Slashdot Mirror

A yound adult who was still legally a minor, not a kid. 6'3" and 160 lbs is well into normal BMI range. Calculate it yourself.

Martin, at 6'3" and 160 lbs was well within the normal range for BMI. Calculate it yourself.

One or more eye witnesses saw Martin on top of Zimmerman. And note the police report:

police report that states Zimmerman was injured and treated at the scene:

"While I was in such close contact with Zimmerman, I could observe that his back appeared to be wet and was covered in grass, as if he had been laying on his back on the ground. Zimmerman was also bleeding from the nose and back of his head. . . .

Zimmerman was placed in the rear of my police vehicle and was given first aid by the SFD.

Note - "his back appeared to be wet and covered in grass" Hmmmm

And 160 lbs at 6'3 is so skinny as to be a total non-threat.

6'3" and 160 lbs is well within normal for BMI. Calulate it for yourself.

Normal people can be dangerous when they decide to be.

And yet the police report notes that Zimmerman had grass stains on his back, and injuries to the back of his head. One or more eye witnesses saw Martin on top of Zimmerman. (The power of a sucker punch?)

police report that states Zimmerman was injured and treated at the scene:

"While I was in such close contact with Zimmerman, I could observe that his back appeared to be wet and was covered in grass, as if he had been laying on his back on the ground. Zimmerman was also bleeding from the nose and back of his head. . . .

Zimmerman was placed in the rear of my police vehicle and was given first aid by the SFD.

"his back appeared to be wet and covered in grass" Hmmmm

Also note that Martin's BMI would have been 20, which is well within the normal range.

Not that you're any different than 99% of people who will see a girl that weighs 150lbs and think "eww, fatty".

Well, it's all relative. If she's five feet tall and weighs 150 lbs, she's pretty chunky, borderline obese in fact. If she's six feet five and weighs 150 pounds she's rail thin.

Actually...

Nah, they're going to blame it on the economy - you know ... inflation.

Or they'll just say that it's environmental - they live in the South

Why Are Southerners So Fat?

People from Mississippi are fat. With an adult obesity rate of 33%, Mississippi has gobbled its way to the "chubbiest state" crown for the fifth year in a row, according to a new joint report by Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Alabama, West Virginia and Tennessee aren't far behind, with obesity rates over 30%. In fact, eight of the 10 fattest states are in the South.

Another example of how you are what you eat ... and another reason to keep your BMI below 25.

The BMI is a useful tool in the sense that it helps get people to actually discuss the issue. Of course, the real test is with calipers. Can you "pinch an inch?" If so, you're carrying excess fat. If you have to use the jaws of life to remove the calipers, you're obese. If the calipers strike oil, you're a Southener.

I'll forego using mod points on this thread to reply. I'll burn them off on some other topic.

It's surprising that there's not a single really overweight person commenting here, considering that 90% of overweight (by BMI) are simply fat.

I qualify by BMI (29.5, just shy of "obese") and by personal assessment (yes, I do look feel fat in this body right now). I was forced into a more sedentary life style 20 years ago and for many years I was obese by any standard, but I've shed more than 20 lbs from my heaviest weight. I am now reasonably fit, bicycling over 100 miles per week and self-training to do century ride in a month or so. I also do flat water kayaking, which is a good complement to the biking.

link to the NIH BMI Calculator used below.

Here's the thing: my personal ideal body weight will give me a BMI of 27.0 at the weight where I felt best before the accident that changed a lot of things in my life. This is still "overweight" by accepted standards. But to get to the top of the "normal" BMI range at 25.0, I would have drop to my weight when I graduated from high school, when I was a skinny guy with all the muscle tone of a boiled noodle. My long term (5 - 10 year) goal is to drop another 20 lbs to a BMI of 27, but I would have to drop 33 lb to get down to a BMI of 25, and that would definitely be unhealthy.

BMI can be sort of helpful to people of European and Asian descent in possibly refining their personal ideal self-image, but it isn't going to work so well with descendants of Native Americans, Polynesians, or Arctic peoples. But it isn't very accurate, and if it does not match up with a healthy person's ideal self-image, it should be ignored.

