While on the subject of health and fitness, I noticed that I can access Sainsbury’s Diets for free, should I want to. I don’t particularly as even for free, I don’t need any help planning my diet and don’t have an issue with my weight. However, being mildly curious, I did take a peek. Disturbingly, Sainsbury’s is using the discredited BMI as an indicator of appropriate weight. At 5′ 7” and a little over 10st, my BMI is comfortably within the normal range anyway at 22.2. However, if I had more muscle mass, I could be incredibly fit, yet be deemed obese and according to the BMI indicator, need to lose weight.
Sainsbury’s acknowledge this on the results page:
Its main drawback is that it doesn’t reflect body composition i.e. the difference between muscle and fat. BMI can’t differentiate between people carrying too much fat, and people who are heavy but actually very athletic and muscular – for example rugby players and body builders. Such people will have a high BMI but this may not be a true reflection of their health and ‘fatness’.
So don’t use it, then.
Quite right, BMI is crude and known to be flawed.
And originally complied on data collected in the US Mid-West in the late 1930’s
The DUSTBOWL.
So evryone data-logged was thin, which skewed the data horribly.
Oh dearie me
If I were to get back to my ideal weight for a BMI of 25 say, I’d have to lose around 3st 3lb am currently at BMI around 32 which would make me clinically obese, however not so long ago I completed the London triathlon in under 3 hours and the Rome marathon in around 4h 20, and so whilst hardly Nijinsky, I am not a hopeless lump of lard either, until recently I regularly did a 2hr hill run around my local hills, I only stopped after my dog died and will start again in the New Year (after the local boar hunt season has finished – being shot would definitely undo all the good work).
I enjoy cooking and eating, and eat and drink too much; No doubt the NHS would refuse to treat me; fortunately I also enjoy exercise, and work permitting get plenty.
Conclusion – BMI is a load of crap.
Like most sensible people I wish these bastards would f**k off out of our lives.
According to my sister who is a mental health professional, BMI is well known in medical circles to be useless as an indicator of obesity, however it is of use in determining when someone is seriously underweight, which is apparently much more of a problem than is acknowledged, especially amongst those who are obsessed by health and fitness and consider it a moral question. Puritans are ill, as many of us always suspected.