At this website (National Institutes of Health) there is a BMI calculator.
This BMI calculator gives me a BMI just .2 below obesity. (6ft 0 in, 220 lbs). If I gained just one pound (and for all I know, I gain and lose the requisite pound daily) I’d be obese.
But… that’s just wrong. There’s no way I could be called obese, at least not according to conversational usage. (By this I mean, no one would say about me behind my back “That guy’s obese” or even “That guy’s fat.”)
What up with this? What does “obese” mean to the National Institutes of Health, other than “having a weight over such and such ratio to height.” Is my life in danger? Or what?
Actual scientists are calling me fat and I want to know why. :eek:
I’ve just done some more experimenting. It says that at 137 lbs (still 6 feet tall) I would be “normal.” (At 136 I would be underweight.)
137 lbs at 6 ft counts, even as “borderline,” normal? I mean, I would think a 140 lb 6 ft man is starving to death (wouldn’t I?).
Normal for me is supposed to be anywhere from 137 to 183. The average here is 160. 160? That seems like a really ridiculous ideal. But am I just spoiled or something?
What is going on here? The more I think about this, the more its bothering me. Maybe I shouldn’t let it get to me maybe?
My wife has just reminded me that when she met me ten years ago, I weighed 180, and that when she met me, people would often comment on how skinny I was. That’s right! So were people just wrong to think I was skinny or something? Is it just that we’re so used to fat people, a nearly overweight person looks skinny?
I’d show you guys some pictures to judge for yourself, but until very recently I haven’t dressed in a way which showed much about what the body beneath looks like. (Baggy clothes. A (bad) habit I picked up back in High School.) Pictures really would be deceptive in this case.
-FrL-