Which is just as ridiculous as using the BMI here. BMI is a calculator that only takes into account your height and weight. It doesn't take into account body frame or muscle mass or even differentiates between men and women. So a body builder or someone who was fit by any other standard can come up as obese.

Well, too much in this country is made about BMI. If you're 6 feet tall and weigh 200 pounds you can be a chubby guy or a really fit guy or somewhere in between, but regardless the government classifies you as "overweight". You need to set a standard for health that doesn't deal with weird metrics like "waist size" or "body mass index".

BMI Categories:

Underweight =

So, my BMI of 18.3 is underweight you stupid jackass. And it is in supermodel range.

Comparing measurements as well:
Karolina Kurkova: 33-23-34.5 (US)
Me: 33-26-34

So, yeah, our measurements are pretty much the same as well. :P And for reference I wear a size 4, which is one of the two sizes that supermodels actually wear (those are 2 and 4.)

That would be great if it weren't based on a standard that has little to do with health. According to the BMI calculator (see below), I'm obese. I'm 5'10", and weigh around 210-215. I eat a lot of lean meats and vegetables. I lift weights three days a week, and run about 9 miles a week. I take a vitamin and mineral supplement packet every morning. Funny how you can be a borderline health nut and still might end up paying a higher premium because some people think BMI is a reasonable indicator of health. I have about 16% body fat, as measured with the 7-point caliper test, last time I checked. That's out of the 'obese' range, past the 'normal' range, and into the 'fit' range. Not exactly GQ model single-digit body fat percentage, but a long shot from obesity.

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

BMI Categories:

        * Underweight = 18.5
        * Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
        * Overweight = 25-29.9
        * Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

It would make a lot more sense to give people higher premiums by default, and give discounts to people who pass a voluntary aerobic fitness test.

I'm 5ft 8in tall and 200 lbs. According to this site, that gives me a BMI of 30.4

On the other hand, my chest is 44 inches, my waist is 37 inches (for the pervs that are salivating: I'm a guy. For the remaining pervs still salivating: I'm hetero. For the woman salivating: I'm single). I regularly bike (50 to 100 miles per week @ 15+ mph in preparation for a 60 mile charity ride this fall), run (I can run 2 miles in just over 17 minutes) and weight lift. Last time I got my cholesterol checked, my doctor mentioned that it might be too low (!).

Am I "grossly obese"?

Maybe you're using the wrong BMI formula. Mine is 26 and I'm in excellent shape.
BMI is well known for being grossly off in predicting disease for tall or muscular people, and if you're both, that's the worst.
I used
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bmicalc.htm
which gives me the same BMI number as every other calculator I've seen.

Unless this is combined with human judgement and common sense, this is bad. Even with that I think it's highly questionable. BMI doesn't account for how much of your weight is muscle over fat. Someone who lifts weights regularly can be "overweight" according to BMI.

For example I'm 6'2" and 280 lbs. I've got some fat on me, I won't argue that. I also work out daily, deadlift 350+lbs, and can run a 6 minute mile (although I wish I hadn't after I do). I'm going to be generous and say 30% bodyfat, which I think is a good bit above reality. That's 84 lbs of fat. Losing 20% (56 lbs) to put me at 10% bodyfat, which is fairly low for anyone other than professional bodybuilders (and those guys who go way lower are being arguably just as unhealthy) leaves me at 224 lbs. According to this BMI calculator I'm still way overweight and nearly obese and am currently ridiculously obese in my 40" waist jeans. According to that I should weigh 145 to 195 lbs. 145 lbs? Talk about unhealthy for someone who's 6'2". My Junior year in high school I weight 190-195. I was skinny. Not muscled, not ripped, skinny. Not unhealthy thin, but I would say more than 5-10lbs less than that would have been unhealthy.

How about a better idea? If you go to the doctor all the fucking time you pay more.

