I over estimated at 25/26. Your tummy’s pretty soft.
No. But he’s heavier than he could easily be, and that’s what “overweight” means.
I’ll admit I like people thin. Probably more than most. I like me thin too, fwiw.
So I guess it’s that 24 is too close to 25? I’d expect you could lose 15 lbs easily and have a much more impressive mirror shot.
It’s a touchy subject sure, and nobody likes the scale (floor, BMI or otherwise), but as I said just above if you weigh more than you could easily and healthily, I don’t see how you can be anything but overweight. You’ll say this makes nearly everyone overweight, and I’ll probably agree, because they are.
As with everything it seems, it’s a matter of degree. You can go from twig to trim to toned to tubby within a fairly narrow weight range. All that matters in the end is that you are happy with what you see and how you feel. This board loves to bash BMI, but it is simply a guide, and I’ve seen no evidence so far that it isn’t good for it’s purpose as such. It’s not prescriptive, people are different, but as a guide it works well enough.
If I dropped 15 pounds I’d weight less than I did in high school when I had a body fat percentage of 5%.
I realize that lots of people are overweight and that my perception of myself and the perceptions of lots of other people are skewed because of this. I just think that BMI is also a poor scale. I guess with the small amount of people that have responded that maybe my view is more skewed than I thought.
No, but it’s denser, that’s all. It doesn’t WEIGH more so much as it’s HEAVIER. Like lead is heavier than feathers. Let’s say the say that you have a block of fat and a block of muscle that’s the same size-the muscle will weigh more-just like a block of lead would weigh more than one built of feathers.
And I don’t think ANYONE here is arguing that “Oh, the BMI is wrong, so I’m not overweight!” Just that it’s not very accurate. I’m about average for my size-I wouldn’t mind losing about 15 pounds, but I mostly just want to get in SHAPE, you know, less flabby. But if you saw me, you’d never think of me as fat. (Just well, “busty”) 
Although, I probably should weigh myself-it’s been a while, so I don’t know how much I weigh.
Yea, that’s what I said from the opposite direction. “People who are saying this mean a ten pound glob of muscle is more compact than a ten pound glob of fat.”
Like so:
http://www.premierfitnesshealthspa.com/pictures/muscle_fat_comparison.jpg
My point is that my body isn’t going to lose weight. I don’t get quite as much excercise as I wish I did, but my actual body weight won’t go down any unless I start a starvation diet. It also doesn’t really go up any. I just want to know if I’m definitely unhealthy, and what I am “supposed” to weigh.
I just don’t get the nitpicking about being 24 or 25 (borderline). You don’t HAVE to lose 20 (or 30) pounds if you’re on the borderline side. Y’all are going to the other extreme. As in, “I’m in the edge and I’m quite trim, I cannot possibly lose 20 pounds to be fit!”. That’s ridiculous, you don’t have to be. As long as you’re in that range you’re not increasing benefits by losing weight. At least, that is what the BMI shows. It gives you a range, and within that “normal” range, you’re OK, whatever your weight is.
Now, as someone who is borderline, you know that perhaps if you lost 5 pounds, watched what you ate, remain physically active, that would be good for you. And you know that you have to be careful, otherwise you may slip and end up tipping over to the overweight part.
At least, that’s how I look at it, and I’m borderline. I’m not thinking I have to lose 20 pounds, rather I want to be fitter, firmer, less flabby, eat better, etc.
No, it’s not.
I tend to think that they’re like any other average or median value; only really useful if you’re actually there.
I’m 6’1" (well 6’ 0.5", but I round up), and about 295 lbs. According to those conductance based body fat percentage things, my bodyfat percentage is 39%
Which means that about 180 lbs of me is not fat. Assuming that I have a healthy body fat percentage of 10% (which is on the low side), I’d still weigh 198 lbs.
According to the BMI calculations, I’d have a BMI of 26.1, which is “overweight”.
According to the charts, I should weigh about 182, which would be like 1% bodyfat, which is unhealthy.
Define “easily.”
While I’ll be the first to say there are a lot of folks in denial about their weight, “you’re overweight if you can lose weight” is a ludicrous and logically indefensible claim.
