5 ms·

Where are you on the global fat scale?

22 points by mikecane 14y ago

tfb 14y ago
I'm really not a fan of BMI being the determining factor in obesity. At 27 BMI, I'm apparently 3 BMI away from being considered obese. As a naturally large, fairly muscular 24 year old german/irish man, I'm 6 foot 1 and weigh 205 lbs, but you can see my abs and I'm in relatively good physical condition. Is my definition of obese wrong? I always thought obese meant someone with at least a few dozen lbs of excess fat.
- streptomycin 14y ago
  Invent a way of easily measuring body fat percentage, and we can do away with BMI. Until then, muscular people can simply ignore these things. BMI works well enough for the rest of the population (the vast majority of the world). If anything, normal people have the opposite problem you do. BMI tends to underestimate obesity in the general population. http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/health/obesity-rates-maybe-worse/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/health/obesity-rates-maybe-wor...
  - evilmushroom 14y ago
    There are techniques for doing this. I weight lift... a lot. So BMI is utterly useless for me (as you said)
    - streptomycin 14y ago
      No, there aren't. BMI can be calculated by anyone in about 2 seconds without taking any measurements they don't already know. Body fat percentage can't. And while BMI may be useless to you, it's reasonably useful for the vast majority of people in the world.
      - gaius 14y ago
        I sure wouldn't want my insurance premiums to be calculated on my BMI.
        streptomycin 14y ago
        Ok? What's your point?
        geebee 14y ago
        Unfortunately, they are. However, I don't think most insurance companies put you into a lower category based on BMI alone until you hit 27 or so. It's still possible to be at a healthy body fat percentage and have a BMI of 27 or higher, but obviously it's not as likely as it is at the cutoff of 25. Overall, I think BMI is probably a pretty good overall metric, just not a good diagnosis for an individual. For instance, a physician might notice that a patient has a BMI above 25, but then see that waist to height ratio or a bf measurement looks very favorable. From a broad numbers perspective, I think BMI is probably very useful - for instance, if you notice that a higher percentage of a population has a BMI in excess of 27 than in previous years, you can safely estimate that the population is becoming increasingly overweight. I suspect that the situation where people have high bmi's with low body fat is limited to a small number of athletes who are not typical of the population at large.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - dredmorbius 14y ago
        There are tons of things which can be calculated easily and simply, which are simply wrong or utterly useless. Palmistry, astrological signs, numerology, stock charting, biorhythms, dowsing, etc., etc. Simply because a measurement is fast, simple, and gives some arbitrary numerical precision doesn't make it useful. It's also got to, you know, like, correspond to the stuff it's supposed to be measuring. Which it doesn't. Official discussion of BMI actually admits this. The panel did not search for evidence to prove that measures of body composition or metabolic rate are useful tools. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/ob_gdlns.htm http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/ob_gdlns.htm
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    A simple waist circumference measurement is more accurate than BMI at making individual assessments of obesity (> 40" ~ 100cm is bad). A set of 3-4 tape measurements (height, neck, abdomen for men; height, neck, waist, hips for women) will give a reasonable estimate of body fat. Equipment cost, about $5. http://www.linear-software.com/online.html http://www.linear-software.com/online.html Your observation of the weakness of BMI is that it tends to misreport true body fat percentage both ways. I'd hardly call that an advantage of BMI. Note that since official US government policy defines obesity in terms of BMI, technically, BMI doesn't misreport obesity. What it does is fail to correspond to true body fat percentage in any meaningful way.
    - streptomycin 14y ago
      My point is that BMI is ridiculously easy for nearly everyone to measure. Your point is that a better measurement can be made if everyone goes out and buys some new thing and takes some new measurement. That seems to be in agreement with my point. > since official US government policy defines obesity in terms of BMI, technically, BMI doesn't misreport obesity The US government defining something doesn't make it true. >What it does is fail to correspond to true body fat percentage in any meaningful way. It is very meaningful. It's much better than a random guess.
