I know that people tend to complain about the BMI and why they don’t think they are overweight or obese when it says that they are due to muscle mass, heavy bones or something. This isn’t about that. I want to know why the low end of the normal range is so incredibly low.
I am 6’1" and 187 pounds which puts me right at the top of the normal range which is fine. However, my normal BMI range goes down to 140 pounds. There is no way that any reasonable male my height can weigh that little and appear anywhere near normal. I weighed 155 pounds early in high school and spent much of my money on weight gain shakes to claw myself up to 170 because I looked emaciated much below that. People have complained when I dropped below 180 as an adult. 140 pounds is in the freeze dried range and no where near healthy and I am not big boned, overly muscled or anything like that.
You can try experiment with your own weight if you wish to see what the bottom of the normal range for you is using this calculator:
What type of person would be normal at that weight and why is it given as perfectly normal?
BMI is not age or sex-specific. A 6’1 140 lb young woman would certainly not be “normal” in the sense of “average”, but she’s probably not “underweight” enough to need medical intervention (to use the BMI terms).
When I was a gangly teenager I was 5’10 and 125 lbs. I wasn’t unhealthy, I was just scrawny.
Also remember that the BMI was originally developed as more of an epidemiological tool. Whoever came up with the scale probably determined that people with a BMI of 18.5 do not have significantly elevated disease risks.
(Or, speculatively, that people with a BMI of 19 do not have elevated disease risks, but people with a BMI of 18 do, so… let’s somewhat arbitrarily put the line at 18.5)
BMI is a very inaccurate way to judge overall health. I fails to take into account excess weight due to muscle mass, which is generally not unhealthy (unless taken to extremes). That said, the “normal” weight for most Americans is way higher than it should be. Take a look at photos of people from the 1950’s, and compare to people today - we are just much fatter than we used to be.
It’s about determining medical risk. It seems you can get pretty skinny without having serious medical risks. This shouldn’t be all that shocking- look at someplace like China, where people really are often naturally pretty darn skinny. They aren’t dropping like flies just because you can see a few ribs.
In the land of the cyclops, the two-eyed person looks mighty peculiar. What looks normal to you has nothing to do with human history (i.e. what we’re evolved for) and medical reality, it only has anything to do with modern day America (or your country of residence) and what your sense of taste has become attuned to.
You’d also be surprised at how losing weight sometimes scales in proportion to looking underweight. I’ve seen people at lesser weights that don’t look any different when they’ve lost 20 pounds or so.
To answer your last question - my dad is 6’1", and was 135-145 lbs for most of his life - so underweight to just barely ‘ideal’. He looked skinny, to be sure. But he has a very small frame. That’s him on the right, in his early 20s. Looks normal enough, to me anyway.
When he was very ill and bedridden with serious health conditions in his 40s, he got up to 185 lbs, and he was fat. Big bloated face and neck, and a belly.
6’, 180 lbs doesn’t seem skinny to me, but it depends on your body type. I’m 5’11" and at 165 I could still use another losing another 5-10 lbs of fat from my belly. At any rate, the lower range of normal for my height bottoms out at 133. That does seem amazingly light for a male, but not so much for a female.
Our notion of ‘average build’ for men has shifted upwards in the last 50 years. What was ‘average’ fifty years ago is now considered slim on an aesthetic level. What was “slim” 50 years ago is considered emaciated now (aesthetically).
My middle son is 6’5", 185 - and while skinny (and trying to put on muscle to play basketball) doesn’t appear emaciated (now, 1 inch and 20 pounds ago, you didn’t want him to turn sideways or you’d lose him in a crowd).
On the other hand, at 6’3", I’m thinking that 180-190 would be a pretty good weight.
Years ago, I remember a graphic in a newspaper about the caloric intake, average weights, and waist size of soldiers in the (First) Gulf War, WW2, and the Civil War.
IIRC, the average waist size for a soldier in the civil war was a 28.
I think they played at the first concert I ever went to back in '78. He did look pretty good.
I don’t know if anyone has ever told you that you have a nice rack fitted on a good frame but, if I ever witnessed such a thing, I wouldn’t punch them in the mouth because I think honesty is the best policy.
It does make me thankful that I didn’t start a thread that made people post pics at the upper end of the curve.
I think a lot of it is gender and bone mass - the low range of normal for me is 118. Until I was 25 or so I weighed a lot less than that - 100 to 110. I was skinny, yeah, but not emaciated - I had a high metabolism, and I’ve got little bird bones. If anything I’d say it’s often too generous - I need to lose some weight but I’m still at the high end of “normal”, I assume because it isn’t split out by gender and a 5’7" guy would be fine at my weight.
I was about 6’1" (a under) and 135 lbs when I graduated high school. I was hardly a stick figure, but I’d guess my bone structure is a lot lighter than yours. I filled out to 160 after college (beer weight?) and now am around 200 (too big). My personal ideal weight is probably around 175.
My son is around 5’2" and weighs about 130. He’s got a little pudginess, but doesn’t look fat. But he’s always felts so heavy, as if he had his own gravity well. He has a very broad chest and thick sturdy (muscular) arms and legs. I’ll be very surprised if he gets out of high school at less than 185 (he’s just 12 now). There’s a fairly broad range of “normal” body types.
My husband is 6’3" and around the time we got married he got a physical for his taxicab license and weighed 144. He was a skinny guy–he didn’t look abnormal, but he did look like a tall, skinny guy.
At the same time, I (5’5" if I stretched just a little bit) weighed 105. Again, way below what it said on the charts, and definitely skinny, but I sure didn’t look emaciated or anything.
At the time, neither one of our weights was anywhere near what was on any chart we ever saw. But people were not offering us sandwiches on the street, although the Hare Krishnas offered a plate of something, but they offered it to everybody.
Think small frame. For me, very small frame. I have never met an adult who has a skinnier wrist, although I have met a couple whose wrists are just as small. I can wrap my other hand around my wrist almost to the middle knuckle.
