To think that people were thinner

[Elfina]

In the past in the UK, up until about the 80s because food was less 'interesting'; less variety, seasoning etc so because it didn't taste that amazing you'd just eat your full and no more?

[Sirzy]

No I don't think clothes sizes are much better, but BMI is rubbish.

My waist is about 70cm IIRC height 156cm.

[Reastie]

Agree with alot of what's said.

Portion size has greatly increased, grazing culture, increased eating out/fast food/take away, more seditary jobs and less physical work, less walking/exercise, more fatty/sugary snacks and sugary drinks as the norm not an occasional treat, more variety of foods to choose from, families not eating meals together/eating in front of tv/separately, lack of cooking skills taught in schools or passed down, increase in convenience foods which can be high in fat/sugar/salt and don't keep you full for as long, poor school meals. The reasons are endless to our lifestyle and how as a culture we are changing.

BMI doesn't take into account those who are very muscly. It's a useful tool but things aren't that clear cut.

[TalkinPeace]

sirzy
please explain why you think BMI is "rubbish"
and which allegory body fat measure you think is better?

reastie
BMI is indeed inaccurate for those who are heavily muscled with body fat under 20%,
but most of the people who slag if off are not in that category

[Sirzy]

Personally I think LOOKING at the individual and taking them as an individual is much better. Just looking and height and weight does not give anything like an accurate picture.

I think its quite dangerous to try to get everyone to fit into a certain little box.

[TalkinPeace]

which is fine so long as you look with an impartial eye :
which many parents no longer do - hence their denial that they are making their children obese
and most people do not see the real them in the mirror

looking is subjective, variable and deeply unreliable (as has been proven in hundreds of court cases)
measurment is reliable

why do you not like measurement?
does it tell you something you do now want to hear?

[Sirzy]

I do agree with what you are saying, especially with regards to children. I just think that measurement when compared to some sort of standarised graph don't give as accurate an image as some would like to believe.

The measurement itself is reliable on its own but when you are using 2 measurements to make a decision which doesn't take into account things like body shape, muscle mass etc then it becomes a lot less reliable. Yes it may be a very rough guide but it is nothing more.

[TalkinPeace]

if your BMI is over 25 you are fat
end of
unless you are very heavily muscled
and that would need to be proved with a proper body scan not those silly scales

my BMI is under 21 and I still carry over 25% body fat
athletes carry under 20% body fat

most people nowadays are deluding themselves about their true frame size as getting lean and fit is harder work than eating biscuits

[Sirzy]

talking, I have worked blooming hard to get to the weight I am having lost 4 stone. The process has made me open my eyes to the fact that a) what it says on the scales isn't the best indicator anyway as general health and fitness is more important and b) BMI isn't an accuate measure.

It is a guide, nothing more nothing less.

Obviously though you don't agree and that is fine but I am not carrying on going around in circles coz I won't change your view and you won't change mine!

[TalkinPeace]

ah yes NSV : utterly true that a toned heavy person looks a darned sight better than a flabby light one
and getting the cardio system in shape is often more important than starving oneself down to an imaginary goal

BUT
visceral fat leads to health problems
its worth trying to get rid of it ... even if those flabby bits on the backs of hips remain

cellulite never killed anybody
fat around the heart does

[Snowdown]

Agree that BMI is a bit of a shit approach, men and woman have the same calculation - men have most definitely more muscle, I have read suggests than woman's healthy BMI should be lower and men's should be higher - being the same is irrational. Waist to height - I am an hourglass even at my heaviest my waist was still perfectly fine but I was a size 16.
A health check at Bupa suggested my waist was too small for my weight, that's how stupid these calculations can be ...someone looking at me would have known whether I was over weight, I knew - these daft measurements did not. Yes some people are deluded but many are not...in fact we have no idea how many people are aware of how overweight they are, we only can assume how many are actually overweight, but do they know? It would be interesting to find out...

[Reastie]

There was a fascinating docu series a while ago called 'the men who made us fat' and 'the men who made us fat' (worth a look on you tube). On that apparently the healthy BMI range was changed several years ago and from memory it was for no other reason than plucking a figure from the air.

[scaevola]

BMI is still a sound indicator. Unless you are pregnant, or a serious athlete or have a very physical job (military, firefighter, builder) it works.

Appearance is not a reliable indicator, and apparently anomalous measurements (such as overly small waist) need to be checked as they are normally measurement error.

Blaming BMI as faulty (when if you look at the actual heights/weights that underpin the calculations) you see that it is produces a normal BMI when you are a normal weight. There have been alterations to allow for different BMIs for different ethnic groups when there is a genuine biological difference. And research into the impact of weight into health will continue, so maybe one day a better screening method than BMI will one day be found. But that doesn't make it bad to the point of uselessness now.

[daisychain01]

phantom point 3 is really depressing regarding reasons why people are overweight now - I do agree with it, though

people are clueless/uninformed/in denial about the calories in soft drinks and alcohol and consume too much too often

Add to that list heavily processed food full of sugar and fat

We have never had so much knowledge about the importance of nutrition, and yet people still choose to ignore it! And food labelling + traffic light system because nanny State wants to make it easier including calories, fat, sugar, salt content has never been more comprehensive.

People just ignore it, "it doesn't apply to me" syndrome...

[daisychain01]

sirzy I totally agree with your realisation that what it says on the scales isn't the best indicator anyway as general health and fitness is more important

I used to agonise over my body shape and now I am much less fixated by that, and more concerned about my nutrition, and coincidentally I am slimmer than in my yoyo diet days!

