The case for being overweight

Vols just threw up.

 

Beautiful. Perfect. In my mind, a 10.

You guys know that her BMI is still probably on the low end of the normal range, though, right? She's prolly 5-10, a buck 45 at most.

That's a BMI of 21, guys.

 

21 would never wear a dress that tight, and if that girl wore a dress that fit, she'd look 10 pounds thinner.

BMI is bullshit, btw.

 

Well, the heavier you are, the more calories you require to actually exist. You would also burn more calories doing a given activity at the same intensity as a lighter person.

I know that wasn't your point, but just a random aside. To your point...it would be interesting to see a breakdown of the study and see how those who died actually died.

 

If you want to lose weight, the last place I would go would be your regular doctor. The majority of them use BMI as their measuring stick no matter how ridiculous it is.

 

Agreed. I did not take the article as being a "a case for being overweight", as the thread title misleadingly says, but it is yet another indictment on the ridiculously flawed BMI method for determining who is overweight.

The idea that there's an ideal weight for each height is sheer nonsense. For those born with unusually broad shoulders and a wide/thick skeletal frame it can be virtually impossible, short of starvation, to be a the prescribed BMI range. For others born with a different frame, it can be done rather easily with little effort and plenty of extra fat storage. It's absurd that we have doctors that still take seriously this method, devised in the mid 19th Century, that ignores the obvious fact that we're all constructed differently.

The most reliable method for determining the extent that someone's overweight is to measure body fat percentage. But that requires effort and tests and shit. So much easier just to look at some bogus chart.

 

We should just go back to the days when women were allowed 100 pounds for 5 feet and then 5 pounds for every inch thereafter. Much more workable system.

 

Stoney, this was the passage that stuck with me when I wrote the thread title:

Some experts said fat could be protective in some cases, although that is unproven and debated. The study did find that people 65 and over had no greater mortality risk even at high obesity.

“There’s something about extra body fat when you’re older that is providing some reserve,” Dr. Eckel said.

And studies on specific illnesses, like heart and kidney disease, have found an “obesity paradox,” that heavier patients are less likely to die.
That said, I'm in complete agreement. I'd love to see such a study that only accounted for body fat percentage, not raw weight.

 

And even that has to account for the fact that being severely underweight likely also decreases your life expectancy.

 

Here is your perfect woman:

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/perfect-woman-weighed-171-pounds-194800801.html

 

Yes! Wouldn't it?

There are a few things I can think of that can cause a person to die-- and also lower their weight. Smoking would be one.

I wonder how many of those people studied were "normal" weight but died of a disease like lung cancer because they smoked.