      - dredmorbius 14y ago
        How are you positing people measure their weight and height without, you know, like, a scale, and, um, a tape measure? As many people in the fitness/bodybuilding field will tell you, eyeball estimates of bodyfat are in fact pretty bloody accurate. If you're interested in equipment costs, I could look up eyeballs on Amazon as I did for tape measures.
        streptomycin 14y ago
        Most people know their weight and height already. And again, I agree that there are more accurate measurements, but they are all significantly more complicated. This time you are suggesting training people to visually estimate body fat percentage. That could work. But it's a heck of a lot more complicated than telling someone to type their height and weight into a website.
  - graeme 14y ago
    This is true, but it's impact is overestimate. I used to hover near the 25 level for my BMI. I was muscular, so I thought it was silly. But I've not lost 6 pounds while gaining strength. I can see my abs. Turns out I was 12 pounds over my high school weight. I'd now need ~8 pounds of extra muscle to become "overweight". That's a lot. I think it's hard to go over BMI based on muscle alone. You may have less of a problem is you're BMI 25 and muscular, but you still probably could stand to lose some fat.
  - krschultz 14y ago
    Well, I have a scale at home that does Body Fat %, and it is reasonably accurate. (It is consistent day to day, compared to a doctor's office one its off by maybe 1%). I believe it was $50. There are several on Amazon for that price and lower. If a regular scale is $20, and one that measures body fat is $40, then I don't think it's a big deal. I personally watch the body fat % now rather than weight.
scott_s 14y ago
This uses the body-mass index, which does not measure fat. It's just a ratio of height to weight, which does not take body composition into account.
gaius 14y ago
It is really irresponsible of the BBC to be promoting BMI as a measure of health. I'm a Marathon runner who is apparently fatter than 99% of the world...
evilmushroom 14y ago
This is flawed, very flawed. I weight lift now and workout 6 days a week... in college I was a skinny 5'11" and 130. I'm not 5'11" and 186. This is going to tell me I'm fat.
- graeme 14y ago
  Can you see your abs? Serious question. I hovered around 25 BMI, was muscular, thought it was silly. Everyone considered me "lean". But, no abs. Now I can see mine, am very strong, and have a 23 BMI. It's possible BMI effectiveness changes with height though, which would make it even worse. I'm 5'6".
victork2 14y ago
Before complaining about "wah wah that's BMI, BMI sucks" please think twice. Everybody knows it's BMI, BMI is a rough measurement of your ratio height to weight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and_shortcomings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and... "The medical establishment has acknowledged major shortcomings of BMI.[...] found that BMI-defined obesity was present in 21% of men and 31% of women. Using body fat percentages (BF%), however, BF%-defined obesity was found in 50% of men and 62% of women." Take it as a statistical game and stop getting self conscious about it. Note also: If you are very muscular with a crazy BMI despite no fat it's not healthy either.
- gaius 14y ago
  No "everyone" doesn't know that BMI is discredited, the BBC should have put a huge disclaimer on it saying "these numbers are nothing to do with how healthy you are, in fact they are completely meaningless".
  - victork2 14y ago
    I like how I got downvoted. Please read everything that is on the website: The BBC say it's an estimate, with a link on estimate leading to its definition and a disclaimer about BMI. They never say that you are fatter or slimmer than the rest of the population but they talk about your BMI and your BMI only, just a quote: "You have a lower BMI than 88% of males aged 15-29 in your country" "You have a lower BMI than 54% of males aged 15-29 in the world" I really don't see anything about weight or any scheme to make you think you're fat if you have a high BMI from the BBC like some imply in the comments. It's very funny how hyper defensive everybody gets around the BMI thing, especially the ones who don't have the "right" BMI.
- vonmoltke 14y ago
