Should We Be Focusing On BMI As An Indicator Of Health...Or Not?
You've probably been to your primary care doctor and heard them say something related to whether you were in the range of a healthy BMI or not. You may have been told you were on the low end of normal or the high end or even above the healthy range. What does this mean for your health? And should this be something you focus on as an indication of your health and wellbeing as a human? Or are there better ways to qualify ourselves as healthy or not?
One of the things that comes up 99% of my time with clients in our initial history session is whether or not they're in a "healthy" BMI. They say things like, "I'm technically overweight according to my BMI" and talk about needing to lose weight to fit into that "healthy" range.To this I say two words.
That's stupid.
Just kidding, I don't actually say that's stupid, but I definitely think about it to myself. You see, the BMI is such a poor measuring tool for determining how healthy a person is and can actually lead to stress and anxiety with food and weight that is unnecessary and harmful. There are far better ways to determine your health than trusting a mathematical equation that is limited to height and weight.
The BMI was originally created not by anyone medical, believe it or not, but by a mathematician named Aldophe Quetelet who even said himself that it wasn't a good tool for directing patient's medical care. He devised the BMI by dividing kilograms by height and squaring it for no reason other than to see a pattern. It's not a good representation in the slightest of a person's nutrition status.Here's a couple of reasons why...
BMI IGNORES A PERSON'S BODY COMPOSITION
Look around you. There's people who are short and tall and somewhere in between. There's also people who are thicker and thinner by nature. BMI ignores a person's body composition and whether they have larger or smaller bones, or more or less muscle build. With this flaw, a person who is perfectly healthy and strong could be labeled as "overweight" by the BMI standards. Same thing for those who are in a "normal range" but are too low a weight for their individual body and have very visible signs of under-nourishment such as amenorrhea or osteoporosis.
BMI DOESN'T TAKE INTO ACCOUNT LIFESTYLE
The misconception we have with health in our current healthcare system is that lower weight equals health. But we know that even without weight loss and with lifestyle changes a person's more accurate measures of health such as blood pressure, labs, reproductive function, etc are improved. Health is so much more than just a person's size, what they eat, and what their BMI reads.
A "HEALTHY" BMI DOES NOT MEAN YOU'RE HEALTHY
Just because you fall in a "normal" and "healthy" place on the BMI chart does not mean that you are healthy. Again, it ignores things like body composition and lifestyle and puts all the focus on weight. If a person is skinny because they smoke two packs of cigarettes a day they are most definitely not healthy! Only looking at numbers as a measure of health, such as with the BMI, instills in our society that we can ignore other most obvious health concerns. We have to be looking at the big picture. So if you've felt like a failure because you can't seem to fall in that "healthy" BMI range that your doctor recommended, please don't be discouraged. And most definitely don't feel that you need to go on a restrictive diet in order to get to that place. Instead, take a look at your lifestyle, all aspects of your health. Are there any areas of your life, your physical, emotional, environmental, nutritional, or spiritual, in which you feel you could improve upon? Start there! If you feel healthy in all 5 of these areas then know that you are at your healthiest self and BMI can be & should be ignored. What's one way you're going to work to shift your mindset today from weight-centered to health-centered?