[zhdc1]

> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Building muscle increases your weight, but makes you look better and be healthier. Also muscle burns more calories to maintain, so you can eat more.

I completely agree, but the ratio of overweight/obese to "I have a slightly high BMI because I lift 4x a week" has to be somewhere in the range of 100-1.

[Aurornis]

> but the ratio of overweight/obese to "I have a slightly high BMI because I lift 4x a week" has to be somewhere in the range of 100-1.

Way too many people try to discredit BMI by bringing up the hypothetical trained weightlifter example.

It is possible to have a moderately low body fat percentage (12-15%) and fall into the overweight BMI category if you're very trained and muscular, but the number of people in this situation is very small. Moreover, they're well aware that BMI is not a useful indicator for them.

A 6 foot tall person would have to weigh 221 pounds to get all the way into the "obese" range of the BMI scale. A 6' tall man weighing 221 pounds with low body fat percentage is a seriously fit individual, not someone who casually goes to the gym several times a week. I don't think people realize how hard it is to get to this level of fitness.

BMI really isn't a bad for the average person, even if they lift weights.

[Fluorescence]

You seem to describe using BMI in casual conversation or as a personal goal but there are other issues.

Doctors use BMI as a filter for medications, surgery and such. With increasingly tele-medicine, I only get to fill my height/weight in a box and not treat a doctor to the gun show.

I don't know what other uses it has - insurance maybe, medical fitness standards for jobs etc.

Other criticism is about not capturing the variation between different ethnicities or builds so applying a numerical limit can be quite prejudicial.

On the otherhand, in some cases, weight is weight. There are some things where body-mass, muscle or fat, increases the relevant risk.

[seer]

Its more about incentives. If I’m trying to chase the weight number obsessively, as is the case with my level of OCD, I’ll be prone to eat less, run more or do other things to loose weight. But I don’t want to loose weight, I want to look good and be healthy. And I don’t really like myself in that life - worrying about this almighty number, and measuring my actions to change it usually makes my life less worth living.

When I concentrate my efforts to general health/happiness - e.g. eat less carbs, move around more, stand in front of a screen instead of sit in front of one, go dancing … just try to increase “healthiness” level as I see it, I can actually enjoy life more.

I mean I love eating out, especially when I travel, and trying to eat less on a vacation is not fun at all. But if I go hiking/social dancing/just walking about, suddenly I can do that and have more fun and am still be “fit” as per my personal definition.

I like to think about it in terms of system. I don’t want to loose weight now cause I know I’ll immediately gain it back the moment I get tired/bored/depressed. I want to build a habit (system) that would naturally bring me to my goal without exerting much willpower.

And chasing weight has never given me personally enough of a mental boost to keep at it in and off itself.