Be Excellent To Each Other

I got rid of a lot of weight 3 years ago before my wedding; I did so via some discipline on both diet and exercise. I did 30 minutes at the gym almost every day Mon-Fri and went on the Slimming World diet; I found the discipline of the weekly weigh in helped.

I’ve kept most of the weight off, once off the diet you will put it back on again, so these days I run 5 miles a couple of times a week and go to the gym. I eat what I want in sensible amounts. Don’t really drink in the week.

Exercise is the only sustainable way and its better if there is a social element; I’ve joined a local running club

BMI needs to be done by the passing the current through the body machine. Then it gives a break down of fat and non fat.

my BMI is 33 normal methods. But bupa said my body fat is 21 which is just outside the 14-19 normal range.

Isn't 'measuring body fat via electrical resistance' even worse than BMI in terms of bad science, or am I making that up?

Ah, here we go.

http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=218

it made me feel better as it is a lot less than the height/weight bmi thing. I am not that overweight,but my BMI is 33 (Moderate Obesity).

You should use the Craster scale. Then all you need to do to be healthy is flash a bit of tit.

That's a very nice app actually, seems pretty much perfect for tracking in and out calories and exercise, just what i need, cheers

Not sure I'm going to bother with fitocracy though, I've got garmin connect to track my running, and the above app for food and other exercise stuff, where I'm only interested in calories burnt anyway.

The wife uses Fitbit. It appears to be the ultimate in substituting technology for actually doing anything. She's got a doohicky in her pocket that does step counts, distance travelled, and elevation changes, along with a set of scales that connect to wifi to automatically log her weight and stuff on the website.

From a technology perspective it's actually pretty neat. Not sure it helps you lose weight, mind.

BMI is fine for the average person, it isn't intended to be used by athletes, so the fact it doesn't work for them isnt surprising. For everyone else it is a good measure to use.

This post has been sponsored by my qualified dietitian fiancé

I'm not going to count general walking around and step counts in any exercise, as that feels like cheating to me

I play a bit of rugby, i am no way an athlete...

So BMI is probably a good measure to use for you

I've just joined up to this. I think I may have just lost my afternoon.

*reads*

Given that being an athlete isn't a binary state, surely it also doesn't work for anyone anywhere between average and an athlete, for a varying degree of inaccuracy? And, conversely, one would speculate, anyone who's less healthy than average?

So, in fact, BMI works for the average person, but not for anyone else? And the average person shouldn't really need to care about BMI?

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the WiiFit yet?

(Maybe they have but I'm not reading 2 pages etc...)

BMI as a goal works for everyone, if your goal is to be a healthy weight. Which for pretty much everyone, it is.
However if you are training your body for a specific event other than just being healthy, then it doesn't work.

I still maintain it's arbitrary. There's no such thing as a standard height:weight ratio. Body shape varies, muscle mass varies, bone density varies. It only exists because it's something that's easy to measure. Body fat % would be massively more valuable a measure, but as discussed above, measuring it is a bitch.

Note - I'm not arguing against using it as a guideline. As I said, your height is constant, so measuring your BMI loss is essentially measuring weight loss. I just think it's awful science, and that pisses me off.

I'm very long in the spine, and therefore short in the legs, which means that when I reach BMI 25 I'm skinny. Hence people being confused at the Manchester meet in '10 when I was still 15 stone.

Of course, now I'm fat again (I was 16st 12lb on Friday... and 17st 3lb this morning, worryingly), but still don't worry about BMI. Just weight.

Can't think why that might have been.

Looking back on it, I ate fuck all at the BBQ. 2 bits of pastrami, 1 bbq pork skewer, and a burger that I well overcooked and only ate half of.

I didn't eat that much! Well, I don't remember eating that much, which is the same thing.

Sure it's arbitrary, it's just a number measurement. However, on average, people who fit in the healthy range are healthier, and on average, people are average...

If your BMI is outside of the healthy range, and you can honestly look at your lifestyle and say why, maybe you do a huge amount of exercise, maybe you have a lot of muscle mass etc... then no problem. However, for the vast majority of people that isn't the case, and the reason why they are above the healthy range is that they are lazy fuckers (myself included).

The rugby player argument against BMI is amusing, so what if it doesn't work for rugby players? Most people who argue that have a quick game with the lads once a fortnight, and spend the rest of the time sitting behind a desk eating mars bars, but it's ok because they are rugby players...

