Where are you on the global fat scale?

Phub said:

What's the significance of BMI when men like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lawrence Dallaglio have weight-height ratios registering as obese. I don't think I would tell them they are 'fat'! Would you? .

Surely it would be better to asses a person's percentage of fat as a more reliable indicator of obesity. (But really, when it comes down to it, all we need to do is strip off and look in a full length mirror. (Or catch a surprise glimpse of ourselves on a video; as I did recently at a wedding!) That soon tells you if you are 'big'.

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A great deal of truth in this, particularly with regard to looking in the mirror and watching yourself on video. My weight has gone up and down over the years and is presently in a happy place, but I still cringe at footage taken, nearly twenty years ago, of me in a swimming pool with my then two-year-old daughter. Not a pretty sight, and one that prompted one of my occasional serious stabs at weight loss over the years.

Muscle is heavier than fat and I think most seriously muscly people don't conform to the norm and that healthcare professionals take this into account when assessing the BMI of such people. As an aside: is it just me who thinks that seriously muscly people, like professional body builders, for example, look massively abnormal and shouldn't necessarily be categorised as having a "healthy" physique, whatever that means?

.... That's before you even start on stuff like the steroids that they neck to bulk up their muscles; but I am veering off topic now ....

I agree with you about 'body-builders, and their physiology. But the fact is, as you said, muscle is denser than fat, and the same volume of muscle would weigh more than the fat, which might mean they are in fact overweight for their height. After all I suppose the heart doesn't know whether it is fat or muscle that's the burden. A sports fanatic would have a healthy heart of course, capable of supporting the extra weight.

I don't think all body-builders take steroids though. I never did when I joined a gym. On the other hand I never felt the need to become super 'muscly'. Just wanted to trim me down. It didn't work, so I saved my money, and started walking in Wales etc! That didn't work either until I stopped eating bread and spuds so much!

OK, I typoed 165 metres as my height and it said I had a BMI of zero and was from Bangladesh, har'fixed it to 1.65 metres and suddenly I was from Uganda

Sucre Bleu said:

OK, I typoed 165 metres as my height and it said I had a BMI of zero and was from Bangladesh, har'fixed it to 1.65 metres and suddenly I was from Uganda

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Keep trying - Tonga is clearly the place to be! But you might have to sit on the ground to qualify.

BMI of 25 below the UK average and above average globally and similar to Ukraine
so that means I am a global porker and a skinny Brit lol

carty said:

I am. at the very bottom of the list 18 Bangladesh !!!!
CAROL

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I'm with you in Bangladesh, Carty.

What I want too know is, how they knew I luuuuuurve curry and look like a native when I've spent some time in the sun?

Micronesia and it's not good.

Sucre Bleu said:

OK, I typoed 165 metres as my height and it said I had a BMI of zero and was from Bangladesh, har'fixed it to 1.65 metres and suddenly I was from Uganda

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Yes I remember Idi Amin, slim fellow. Well maybe you would have been better to have stayed with Bangladesh.

I got less than the UK average and I'm average for a country I can't spell, haven't heard of before and don't know where it is. So that wasn't terribly helpful.