“The body mass index has long been criticized as a flawed indicator of health. A replacement has been gaining support: the body roundness index.” Article unfortunately doesn’t give the freaking formula for chrissakes; it’s “364.2 − 365.5 × √(1 − [waist circumference in centimeters / 2π]2 / [0.5 × height in centimeters]2), according to the formula developed by Thomas et al.10”
Here’s an online calculator
How come there’s a metric button that doesn’t work?
Worked for me.
Drag tried on mobile and PC. Every time drag clicked metric, it reloaded and switched back to imperial.
Why are you referring to yourself in the third person?
Drag isn’t referring to dragself in the third person. Drag is using drag’s first person neopronouns.
As a separate person, Drag is not Dragonfucker but concurs that Drag pronouns make Drag sound very cool, and Drag would like to adopt Drag’s neopronouns for Dragself as well.
Awesome, drag is glad Drag likes them.
Height selection on metric side has jumps of up to 3 centimeters lmao. Makes me doubtful about the accuracy since I’ve never before seen that
I’m also pretty skinny and it says my BMI and body fat is great but that I’m too round. I don’t even have belly and it is showing me as quite rotund lol. I think there’s something fucky going on with my measurements or about inputting metric into the calculator.
E: Tried it again and now I’m out of healthy zone for being too lean. Hmm. I’m not sure if I measured wrong or they’re saying I should have a bit of a belly. Which is the sort of medical advice I actually want lol
Height selection on metric side has jumps of up to 3 centimeters lmao.
Too lazy to look, but given 1 inch = 2.54 cm, my guess is the tool is written in inches, and just rounds those values to the nearest whole cm, thus alternating between 2 & 3 cm increments.
Don’t Americans deal with differences smaller than 1 inch when it comes to height, is it just 2 footies 7 incherinos? I’m so used to it being per cm.
Tbh I’ve never before seen a dropdown selector for height before either. It’s always just fill in thing.
Maybe to a half inch, but it’s not super popular (except for kids who ALWAYS are proud of that half inch they grew in x period of time). At least, that was the case before I moved to the sanity of metricland.
They don’t. At most just 1/4 inch sometimes.
Partial inches are only used by people insecure about their height. “I’m 5’7.25” “, naw bud, you’re 5’7”.
I was thinking that this was a bit like with age. Someone telling you online that they’re “25 and a half”, yeah I bet you are lol.
But to me 3cm difference especially in this sort of calculations just seems surprisingly big.
The wikipedia page has a calculator that supports metric more properly
This is giving me body fat percentages that are around double what I get from other methods. Not sure what’s up, but I don’t really believe my 5’8" 150lb ass is 30% body fat
We’re the same height and weight and I got 22%. No. Way.
It’s incorrect, it claims my body fat is 19% when I know for an absolute fact it’s 22%.
Much better estimate than BMI innit?
I think interestingly enough it’s inaccurate in the other direction. While BMI is will call people unhealthy if they have a lot of muscles, this will call people healthy if they are like me severely underweight.
My roundness index claims it’s in the healthy zone while in reality my weight is unhealthy.
How do you know you’re unhealthy?
I’m currently receiving treatment for onset osteoporosis caused by malnutrition. Also it’s kinda obvious your weight is probably not healthy when your ribs are sticking out.
Hmm, that puts me at BRI of 2.1, and BMI of 35.4
Those both seem incredibly off.
But I do have extra dense bones apparently, which tends to be mostly what screws with my BMI, and my ability to float/swim. But they seem really hard to break, not that I try very hard… but none of them have broken yet. And I’ve been in situations that seem like they should have broken.
Either way, I weigh alot more than I look like I should, not quite “Wolverine getting on a motorbike”, but a bit like that.
Kinda makes me wish those “guess your weight” carnival experts were something I could see in real life, only ever seen it on TV.
BMI is the best measure we have for statistical purposes (i.e., a population) because it’s been around for 50(?) years and is what is often used in studies, so you can compare one study to another using BMI.
It’s also not terrible for a population because it averages out. But for an individual it is definitely not a good measure because there are way too many other variables that matter.
100% this, plus it’s very easy to measure.
Yes! Thanks, I had started to mention that and ended up with a huge run on sentence and it didn’t make it through the editing process. 😅.
we publishing peer-reviewed comments with this one
I think there is a better one, it’s called a mirror. I look at it every day and cry, but there is no question lol
Can’t tell you how disappointed I am that isn’t just a chart of increasingly tubby kittens.
