest of the world from Europe to the Middle East to the Eastern shores of Asia. This slide show really demonstrates what American’s image is of women’s weight and their image of “health”. BMI is a measure of scientifically linked measurements to standard weights and health factors. It is not a measure of beauty or self worth. Compared to the rest of the world, the categories laid out by the BMI tests look to be accurate.

   — Elizabeth
4. 4. October 3, 2007 11:44 am Link

   It seems to me that BMI doesn’t take into consideration muscle mass- someone who is athletic and fit but not skinny ends up being classified as overweight.

   — Julie Clare
5. 5. October 3, 2007 12:19 pm Link

   I am 5′2″ tall and weigh 180 pounds with a BMI of 32.9 - according to the charts I’m obese. By all other indicators I am in incredible health. My blood pressure is around 110/70, resting pulse of 65, low bad cholesterol and high good cholesterol. I run 2-3 miles a day and lift weight several times a week, eat a balanced diet with lots of veggies and fruit.

   I don’t think BMI is necessarily bad, but we use it and the end all measurement, and it shouldn’t be. Look at the morbidly obese women pictured who do triathlons - the truth is that they are probably healthier than a “normal” weight woman who eats crappy food (though fewer calories) and doesn’t exercise. When will we stop focusing on one very specific calculation and start worrying about the real measures of health and quality of life?

   — MP
6. 6. October 3, 2007 1:00 pm Link

   What is often overlooked when talking about weight and BMI, is a phenomenon I recently heard referred to as TOFI (Thin Outside Fat Inside). Basically what that means is that it’s the visceral fat (the fat around your internal organs) that is of most concern when you are talking about risk of heart disease and diabetes. People who would appear “normal” could be carrying damaging fat around the heart or kidneys, but would have no way of knowing because there is currently no good way to measure that - other than an expensive body scan. Bottom line - modest exercise can help keep visceral fat at bay, even it doesn’t affect your subcutaneous fat (fat under your skin). So, you can still look “overweight” and be healthy.

   — Lori
7. 7. October 3, 2007 1:41 pm Link

   Obesity is now recognized as a chronic inflammatory disease, and one of the driving forces behind artherosclerosis.

   Fat cells direct a large number of chemical interactions and immune processes, convincing doctors who work in the field of inflammatory disease to think that fat acts like a gland or even an organ.

   Of the 5.3 billion people in the world, 4 billion virtually never have heart disease or cancer. These 4 billion people have one thing in common: they eat a low-fat diet, about 12 to 15 grams of total fat a day, as opposed to the 40 grams that are eaten daily in the U.S. Your body only metabolizes 3% of the fat you eat, so what you consume today, you wear tomorrow, increasing the body’s inflammatory response. Fat is not beautiful, fat is dangerous.

   — Kim Kachmann-Geltz
8. 8. October 3, 2007 2:30 pm Link

   BMI and body size are not good indicators of health. We have to stop equating thinness with health and fatness with lack of health. Moreover, we have to stop equating health with morality. Rather, we need to encourage people, all people, to enjoy living in their bodies, to feed and nourish themselves in multitudes of healthy and creative ways, to play, to dance, and to enjoy life rather than obsessing about meaningless numbers on scales and BMI charts. Body shame is far more toxic than body fat.

   — Mary Ray Worley
9. 9. October 3, 2007 3:45 pm Link

   Kim Kachmann-Geltz said:

   “Of the 5.3 billion people in the world, 4 billion virtually never have heart disease or cancer”

   And how many of them die of infection, communicable diseases, violence or injury long before reaching the ages at which cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic “diseases of affluence” set in.

   Everyone dies eventually. It’s fine to worry about yourself and your loved ones, but people need to keep their vanity and sanctimoniousness away from others. Thin or fat, it’s not becoming.

   — Somewhat Fed, Really Fed Up
10. 10. October 3, 2007 4:33 pm Link

    What is missing from the whole BMI discussion is personal honesty and common sense. Forget the numbers. Look at yourself in the mirror in a swimsuit. Can you see your collarbones and rib bones poking out, and no muscle on your legs? Too thin. Do you have a smooth shapely silhouette? Normal. Do you have bulgy wiggly bits, are you thick in the middle? Overweight. I have a friend my exact size and height who is 20lbs heavier than me. We wear the identical size. BMI is a written guideline - the only guide you should be paying attention to is your mirror.

    — Sansu
11. 11. October 3, 2007 5:28 pm Link

    Websites like this are trying to remove the shame of being overweight in the US. That’s a good thing. However, what they miss is that there are well-documented associations between BMI and diseases such as Type 2 diabetes. At the population level, steady increases in BMI are associated with increased disease and the costs associated with treating disease. I’m all for making people feel better about themselves, but it doesn’t change the numbers. People shouldn’t be judged for being obese, but they should be encouraged to loose weight. Higher BMI is associated with poor health. Period.

    — Cary
12. 12. October 3, 2007 6:01 pm Link

    I submit: obesity is not the cause of chronic inflammation but one possible result of it.

