Im ALMOST over-weight

THe new home-page thingy all about weight loss and what not....

Well ive never actually calculated my BMI...but at present, I am RIGHT at the upper-limit of the 'normal' category (77kg & 179cm). Even when I put in 75kg...whcih I am some days, im still at the upper end of the scale.

Now I dont think I am overly porky, but I do like my cake. Im also not ridiculously heavily built, most people say I am fairly skinny (but are they just being polite?)

I know body fat % is probably a better indication, but I dont have a huge amount of that either I dont think....im sure I had it measured once and it was 12%...I think.

Am I just made up of particularly dense matter? (I know that statement is leaving em wide open to certain comments!)

.......Or am I simply a fat bloater in denial?!

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Comments

  • I'm fat

    and

    I'm proud!

    Nick - you're skinny

  • The one that i sawe dind't include the body type either - so doesn't take into account the body frame
  • Nick LNick L ✭✭✭

    ...oh stump you're just SAYING that..... *blushes coyly*

    Seriously though...I dont have a massive frame, I not carrying excessive blubber (i dont think)....yet I am within a fairy cake of being 'fat' - 24.3

    How does that work...or how is that justified?

  • acording to BMI (whichisa pile of rosh) i was over weight when i did IMDE ...and i was in singl figure body fat then

    image

  • 21.8 normal, but Mrs NGL says I am too skinny.  I am.

    I don't know the answer Nick, but if thats a recent picture, then the BMI stuff is just wrong, unless you are a very strange shape?

  • Nick

    Think about what its asking you for:

    Height and weight.

    Then think about how that weight can be made up... you could be all fat or all muscle, or somewhere in between. Clearly tendancy toward muscle is healthier than tendacny towrds fat, yet the BMI calculator doesn't make any allowances for this, so a 12st fat monster will have the same bmi as a 12st toned afleet of the same height.

  • Nick LNick L ✭✭✭

    .....yeah my arse is HUGE!

    http://www.untitledlife.com/wp-content/images/2007/01/070105_butt.jpg

  • You barsteward I thought you havd burned that one
  • Then I would respectfully suggest you entered incorrect details when you said this:

    Well ive never actually calculated my BMI...but at present, I am RIGHT at the upper-limit of the 'normal' category (77kg & 179cm). Even when I put in 75kg...whcih I am some days, im still at the upper end of the scale.

    Unless you were talking about yo ass. Or talking out of it.image

  • Nick LNick L ✭✭✭
    ha ha ha ha ha!
  • Quote from the BMI site linked to from the home page...

    It may overestimate body fat in athletes and others who have a muscular build. It may underestimate body fat in older persons and others who have lost muscle mass.

    So, as chocolate teapots go...

  • Nick LNick L ✭✭✭

    DoT....i see your point....and it makes sense. THing is I dont think I am either of those.

    ANyhoo...I dont think the RW article stressed enough of the limitations of the measure of BMI, which could lead some people to worry overly. I know the context of the BMI....but it shouldnt be a universally accepted measure, which it generally is IMO.

    Im not bothered with my weight...id like to lose about 1/2 stone, (so I could hopefulyl be faster!) but I cant see it happening (cos I cant be arsed). I was however a little surprised just how close to being considered 'overwieght' I am based on this measurement.

  • Nick LNick L ✭✭✭

    ...posted previous comment before reading the one above it by DoT!

    'nuff said

  • Nick,

    the other thing to consider is that if you run (which you do) and you consider yourself to be carrying too much excess fat (which apparently you do - I can't comment), then you will have the double wammy (weight wise) of muscle plus fat combining to give you a higher BMI.

    If you continue to train for endurance events then your body fat percentage will probably come down (calories in permitting), eyt your muscle mass will probably also continue to grow slightly, so the reductiion in your bmi may not be proportional to the amount of body fat you lose.

    As a tool for the sedate masses bmi is a useful indicator and no more, as an indicator of fitness for purpose in anybody who does regular exercise and wishes to improve competietively its about as useful mas the aforementioned chocolate teapot. IMO

    At the rsik of starting a heated debate, I regularly use a set of Tanita scales to monitor bmy body fat and water content. These also make assumptions about body make up, but are more sophisticated than the bmi tables and allow you to define by sex and exercise habits. Since I train 10hrs a week or more in one way or another I qualify for the "athlete" setting - which gives me a good feeling in itself!!

  • I am almost obese - I am very overweight but according to BMI will still be slightly overweight at MY ideal which is where I look and feel my best - so I ignore BMI - load of carp designed to panic people
  • Nick LNick L ✭✭✭

    I is an aferleet too DoT! I got a card in the post which says so from UK Athletics or something like that!

    We can compare how lardy we are DoT at La Rochelle over a nice cake and coffee in a Patiserie! (well I can whinge and whine!) while you gloat over your new PB!

    Maddy...I agree...load of carp!

  • BMI is a load of poop.   A lot of muscle hides the lack of fat. Making you appear more 'normal' than you are!
  • My experience of BMI is that it is generally a better indicator with ladies than with men, but can be questionable for either. Nick - if your body fat is 12% then if anything it's on the low side. This suggests that a lot of what you think is excess weight is actually muscle, which weighs more than the same volume of fat. You also have to take into account body types - ectomorph is the lanky one, endomorph is the curvy one and mesomorph is the muscley one. Ectomorphs tend to look OK (i.e. not gaunt or ill) at the lower end of the 'healthy' BMI range. Endomorphs and mesomorphs tend to look better a little heavier. You are stuck with your basic type whatever you do diet and exercise wise. 

