The Gun Counter

Ok, I officially hate the BMI. I'm 6'4" tall. I weight 265 lbs. I'm fairly broad shouldered, too.

My BMI is 32.3 that says I'm obese.

According to the Google BMI calculator, my healthy weight is 204 pounds.

What in the actual fuck? Seriously. I'd have to look like a concentration camp survivor to weigh that much. Yeah. looking like a walking skeleton is healthy.

What's your waist:hip ratio?

Got access to a newfangled scale with BF impedance measurement? Even if it's off by a few percent like mine is, it would be an interesting order of magnitude sort of comparison with the BMI. I laugh at my scale because it also calculates BMI.

AFA football linemen have to get a waiver for BMI so they can stay healthy and play football. After graduation I imagine (I don't actually know) they are given a period of time to go on a diet to get down to BMI standards. Of course they are closely monitored and helped by flight surgeons and other doctors.

I imagine the other branches are similar.

I swear the BMI is designed for ectomorphs and/or marathoners. I'm 6' and a fraction, about 205#. I walk to work most days (and when I'm teaching I'm on my feet a lot, plus I like to walk to run errands when I can), play basketball two mornings a week at OMG30 with other over-educated old farts and the occasional young one, and BMI says I'm overweight. Okay, my knees would probably like me to lose 10 or so, but I have my doubts about BMI.

I'm also pretty sure the new AHA blood-pressure guidelines have more to do with getting more people on BP meds than they they do with actual public health.

BMI isn't worth a fart in a hurricane. Most nfl players would be considered obese or morbidly so,.not just the linemen, the defensive backs. Bodybuilders, the ones with single-digit body far percentages, would also show as obese.

Why?

Because it's the ratio of height to weight, and a pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat, but one is healthy and one isn't necessarily healthy. Body fat percentage is a MUCH better metric of health.

Just a little resource on the topic:
https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/body-fat-percentage/

Rich wrote:AFA football linemen have to get a waiver for BMI so they can stay healthy and play football. After graduation I imagine (I don't actually know) they are given a period of time to go on a diet to get down to BMI standards. Of course they are closely monitored and helped by flight surgeons and other doctors.

I imagine the other branches are similar.

Spoken for truth. One of my AFIT classmates had been an AFA lineman, and we noted that he'd look frighteningly unhealthy if he were to manage to get his waist down to the 'max' score of 32" for the PT test.

I'm 6"1' and was continually being harassed while I was in (before BMI became a thing) as I kept between 200 and 210 pounds, but my ideal body weight according to the charts was 180 (which I hadn't seen since Jr High), and since I was more than 10% over mt "ideal" weight I had to weigh in twice as often as everyone else. This at a time when I was running regularly (including a 10K) and had 0 problems keeping up in the field during SERE and never had an issue with a flight physical. I had to be careful when lifting weights to ensure I didn't exceed my Max Allowable Weight.

One of the reasons my weight ballooned after I got out was I was sick of monitoring my weight, especially against such BS standards and went too far the other way. (I'm bringing it back down, slowly,, but working on it).

MiddleAgedKen wrote:I'm also pretty sure the new AHA blood-pressure guidelines have more to do with getting more people on BP meds than they do with actual public health.

Roger Roger. My BP was controlled to a "healthy" level until this week. Now all of a sudden it's not. Fortunately my Docs seem to have common sense, because I am not going to start popping more pills. Whenever my BP has gotten into the new "normal range" I get light headed, dizzy, and in general not enjoying life.

BMI has undergone a sort of reverse inflation since the concept first became widely known. underweight has become normal weight, normal, obese, and morbidly obese has expanded ( )
It is suitable more for a marathoner than a fullback, and it's all part of the procrustean approach to health (and everything else) Government is known for.

My question about Blood Pressure is whether a seventy year old man is supposed to have the same blood pressure as a twenty year old. There's a loss of elasticity in so many body parts as one ages -- wrinkled faces are a result of loss of elasticity, as is presbyopia, the need for reading glasses.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... =106268439

Itis in fact worthless as an individual measurement and was never intended to be used that way.

I am 6'1" and about 195 lbs, per BMI I am quite fat, per actual body fat measurements I am fit.

Thank God the Navy never bought into the BMI cool aid.

Vonz90 wrote:https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... =106268439

Itis in fact worthless as an individual measurement and was never intended to be used that way.

I am 6'1" and about 195 lbs, per BMI I am quite fat, per actual body fat measurements I am fit.

Thank God the Navy never bought into the BMI cool aid.

Is there a good way to gauge a reasonable weight besides calipers or dunking a person?