    I’ve been on low fat diets and found them to be counterproductive because of the raging hunger they cause, indeed low fat is counterproductive to as much as 40% of the US population. OTOH I’ve lost over 70 pounds while eating more than 100 grams/day of fat.

    — None Given
13. 13. October 3, 2007 6:30 pm Link

    “Conclusions: A BMI in the overweight range was associated with some modest disease risks but a slightly lower overall mortality rate. These findings suggest that a BMI cut-off point of 25 kg/m2 may be overly restrictive for the elderly.”

    http://tinyurl.com/3beyoc
    http://www.obesityresearch.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/7/1827?maxtoshow=&HITS=&hits=&RESULTFORMAT=1&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&fulltext=bmi+mortality&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

    — None Given
14. 14. October 3, 2007 6:52 pm Link

    Why do we still use BMI as a tool? It was invented in the mid 1800s, when nutrition and health standards were very different than they are today.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Quetelet#Public_health

    — WDL
15. 15. October 3, 2007 9:57 pm Link

    I think the intended point of this slide show is to demonstrate some kind of absurdity in the obese and morbidly obese labels - but all of the people who were labeled as obese and morbidly obese LOOK like they need to lose weight. Pretty much everyone who was labeled as morbidly obese looks like they need to lose 100 lbs or more. Americans can try to rationalize their increasing waistlines as beautiful or healthy as much as they want, but that doesn’t change the fact that all of the people who are overweight to morbidly obese in the slide show are just that: overweight to morbidly obese. Just because someone wants to impress upon the world that a flattering outfit makes their morbidly obese body somehow more palatable, it doesn’t change the fact that they are endangering their health and burdening those who respect their bodies with the exponentially increasing cost of their health care.
    Another huge problem that I don’t think many people identify is that the overweight are creating a huge energy burden by forcing public places to use air conditioning in excess. I live in Houston, repeatedly ranked as the fattest city in the U.S., and attend Rice University where the classrooms are kept at inordinately low temperatures. When I look around in a cold classroom, the only people who aren’t shivering or wearing a sweater are those who exceed their healthful BMI by a great deal. Today one of my classes had the thermostat set at 60 degrees - my morbidly obese classmate complained that it was warm while the rest of us were shaking with cold. He also let us know that he keeps his AC at 50 degrees - and also that he is saving energy in other ways. Air conditioning in the south is often the greatest contributer to the power bill, and we need to lower our energy expenditures by raising the temperature to what used to be “room temperature” and is now just too hot for overweight people to handle. I think its ridiculous that people of healthy sizes are being refrigerated in Texas so that the obese can be comfortable. If you are hot when it is below 75 degrees, you simply need to lose weight.

    — Whitney
16. 16. October 3, 2007 10:43 pm Link

    Websites ‘like this’ are NOT trying to remove the ’shame’ of being overweight, they are trying to provide new visual intelligence on this topic, although that intelligence is being resisted a little too vigorously for some reason - as evident in the persistent and futile determination of someone’s health and body knowledge “just by looking at them”. I wish my doctor had a pair of those glasses y’all are wearing, it takes him AGES to figure out stuff sometimes!

    I am one of the people in the slideshow. I have had 3 of those expensive body composition scans (Dexar) done in the last 12 months because I was training hard and wanted to see results in minutae. In the last scan my BMI still put me in the overweight category because I have a high bone mass and density (no osteoporosis for me, yippee!) and a high muscle mass (gosh, all that yoga, cardo and weights!), and even more telling, I was 300gms under the 1kg preferred fat mass reading in the abdominal region - you know, where all the bad things happen when a waist is more than 36″ around? No chiding from Dr Mehmet Oz for me! I therefore DO NOT fall into the risk group for diabetes and heart disease yada yada by reason of my actual fat composition, but clearly as I am overweight according to the BMI I am going to get them anyway. Y’all would be able to confirm this because YOU’VE SEEN MY PICTURE! Zoiks!

    I know more about the health of my body from living in it and maintaining it like the exquisite piece of engineering that it is, than you can ever know just by looking at me. If you wanted to doggedly continue to promote the BMI as a modern measure for individual health instead of a population-wide indicator that was devised between 1830-1850 during some theorising on social physics (Wikipedia) then please let the door hit you on the way out to some other forum. BMI is not the be-all-and-end-all in determining health. Period.

    — A Woman In the Slideshow
17. 17. October 4, 2007 6:43 am Link

    As an RN in Wellness, I feel BMI is just a guide. Even numbers like blood pressure and cholesterol are guides — they vary from day to day (or hour to hour). Understand your own number so you can see each one as a potential risk factor and then think for yourself. What are the diseases prevalent in your family? What do you see in the mirror? What are you eating? How much do you actually move (call it exercise if you wish) each day? Our health is our responsibility - regardless of what any health professional thinks or says to you. Even when our numbers look great, we can still kill ourselves with alcohol, drugs, stress, or reckless behavior. The best defense remains a healthy lifestyle.