  Note also: If you are very muscular with a crazy BMI despite no fat it's not healthy either. I hear this claim parroted quite a bit. I haven't seen any evidence of this in medical literature, though, except in cases of really big guys like NFL lineman. Do you have any references for the claim?
dredmorbius 14y ago
BMI is an utterly bogus means of determining individual fitness assessments, and there's some reason to believe it's not very useful for population measures of fitness. - Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1062684... - Beyond BMI, Why doctors won't stop using an outdated measure for obesity : http://www.slate.com/id/2223095/ http://www.slate.com/id/2223095/ - Do You Believe in Fairies, Unicorns, or the BMI? : http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_09.html http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_09.html
- dxbydt 14y ago
  Dude, thanks for linking to Dr. Keith Devlin's column. Probably the only thing I read religiously in the MAA. BMI is just one of several mistakes attributed to the great mathematician Quetelet. You can credibly implicate Quetelet for a variety of modern day statistical crimes such as profiling ( attempting to figure out if a person is a criminal based on statistical analysis of race/sex/height/etc...),"normal" age of marriage, statistical rates of divorce in different countries and their implications on fidelity, and such other sociological nonsense. Dr. Devlin labels these things "junk math, numerological nonsense". But you can take a more charitable view - given that Quetelet practically invented both statistics & sociology ( which he called "physics of society" ), he came up with a number of formulae that seemed true at that time ( mid 1800s ). On hindsight much of this stuff is just silly mathematical manipulation ( Instead of dividing weight by square of height & multiplying by the constant 703, you can square the weight & divide by the cube root of height and put in some other constant...) If you are interested in the kind of statistics practiced in Quetelet's timeframe, here's some wacky references. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_1/May_1872/Quetelet_on_the_Science_of_Man http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume... http://statistiks.net/wp-content/plugins/downloads-manager/upload/v0101021.pdf http://statistiks.net/wp-content/plugins/downloads-manager/u... btw, much of what we do today in quant finance is suspiciously similar to what Quetelet suggests :) We build statistical "factor models" that credibly relate earnings of a company in california to the price of chicken in China :) We take a rigged number called the LIBOR & price interest rate derivatives on the spead between this rigged fixed rate & the floating rate. Then the public loses money & we scream - hey who the fuck rigged the LIBOR in the first place ?:) Talk about bootstrapping... honestly, we are no different from Dr. Quetelet. Might as well base Google's quarterly earnings on Page's BMI.
mathewsanders 14y ago
Is anyone else having problems with this? I've tried loading in Chrome, Safari and Firefox and each time a js is not loading and my BMI as '0'
- Tooluka 14y ago
  You probably input Height in centimeters. Try inputting 1.xx (or 2.xx).
excuse-me 14y ago
Damn averages. By moving to a city with a lot of S.E. Asian people I'm suddenly above average BMI - I need to move back to Texas. On the other hand, all those little old Japanese women mean that the average life expectancy here is among the highest in the world - so I should live to a 100 like them
cryptide 14y ago
>> You're most like someone from Mongolia
jere 14y ago
I hate BMI too (moderately lean according to body fat, but nearly obese according to BMI). But whether you're muscular or fat, this scale is a pretty good reminder of how well nourished we are compared to everyone else.
- mithras 14y ago
  Speak for yourself: "You're most like someone from DR Congo"
graeme 14y ago
They messed up median and average. I'm above the global "average", but if everyone were like me, the world would lose weight! They clearly mean I'm heavier than most people, but lighter than the average BMI. Very large people skew the average upwards. Edit: I am wrong. See the comment below. I thought average referred to arithmetic mean.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Median is an average measure. As are arithmetic mean and mode. You're messing up "average" and "mean" :)
thekungfuman 14y ago
I was really interested to see this data until I saw that they use the BMI; possibly the dumbest and most loudly touted measure of health. According to these numbers I am overweight, heading towards obese, and I don't think any doctor on Earth would say I was overweight if they looked at me.

