BMI Limitations

Comments critique BMI as an inaccurate health metric, especially for athletes and muscular people who appear overweight despite being fit, and advocate for body fat percentage as a better measure.

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Keywords

BMI DEXA BF PNG UFC wikipedia.org bmi weight fat overweight body eat muscle health lose weight height

Sample Comments

jimt1234 Jan 2, 2025 View on HN

My interpretation is that weight is an overrated measure of health.

shishy Jan 25, 2022 View on HN

Aren't people who exercise (bodybuilding) generally considered overweight (defined as having a too high weight for a given height?) I noticed the same as you pointed out but figured that might help explain some of that difference

Buttons840 Dec 29, 2020 View on HN

It goes the other way too. You might have a BMI in the "healthy" range, but actually have an unhealthy amount of body fat [0]. Of course, nobody puts themselves in this category.[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#/media/File:Co...

jakemoshenko Aug 10, 2018 View on HN

That sounds like a problem with the definition of overweight, which probably uses BMI. BMI doesn't seem to scale well to athletic builds.

pkaye Jun 25, 2014 View on HN

Would be interesting to see their BMI. People always say BMI is not a good indicator for athletes.

texasbigdata Feb 3, 2020 View on HN

How about just body fat percentage?

FooBarWidget Jun 22, 2009 View on HN

No offense, but could your weight be a factor as well? Your body-mass-index is in the "overweight" category while his is barely in the "normal" category.

SamPatt Sep 18, 2022 View on HN

You're fine. I'm almost identical in measurements and I'm fit. A bit of muscle makes BMI a joke.

bagels Oct 12, 2023 View on HN

I thought it was meant more to assess how fat someone is, not health?

JoshGlazebrook Oct 13, 2013 View on HN

I would rather see something on body fat percentage. BMI is not an ideal measurement in terms of health for a lot of body types.