Its like it doesn't follow that only overweight people can have a cholesterol problem, you can be stick thin and have a problem either through genetic propensity and/or poor diet habits.

[DuckworthLewis]

Personally I think LOOKING at the individual and taking them as an individual is much better.

No! This is exactly the problem!

As everyone is getting larger and larger, we have almost completely lost sight of what is normal.

Nobody looks 'ill' or 'gaunt' at less than a size 12 - (or whatever twaddle people choose to spout to justify their obesity.) They just look slim because everyone around them is so much larger.

It really is as simple as that - there is no need to look past measurements (BMI, Body fat % or waist/height ratio). They tell you all you need to know.

I know we all like to think we are special snowflakes, but the reality is that we are all chunks of meat and there is actually very little physical difference between one example and another.

[DuckworthLewis]

general health and fitness is more important

General Health will not help the joints of an obese person groaning under the additional weight that they have to support.

General Health will not help you in surgery when a doctor is struggling to locate organd under layer upon layer of adipose tissue.

General Health will not help you when you have to receive IV drugs that are fat soluble and the prescribing doctor had no idea what dose they have to give you - they can't tell how the drug will be metabolised due to the amount of fat in your body. (this one very nearly killed my obese mum last year)

Being obese is just terrible for your health, why is that so hard to comprehend?

[BoulevardOfBrokenSleep]

Being morbidly obese is bad for your health, yes.

But just being a bit overweight isn't particularly bad for you in and of itself. Certainly, a fit but overweight person is statistically more likely to remain healthy than an ideal weight person who doesn't exercise.

But we get 'looking fat' and 'being unhealthy' conflated in our minds.

See Snowdrop 's post above? The point of the waist/height measurement etc isn't to tell you whether you can wear a bikini or not , it's to work out if the extra weight you're carrying is likely to impact on your health. And this depends on fat distribution patterns.

This is also why the BMI recommendation is the same for men and women, even though a 13-stone woman will look fatter than a 13-stone man of the same height. Women are designed to carry a bit of lard, so the health impacts are less than on men (in an oversimplified nutshell!)

[BoulevardOfBrokenSleep]

oops, snowdown not snowdrop!

[Sirzy]

Nobody is saying being morbidly obese, or even obese is good for you. BUT being statistically a stone or so overweight doesn't automatically mean you are unfit/unhealthy/about to drop dead from a heart attack.

I think that a lot of the problem is we confuse being a 'healthy' weight with actually being fit and healthy when although there may be some level of correlation between the two they don't always go hand in hand. How often do people who are a 'normal' weight proclaim they are lucky to be able to eat whatever/as much as they want, and they don't need to exercise - we seem to forget that that person is still putting the crap into their body, they aren't necessarily looking after their body they just have a metabolism whereby they don't put on fat as easily as others but that doesn't equate to them being healthy or having a healthy lifestyle.

We need to change the focus from being AS MUCH what is said by the scales and start looking at the lifestyle in general and encourging a much healthier lifestyle for everyone irrespective of their weight - doing so will also hopefully have a knock on effect that people who are overweight loose some of the excess weight

[DuckworthLewis]

Sirzy The trouble with being a stone or so overweight is that before you know it, that stone has turned into 2, then 3 then people find themselves with a seemingly insurmountable problem.

What really frustrates me about this debate is the increasing insistence that the first stone or so doesn't matter (as perfectly illustrated by this thread).

It is precisely this stone that matters the most. If you never gain it, then you will never gain the other 4 or so stone that really will ruin your life.

[TalkinPeace]

Look at this picture
livewell-la.com/wp-content/uploads/125-lb-person.png
the fat on the thighs will make her knees hurt
the fat around the organs will kill her
better to have as little as possible

[Tulip26]

You know BMI is originally a scale used to measure children? It was invented in the 70's. Don't take it as gospel. You can be only 20% overweight and be classed as obese. So if you weigh 12st instead of 10st, you'll be classed as obese even if you're a boxer or rugby player.

[Sirzy]

But Duckworth - if you have the HEALTHY lifestyle then the chances of that weight going up are slimmer. We could argue then that we shouldn't be happy at being a healthy weight because we may put weight on, indeed that should be a real concern for those who are currently a healthy weight but have poor eating and exercise habits because in the long term then that could easily cause trouble for them.

[TeacupDrama]

being obese has a negative health impact being morbidly obese even more so, however, being in overweight category according to medical research makes not too much difference, life span for the overweight is actually slightly longer than normal BMI

if you do have a heart attack or stroke the outcomes for the marginally overweight are actually better than for lower BMI's
for the elderly this matters even more as the underweight and lower end of normal BMI means body has less reserves to deal with illnesses

this does not mean being hugely overweight is good but in terms of health having a BMI of 27 instead of under 25 does not matter medically that much

I agree with above poster that if you are a stone overweight being 2 stone then does not seem to be too bad either; you can't become obese without being overweight first

however a slim person that is slim because they exist on sugary tea and fags is not healthy just because they are slim they would be better off stopping smoking and putting on a stone, the 1 stone ( not 2,3 or more) would damage their health far less than the fags

my other concern is that people say healthy range of BMI is 20-25 but the nearer to 20 the better when actually there is not a single shred of evidence that a BMI of 20 is any healthier than 25

[TalkinPeace]

Tulip26
You know BMI is originally a scale used to measure children? It was invented in the 70's.
You are talking rubbish
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index