Are you overweight? BMI CAN'T tell you

English: 8 women with the same Body Mass Index rating (BMI - 30) but with different weight distribution and abdominal volume, so they have different Body Volume Index (BVI) ratings. Select Research, 09-09-08 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you read those forums about muscular men going to the doctor and found out that based on their BMI they are overweight? Well if you haven't then you should Google it when you are done here because they are eye openers towards our current healthcare system.

Adolphe Quetelet, the creator of the BMI, developed it in order to determine the "normal man" by describing the standard proportions of a person. That doesn't mean body fat percentage. The equation was first used to study population health, but doctors started to adopt it to measure patient's health because it was easy and available.  BMI started out with two sets of values for men and women, but the NIH combined them even though our physiology is different between the sexes. Men are naturally heavier than women, so that made the use for it even worse.

Journalist Jeremy Singer-Vine author of "Why doctors won't stop using an outdated measure for obesity" wrote:

"No matter how attentive they might be, health professionals have increasingly used body mass index to justify lifestyle recommendations for their patients. And online BMI calculators—there’s even one hosted by the NIH—invite people to diagnose themselves without any medical supervision whatsoever. Faulty readings could promote a negative self-image among healthy people and lead them to pursue unnecessary diets. Or the opposite problem: People with a little too much body fat might be lulled into a false sense of complacency by a misleading BMI."

Why do we still use it? People don't like change. Insurance companies use it, doctors, physicians... it has become so ingrained in our system that it will be hard to switch. Or would it?

There are other easy ways to measure a persons health based on body fat percentage.

• Waist Circumference Measurement
• Waist-to-Hip Ratio
• Skin Fold

These use simple measuring tapes, or the skin fold test uses a set of calipers. They only take a couple of minutes and are much more accurate. These are so easy that you can even do them at home, but I recommend you always seek a professional for advice and determining what the measurements actually mean. 

Talk to your doctor about your concerns and ask if you can use these other methods.

Let me know what you think, or share some of your stories.

Sources

• (2009) Gender and Sexuality, Health, Nutrition & Fitness, New Research, The-F-Word.org. (July 29, 2013) http://the-f-word.org/blog/index.php/2009/07/22/the-history-of-bmi-and-why-we-still-use-it/
• Singer-Vine, Jeremy. (2009) Science and Science, Slate.com. (July 29, 2013) http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2009/07/beyond_bmi.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2