What's a better metric than bmi? Anonymous 1963
AFAIK it excludes some factors like body fat % and doesn't work well for others like height if you're rather short or tall, and the constant used in the formula is petty arbitrary. It doesn't really matter if your bmi is just slightly under 18.5, as long as your body is getting all the macro and micronutrients you need in more than sufficient amounts, right? According to a number of sources the ideal bmi is between 20 and 21 for caucasians but most people look a little flabby sans clothes at that number, and that most underwear models who look perfectly healthy otherwise would be classified as underweight.
Anonymous 1964
Body fat % via DEXA scan seems rather consistent and accurate. Waist to height ratio is another better measurement of health than BMI but not always since some people will have more ideal body fat distribution than others. BMI is actually inaccurate BECAUSE it underestimates the level of body fat percentage people have at so-called "healthy" or even "underweight" BMIs, it's sometimes so bad it's known as "skinny-fat".
Anyway, I wish they had a BMI standard for people of African descent. We already know Caucasians' standard of BMI (which is the default), East Asians standard of BMI (which places anything above 23 BMI as overweight), and South Asians (which has a even lower BMI scale but I can't remember off the top of my head).All we know is that people of African descent have higher muscle mass and lower body fat than all of those groups but it's not good enough tbh. It gets very confusing losing weight and trying to find your ideal number but all you see are either for Caucasians or Asians.
I imagine most Caucasians look mediocre at 24-25 BMI for example because of the lower muscle mass and the sedentary lifestyles most people in America live which causes a higher body fat %. I can see 20-21 BMI just being plain skinny-fat but they could probably look better or just about the same as that woman in the OP pic if they worked out and build more muscle.
Sorry for the tangent I just have a lot of thoughts about this lel
Anonymous 1966
>>1964Thank you! This seems very expensive though, might settle for some cheaper methods like calipers.
Anonymous 1967
>>1964People of African descent have a standard that's higher than Caucasians, iirc it's a few points higher than Caucasians. A non hispanic white woman is considered Obese at a bmi of 30, a black woman is the same at 32. So a white person's bmi 25 is similar to a black person's 27.
Anonymous 1968
>>1964This. I'm caucasian, very athletic with BMI of 20-21 and my body is a lot like OP pic, but with more muscle and definition.
If you're very athletic, BMI becomes unreliable, just as it's unreliable if you're sedentary.
Anonymous 20022
1981987-4-Ways-to-…
If anyone is interested, checking your fat levels can be a better test. Basically take a pair of calipers (or use your fingers and a measuring tape) and grip the fat layer around a few places. This website is a good calculator
http://www.linear-software.com/online.html and a wikihow for how to do it
https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Body-Fat-Calipers. It won't work if you're already too fat iirc but it's a great indicator of being skinny fat and for if you're unsure if you're getting to overweight territory
