please give me a million dollars and, oh yeah, huge pectoral muscles

[soopageek]

I've gained 10 pounds over the summer which presents me with a dilemma. I've always promised myself that 175 lbs. was my cutoff weight, since somewhere around 165-170 is the top end of most BMI charts for my height of 5'10". I've always vowed that if I ever reached 175, I would begin taking steps to maintain and/or reduce it. Yesterday when I

Comments

[obscurek]

The BMI chart always makes me wonder. It's so clearly wrong, that I wonder why it ever existed? It seems like the worst tool ever designed. I'm still super thin compared to most people I see in the world and it makes me mid to upper healthy. Was there a time when healthy people didn't have muscles? As soon as you put any on you go right out into the overweight range. Maybe it works better for women who try to get fit without bulking up? It juse seems such a strange concept that it caught on to the point where everyone knows about it, but it doesn't work at all realistically, and no one made up something better right away to replace it.

[soopageek]

I think the BMI is meant to be a "starting point" for determining where you are in relation to an average, and that other factors must be considered when deciding what course of action, if any, to take. At least, that's the spirit with which I'm approaching it. Clearly it doesn't take into account significant gains in muscle mass which I attribute to my recent weight gain.

That said, it is true that if I lost the excess fat in my belly that I would fall back into an acceptable range on the chart, however, I feel that at this time in my life it's appropriate for me to have and the amount of work and lifestyle changes required to reduce/eliminate it greatly outpaces the minor benefits I would gain from it. I'm far from obese and I'm not a terribly vain man, so it's hard for me to justify the effort to do something about it.

[democritus]

Body Mass Index was a concept invented in the 1800s by a statistician as a sociological tool and was only later adopted by the medical community in the 1980s because there was nothing better to use. As you've observed, it doesn't differentiate between fat and muscle weight so I consider it pretty useless. The news media sure loves it though, because they can claim huge obesity rates as "epidemic", etc. I'm not saying people aren't getting fatter, but it's hardly what mass media would have us believe. I've been "obese" according to that chart from my ripped, totally in shape military days to today (and granted I am kinda tubby but hardly obese) so i have a personal vendetta against it too. :P

[rasa]

heehee, unless your frame has changed pretty majorly since I last saw you, it's pretty funny that you're mid to upper healthy, but I'm considered underweight! I'm definitely thin, but not underweight!

[obscurek]

Heh... it would be ridiculous if that were the case. I'm always going to have a naturally thin frame, but I have put on a significant amount of mass since we were together. The chart isn't quite that far out of whack.

[welfy]

Dude, you should see his muscles!

[im_not_real]

yeah you've got to account for the muscles, for sure. i'm 5'11 and about 178 right now, just on the cusp, but i've lost most of my muscle mass over the summer due to sickness/no appatite.

When I got up to 192 and felt like a fat fuck, i started riding my bike like crazy and reduced my caloric intake to get it down, but i couldn't get below 188, although I noticed the fat left my chin/neck and belly areas. My legs were like tree-stumps because of the 50 mile bike rides I went on. My BMI went down alot, but the actual weight didn't change.

As long as you've got the muscles let it slide man! 180 is technically my cut off but i'm doing a 9-5 job again, so i'll prob blow past that soon.