For Weight loss BMI is bogus
In my entire life I have only met 2 people who said "I'm too thin and trying to gain weight". Have you ever stepped on a scale on a day when you felt OK, then looked down and had your mood ruined by a number? In my experience using the BMI (body mass index) and weighing your self compulsively every day only serve to increase your stress and lower self-esteem which ends up becoming a form of self-terrorism.
While there are trends to loose weight in the summer, during holidays and for special events, it's much healthier for your body and your psyche to shoot for a healthy balance of exercise and nutrition overall.
Some of my patients have asked about acupuncture for weight loss. Acupuncture alone will not automatically shed pounds, but rather helps to support your weight loss effort by minimizing cravings while increasing energy and metabolism in the body.
Below is an NPR article lays out the pitfalls of the BMI theory. Enjoy.
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Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus
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The BMI Formula
BMI = weight in pounds/(height in inches x height in inches) x 703
The 703 is to convert the index from the original metric version of the formula.
CDC Recommendations:
Below 18.5 = Underweight
18.5 to 24.9 = Ideal
25.0 to 29.9 = Overweight
30.0 and above = Obese
Weekend Edition Saturday, July 4, 2009 · Americans keep putting on the pounds — at least according to a report released this week from the Trust for America's Health. The study found that nearly two-thirds of states now have adult obesity rates above 25 percent.But you may want to take those findings — and your next meal — with a grain of salt, because they're based on a calculation called the body mass index, or BMI.
Weekend Edition math guy Keith Devlin graded the body mass index and tells host Scott Simon that it fails on 10 grounds:
1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.
The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.
2. It is scientifically nonsensical.
There is no physiological reason to square a person's height (Quetelet had to square the height to get a formula that matched the overall data. If you can't fix the data, rig the formula!). Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.
3. It is physiologically wrong.
It makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI. Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves classified as overweight or even obese.
4. It gets the logic wrong.
The CDC says on its Web site that "the BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness for people." This is a fundamental error of logic. For example, if I tell you my birthday present is a bicycle, you can conclude that my present has wheels. That's correct logic. But it does not work the other way round. If I tell you my birthday present has wheels, you cannot conclude I got a bicycle. I could have received a car. Because of how Quetelet came up with it, if a person is fat or obese, he or she will have a high BMI. But as with my birthday present, it doesn't work the other way round. A high BMI does not mean an individual is even overweight, let alone obese. It could mean the person is fit and healthy, with very little fat.
5. It's bad statistics.
Because the majority of people today (and in Quetelet's time) lead fairly sedentary lives and are not particularly active, the formula tacitly assumes low muscle mass and high relative fat content. It applies moderately well when applied to such people because it was formulated by focusing on them. But it gives exactly the wrong answer for a large and significant section of the population, namely the lean, fit and healthy. Quetelet is also the person who came up with the idea of "the average man." That's a useful concept, but if you try to apply it to any one person, you come up with the absurdity of a person with 2.4 children. Averages measure entire populations and often don't apply to individuals.
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