to think BMIs are ridiculous?!

[HairTodayBlondeTomorrow]

I'm 5 foot 4 and after my kids ended up at 13st 9lbs,

I'm now down to 12 stone.

When I got married I was 11 stone and was in a size 12 dress and I think I looked lovely.

I'd like to get back to 11 stone. but according to the NHS at 11 stone and still be in the 'overweight' catagory.

Infact at 10 stone 7 i would be classes as over weight?

Surely it can be healthy to pus that on people?

I mean if i was 10 stone 5lbs i would be jussssst out of the overweight category.

And to be directly in the middle of the healthy range I need to be 9 stone?!

Have I just been over weight too long to remember what healthy is or does anyone else feel BMI is unrealistic?

If you're just the average fat chick as opposed to an elite athlete, then I think it's a good guide.

yanbu

i'm just into the overweight category according to bmi - pic on profile.

Same height as op

If you use a combo of waist to hip ratio and BMI it's a good as indicator as any. I have big boobs for a little person, I am very muscular and my BMI is normally 21. My healthy range is huge, if I was at the top end, I would be chubby. Anything Over top end, I would be and have been fat. You may have HUGE bones and Muscles but this isn't often. Kelly Holmes had a bmi of 18-19 when she was competing. All muscle, so the muscle argument can sometimes be real twoddle. If you have high bmi and over recommended hip to waist ratio you probably are overweight. So YABU (a little bit). I am really hoping to make it to 9months pregnant and still be a healthy BMI, so I think that kind of shows the huge range you can be and that range is pretty generous.

Sorry, I think YABU, too.

I am 5"9' and weigh just over 10.5 stones (well, I work in kilos, and hover around 68 kilos).

I am a size 10/12. I am slim, but certainly not skinny, unforch. And yet I am still lighter than you when you were your ideal weight, with several inches on you height-wise. My BMI is 22 which I believe is about right in the middle of the healthy range.

I do think people have an increasingly skewed view of what overweight looks like. BMI is a crude indicator, but the fact that nobody has yet come up with a better one says a lot.

Oh, and muscle does not weigh more than fat, any more than stones weigh more than feathers. A kilo of fat weighs the same as a kilo of muscle. Obviously. I think people are getting confused with density.

tryingtoleave, I'm bang on 5 ft 2 and a half lol, I currently weigh 9st 9lb and I'm looking skinny (6-8 on top, 8-10 bottom)....if I went to 8st I'd look ill!
I've got into a heated debate on here before as nobody believed I was 11st at my height and still slim, I was very happy at that size 10-12 size!
It's funny as my mum is exactly the same height and clothes size yet she's just over a stone lighter. My profile pics are of me at 10.5-11st ish....I'm always fluctuating!
So OP, YANBU, BMI does not fit everybody!

BMI works for me but not my DP.

I am 5'9, and weigh 11 st 5, which makes my BMI around 23. I have broad shoulders, a long body and big boobs. I have big hands and a big head. I carry a large part of my weight as muscle and am relatively fit. I reckon I could do with getting down to around 11st as I have a bit of fat on my waist and hips that I would like to lose. I wear a size 10.

My DP has a BMI of 30, but a recent body fat measurement showed that only 12% of this is fat, right in the middle of the healthy range. However, just to look at him you can tell that he carries most of his weight as muscle. He has very muscular legs, a flat stomach and broad shoulders. A skin pinch test shows that he has little fat. I do wonder how many other people who claim to have a large build as a reason for a high BMI can really say the same?

This may cheer you up. These are BMIs of some celebrities: Tom Cruise (BMI 26), George Clooney (BMI 29), Mark McGuire (BMI 30) and President George W. Bush (BMI 26). And surprisingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger (BMI 33), Sylvester Stallone (BMI 34) and Dwayne ?The Rock? Johnson (BMI 33) are all considered obese!

Does your mum have the same measurements as you, linz? I mean, bust, hips waist. It is hard to to get my head around. I was around nine stone after dc2 was born and I definitely felt plump at the time. My hips start to encroach on my waist at that weight.

I have no idea to be fair....we look the same and I know 100% I do not look my weight...people are always shocked to know and I've had to step on scales a work more than once at work to prove it lol.
I put on weight well though...it doesn't all go to one area, it seems to distribute over every inch of me IYSWIM?? Also I am quite pear shaped so have a flat stomach and small waist...dress shopping is not easy!!

Turbo I have no idea who Mark McGuire is and I can't comment on gw bush, but safe to say all the other celebs you mention have visible six packs and ripped muscles...things you only get with very low (athlete standard) body fat %. so they fall into that rugby player exception too. Everyone claiming big bones, you should also relax if you sport similar abs and biceps as Tom Cruise and Arnie!

