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Comment by bognition | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind that the medical classification of overweight and obese don't line up with what most people think of when they hear those terms. Anyone who is taller than average and has even a little bit of muscle mass will come in as overweight or obese.

Personally it used to cause me a ton of mental anguish until I realized that BMI (the metric used to classify someone as overweight or obese) is flat out wrong. At my peak fitness level my BMI was 30. I was lifting weights 3 days a week and running 3 days a week. Lifting sessions were 90 minutes and I was capable of running half marathons in less than 2 hours. My resting heart rate was between 52 and 57 BPM. I wasn't an athlete but my fitness level was pretty good.

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Your case is exception, not the rule. People always bring up how inaccurate the BMI is, and it's true but not for the reasons they usually think (i.e., overestimating how prevalent obesity is). BMI is bad because it actually underestimates obesity prevalence.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20125098/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2877506/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

What you say is absolutely true. But I will also say that most people have warped ideas of proper weight. Using myself as an example, I was 195 and felt like I was overweight but not obese. If only I could get down to 165 again I'd be skinny. Charts said my "normal" range was 120-140 and I felt like that was ridiculous. When I reached 160 I was surprised at how much fat was still on my body. Again at 145. When I reached 130 I could finally see that those numbers made sense. I was fit, not a lifter but not sedentary either. The range was perfect.

Agreed with everything except the first sentence. People's subjective judgements of normal have been warped because most people are fat. Hell, 42% are obese. Everyone is the captain of their own life but at people should at least be objective and honest with themselves and not try to dismiss reality as a coping mechanism, even if it is an unconscious one.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true. Just take a look at data of American BMI over time[1]. I don't think you can explain that away as "people are tall" (BMI takes height into account) and muscular, with a straight face -- very, very few people have BMIs over 25 due to muscle and very, very, very, _very_ few people have BMIs over 30 due to muscle. I think most people's natural judgement of overweight and obese are correct and for the vast majority of people it accurately buckets them into overweight/obese classifications because they are.

[1]https://conscienhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/BMI-Tr...

> (BMI takes height into account)

Does it do that correctly though? I've always wondered why the formula is not w / h^3, since I imagine your weight should scale cubicly with your height.

It’s well established that BMI doesn’t work well for diagnosing individuals but is a reliable and valid method for measuring obesity in populations. For individuals measuring body fat percentage is probably the most accurate measurement, but given the cost of reliable body fat percentage measurements, a scale, a mirror, and some honesty is what a person really needs.

I’m unsure I ever meet an adult that was obese on the BMI, was not obese by body fat percentage scale, and did not know BMI was inaccurate for them.

[0] CDC: BMI is not a valid diagnosis tool, but is generally correlated with body fat percentages. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/downloads/bmiforpactitioners.pdf

Most HN users can afford the cost of an annual DXA scan. It costs less than $100 to get an accurate body fat measurement.

The nice thing about DXA scans is that they can distinguish between visceral versus subcutaneous fat. For most medical conditions it's the visceral fat that's a real killer.

An anectdote: I am 5'10", have a 30" inseam (longer torso than normal for my height), and cycle a lot. My legs are quite muscular, and upper body is reasonable with just a bit of a stomach. My RHR is in the 50s. I weigh ~175 most of the time, dipping into the upper 160s during summer.

If my weight gets lower, into the low-to-mid-160s, even notoriously-skinny cyclist friends start to think I'm looking exceptionally thin and should watch it.

At my physicals the software automatically classifies me as overweight, but the doctor never mentions it, because he clearly gets how these categories can go wrong for folks like us. Someone my same height, with longer legs and a shorter torso, ends up 10-20 pounds just by nature of having less core. But of course BMI is just height vs. weight.

I'm your body double (5'10", wear 30/30 pants). I run (1:46 HM) and I lift (1.5x bw bench, 2x bw squat). My RHR is low 50s.

I'm currently 180lbs and trying to put on more muscle mass. I'm still pretty lean, with ab veins and shoulder striations.

I've only ever been out of the overweight category (<174) once in my life. I felt sapped of energy and looked gaunt, with veins popping everywhere.

That is a super interesting observation about inseam length mattering. I had never considered that and I have always looked with amazement at people my height who seem muscular yet weigh in the 150s. I always thought I was doing something wrong.

34/30 pants for me, but yeah, I think torso size is a big part of it. It also comes out in bicycle sizing.

