Beyond BMI: A healthier approach to Weight and Health
Maybe you have heard about body mass index (BMI) at least a few times in your life. This metric is so popular when talking about health topics whether you are a health professional, nutritionist, or simply when it comes to you managing your own weight and health. It’s a useful metric to use for evaluating your own health with established levels. It is easily accessible, easy to understand, and you can usually find a free BMI calculator online without much difficulty, using only your height and weight. Then, the results show the range you are in: either underweight, normal, overweight, or obesity. Seems like a hassle-free way to assess your health, right?
Actually, it isn’t that reliable when it comes to measuring your health.
BMI is only a crude measurement of a person’s body fat based on weight and height, and it doesn’t provide any serious observation about health. Even more concerning is that BMI is widely used by health professionals in clinical settings as a tool to diagnose obesity. The problem of relying on this single measure can lead to an inaccurate picture of a person’s health. In fact, in June 2023, the American Medical Association recognized BMI as a problematic measurement due to its limitations.
What is BMI, exactly?
BMI is simply a measure of body fat based on height and weight. It is derived from taking the weight (kg) divided by the square of height (meters). The formula is described below:
- weight (kg) / (height (m))²
So if a person’s weight is 65kg, and has a height of 1.7m, their BMI would be:
- 65 / (1.7*1.7) = 22.5
According to the WHO, for adults, BMI less than 18.5 falls within the underweight range, BMI between 18.5 and <25 is considered healthy weight, from 25 to <30 is overweight, and above 30 is considered obesity.
The inherent problem with BMI
The first problem stems from how BMI is created. Originally, BMI was first introduced by a Belgium statistician named Adolphe Quetelet in the 1800s as a means to determine the normal weight of white Scottish soldiers, and he never intended the index to be used for medical purposes. This piece of history tells us a very important weakness of the index – it doesn’t apply to all of us. Probably one of the most prominent examples where BMI falls short is athletes, where most can have BMI in the overweight range, because it doesn’t differentiate between muscle mass and fat mass. For people of different ethnicity, race, and sex, BMI also doesn’t extrapolate and apply to them reliably.
“It is not a perfect measure of body fatness because it does not differentiate between fat mass and lean body mass, and it does not provide information on body fat distribution”
Frank Hu – Chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The use of a person’s height and weight as an indicator of their health, surely, doesn’t serve as a reliable measure for obesity at all. A person who has more lean muscle mass and less fat cannot be considered obese as a person who has less muscle and more fat. Furthermore, BMI, as proven in the past, can neither address fat distribution of a person, nor it can distinguish between fat and muscle mass. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health also acknowledged this as a weakness of the BMI index.
Consider a woman who is 1.65m tall and weighs 68kg, her BMI is 25, which places her on the brim of being overweight.
The catch here is, though, she can be a person who goes to the gym frequently and be very muscular, or she has the majority of her fat in the lower body, which doesn’t cause any serious health problems compared to fat in the upper body.
So, what are the alternatives to BMI?
With many problems surrounding the use of BMI as an health risk indicator, the American Medical Association suggests that BMI, in clinical settings, should be used with other measures such as visceral fat (hidden fat that surrounds the organs), body composition (percentages of fat, bone, and muscle in the body), body adiposity index (the measure of the hip size relative to height), waist circumference, and genetic factors for better diagnosis.
While most of these solutions require professional support, some of it can be easily done at home. The BMI can be used to some extent, as long as you don’t go to the extreme in interpreting the index without other measures such as measuring waist circumference to back it up. The important thing is to be comfortable with your body and to not worry about an index saying your health is in trouble.
While BMI can be a starting point for a conversation about weight, it falls short when it comes to providing a comprehensive picture of your health. That’s where ANTI Diet steps in.
Our app leverages smart scale technology on a daily basis. Our approach helps you to correctly track your body composition, such as muscle, bone, and fat to provide you with a deeper understanding of your body, which has been scientifically proven to significantly help with the process of losing weight.
Going beyond BMI, we are not simply telling you a number such as calorie intake; we provide you with personalized actionable insights and scientifically-backed methods to reach your goals. For example, your weight can fluctuate significantly in a short period of time due to water retention after a meal and this can cause you worries when seeing the traditional approach (BMI) indicating higher health risk. Our app will guide you through these problems and ensure a stress-free experience.
At ANTI Diet, our priority is your well-being. We believe in building a positive relationship with your body and providing the tools you need to achieve a healthy and sustainable weight.
Sources:
Gurunathan, U., & Myles, P. S. (2016). Limitations of body mass index as an obesity measure of perioperative risk.
Müller, M. J., Braun, W., Enderle, J., & Bosy-Westphal, A. (2016). Beyond BMI: Conceptual Issues Related to Overweight and Obese Patients.
Steinberg, D. M., Tate, D. F., Bennett, G. G., Ennett, S., Samuel-Hodge, C., & Ward, D. S. (2013). The efficacy of a daily self-weighing weight loss intervention using smart scales and e-mail.