Weight/fat is a fraught topic on all of the internet, the Dope is no exception. I’ve heard frequently that SDMB posters in particular are skewed towards the heavier end, more so than the general population, so I made this poll to see if it’s true.
If anyone would like to add their opinion on the BMI equation, feel free. I personally feel it is a nearly useless measure of anything but the height/weight of people within a large population (and that’s all it was intended and used for, until Ancel Keys dug it up in the 70s and suddenly it started to be used as a health marker by medical professionals). It tends to be more inaccurate for both short and tall people. It doesn’t accurately predict body fat percentage, which is a very important health marker that few doctors actually test for. It doesn’t predict someone’s general health or risk factors, outside of extremes (severely underweight people have predictable risks, and obese people have large increases in the incidence of certain risk factors and conditions compared to overweight and ideal weight people). I don’t think it should be used for anything but statistical purposes.
If you don’t know your BMI, calculate it here. You must know your height and weight.
As for me, I am 5’5", close to my highest weight ever at 105 lbs yesterday, and am significantly underweight with a BMI of 17.5. I’ve had my body fat tested by DEXA scan (calipers administered by a professional, DEXA, or hydrostatic weighing are the only accurate measures of body fat percentage) and it’s around 20% which I am very happy with. I have been underweight since I was 3 - I was an average-weight baby and toddler, then I dropped to the very bottom of the charts and haven’t moved up since.
I don’t think that BMI is all that useless. My employers use it all the time. But what do they know? They’re just medical professionals specializing in weight management.
It’s true that muscle weighs three times what fat does, and can throw off the BMI calculation, be we go on the assumption that our morbidly obese patients are not body builders.
I’m at 27.5. It’s misleading for me, though. I am a pretty big guy, and I work out regularly. I can still bench 300 pounds, for example. I just ran my first marathon last weekend (albeit slowly!). I’ve run 5 half-marathons in the last two years. I wear 36 or 38 pants, I’m 6’ 2" (or 3", it seems to vary), and I weigh a bit under 220 these days.
In other words, I think I’m in very good shape for the average guy of any age, and compared to the average 49-year-old guy, I’m in excellent shape. Not saying I have zero fat to lose, but I don’t think I’m overweight. And I’d have to lose over 20 pounds to not be “BMI overweight,” and I think that’s silly. So, the BMI is a very rough gauge for me, I think.
Annoyingly that’s after giving up beer for a month, which is meant to make me lose weight - it hasn’t. I eat the same but don’t intake the calories from beer and I’ve actually put on a couple of pounds. And I miss beer.
25.6 at my current weight of 205. I have been 6’3" and 200 to 210 pounds for many years. I became overweight in 1998, when the NIH changed the cutoff from 27.8 to 25.
28.2 - overweight. I can lose a few, so no arguments. I exercise hard and a lot, so I feel a bit like **Stratocaster **(great guitarists must BMI alike, as with Crotalus…)
When I graduated high school, mine was 16. Now it is either 18.1 or 18.7 depending on my height, which I am not exact on. What was Walter Hudson’s I wonder? (the guy who weigh 1000 lbs)
I’m currently at 29.1 BMI and slowly headed downward from a high point of 32.7 a year and a half ago. If all goes as planned, I’ll be down around 27 by spring, which is my current target.
2.45, right on the cusp of being “overweight”, which if you looked at me, you’d agree was bullshit. I might have an extra 5lb to lose, but nobody would ever consider me nearly overweight.
