How’s your Monday going so far? I bet it started off better than mine did. I’ve (finally) just gotten registered with a GP here, and had my nurse’s appointment this morning. Apparently you have to do this every time you register with a new GP before you can even make any doctor’s appointments – it’s just to take down your vitals, medical history review, yadda yadda yadda. All fine and good. So I got up, headed to the office and had my appointment. The nurse took my height and weight (and I was relieved to see I hadn’t gained any weight yassss). She then proceeded to calculate my BMI, which I thought was weird. The last, and only time, I ever calculated it was like, in high school for a science project. Based on her calculations, my BMI was like 26 point whatever, which she said was a little higher than it should be for someone my age. She then asked about my exercise and eating habits. A “healthy” BMI for someone like me falls within 18.5 to 24.9
So basically, I was told that I was slightly overweight.
Let me be fully transparent here – I am 26 years old, and, as of today, I am approx. 5’5” at 156 pounds (I’m not someone who cares if everyone knows my weight – so what?). As you can see, I’m obviously not the tiniest person. I also eat pretty well (but will never say no to fries), and exercise 3 times a week. But I’m overweight? Give me a break.
For shits and giggles, I came home and did another 3 BMI calculations based on the information I got at my appointment today. The results? Between 24.5 and 24.7. As you can see, that is not only lower than what the nurse told me (how the hell did she get 26 point whatever?), but it’s also within the so-called “healthy” range.
Now, I’m not saying this because I want to feel better about myself, to disparage the nurse, or to just flaunt to the world that I’m not overweight. I’m saying this because I want to show just how absurd it is that the NHS uses BMI calculations in their patient assessments. BMI is inaccurate and very misleading. You can see that from the difference in the results I got in office vs. online. It also doesn’t take into account other factors, such as muscle mass, and bone density, as well as a plethora of other things. One of the biggest reasons it is so inaccurate, is because there’s no way to distinguish between fat and muscle. It’s going to look at the weight as a whole, not on what percentage of that is fat, and what percentage is muscle. With so many different bodies, builds, genetic factors, etc. – it doesn’t seem that BMI can be very accurate or useful.
I’m not a doctor, or particularly good with things like science, math, and medicine, so I’m in no way an expert on something like this. But I was a bit irked that the NHS thinks that this is valuable information, and something we, as patients, should go off of when assessing our health. It must be extremely disheartening to people who, by all means are healthy, to be told that they aren’t. If you look online, there is article after article about research done to explain why BMI shouldn’t be used because of all it’s inaccuracies. Until it is calculated more accurately and in depth, and things like body fat and muscle mass are taken into account, it’s best to take this with a grain of salt, in my opinion. There’s more to be gained from learning about your medical history, which they take into account anyway. So why bother with BMI?
Anyway, this was just me ranting because lol don’t tell me I’m overweight when I’m clearly not.
xx Lauren
I could go on for DAYS about how much I hate, hate, HATE BMI as a measure of health!
I know more than one bodybuilder whose BMI chart classifies them as “obese”. It takes no other factors into consideration and is such an antiquated way to measure health. It really just needs to GO.
It’s terrible! I don’t understand why health practitioners STILL use this! I agree that it absolutely needs to go – it is neither accurate nor helpful to patients.