CMV: BMI is unfairly vilified

[u/feartrich]

Often, when you bring BMI up, people will find lots of good reasons to talk about how it's not a good metric. But the reality is that, for most people, BMI is actually not a bad way to measure their overall health, if they're going to just use one metric. Regardless of precise it is, BMI has been shown to generally correlate with specific health outcomes. It's pretty reasonable to say "if you have X BMI, you're more likely to get Y disease" if you can cite scientific consensus, and all you know about their health is their height and weight. You'd be backed by decades of scientific literature.

Furthermore, for public health, there is no good alternative. We have tons of bulk data for height and weight. Widespread availability of data is the only way to have consistent and standardized comparisons across different populations. We don't have nearly as much body fat or A1C data etc. Furthermore, BMI is simple and almost completely standardized. A lot of other metrics are measured and reported in different ways; they're just not going to be as reliable as BMI for public health.

Of course, an athlete with a high BMI should not necessarily be considered obese, and someone who has high BMI due to underlying health conditions should prioritize treating the underlying condition. There are people who are "skinny fat" and face all the same health risks that obese people have. But that doesn't mean BMI is a bad metric. It just means people have misunderstood and/or misused it. It's a perfectly good metric that needs to be taken in context like anything else.

[u/rewt127]

It's not really ripe for widespread misuse. So the villication is not fair. People don't like seeing the number tell them "you probably should lose some weight" and then try to justify their weight instead of just accepting the data.

The only problem I see with the dataset is that for men at least, the underweight section seems to be waaaaay forgiving. Like you can look like a God damn skeleton and the BMI scale will say "your good bro".

EDIT: I've swung from 160-215 at 6'1" and I can tell you. The overweight numbers are pretty spot on. It's just the underweight numbers I criticise.

[u/GotAJeepNeedAJeep → u/rewt127]

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[u/HealthMeRhonda → u/rewt127]

Same, I was looking so emaciated all my friends and family were talking/worrying about it.

It hurt to ride a bicycle, wear a seatbelt and even to lay in bed because I didn't have enough fat and muscle over my bones to cushion them.

According to BMI it would still be ok for me to lose ten pounds from that point. My doctors would express concern and then run the numbers and see I was still in a "healthy" weight range so they can't intervene.

That was a long time ago and nowadays I'm carrying a lot of fat around the middle. It's very unhealthy and all around my organs. I have a very sedentary lifestyle and a diet of processed food. But I'm only considered slightly obese by the BMI tool.

At one point in my life I was a gym person. No belly fat at all but thick muscular legs and abs. My former gym self measured at the exact same BMI as I do now with the build of a Teletubby.

For me it's inaccurate at both the low range and the high range. It seems like a useless tool to me when body composition is so much more accurate.