22 points by mikecane 14y ago

tfb 14y ago

I'm really not a fan of BMI being the determining factor in obesity. At 27 BMI, I'm apparently 3 BMI away from being considered obese. As a naturally large, fairly muscular 24 year old german/irish man, I'm 6 foot 1 and weigh 205 lbs, but you can see my abs and I'm in relatively good physical condition. Is my definition of obese wrong? I always thought obese meant someone with at least a few dozen lbs of excess fat.

streptomycin 14y ago
Invent a way of easily measuring body fat percentage, and we can do away with BMI. Until then, muscular people can simply ignore these things. BMI works well enough for the rest of the population (the vast majority of the world). If anything, normal people have the opposite problem you do. BMI tends to underestimate obesity in the general population. http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/health/obesity-rates-maybe-worse/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/health/obesity-rates-maybe-wor...
- evilmushroom 14y ago
  There are techniques for doing this. I weight lift... a lot. So BMI is utterly useless for me (as you said)
  - streptomycin 14y ago
    No, there aren't. BMI can be calculated by anyone in about 2 seconds without taking any measurements they don't already know. Body fat percentage can't. And while BMI may be useless to you, it's reasonably useful for the vast majority of people in the world.
    - gaius 14y ago
      I sure wouldn't want my insurance premiums to be calculated on my BMI.
      - streptomycin 14y ago
        Ok? What's your point?
      - geebee 14y ago
        Unfortunately, they are. However, I don't think most insurance companies put you into a lower category based on BMI alone until you hit 27 or so. It's still possible to be at a healthy body fat percentage and have a BMI of 27 or higher, but obviously it's not as likely as it is at the cutoff of 25. Overall, I think BMI is probably a pretty good overall metric, just not a good diagnosis for an individual. For instance, a physician might notice that a patient has a BMI above 25, but then see that waist to height ratio or a bf measurement looks very favorable. From a broad numbers perspective, I think BMI is probably very useful - for instance, if you notice that a higher percentage of a population has a BMI in excess of 27 than in previous years, you can safely estimate that the population is becoming increasingly overweight. I suspect that the situation where people have high bmi's with low body fat is limited to a small number of athletes who are not typical of the population at large.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      There are tons of things which can be calculated easily and simply, which are simply wrong or utterly useless. Palmistry, astrological signs, numerology, stock charting, biorhythms, dowsing, etc., etc. Simply because a measurement is fast, simple, and gives some arbitrary numerical precision doesn't make it useful. It's also got to, you know, like, correspond to the stuff it's supposed to be measuring. Which it doesn't. Official discussion of BMI actually admits this. The panel did not search for evidence to prove that measures of body composition or metabolic rate are useful tools. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/ob_gdlns.htm http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/ob_gdlns.htm
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  A simple waist circumference measurement is more accurate than BMI at making individual assessments of obesity (> 40" ~ 100cm is bad). A set of 3-4 tape measurements (height, neck, abdomen for men; height, neck, waist, hips for women) will give a reasonable estimate of body fat. Equipment cost, about $5. http://www.linear-software.com/online.html http://www.linear-software.com/online.html Your observation of the weakness of BMI is that it tends to misreport true body fat percentage both ways. I'd hardly call that an advantage of BMI. Note that since official US government policy defines obesity in terms of BMI, technically, BMI doesn't misreport obesity. What it does is fail to correspond to true body fat percentage in any meaningful way.
  - streptomycin 14y ago
    My point is that BMI is ridiculously easy for nearly everyone to measure. Your point is that a better measurement can be made if everyone goes out and buys some new thing and takes some new measurement. That seems to be in agreement with my point. > since official US government policy defines obesity in terms of BMI, technically, BMI doesn't misreport obesity The US government defining something doesn't make it true. >What it does is fail to correspond to true body fat percentage in any meaningful way. It is very meaningful. It's much better than a random guess.
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      How are you positing people measure their weight and height without, you know, like, a scale, and, um, a tape measure? As many people in the fitness/bodybuilding field will tell you, eyeball estimates of bodyfat are in fact pretty bloody accurate. If you're interested in equipment costs, I could look up eyeballs on Amazon as I did for tape measures.
      - streptomycin 14y ago
        Most people know their weight and height already. And again, I agree that there are more accurate measurements, but they are all significantly more complicated. This time you are suggesting training people to visually estimate body fat percentage. That could work. But it's a heck of a lot more complicated than telling someone to type their height and weight into a website.
- graeme 14y ago
  This is true, but it's impact is overestimate. I used to hover near the 25 level for my BMI. I was muscular, so I thought it was silly. But I've not lost 6 pounds while gaining strength. I can see my abs. Turns out I was 12 pounds over my high school weight. I'd now need ~8 pounds of extra muscle to become "overweight". That's a lot. I think it's hard to go over BMI based on muscle alone. You may have less of a problem is you're BMI 25 and muscular, but you still probably could stand to lose some fat.
- krschultz 14y ago
  Well, I have a scale at home that does Body Fat %, and it is reasonably accurate. (It is consistent day to day, compared to a doctor's office one its off by maybe 1%). I believe it was $50. There are several on Amazon for that price and lower. If a regular scale is $20, and one that measures body fat is $40, then I don't think it's a big deal. I personally watch the body fat % now rather than weight.

scott_s 14y ago

This uses the body-mass index, which does not measure fat. It's just a ratio of height to weight, which does not take body composition into account.

gaius 14y ago

It is really irresponsible of the BBC to be promoting BMI as a measure of health. I'm a Marathon runner who is apparently fatter than 99% of the world...

evilmushroom 14y ago

This is flawed, very flawed. I weight lift now and workout 6 days a week... in college I was a skinny 5'11" and 130. I'm not 5'11" and 186. This is going to tell me I'm fat.

graeme 14y ago
Can you see your abs? Serious question. I hovered around 25 BMI, was muscular, thought it was silly. Everyone considered me "lean". But, no abs. Now I can see mine, am very strong, and have a 23 BMI. It's possible BMI effectiveness changes with height though, which would make it even worse. I'm 5'6".

victork2 14y ago

Before complaining about "wah wah that's BMI, BMI sucks" please think twice. Everybody knows it's BMI, BMI is a rough measurement of your ratio height to weight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and_shortcomings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and... "The medical establishment has acknowledged major shortcomings of BMI.[...] found that BMI-defined obesity was present in 21% of men and 31% of women. Using body fat percentages (BF%), however, BF%-defined obesity was found in 50% of men and 62% of women." Take it as a statistical game and stop getting self conscious about it. Note also: If you are very muscular with a crazy BMI despite no fat it's not healthy either.

