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No, it does not. Say I'm 6' tall. "Normal" BMI is between 18.5 and 25, which translates to between 136.4 lbs - 184.3 lbs. Telling me my weight is going up or
by pmiller2 7y ago
No, it does not. Say I'm 6' tall. "Normal" BMI is between 18.5 and 25, which translates to between 136.4 lbs - 184.3 lbs. Telling me my weight is going up or down tells me nothing about whether I fall into this healthy range. And, depending where I fall (below, within, or above the range), the actions I would wish to take differ. It's that simple.
What instrument do you have that measures your "weight relative to others and your history"? Don't you only want to measure it relative to other healthy individuals? And, if you are particularly underweight or overweight, wouldn't you want to know when you're in the normal range? An instrument that only tells you what direction the change is doesn't tell you any of that.
- josephcooney 7y agoBut weight by itself (and BMI) are fairly crude measures. You could be 6' tall, be a muscular 210 lbs with a body fat of 10% and be classed as obese. The next level of the "onion" is body composition (fancy scales do this, but not that well). Then you're getting dexa scans....and there are probably other levels after that. I think I'd rather know if my weight and body fat % are going up or down, rather than their absolute value.
- pmiller2 7y agoLe sigh. I should have known someone would throw that particular nitpick. That’s an edge case. People who fall in that category already know that. And they’re very interested in their accurate, absolute weight. Besides, BMI is just a convenient way of quantifying what a “healthy weight range” is. I could have used any range and said I was interested in weighing between X and Y.
- josephcooney 7y agoI am kind of in that category...and I'm interested in relative fluctuations in body fat % even though I don't give much credence to the absolute accuracy of the body fat measure.