BMI means Bad Measurement Indication. Alright, that's not true. I just mislead you! Kinda like the BMI indicator.....

BMI actually stands for Body Mass Index. It's a measurement used to indicate how healthy a human is in regard to their height, and weight. Just that tidbit of information should set off red flags in your frontal cortex.

Height and Weight? That's it? 

 

That's it! Wanna calculate yours?

Here's the equation. 

 

If you live in the US like I do, and don't got no time for Euroasians and their wierd meteric/kilo system, do a quick few searches on google. 

>Your weight in pounds to kgs. Your height in inches to meters.<

Then, try to find where you'd land on this handy chart .        

Yo.... WTF???

There are a ton of issues with this calculation.

Consider this:

Marshawn Lynch. Running Back for the Oakland Raiders.

Weight: 215 Pounds

Height: 5'11"

According to BMI, Mr. Lynch is obese. He should have tremendous health risks associated with his weight according to BMI. He is a great risk of heart issues, and prone to developing diabetes. Except no he isn't.

He's considerably more muscular than the average man. His bench press is over 300lbs. He runs a 4 second 40 yard dash. 

BMI does not account for muscle to fat ratio. Let's develop a fake human being. Lets call him Bill Billiamson.

Now, Mr. Billiamson is also 215lbs. He is also about 6 feet tall. Clearly this dude is fat. We can't really tell just by the picture, but he's got two chins and basically no neck. For arguments sake, let's just assume the guy does NO exercise. He eats a ton of salty and sugary food. His blood pressure is high, and he has considerably more fat than muscle. This dude probably doesn't have ANY muscle. 

Marshawn and Bill have the EXACT SAME BMI. 

Lets Look at Another Example.

Our bodies are around 70% water. On any given day, your water intake fluctuates tremendously. Perhaps you usually drink a gallon a day, but yesterday you were out with the homies and forgot your jug. Maybe you're pregnant, or it's that time of the month. You're peeing like old faithful. Every 25 minutes you take a minute-long-leak. 

That's going to play a role! If your weight is all over the place because of water..... how could you possibly accurately judge whether or not you're healthy?

So what is this BMI? Who the hell came up with it? Why is such an inaccurate test so widely used? 

 

BMI was devised in the 1830s by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. He created the BMI test to study and compare... and I quote.... "Normal Men." He later changed his focus to the study of obesity because of a man named Ancel Keys. 

In 1972, Mr. Keys used the new BMI test in his study called the "Indices of Relative Weight and Obesity." 

This new study caught on in the health and fitness industries, and quickly turned the BMI indication into an industry standard for measuring obesity. 

The 1970's were essentially the dawn of the fitness era. This is when people started really catching on to fitness as a habitual activity. You'd see people running down the road, or doing pull ups at the park. You're mother would think that shit was wack, but more and more of your friends were doing it. Classic bodybuilding also came up on the horizon. Crazy-ass fitness contraptions were marketed to the general public more as common household or gym equipment. 

It's no surprise then that the first body normalization studies were also popping up at this time. Sure, for such a primitive time in the human health diaspora, it's hard for us to blame them for using such a simple test to portray human body averages. 

But yall....... it's 2018. First, the health fields need to wake up. The BMI test is a test for nothing other than proving you can complete a math problem. This should not be applied for measuring health in any scenario. I don't care if a person is clearly obese or overweight. Applying the BMI for them is not relevant. 

When it comes to a group of non-professionals sitting around talking and asking about each others BMI's..... stop doing that also. 

IT DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL. We should stop fat shaming, and start BMI use-shaming. If someone wants to talk about your health in relation to the BMI on a serious note, laugh at them. They don't have a clue how to measure health. 

Want to know some legit ways to measure health? Let's list a few decent indicator methods. 

Using Body-fat Calipers

Using Hydro-Static Weighing

DEXA, or Dual Energy X-ray Absorption

These tools are all VERY comprehensive, and give significantly more insight into the total composition of you body. 

So with all these tools..... WHY are we still using BMI?

 

 

 

 

THANKS FOR READING! 

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