Weight loss and BMI solution – forget about it.
Are you surprised about the headline? Or do you already know why you shouldn’t care about your weight nor BMI (Body mass index) – if not, continue to read and if you already know why, please continue anyway as I will give you a small present further down.
If you have Googled “weight loss” at some point you are not alone. Approximately 6 million people Google that phrase every single month, with a peak in January :-). Everybody seems to want to lose weight at some point and with the rising numbers of people suffering from obesity, it’s not that strange. Losing weight is a huge topic and the industry around, a giant money machine.
If you are a little bit more into it, you might have considered your BMI as well and not just your weight. Taking into account how tall you are, compared to your weight seems like a logical way to figure out if you are overweighted or “normal”. A BMI around 20-25 is considered to be good.
The problem with BMI:
If you look at the photo below you will see a picture of me during a workout. My BMI is 24.7, so I’m just on the border to be defined as “overweighted”. What do you think?
The BMI is asking how much mass your body has but what it doesn’t ask is what kind of mass. And there we have the problem with BMI
Let’s say you go to the butcher and ask for one pound of meat? Would you do that or would you actually ask for a specific kind of meat? BMI doesn’t ask that question. Mass is mass no matter if it’s bones, muscles water or fat. You see the issue with BMI?
According to BMI a person with a lot of muscles but no fat could easily be defined as overweighted. Where a person with little muscles and remarkable fat could be defined normal.
The problem with weight focus:
Years ago when I started on my fitness journey the following happened with my weight.
The first 6 months I gained 5KG. Say what? How can that be? Well very simple. As I hadn’t been physical active for several years my muscles mass had decreased a lot and when I started to work out it was natural for me as a man to gain muscles. Therefore the extra kg was simply me putting on more muscles.
After the first six months, something strange again happened. I suddenly started to lose weight. No, much but around 1kg a month. So how could that be? Without changing the amount of workout or my nutrition?
Muscles in contrast to fat require energy, even when you are resting. So the extra muscles I had gained suddenly upgraded my “body engine” from a V4 to a V6 – my body simply needed more energy and as I didn’t add more, it started to tear from my body fat.
Summaries of the problems:
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BMI doesn’t care if it’s fat, muscles, bones or water – therefore it’s not interesting.
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Weight control has the same problem. It’s just a weight and again it doesn’t matter what.
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When you start to workout you will probably gain weight and thereby raise your BMI as you put on muscles – which in the long run is good as muscles raises your metabolism.