BMI Mistakes Muscle for Fat

BMI uses your weight in the formula but doesn’t distinguish if that weight comes from an abundance of fat or from lean tissue. Athletes and gym enthusiasts who carry a great deal of muscle may seem heavy for their height or overall size, but that’s because muscle is denser than fat. These highly muscular folk may have a high BMI but not have too much fat.

Individuals who are very muscular such as bodybuilders or those that have very little muscle definition may not receive an accurate BMI reading by using height and weight measurements alone. Muscle weighs more than fat. Hence a muscular person may appear to have a higher BMI and be perfectly healthy, or a frail, inactive person may appear to have a lower BMI and in reality have more body fat than is healthy.

Your health care provider can easily see with a physical evaluation and lifestyle questions that your high BMI is due to muscularity rather than fat. Further evaluations, such as blood pressure checks and cholesterol screenings, may still be performed to rule out any underlying health issues.

BMI Can Underestimate Fat

Because BMI does not directly measure fat, it can miscategorize people as healthy who have a normal weight for their height, when they’re actually carrying too much fatty tissue. A man with 20 percent or higher fat and a woman with 30 percent or higher, but both at normal weight, can be at the same risk of chronic disease as a person who looks obviously overweight.

Sedentary people and older adults are at particular risk of this condition, called normal-weight obesity. If you don’t exercise, you lose valuable muscle mass and accumulate excess fat — even if you don’t rank high on height-weight charts. Older adults naturally lose muscle mass as they age, along with some bone density. For this reason, health providers often run lifestyle screenings, family history questionnaires and annual blood tests in addition to BMI calculations on all patients. This helps rule out normal-weight obesity in otherwise seemingly healthy patients.

A normal BMI is only one factor in your overall picture of health. If you smoke, eat a nutritionally poor diet that contains a lot of sugar and saturated fat, or sit the majority of your day, you may still be at risk of health problems.

BMI May Not Reflect Positive Change

BMI is a broad number that doesn’t accurately reflect changes in behavior, which could be improving your health. People with a high BMI who are physically active are at lower risk for many health problems than people with a high BMI who are sedentary. For example, physical activity correlates with reduced risk of coronary heart disease and early death, regardless of your weight.

People who adopt a healthier lifestyle by exercising more and choosing healthier foods over junk food may not lose weight if they haven’t reduced their calories significantly. They are healthier, but BMI doesn’t change because their weight has remained stable. If they rely on BMI as the only marker of their health, their new habits don’t seem to be doing much good.

Even if you lose weight, your BMI may not change noticeably. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that losing 5 to 10 percent of your weight can lead to positive benefits, such as decreased blood pressure and cholesterol. In a 200-pound person, this is a loss of 10 to 20 pounds. Losing the weight may not move your BMI to a normal range, however. For example, a 5-foot-11-inch person must weigh between 136 and 178 pounds to register a normal BMI. If he started out at 200 pounds and lost 10 to 20 pounds, he may have improved his health, but he still falls into an overweight BMI range. Although a bit frustrating, the change still has positive benefits.

Weight Distribution and BMI

Healthier habits often also change the distribution of your weight, even if weight loss isn’t showing up on the scale. You may lose some visceral — or belly — fat, which is inflammatory and increases your risk of disease. Exercise in particular helps you lose this fat. BMI can’t tell that you’ve reduced a wide waist circumference and added muscle, creating a healthier body composition. It may just show an unchanged ratio of height and weight, putting you in an overweight category.

Your waist size may be a better marker of your health status because it indicates where you store fat. Use a measuring tape to measure around your waist just below your belly button. A waist wider than 40 inches on a man or 35 inches on a woman can be dangerous.

Those who have enough lean mass to be classified as obese by BMI but not by body fat percentage, are far and few in society. These persons would normally be highly active athletes, and it is unlikely sedentary persons or those with infrequent exercise habits would fall into this category.

Does not consider Age, Gender and Other Conditions

BMI fails to take age and sex into account. Women naturally tend to have more body fat than men of equal BMI, while older people tend to have more body fat than younger people with the same BMI.

Furthermore, BMI measurements have no way of measuring where body fat is located in the body. Studies have indicated that belly fat – the fat surrounding abdominal organs – is more dangerous than peripheral fat beneath the skin in other body areas.

If you are normal weight or overweight according to BMI (18.5-29.9) there is still a chance you are actually obese, which is primarily due to low levels of lean mass (muscle, water and glycogen).

BMI also does not account for lactating or pregnant women, children and teenagers who have not reached physical maturity and are still growing, and a tendency for natural differences in height and weight ratios between races.

Conclusion

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute suggests that an assessment of weight and health risks involves using three key measures

• BMI
• Waist circumference
• Risk factors for diseases and conditions associated with obesity.

As BMI is based on weight and height measurements, by losing weight you will reduce your BMI and put yourself into a lower risk group. A healthy diet, including a balance of food groups, vitamins and minerals, is essential for a long and active life. Body weight and shape are a balance of energy intake (dietary calorific content) against output (calorific burn from activity and exercise).

Many studies have shown that, to lose weight slowly and steadily, any diet that includes a healthy balance will work if you are motivated. Ideally, a balanced eating plan is always best to lose weight healthily.

Simply put, BMI can give you a rough idea of your level of health when considered along with your lifestyle and physical factors. Sedentary lifestyle with an unhealthy diet and belly fat all point towards the risks that your BMI indicates. However, if you’re the opposite of the above factors, BMI may not be a criteria doing justice to your overall health.

Until next time,

The Travellothoner.