BMI - The Great Fitness Industry Swindle!
by
Alan Runacres
FCollP. FISM. BSc. Hons. DipHMan. MICM Dip
Director of Training
WABBA Qualifications
No, I’m not referring to British Midland International, those really nice airline company people, I am referring to Body Mass Index, the fad system of ‘measuring’ if someone is ‘overweight’ or not, that has seen such a resurgence over the last few years, it’s becoming a bit of a national obsession! Originally it was called the Quetelet System after its inventor, a Belgian Polymath called Adolphe Quetelet, who came up with the idea in around 1850 as part of his programme of social science rationale.
Adolphe wasn’t wrong about everything, but his BMI thinking needs a bit of modernisation to say the least, or dare I say better still, popped back into the dusty old filing cabinet of history from where it came! Just like an epidemic, it’s sweeping across the country again (the last time was in the early to mid seventies) and infecting everyone from Personal Trainers, the training organisations who taught them, Life Assurance Companies, and even the government and large supermarket chains have now been bitten by the bug too. But ironically, it was down at our local friendly Doctors Surgery that the idea first curried favour when you went in for a health check up and the Doctor would ask ‘How much do you weigh?’ quickly followed by ‘How tall are you?’ and then they would scan down their charts to see if you were ‘overweight’.
Strange then, that none of the world’s knowledgeable trainers use this system to get the astonishing results that they achieve for their clients or themselves. The whole concept of dividing a person’s bodyweight in kilo’s by their height in metres squared is a highly flawed method of assessing if someone is ‘overweight’ and possibly obese. It’s a bit like saying everyone in Cornwall has size 14 feet, we know some people will have, but the majority won’t, and I like Cornwall, it’s a nice place! Let me explain my reasoning with a simple question and answer analogy.
Why don’t people get it - “It’s not what you weigh that counts, It’s what percentage of that weight is Fat Weight that counts”. Don’t people realise that a person weighing 90 kilos and measuring 1.74 metres tall with a bodyfat percentage of 15% is not obese but a very healthy individual. If the same person has a bodyfat percentage of 40% then that person is obese! The BMI chart’s reading of 29.8 would have us believe that BOTH people in my example need to ‘lose some weight quickly’ to get their BMI down to an ‘acceptable level’. This is truly misleading and it really is time that a stand was made against this ancient and out of date system.
A more accurate assessment of a person’s current health state and risk potential would be to undertake an analysis of their bodyfat percentage, and work with them to get within those ‘acceptable levels’ to improve their overall health status. Bodybuilders have been saying this now for over half a century and no one could accuse a competing athlete in any mainstream sport of being overweight. Remember, bodyfat and more importantly the amount of it that makes up a person’s overall bulk is totally different from bodyweight, where lean tissue is the key issue. Let’s not forget the golden rule, that lean tissue is denser than fat tissue, and hence why you can actually weigh more, yet look leaner and healthier with a lower bodyfat percentage thrown into the bargain!
Author: Alan Runacres has over 35yrs gym experience, been WABBA director of training for 14 yrs and is the author of 3 books, and over 100 published articles.
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