https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-02/the-problem-with-the-body-mass-index-bmi/100728416
People calculate BMI using a simple formula: weight in kilograms divided by height in meters. It puts you in specific body-mass categories.
The categories are very black-and-white. If you are underweight, if you are less than 18.5, you are normal weight if you are 18.5-24.9, and you are considered obese if you are higher than 30. People believe it is simple, but in reality, it makes the subject simple and creates very radical feelings.
The BMI scale was developed in the 1830s by the Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet, who was not a medical professional. What is really interesting and funny is that this was never his goal for BMI to become such a relevant thing, but to find the weight and height of the average man, whatever that means; it was never about health or a measure of it. This was a measure in which only Western European men participated. In the 1970s, Ancel Keys proposed it as a way to study obesity, and the study was conducted only on men.
There are many flaws with BMI. First of all, we can see how it works when applied to a large group, but it is not to be used for individual health assessments. Another difference is that there is no distinction or further investigation of muscle, fat, and bone, which is why athletes mostly score as overweight; it is mostly muscle weight. There is also no breakdown by ethnicity, age, or gender. There is the fact that healthy BMIs differ across groups and populations. It is very interesting to look at the fact that there are people with a high BMI who are considered healthy, but others who have a normal BMI who suffer from several health issues because of this.
There are some medical and emotional consequences when it comes to this and one of the main things that happens is that it can cause it might cause shame and stigma, some people avoid medical care because at times they feel that doctors are only focused on their weight, the high weight stigma causes people to get discouraged and accept that they can not gee a healthier body and finally BMI become a tool for judgment instead of something that actually helps.
BMI is still used for several reasons, two thirds of people in Australia are considered overweight or obese by the use of BMI alone, the reason why it is still used is because it is really easy to use it takes limited costs and it is easy to measure, it is really useful when doing large scale reaserch for example it helped at the time when COVID 19 vaccines were hard to get to sort out individuals who could be considered high risk and experts believe it can be used but not alone there needs to be more context when it comes to measuring bodies.
There are better alternatives they could use in this sense, such as measuring the waist, which can help better assess health risks and the risks they entail. Women with high waist measurements have increased medical risks, and one fact that some people don’t realize is that the fat in your abdomen is more dangerous than in every other part of the body.
There are different situations that doctors suggest doing, and one of them is focusing more on behaviors and habits, and not just weight, and also looking more at habit building can have more of a difference than losing weight.
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