Actually, on average virtually nobody is average given that we're talking about mean and not mode here.

Like I said, the outcome of tracking using BMI is valid. It's still bad science.

+1

Actually, healthy BMI is a range, precisely due to that reason. It covers the greatest number of healthy body types in the bell curve.

Using a range doesn't matter. It still says that for any two people in the world who are the same height, if one has a lower weight than the other, that person is healthier. It's a convenience, because you can't measure 'health'.

Once again - it's perfectly valid for giving yourself a weight loss target. But it's still bad science.

That always happens when you cook, though. I had one of your burgers and one of Mali's, some chicken and some pastrami, I think.

I had some steak, a burger, a spicy lamb burger, some pork fat skewers and sole pastrami.

And all the wine.

No it doesn't, it says for any two people in the world, as long as they are both within the healthy range, then they are a lot less likely to have health complications due to weight.

Apart from Singaporeans, who have different BMI bands.

Of course, you shouldn't worry about your weight at all and concentrate more on how you feel.

Man.

And if the two straddle the healthy/overweight line?



Pretty much every country does - because it's arbitrary.



What if I feel hungry?

Aye, because Asians are more predisposed to diabetes, so their healthy range is different.

I think I know Crasters difficulty with BMI, he keeps referring to it as science. It isn't, it's statistics.

No, I keep referring to it as bad science. Statistics pretty much is bad science

And that's my point. If your way of measuring health isn't science, then you need to find a way that is science. Because otherwise you're only catering for those people who are statistically average.

Turns out that's because they eat heavily-sweetened rice three times a day. Funny that.

And my point is, if the stats show that if you are in the healthy range, then you are less likely to have health complications due to weight than some one who is above the healthy range. What better measure can you get other than what actually happens to people at whatever weight they are when it happens?

And most people are statistically close to average, that's kind the point of average. Come on dude, you know how bell curves work

You're statistically less likely. Not less likely. They are very different.



Sure I do. However, if you're going to hold up a measure to someone that's been derived from a bell curve, it's incumbent on you as a health professional to work out where that person fits on the bell curve, no? Imagine if that's how blood donation worked - most people statistically are blood type O+, so we'll just give everyone O+ blood when they arrive in hospital needing an infusion.

Blood is a completely different argument that is treatment, not prevention.

When you come to treat someone you have to be specific, when it is about reducing the chances of needing to treat and prevention, then it is perfectly fine to be generic.

I don't know how to break this to you dude, everyone isn't a special snowflake, there are trends in individuals that have direct correlation to the expectation of poor health in the future.

My BMI is 18.5, and I don't seem to be able to do much about that.

I anticipate this will change pretty rapidly once I reach a certain age.

Up until my early thirties I was 10st 6lbs no matter what I did. The past couple of years I haven't changed anything, yet the weight has started to pile on.

I got told that the treatment for having high blood pressure was to lower my BMI.

Anyway - my point is that the world I like to live in, you don't have a nebulous definition of 'health' that is based on ignoring large amounts of contributory factors, because it's easier to generalise rather than analyse. I can't think of any other aspect of healthcare that does it. It's the 'have you tried turning it off and on again?' of medicine.

Indeed, because being overweight is a high contributory factor to high blood pressure.

Of course it is. But it's treatment, not prevention. Which is the opposite of what you said.

When the hospitals are literally full of people who are in there for complaints that are directly related to being overweight, then telling overweight people they need to lose weight is pretty obviously the right thing to do.
When you take A&E out of the equation, the vast majority of people in Bedford hospital are there due to issues directly related to being overweight.

That's totally fine. What I dislike is the fact that you take something plainly obvious "You're overweight, you need to lose weight", and dress it up in pseudoscience by doing some maths, creating a graph out of it, and pretending it contains absolute values of any merit.

I've not once objected to weight loss as a health improvement mechanism.

Hey, I made a job out of that for 6 and a half years! And probably am doing that now.

It's only the same as having a recommended maximum number of units of alcohol to drink or minimum amount of vegetables. It gives most people a rough guide to go on. Also it's a lot easier for a doctor to tell someone that they're too fat and have a chart to back them up, especially since the chart will be correct most of the time.

Bingo, that's the point, plus it makes a good goal for people, and is backed up based on statistics of actual people.

Dude, your doc was saying you were fat, but being polite