I am pear shaped too... I find dresses quite easy to get. Trousers, however, are difficult.

This topic has been weighing heavily(!) on my mind. I am overweight on the BMI scale at 10s7 and 5ft3in. BMI is 26. Judging by this thread I know I must be overweight. The world fat scale tells me I'm overweight. I just don't think I am! I really dont see it. Maybe delusion is really hitting me hard.

Waist measurement is supposed to be used in conjunction with BMI as an indicator of a healthy weight. People who carry extra around their middle are more prone to health problems such as heart disease, diabeties, etc.

Healthy waist measurement for women - 32 inches (80cm) and under

Healthy waist measurement for men - 37 inches (94cm) and under

More here

I think it is a reasonable measure, most people aren't top sports players or super muscular. I work abroad a lot and I am always shocked if I've been away and come back to the UK, there are so many fat people.

What is more, it's become a movement within feminism recently to accept fat. Yes, it's your body, do what you like etc, but it is really unhealthy.

The only problem I have with the BMI personally is that it can be easy to convince yourself that healthy weight = healthy. I am 5ft1, weight 7 and a half stone so I am in the healthy range of BMI. But really I know that I'm not healthy - I eat too much sugary crap, don't do enough exercise and skip meals because I'm too busy. I think they should make it clearer that a healthy weight doesn't mean you can just carry on with what you're doing health-wise.

Bmi doesn't take into account my massive chebs

Like a stone each grrr

I think BMI is over generous, im 5'6 weight 9 stone 3 and have a bmi of 20.83 i still have ALOT of fat around my waist and hips i can grab handfulls of the stuff and when i sit i have a large tyre i can hold! i could go down to 8 stone 7 and STILL be within healthy BMI which is where my target is, on the other side of the scale i could go up to 11 stone which is where ive just come down from and im massive at that size very very unhealthy for me, BMI is a large scale too large probably

I'm in the camp of thinking that people of have forgotten what a normal weight looks like.

I think that the BMI is actually too generous, in fact I think I remember reading somewhere that the upper scale was classing too many people as a healthy weight when they weren't.

It's not helped by dress sizes becoming so ridiculously huge. I weight half a stone more than I did 20 years ago, but I'm 2 dress sizes smaller.

fraggola I was thinking the other day - I'm 3 stone heavier (eek! Working on it) but I've always been a size 14 so clothes must be getting bigger.

Dress sizes are getting bigger?

If you look at the maths, BMI assumes that you are a 2 dimensional square.
I don't think any of us fit that model! When I was 18 and starting uni, I was a size 10 (5'4") with a ribcage like a xylophone and the Dr told me I needed to lose a stone as, according to my BMI, I was overweight. I'm not a rugby player, or a body builder.
BMI in pregnancy, now don't get me started on that....

so you look at my picture and conclude i'm overweight and i've deluded myself as to what is normal? fair enough, i disagree

i'm 5foot4 and weigh 69kg. i'm not an athlete. i wear size 8/10 clothes. bmi says i'm overweight, it must be true

Ah, the Mumsnet approach to statistics! "Well, this didn't happen to me so it can't be true."

The BMI does not speak to INDIVIDUALS, so latter might well be overweight for her at the top of the healthy BMI range.

The BMI speaks to POPULATIONS. Give me 100 people with BMIs of 20-25. Fewer of them will have, say, heart attacks or develop cancer compared to a similar group of 100 people with BMIs in the range 30-35.

I have a BMI of 22.3. This does not guarantee that I won't get cancer, but my risk is reduced. I don't smoke, so that reduces my risk of cancer. These things don't guarantee anything, but it helps to work out risks on a population basis.

My dad (nearly 70) moans about BMI, how unrealistic it is. He is 6'4" & he says it tries to made him too skinny, that could never be right, etc.

The thing is, the weight that BMI wants him to be is what he actually weighed for first half of his adult life. He did heaps of sport until he had back injury in his early 40s. He didn't look unhealthy then, either.

I keep getting told that I'm getting thinner. I'm not getting thinner at all, scale numbers haven't changed & my clothes fit the same (DD suggests maybe they are shrinking too, mind ).

So I agree that people's perceptions on what is a healthy weight has changed for the worse. The problem is that people expect someone my age to be heavy & feel puzzled that they hadn't noticed before that I'm not getting heavier like others my age do.

Why are BMI's always thought to be rubbish by people in the overweight and obese categories ?

It's a good, simple, tool that is pretty accurate. People prefer to think it isn't rather than face the fact that they are overweight.

The media encourages bmi use at the individual level, look at the bbc calculator.

I accept that BMi can be useful at a population level.

I don't like the way it's creeping into use at an individual level, yet if you challenge this you're accused of having lost sight of what an overweight person looks like.