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112 - Sept 2009 |
I liked Jachut a lot and I loved her no-nonsense attitude about exercise and eating and how she didn't sugar-coat things or fool herself. But, on this one, she was full of shit. Period.
That's because BMI has absolutely nothing to
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125 - Nov 2010 (IMAZ) |
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114 - July 2009 |
BMI was created to make a guestimate of how overweight or underweight a person is, but it doesn't take into account body composition or frame size so the categories are very rough estimates. And, again, they have nothing to do with an individual's own health. Statistics are not predicative to an individual anyway.
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123 - April 2013 |
But you need to be careful if you try to put too fine a point on it and make distinctions that aren't there -- like the difference between 24.7 and 24.9 or 24.9 and 25.1. Because there is no study that proves that people with a BMI of 24.4 are, on average, healthier than people with a BMI of 24.7.
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113 - May 2010 |
To illustrate the wide range of weights that are covered by the "normal" BMI category, here are some pictures of me at various weights, all of which fall into the BMI range of 21 to 24.9.
As you can see, in some of them I have some pretty thin body parts (even if the whole is fine) and in some of them I am actually pudgy. Even sometimes at the same weight!
But they are all technically normal, if all you look at is BMI.
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117 - Feb 2010 |
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115 - June 2009 |
The ones I find the most interesting are the ones in the 120+ range. At Ironman Arizona, I'm 124-125 depending on the day and I'm almost as thin as I was at 112-113!
I'm not quite as thin because I have muscle covering some body parts that are a bit over-thin otherwise. You can't really see it because I have clothes covering my chest in the 120+ pictures. If I didn't, you'd see that my chest doesn't have that chicken-wing look at the higher weight that it does in the banner at the top of this blog. (However, right now I'm starting to get that look again because I can't lift weights. Grrrr.)
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125 - Sept 2012 |
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129 - Jan 2012 |
Okay, yes we will. I can't resist telling this story:
I met some people right before the 129 picture was taken who I hadn't seen since the summer of 2010 when I was 115-116 and looking similar to my May 2010 picture. Guess what they said? Oh, you look so much better now!
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130 - Feb 2013 |
Um, really? Sorry, but I don't think so. I've got these arranged by size, not weight and there's a reason that picture is next to last!
I'm much happier with how I look in both the IMAZ pic (125), the Wildflower Training Weekend pic taken last weekend (123) and the Team Altered Reality pic (112). Yes, there's a 12 pound difference within those pictures. The difference is muscle. I was in much better shape at IMAZ than I was at Bike MS.
So there we have it... many different weights all in the "normal" range but some clearly overweight, some on the thin side and some "just right." I hope you find it enlightening.