At the BMI's he is suggesting, you would be considered underweight. Normal BMI is 18.5-24.9. If he really had a BMI of 11, I'm surprised that he is still alive.

Here's a page giving some BMI weight ranges and a calculator.

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

Josh

Yes 33,000. The average person is only supposed to eat about 2000 calories. Based on your stature, you probably are eating less than 2000 calories. Personally, I'm not perfect, and nobody else is either. I eat about 2500 calories a day as far as I can figure, but I'm pretty active, so maybe that offsets it. In case anybody is wondering, I'm 5'8" and 160 lbs. Just checked my BMI and I'm at 24.3. That's on the border of overweight. And I consider myself quite skinny. I think the BMI is pretty seriously flawed, and doesn't account for anybody with any significant amount of muscle. I often wonder how much of these studies are offset by the fact that the BMI is such a bad metric for gaging overweightness.

And then there is surely a correlation between the BMI and the percentage of body fat one has. There are fully trained athlets whose musculature increases the BMI into obesity levels without being obese. But those are not normal people. Most people with a high BMI are really fat, and if you do a statistic you probably wont find a 1 as correlation factor, but something very high in the 0.9. Those few heavy lifters don't exonerage a whole fat population from being obese.

Do you have anything to back that up besides "surely's" and "probably's?" I only have my personal experience, but it is a data point. I am not a body builder. I am 6', 255 lbs. which gives me a BMI of 34.6. This indicates obesity. I can run a 5K, I play soccer and football and go to the gym 3-5 times per week. I wear and XL shirt and wear 40/32 pants. You would never call me obese (a bit overweight, maybe) and you would never guess I weigh 255lbs. If you look at the limitations of the BMI, note It may overestimate body fat in athletes and others who have a muscular build. I am not an athlete, I am a software engineer. Chalk it up to northern European barabarian genetics. I just have a "muscular build," I wore "husky" jeans as a kid and you may have referred to me as "chunky." But I am by no stretch of the imagination a "heavy lifter."

The nonsense with the inches and the pounds is slightly less so-- and the slight bit of extra effort diminishes the "quick and dirty" appeal of the BMI.

Not at all. Doctors and nurses use charts; most people use charts or web calculators like this one.

Mostly "quick and dirty" applies to medical research, where it's quick, cheap, and routine to record a patient's height and weight. You don't need extra funding or specially trained staff to measure height and weight consistently, and in many cases, that data is already recorded as a matter of course. It's an easy statistic to use in a study or to apply retroactively to existing data. The extra complexity of dealing with inches and pounds doesn't matter, since the data is handled in bulk by software.

Suggestion for the new slashdot poll:

"My Body Mass Index (BMI) is:

0-15

15-18

18-20

20-25

25-30

30-35

cowboy neal

For the record, I am a fatso with a BMI of 31.

Is that even remotely healthy? After my grandfather passed away earlier this year he weighed in at 102 pounds at his nursing home. He hadn't walked or moved in over 5 years. He looked absolutely sickly as it was. I can't imagine if he was 6'2" and active.

One of the basic ways of determining whether you are healthy or not, is to calculate your Body Mass Index. This is a calculation based on your height and weight.

Plugging his statistics into the formula (height = 6' 2", weight = 18.6), his Body-Mass-Index is 18.6, which is in the normal range (leaning towards underweight).

Because he can fit a lot of it in his stomach, due to its density. I don't like potato salad, but I know that eating pasta or meatloaf until your stomach is full feels a lot more filling than say, crescent rolls. And no I'm not fat. According to this my bmi is 18.8.

Underweight = less than 18.5
Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
Overweight = 25-29.9
Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

You say that you eat twice a day, less than 500 calories per day, and fast once a week? You weigh less than you did in 8th grade?

Might I gently recommend that you visit your doctor just to make sure that you're not underweight? At least check out your body mass index (NHI BMI Calculator). It sounds like you may be starving yourself or, worse, that you might be at risk for developing an eating disorder. You say that you tend toward extreme behavior so you really need to watch out for the latter, an eating disorder will just wreck your health.