A Little BMI Bashing

Ah, Body Mass Index (or BMI) the stupidest, most ridiculous thing in fitness just won't go away. It's funny how people started to realize that the old school Height/Weight chart was bullspit, so the medical field came up with BMI. To test your BMI you add you height in centimeters to your weight in kilograms and divide by two. If you're below a 25 you're supposedly healthy. If you're between a 25 and 29 you're supposedly overweight. And, if you're over 30 you are supposedly obese.

Hmmm, in the picture above where I'm doing the handstand on the park bench I am 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighing around 195 pound with a 9 percent body fat. Yet according to BMI I'd have a rating of 30.5 meaning that I'd be Obese. I don't see it.

It's funny to me that people actually think that body fat is somehow calculated in their BMI. People wake up! It's not. It's simply taking the height and weight scale and putting in a little math.

In my post a while back about the stupidity of BMI I used some examples of people that would be overweight or obese according to the BMI and it included Dara Torres, Jessica Scofield, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett and more. Today I'm going to show you some more folks who would all be considered overweight or obese by the BMI standards:

For Example:

Dana Linn Bailey

Dwain Chambers:

Mandy Stafford:

Derek Poundstone:

Sara Backman:

Mariusz Pudzianowski:

Cara Heads:

Jamie Lewis:

As you can see, all of these people are very impressive physical specimens. Each one of them is insanely strong, in shape and pretty damn awesome. Also, each one of them would be considered fat or obese according to the Body Mass Index. Can we just get rid of that damn thing once and for all and have people realize that it's not how much you weight, it's what that weight is made up of.

If you're at a sub-10 percent body fat level I don't care if you have a 48 BMI, you're ripped and impressive. If you've got a BMI of 20 and you have a body fat percent of 38 percent, you have way too much body fat.

Stop worrying about your BMI, get in the gym and lift heavy and hard and develop a great body, not a skinny weak body.

Yours in strength and health,
Brett