Help, I'm Obese!!! According to BMI

You would think that it would be obvious to a doctor. Muscle tissue weighs a lot more than fat for the same amount of space taken up. Ever notice that we don't float when we go swimming??? :moon: I know the top of my head just barely sits above water, yet, the guy next to me doesn't even need a floatation device, he can even have his family sit on his lap! :Banane43:

EXACTLY...this is why i wanted to choke the crap out of the little asian fuck who was giving me such a bad time...he never even saw me with my shirt off...this is also the same idiot that took my BP putting the cuff over the sleeve of the long sleeve shirt I was wearing...moron...I've got great insurance now and actually go to an internal med guy at Northwestern who rules...he laughs at the chart with me actually.

According to BMI and bf% I'm athletic. Fuck yeah.

same thing here from the military, maxed out everything but the run, went to get weighed and was sent to the doc for a taping. 5'11" 205 with a 6 pack at the time. the doc just laughed and told me to get the hell out.

Study Finds Standard Obesity Scale Flawed ( http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyid=2006-08-18T134230Z_01_L17785946_RTRUKOC_0_US-OBESITY.xml&src=rss) Click the link above to read this story on the Reuters news wire. About time!

I was complaining to my doctor about having excess skin from being 273 pounds. He was like no you're not fat (I was about 240 20% at the time). He pulled out the body mass index chart that the computer had compiled for me for my entire life and was like you're almost down to average on this so you'er not fat. I wasn't very happy with his response. I was hoping he was going to offer to cut off the excess skin for me.

I have fought the BMI battle, while a military RN and Educator with NIH. If you read deep enough into thier webste, you will find a disclaimer that says it may not apply to individuals with large amounts of lean muscle mass, bodybuilders and athletes. Soldiers who exceed BMI can appear for a tape test, which is also bullshit. The final appeal is to a medical or nutrition expert who will conduct a caliper bio test. I actually had a DEXA done as I am clinically obese at 220, 5'10" and 53 years old. Oh, water immersion showed a body fat then of 6%. Tape test showed 19%. I fought this battle while working at the Pentagon. BMIis used due to concerns of inappropriate touching of military members while testing. We can blow them up in Iraq due to crappy body armor and unarmored vehicles with IEDs, but better not pinch someone with a caliper or there will be an IG investigation filed. BMIisjunk science, invented by the insurance companies in the 1950s as a way to charge fat people more for life insurance. I also got into a battle with CNN.com when they had a hyperlink from the health page to "Check your bodyfat" and a BMI calculator. According to BMI, anorexics, crackheads and those dying of AIDS are the healthiest people on earth. Let's all quit working out, puke out our food and smoke crack to get in shape.

n today's Lancet, Abel Romero-Corral and colleagues1 report a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis, of all available cohort studies examining the association between bodyweight and total mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and other cardiovascular events, including over 250 000 patients with established coronary-artery disease. Romero-Corral and colleagues used body-mass index (BMI) for analyses because it was the most common surrogate measure of obesity reported in the studies. Their results are interesting in several ways, because the meta-analysis includes 40 prospective studies with conflicting results. For patients with established coronary-artery disease, with a mean follow-up period of 3·8 years, low BMI was strongly associated with increased long-term risk of death and cardiovascular events relative to normal weight. Overweight patients were consistently associated with a better survival and fewer cardiovascular events than normal BMI patients. Obesity was associated with an increased total mortality only in patients with a history of coronary-artery bypass graft, and severe obesity was associated with the highest cardiovascular mortality but not with increased total mortality. The better outcomes in the overweight and mildly obese groups as compared with other weight categories could not be explained by adjustment for confounding. These results are consistent with several studies on the association between BMI and mortality in patients without clinical evidence of coronary-artery disease.2, 3 and 4 These studies have also shown that increased mortality is associated with being underweight or obese, especially with higher levels of obesity, when compared with the normal weight category. Overweight and mildly obese patients do not have a significantly higher risk. So, is the debate on the relation between BMI and mortality over? Should we focus only on the prevention of severe obesity? Is it biologically plausible that overweight and mildly obese patients do better? Obesity is acknowledged as the sixth most important risk factor contributing to the overall burden of disease worldwide. At least 1·1 billion adults and 10% of children are now overweight, including 312 million who are obese, leading to reduced life expectancy because of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and some types of cancer.5 The number of deaths per year that are attributable to obesity is about 30 000 in the UK and 10 times that in the USA, where obesity is expected to have overtaken smoking in 2005 as the main preventable cause of illness and premature death.6 Obesity is a chronic metabolic disorder associated with cardiovascular disease and increased morbidity and mortality, and is a risk factor for developing coronary-artery disease. However, Romero-Corral and colleagues' findings provide convincing evidence that the association between increased BMI and death is significant only for severe obesity once coronary-artery disease is established. A paradoxical protective effect of obesity has previously been reported in patients undergoing coronary revascularisation.7 Other studies have shown that being overweight—but not obese—is not associated with mortality.2 and 8 The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are unclear, but could relate to several factors. First, the measure of obesity itself: BMI is the most easily measured proxy for obesity, but evidence suggests that other markers of abdominal obesity are better outcome predictors than BMI. A large case-control study on risk factors for myocardial infarction in 52 countries investigated the relation of four different measures of obesity, namely BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, waist measure, and hip measure to the risk of myocardial infarction.9 In all ethnic groups, waist-to-hip ratio was the best predictor of myocardial infarction. Raised waist-to-hip ratio increased the population-attributable risk from obesity by more than three-fold compared with BMI.10 BMI is not a good measure of visceral fat, the key determinant of metabolic abnormalities that contribute to cardiovascular risk. Estimates of the effect of obesity based on BMI are therefore too low. Second, body composition might have a role in cardiovascular risk: there could be substantial differences in percentage of fat and lean-body mass between individuals whose BMIs are much the same. The better outcomes in overweight and mildly obese people might be because these individuals have a greater lean mass than normal weight and severely obese people. An increased lean mass is related to physical activity and independently contributes to reduced coronary artery disease risk.11 Third, follow-up here was limited to 3·8 years, which is insufficient to detect the full effect of being overweight on coronary-artery disease progression and long-term outcomes. The full effect of obesity on cardiovascular mortality may begin after 15 years or more.12 This meta-analysis does not provide new information, but some useful implications can be drawn from it. BMI can definitely be left aside as a clinical and epidemiological measure of cardiovascular risk for both primary and secondary prevention. The contribution of body fat to cardiovascular risk is a matter of integrated basic, clinical, and epidemiological research, to which retrospective analysis of existing databases could hardly add relevant insights. Uncertainty about the best index of obesity should not translate into uncertainty about the need for a prevention policy against excess bodyweight, which must be strongly supported.