    — Ellie Taylor
18. 18. October 4, 2007 12:52 pm Link

    Amen, Whitney! I was actually blaming the over-aconditioning phenomenon on men, who are naturally warmer than women and who don’t have the option of wearing a skirt and open toed shoes into the office. Here at work, most people have space heaters (!!! In FLORIDA!) cranked at full blast most of the day to combat the frigid temps in the office. Seems really dumb to me.

    — Sharon
19. 19. October 4, 2007 1:43 pm Link

    Your BMI is just a guide. Not the end all. If you score in the overweight/obese category see your doctor or a nutritionist. If they say you have nothing to worry about - you don’t.

    — dave
20. 20. October 4, 2007 6:22 pm Link

    Dear “Woman In the Slideshow”: I was not trying to pick on you. You raise a very good point. I don’t know you and you may be in fantastic health. Maybe better than me for all I know.

    However, you misunderstood my point: That BMI is a useful population indicator for health risk. See my quote: “…there are well-documented associations between BMI and diseases such as Type 2 diabetes. At the population level, steady increases in BMI are associated with increased disease and the costs associated with treating disease.” This statement is true. It does not mean that BMI predicts health in any one individual but it does so very well at the population level and that is the level we are worried about when we discuss the growing “obesity epidemic.”

    My concern with dismissing BMI is that it allows people to ignore the growing problem of obesity and rationalize their own health risk. For the majority of Americans, being obese is not healthy. It is not the result of high bone density or increased muscle mass — it’s a reflection of increased fat. The average BMI of Americans is not growing because we are working out and gaining muscle. It’s rising because we eat too much and exercise too little; and we are getting fat. This may not be the case for you, but you are the exception rather than the rule.

    I am also concerned by your apparent closing of the door to debate. Asking people who dissent to leave the forum is not productive. We need to have an open discussion on this important issue.

    — Cary
21. 21. October 4, 2007 7:07 pm Link

    The overweight are creating a huge energy burden by forcing public places to use air conditioning in excess

    For pity’s sake, Whitney, quit scrabbling about in the bottom of the barrel. Aren’t there quite enough spurious reasons why the fat should be reviled without dragging global warming into the equation? Are you even aware, I wonder, that the medical profession chose to shift the BMI goalposts in 1998, thus rendering millions previously considered “normal” “overweight” overnight?

    I also feature in the slideshow and, while I’m flattered you think my impeccable dress sense renders my unsightly flab more palatable, I assure you that’s not the reason I took part. I did so because I’m tired of reading alarmist tosh about the “obesity crisis” routinely illustrated by photographs of people weighing upwards of three times what I do. I have a serious problem with those images of the extremely fat cherry-picked for maximum shock value, rendered faceless by layout designers, then used without their owner’s permission as a means to inspire shame, self-loathing and fear in the public at large. I’m not here to deny my fatness. Far from it. I’m here to put obesity in perspective; to give it a face beyond the dumb, lazy, negative, ice cream wielding fat-stereotypes promulgated by the media and trotted out ad nauseam by people like you as reasons to discredit fat people and assume the moral high ground.

    By the way, I’m British. As a nation we can barely get it together to do air-con at all, let alone to excess. And much as I’d love to be able to tell you that my extra padding negates the need to for central heating during the winter months thus redressing the ecological balance, that would be crazy talk – pretty much like your assertion that only fat people experience discomfort in the heat. I’ve visited the American South many times and have seen plenty of slender people wilting in the relentless humidity.

    — FT
22. 22. October 5, 2007 5:01 am Link

    Cary, you flatter yourself in thinking I am addressing you directly - I also said that BMI is a population indicator, not a measure for individual health. That should have tipped you off right there because that’s me agreeing with you. I merely took the opportunity to provide more empirical data to the debate so that all of people those spouting the tired ‘overweight automatically equals dire health risks’ rhetoric would have reason to pause and rethink.

    As for your comment about my supposed power to ’shut the door’ this discussion: Sue me for feeling that until there are more open minds willing to accept individual truth before collective stereotyping that a balanced, rational debate is impossible. You proved my point by getting defensive and speaking to everything except the data I presented.

    — Woman in Slideshow
23. 23. October 5, 2007 12:34 pm Link

    Woman in Slideshow — All right, I give up.

    — Cary
24. 24. October 8, 2007 2:43 pm Link

    This slideshow was a good depiction of how inaccurate andconfusing BMI can be. My general feeling is that clothes also hide a lot. Some people do a great job of picking clothes that suite their body shape, making them look much better or thinner than others who pick things that just don’t work. We all hide in our clothes, which is fine and just another reason being judgemental based on appearances really sucks.

    — ffoodie
25. 25. October 12, 2007 9:10 am Link

    Cary, I wasn’t trying to beat you down, I was merely trying to open your mind. We already know the hoo-ha about the BMI and associated health risks etc, there’s a lot of preaching to the choir, yeah? All I was trying to do was say okay, the BMI says I’m overweight but gee, when you look at the individual and see what the actual stats can be just for one person based on height and weight and fat and muscle comp, then even if the BMI labels them as ‘overweight’ you can still be wrong to stereotype. ’s all.

    — WITS