According to the crazy math and the book...
- BMI of 25 defines the upper boundary of heathy weight
- BMI of higher than 25 to 30 defines overweight
- BMI of higher than 30 defines obese
So, I'm overweight by 0.8 of something. The whole thing seems ridiculous. What is this 704.5 number? What does it signify? Why divide by your height 2 separate times? And according to this book, there are more ways of assessing fat levels of your body, but THIS one is the most accurate. It just doesn't seem logical. I think I scratched my head more times during this chapter than any of the previous ones.
After I finished the test, I went to Taco Bell and go a nachos bell grande. It hit the spot.
4 comments:
Here's a way to do it without the math: http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/
Even more fun is the body-fat check. The fun way is with pinchers—they grab chunks of flesh all over your body, pinch them, and measure them. FUN. The nice lady who kicks my ass three times a week has a little machine that does the same thing through sensors. Much nicer...but equally humiliating.
I love it when coursework, instructors, & etc hand you a piece of data with no connection to how or why they arrived at it. Give a man a fish - vs. - teach a man to fish.
BMI is total BS. I saw a really interesting Flickr pool that featured people and their BMIs - it was really uplifting. Most of the people listed as "overweight" and even "obese" seemed completely height weight proportional.
Engineer geek explanation: The BMI was developed in Europe, meaning they use metric. The formula there is mass / (height)^2, where mass is in kilograms and height is in meters. There are 2.2 lb in a kg and 39.37” in a meter, so to convert to lb-in. you multiply by [(39.37)^2]/2.2 = 704.5.
The two major problems with BMI:
1. They don’t take body composition into account, so your book is wrong--it’s a HORRIBLE way of telling you how much fat is on your body. It takes only height and weight into account.
2. The formula’s other shortcoming is that it underestimates short people and overestimates tall people. Getting math-y again, but the relationship between height and weight is not as simple as a direct square. I am borderline obese by the BMI and I would have to lose FORTY lbs. to be on the highest end of “healthy”. I don’t have 40 lb. of fat on my body.
To prove my points? Over half the NBA is considered overweight. Have you SEEN an NBA player?
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