    There's something in the Competitive Runner's Handbook about weight and it reckons I should aim for something which I'm sure I'd feel and look pretty rough at to get my optimum time (I did weigh that much briefly once after a rather nasty tummy bug), and that's as someone who tends to stabilise at the lower end of the 'healthy' BMI range. And then we wonder why eating disorders are so prevalent among athletes...

    I think looking in the mirror and how you feel more generally healthwise are much better indicators than scales.

  • I like the bit about 'stop the press taking minutes off your time could be as simple as losing a few pounds'

    That's hilarious - Personally losing a few pounds is a lot HARDER than putting in 10 hours of training every week.  The training I do already - the losing the few pounds I have struggled with for years to no avail. 

  • BMI is tosh. I am officially overweight with a BMI of 25.8, I just need to be 4 inches taller that's all! I have no hang ups about my weight at all and I will continue drinking diet stella because I like it. image
  • I think I have a similar BMI to Nick which just shows how rubbish it is. Nick is a mean lean running machine and I am a mother of 3 with inherent padded areas
  • sigh

    Its just gonna fuel the already weight obsessed peeps on here

    and reinforce the fact that bigger is abd, and makes you a crap runner

    its ok to run slowly

    its ok to be a bit bigger-if you are healthy

    which i am-rudely so

    that having been said-my pbs this year are probably cos of a bit of weight loss

    it wasnt training

  • Nick, from what I recall you're a very elegant package of solid muscle image

    I didn't read the original because I tend to skip past Amby Burfoot's articles (I get the impression that the old geezer has lost his marbles and needs putting out to pasture) and I've already considered and discarded the idea of trying to lose weight in the hope of getting some PBs by the back door. As GA says, it's easier to train harder than it is to lose even a few pounds off a frame that's already fairly lean.

  • I love this debate and would like to highlight a few points:

    The entire crew of the Olympic Coxless fours were obese by BMI standards at the last Olympics.  Additionally all the endurance athletes where in the stavation zone.  Does this means they are about to have coronaries/keel over? Well, no it means they're the correct body shapes and trained long and hard to be specific for thier events.  Which to a lesser extent we all are and as such BMI becomes less relevenant as you move away form the mainstream and towards the odd, i.e. runners. 

    With that said I have got faster as I have lost weight and race better at 66kg than 69kg.  When I was a junior I was a lot faster and raced at 62.5kg which I would love to get back to.

    Additionally people now call me skinny but when I was a junoir I about average, now that is scary.  The general population see me as skinny when my waist is now 3" larger!!!

  • Nick LNick L ✭✭✭

    Some interesting comments on this thread....both with regard to the validity of BMI, and how it could or perhaps should be applied to afferleets like us!

    Given that, and the various other comments on this thread, I question whether RW was/is right in publishing the article in its current format. (although I dont have the magazine...so perhaps there is more detail in there about the limitations??) Should there have been a greater emphasis on the limitations within the article itself...I assume the magazine doesnt have hyperlinks etc!!!

    As RW is (presumably) targeted at runners...although of ALL abilities, surely the fact that BMI has recognised limitations when it comes to 'athletic' people (such as runners!), which SOME people who read the mag and site will be more 'athletic' than others......by that I mean BMI is less applicable to them, than others. (Please recognise that I am trying my best here to not offend people......some people are 'better' runners than others, but the fact that you're out there having a go is what is important....your achievements are all very much relative!!)

    As people have already said....BMI is tosh/crap etc in some circumstances.

    Hope I dont inadvertantly offend peeps with my inane ramblings....I just think now that perhaps RW could have published this with a greater level of responsibility. At the end of the day though it is up to us to consider and interpret stuff.

    Oh and thanks Mrs P & V-rap....but i think you must confuse me with someone else!

  • Look guys, I've got the exact opposite problem. My BMI is 19 (170cm, 55kg), which is on the lower edge of normal. But I think it is really not a good indicator of how people look. I swear, I don't look really skinny at all, that is maybe because my fat is distributed not 100% proportionally. It's more on my thighs and bottom than on my upper body. As a consequence I am 1 dress size bigger below. I really train a lot and hard, but this difference from my upper to my lower body doesn't change. 

    Just to underline that I don't look really skinny: one of my runner colleagues once told me that I was "too fat" to run a 10k really fast. 

    So BMI or not, I don't think it is so easy to determine that one can run faster. I don't think it's much of an indicator really for running....

  • No Nick they haven't you have an excellent level of muscle tone and I suspect that is why your body fat is lower yet your BMI in the overweight range - and you are an very good example of why BMI is bollox
  • But these same runners gain 3.3 pounds per decade, according to a recent US analysis of 4,700 mid-life male runners by the National Runners' Health Study.

    So, this study, did it look at 4700 non-runners and compare how much weight they put on in 10 years? I know plently of me ho would be delighted if they only gained 3.3 pounds in 10 years! Isn't it normal for people to gain weight as they get older, because your metabolism slows down?

    He talks about the other guy who beleives that weight doesn't matter like he's clearly deluded!

  • Coming from the other end of the scale to some of those above, I don't trust BMI at all - at 184cm and 59kg my BMI is 17.4 so I'm technically unhealthy and underweight. Until around a month ago other pressures meant I was not doing any running at all, yet no weight gain. When I was training very hard to run a 40.33 10K last May my weight didn't change at all, nor when I last trained for a marathon. I've never been on a diet in my life, snack all day long on biscuits and fruit, and get regularly fed to bursting by the nice ladies at my church, but my weight doesn't change. I probably do increase the amount I eat when I run more, but my body seems to automatically stay in a happy equilibirum with me apparently underwieght. I don't believe that I'm unhealthy or that putting on an extra 3.5kg (if I was able to) to reach BMI 18.5, would improve my speed.

    Why do researchers keep banging on about BMI when it is so mis-leading? 

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