![]() ![]() Measuring body fatĪnother option is to measure body fat. Fat around the hips and thighs may be less risky. Researchers have suggested that people keep their waist circumference to less than half their height to maximize health and life expectancy.Ī person with fat around the abdomen has a higher risk of heart disease and metabolic disorders, because the fat affects the internal organs such as the liver, heart, and kidneys. However, some scientists argue that waist-to-height ratio might be more appropriate than BMI alone or BMI with WC, as research has proven it to be a predictor of cardiometabolic health. One suggestion is to combine BMI with waist circumference (WC) for a more accurate measurement. Waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio Some people have proposed other options for assessing whether a person is overweight. The BMI would still not represent the increase in fitness. Still, Trefethen points out that if muscle is 18 percent denser than fat, a person who exercised enough to convert 10 percent of their fat into muscle would still increase their BMI by just 1.8 percent. However, muscle is about 18 percent more dense than fat, so this is clearly not true. One problem with BMI is that it does not distinguish between muscle and fat.Ĭonsider that a person who does no exercise is 1.83 m, or 6 feet, tall and weighs 92 kg, or 203 pounds (lb), would have a BMI of 27.Īn Olympic athlete who is 1.83 m, or 6 feet, tall and weighs 96 kg, or 211 lb, would have a BMI of 28.Īccording to this, the athlete is more “overweight” than the person who does no exercise. However, he believes this new calculation gives a closer approximation to the reality of human shape and size. Humans are too complex to be described by a single figure. Trefethen points out that any calculation that assigns one number to a person will not be perfect. divides the weight by height to the power of 2.5, instead of 2, or squaredīMI (metric) = 1.3 x weight (kg) / height (m) 2.5īMI (imperial) = 5,734 x weight (lb) / height (in) 2.5.multiplies the weight by 1.3 for metric measures (kg), or by 5,734 for imperial measures (lb).He recommends a “new BMI calculator” that: The result is that short people think they are thinner than they really are, while tall people think they are fatter than they are. The height term, he says, divides the weight by too much when people are short and by too little when they are tall. Trefethen argued that the formula leads to confusion and misinformation. ![]() In 2013, Nick Trefethen, a mathematician from Oxford University in the United Kingdom, wrote a letter to The Economist in which he questioned the usefulness of the current BMI formula, calling it a “bizarre measure.” After all, people are three-dimensional, not two-dimensional, and healthy bodies grow in different shapes and sizes. Now, some people argue, we have technology that can help us add some complexity to the calculation. When Quetelet devised the BMI formula, there were no computers, calculators, or electronic devices, so he developed a simple system. ![]()
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