Monday, July 6, 2009

Good News: Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI is Bogus

How many of us with EDs are obsessed with our BMIs? Yet how many of us have heard that BMIs aren't very accurate? And for how many of us does that not matter? We continually use BMIs to assess how thin we are, even though in the back of our mind we remember that we've heard whispers that the BMI isn't accurate. I've never had someone lay it out for me why the BMI is bogus and actually give me details, but thanks to Tiptoe for finding it, here's finally an article that does:


Please read it or at least skim through it. As a fellow BMI-obsesser, it has helped me realize how delusional the concept of the BMI really is. Did you know that it was created over 200 years ago by a man that said explicitly that it shouldn't be used to indicate an individual's level of fatness??? And yet we still use it....hmmmmmm....

6 comments:

PTC said...

I've never been one to look at BMI b/c I know it's a bunch of crap. It does NOT take into consideration fat versus muscle. You can have a 200 lb man with 6% body fat and a 200 lb man with 30% body fat and both would have the same BMI. Um...HELLO!

kristin said...

I just posted that on my blog, too. hehe :)

Just Eat It! said...

This gave me a good laugh. I put way too much stock in BMI for such a long time. What irks me the most is that it never differentiated between gender and body-types/

Telstaar said...

I'm gonna go have a look, thanks Kara :)

(oh and yes, I sadly, am a BMI-obsessor *sigh*)

PTC said...

Maybe I should go read the top 10 reasons.

Jackie said...

Great article - thanks for posting it!!! xoxo