Bikes are sized based on the horizontal length of the frame, via measurements "effective top tube length" or the similar "reach", with almost everything else being adjustable. So long as that length is good for your torso length, the other parts can be adjusted or swapped to dial in the fit. (This is why bicycle sizes tend to indicate a height range.)

The whole long torso length thing means that I tend to ride a larger frame with the seat adjusted shorter than someone with a shorter torso would. Thus, I generally ride a large from most companies, but have to be careful that the seat can be adjusted in the right position. Similar height buddies will often ride medium frames with the seat much higher. Their longer legs exacerbate the need for a shorter (length) frame because moving the seat up moves the hips rearward on the bike, making something even shorter needed. For a lot of the typically-athletic-build women (long legs) this can make it a real problem for them to find bikes as it's often difficult to have the seat high enough for their legs but a short enough reach.

(That old thing about sizing bikes based on being able to stand over them is completely wrong. Bike sizing needs to be done based on riding the bike, not standing over it.)

All of my experience would be the complete opposite. Obesity is so normalized in contemporary American society that we have skewed, unhealthy concepts of what is "skinny", "normal" and "fat".

Go watch the 1985 movie The Goonies and look at the character "chunk". By 1980s American standards he was so fat that it was a defining characteristic. In 2020s America he's an average kid. The same thing can be seen anywhere. Look at any photo of the general public prior to about 1980- high school year books, concerts, festivals, political rallies, beaches, shopping malls and compare it to a similar photo today, and the change in the average body and the number of obese bodies in the contemporary photo will be night and day different.

> Keep in mind that the medical classification of overweight and obese don't line up with what most people think of when they hear those terms.

I think it goes the other way round. Carrying excess fat has been normalized so most people don't notice they are overweight. Unless you are lean enough to have some clear abdominal definition I wouldn't be so quick to attribute overweight BMI to excess muscle.

Ok but 95% of people with high BMI are not because of too much muscle... they have muffin tops

I'm fairly confident that that percentage is actually 99.x%

> Anyone who is taller than average and has even a little bit of muscle mass will come in as overweight or obese.

I agree with the point you're making, but this generalization is nowhere near accurate.

This is really not true outside of extreme non-weight class strength athletes. I'm 6'2" and would need to hit 195 lbs before 25 BMI, which is where "overweight" starts. That's roughly Chris Evans at peak Captain American shape. How many people in any randomly selected group do you think are really more muscular than Captain America and that accounts for why their BMI is high? I'd need to be 234 to hit 30 and qualify as "obese." At that point, you're barely short of peak Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is not achievable without getting fat unless you're taking a lot of anabolic steroids.

And yes, heavyweight boxing champs and NFL linebackers do it, but it just goes to show what a joke PED testing is in most pro sports leagues.

> That's roughly Chris Evans at peak Captain American shape

> At that point, you're barely short of peak Arnold Schwarzenegger

Both of these examples are the low side of healthy body fat % though (as evidenced by impressively visible abs), approaching 10%; Where 15% body fat is 50% more than visible abs, and still very healthy.

Stallone could be an example though https://bodywhat.com/?v=ah9a486f 17.8% body fat at 5'10, 27.8 bmi (at age 38)

Vin Diesel @ 50 is not a bad option either for a 6' bmi obese (30.5), muscular, movie star (that isn't a body builder) https://www.bodywhat.com/?1=5h9cfjk7&2=39fkk0o3

> At my peak fitness level my BMI was 30.

Based on those numbers you were literally built like a NFL linebacker. If you were to swap out your hypertrophy sets for max-strength instead you'd likely be relatively stronger and could probably cut your per-mile time down to 7 minutes (from 9) as well.

Ignore BMI and use body fat percentage instead. Try to find a four-electrode machine (hands and feet) you can borrow periodically. (My gym has one and charges $20 per use; I would only expect to need to use it 3-4 times per year.)

I am pretty strong and still get chubby when over 25 BMI. Unless you are using AAS I personally doubt you are at peak healthiness at 30 BMI. And if you are using AAS, those are just as bad for your heart/cholesterol as being fat, if not moreso.

At 5’10 you need to be about 210 lbs to hit a BMI of 30. Highly doubt you will get there with a sub 15% body fat without AAS.

Having an imperfect method of measuring body fat is often used as a crutch to avoid accountability.

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