Not as unhealthy as being nearly 300 pounds - and I was mighty close to 290 a year and a half ago, and I’m within 2" of your height, and wot whereof I speak. At 201 lb, I’ve taken a foot off my waistline, but there’s still some to lose. I shouldn’t discount that 182 lb figure too readily if I were you.
Clearly I think about this a bit differently than most of the people in this thread, but I don’t really see how it’s so ludicrous. If you have excess weight (which is perfectly possible within a “healthy” range) and you don’t want to have it (hence calling it “excess”) then you are overweight. If you find yourself looking at a BMI chart in the first place, chances are high that you’ve got some weight you’d like to lose.
Most here read the word “overweight” as “unhealthy” and the problem comes when we start trying to label a range as healthy vs. unhealthy then apply that to a wide (ha!) population. People on the edges of the range will get angry and start shouting about how they’re perfectly fine and it’d be impossible to lose any weight blah blah, we know how this goes.
Almost everyone could stand to lose five pounds, and it’s impossible for none of them.
However, since all that actually matters is how you feel and how you feel about yourself, I don’t quite get why some are so defensive over what a chart says. Fuck the chart. If you think you’re fine, great. If you don’t, stop eating and start running.
For one thing, it means that there is only one point at which a person has a healthy weight. Only one exact weight can be healthy, since theoretically you can lose weight above it and be healthy, but presumably not below it. You’ve created a definition of “overweight” that is both impossible to meet - even if you reached it you’d instantly be over it every time you drank a glass of water - and, more importantly, that has no real meaning in terms of a person’s health.
At least IMHO, the only meaningful way to approach appropriate weight is its effect on health, which will vary from person to person, though I think we can safely assume the guy on the bus who’s 5’9" and weighs 260 needs to start working out. Within a certain range weight will simply not have a substantial effect on your health.
Of course, as an aside, proper weight does not necessarily mean the person’s diet is good or they exercise enough; some people in the right weight range still eat poorly, and some people with the right weight simply don’t exercise enough and have their weight in the wrong places.
Stop being pedantic. You and I both know we’re talking about fat when we say “weight”. Also, stop acting like you didn’t read where I mentioned a healthy range of weights.
Yeah, I did. That’s the point here. We’ve got a thread full of people claiming that they can’t possibly be overweight because they are perfectly healthy. I’m not attempting to say that they’re not perfectly healthy. I’m saying they still could find some pounds to drop.
The guy who is 5’9" and 260 already knows he’s unhealthy, he’s not looking at BMI and objecting when it says “obese”. When guys like smiling bandit and Snarky_Kong (sorry to call you guys out, but you’re good examples) start looking at BMI it’s not because they’re worried about health, it’s because they’re worried about appearances.
:smack: Sorry, I didn’t read that fully. (I like to ask people the riddle sometime-“what weighs more: a pound of lead, or a pound of feathers?” That’s always fun)
Yes, I could lose weight. How would that help me? I could cut off a foot and lose weight. More excercise will see me gain weight.
Running makes you gain weight? Never heard that one before, unless you have some severely atrophied leg muscles or something.
But saying “they could find some pounds to drop” is not the definition of “overweight,” either.
Back in the salad days when I joined this board, I was 6’2" and 170 pounds. And I could definitely “find some pounds to drop,” because the year before I’d weighed 165 pounds. I’m not sure that made me overweight, though.
As long as we’re talking about science, I have here the latest copy of Oxford Historian. There’s an interesting article by Deborah Oxley about BMI and living standards, and she refers to a study by Hans Waaler which studied BMI and increased morbidity. Dr. Waaler found that people with a BMI under 21-23 were at risk for increased rates of infection, cardiovascular diseases, and cancers. He believes a “healthy” BMI is actually at 24-29. Make of that what you will…
No. That is completely untrue. Words have actual meanings, and you don’t get to redefine them however you wish. Having the capacity to weigh less than you do does not make you overweight.
Exactly. I *could * get down to 110. I’ve done it before. I looked like hell, and I felt like hell, but damned if I wasn’t right in the middle of the BMI chart. :rolleyes:
And FWIW, “frame” is certainly overused as an excuse, but it’s not entirely irrelevant. My best friend is the same height as I am, give or take half an inch. Her hips are narrower than mine are, but her waist is wider, her shoulders are wider, and her wrists and ankles are approximately mine-and-a-half. She weighs more than I do, but she’s definitely not “fatter”.