gaius 14y ago
No "everyone" doesn't know that BMI is discredited, the BBC should have put a huge disclaimer on it saying "these numbers are nothing to do with how healthy you are, in fact they are completely meaningless".
- victork2 14y ago
  I like how I got downvoted. Please read everything that is on the website: The BBC say it's an estimate, with a link on estimate leading to its definition and a disclaimer about BMI. They never say that you are fatter or slimmer than the rest of the population but they talk about your BMI and your BMI only, just a quote: "You have a lower BMI than 88% of males aged 15-29 in your country" "You have a lower BMI than 54% of males aged 15-29 in the world" I really don't see anything about weight or any scheme to make you think you're fat if you have a high BMI from the BBC like some imply in the comments. It's very funny how hyper defensive everybody gets around the BMI thing, especially the ones who don't have the "right" BMI.
vonmoltke 14y ago
Note also: If you are very muscular with a crazy BMI despite no fat it's not healthy either. I hear this claim parroted quite a bit. I haven't seen any evidence of this in medical literature, though, except in cases of really big guys like NFL lineman. Do you have any references for the claim?

dredmorbius 14y ago

BMI is an utterly bogus means of determining individual fitness assessments, and there's some reason to believe it's not very useful for population measures of fitness. - Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1062684... - Beyond BMI, Why doctors won't stop using an outdated measure for obesity : http://www.slate.com/id/2223095/ http://www.slate.com/id/2223095/ - Do You Believe in Fairies, Unicorns, or the BMI? : http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_09.html http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_09.html

dxbydt 14y ago
Dude, thanks for linking to Dr. Keith Devlin's column. Probably the only thing I read religiously in the MAA. BMI is just one of several mistakes attributed to the great mathematician Quetelet. You can credibly implicate Quetelet for a variety of modern day statistical crimes such as profiling ( attempting to figure out if a person is a criminal based on statistical analysis of race/sex/height/etc...),"normal" age of marriage, statistical rates of divorce in different countries and their implications on fidelity, and such other sociological nonsense. Dr. Devlin labels these things "junk math, numerological nonsense". But you can take a more charitable view - given that Quetelet practically invented both statistics & sociology ( which he called "physics of society" ), he came up with a number of formulae that seemed true at that time ( mid 1800s ). On hindsight much of this stuff is just silly mathematical manipulation ( Instead of dividing weight by square of height & multiplying by the constant 703, you can square the weight & divide by the cube root of height and put in some other constant...) If you are interested in the kind of statistics practiced in Quetelet's timeframe, here's some wacky references. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_1/May_1872/Quetelet_on_the_Science_of_Man http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume... http://statistiks.net/wp-content/plugins/downloads-manager/upload/v0101021.pdf http://statistiks.net/wp-content/plugins/downloads-manager/u... btw, much of what we do today in quant finance is suspiciously similar to what Quetelet suggests :) We build statistical "factor models" that credibly relate earnings of a company in california to the price of chicken in China :) We take a rigged number called the LIBOR & price interest rate derivatives on the spead between this rigged fixed rate & the floating rate. Then the public loses money & we scream - hey who the fuck rigged the LIBOR in the first place ?:) Talk about bootstrapping... honestly, we are no different from Dr. Quetelet. Might as well base Google's quarterly earnings on Page's BMI.

mathewsanders 14y ago

Is anyone else having problems with this? I've tried loading in Chrome, Safari and Firefox and each time a js is not loading and my BMI as '0'

Tooluka 14y ago
You probably input Height in centimeters. Try inputting 1.xx (or 2.xx).

excuse-me 14y ago

Damn averages. By moving to a city with a lot of S.E. Asian people I'm suddenly above average BMI - I need to move back to Texas. On the other hand, all those little old Japanese women mean that the average life expectancy here is among the highest in the world - so I should live to a 100 like them

cryptide 14y ago

>> You're most like someone from Mongolia

jere 14y ago

I hate BMI too (moderately lean according to body fat, but nearly obese according to BMI). But whether you're muscular or fat, this scale is a pretty good reminder of how well nourished we are compared to everyone else.

mithras 14y ago
Speak for yourself: "You're most like someone from DR Congo"

graeme 14y ago

They messed up median and average. I'm above the global "average", but if everyone were like me, the world would lose weight! They clearly mean I'm heavier than most people, but lighter than the average BMI. Very large people skew the average upwards. Edit: I am wrong. See the comment below. I thought average referred to arithmetic mean.

dredmorbius 14y ago
Median is an average measure. As are arithmetic mean and mode. You're messing up "average" and "mean" :)

thekungfuman 14y ago

I was really interested to see this data until I saw that they use the BMI; possibly the dumbest and most loudly touted measure of health. According to these numbers I am overweight, heading towards obese, and I don't think any doctor on Earth would say I was overweight if they looked at me.