Lvl. 10: “oh lawd he comin’”
Interesting. Found a calculator and according to this I’m “very lean” (only just) while I’m overweight (again, only just) using BMI.
Judging by the belly fat I can pinch, I’m gonna trust the BMI
Link please? Looks more informative than the one in another comment
I used this one
Yeah not sure how I feel about BRI. It’s telling me my BRI is fine, but I’m rounder than I’d like to be.
How round one wants to be is easily influenced by external factors like culture, though. I think slim bodies look sleek and beautiful, but it’s probably healthier to have a bit of fat in the right places (for times when your digestive system is on the fritz)
I like the effort for a body weight stat being more complete or useful for individuals, but my efforts measuring BRI came up kind of wack too :(. We decided it judged me too thin.
Be egg. It is the only way.
This is fascinating because I got a BRI of 1.9 and it’s saying I’m in the healthy zone. So I don’t really know what to believe here
Wikipedia has a chart:
I would be healthier if I were 1.4m.
I can I get your height? Gotta be 2.2m
For all waists < 85cm, 1.4m would be the best height.
Good to see it as a chart but that is different to the results it returns
I am a sphere.
If you’re frictionless too, physicists will love you
Especially if he lives in a vacuum.
The hard part will be inelastic collisions
Ready to ponder.
This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
As an overweight 35 year old who wore skinny jeans: I feel this.
Don’t skip scarf day
BMI is not a medical metric. Here is an article explaining that. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-02/the-problem-with-the-body-mass-index-bmi/100728416
deleted by creator
Donut is round, so definitely
Paywall.
it’s a gift article bruh
Well, it turns out they both tell me I’m a little too fat.
It is one of the most widely used health metrics but also one of the most reviled, because it is used to label people overweight, obese or extremely obese.
That’s like blaming the ruler for labeling you too short or too tall… Can’t we just use the tool for rough assessment, while being aware of its limitations, and be happy about it?
it’s easy to calculate but extremely rough. Efficacy varies immensely. Look, nobody’s forcing you to do anything, I’m just saying that BMI is way too rough to be seriously examined.
my main beef is that “too fat” is a wildly varying scale from person to person because everyone stores and processes fat differently. and if you’re “too fat” that may not in fact be your most relevant health concern. my experience with health providers that focus on BMI during intake is that if you’re “overweight” many other health problems will be seen through that lens even if they’re unrelated… in my case, lots of dieting advice, being told to exercise more come to find out decades later I had an undiagnosed nervous/muscular condition. now that it’s treated somewhat, my weight stays pretty much in “normal” BMI with the same or lower activity. I’m kinda pissed it took this long to get treatment for an underlying condition because the ruler said “too fat.”
Look at it this way, BMI is a cross section of weight and height. I was considered “overweight” for ages because I just had tree trunk thighs from hiking and weightlifting. Like, less than 16% body fat but told I’m ‘overweight’ every time I got weighed.
The ruler was fucking wrong.
Nowadays, I’m much more of a fat fuck so the ruler is right now but only just so… I’m still under 25% when using hydrostatic!
Or just make a better ruler?
i think you’re taking that quote out of context a bit. a few sentences later, the article says
Even physicians have weighed in on the shortcomings of B.M.I. The American Medical Association warned last year that B.M.I. is an imperfect metric that doesn’t account for racial, ethnic, age, sex and gender diversity. It can’t differentiate between individuals who carry a lot of muscle and those with fat in all the wrong places.
“Based on B.M.I., Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a bodybuilder would have been categorized as obese and needing to lose weight,” said Dr. Wajahat Mehal, director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program at Yale University.
so the point they seem to be making is that, while BMI is controversial partly because people like to shoot the messenger, it’s also just not a reliable measurement in a medical context, even as a heuristic. the article also goes into more detail on its other shortcomings as well. the article also indicates how BMI was never intended to be used in a medical context. so, there are plenty of valid reasons for wanting a new metric.
but i do think the sentence you quoted isn’t really doing the author any favors in terms of trying to communicate the central point of the article.
Seems like a lot of the flaws just have to do with the fact that the real metrics you want to use, which would probably be body fat percentage, are hard to measure accurately at home.
Says I’m 10%. BMI says I’m 22.5. I think that’s a big difference? I’m very tall, thin, but have solid muscle and work out about two hours per day.
Wonder if I’m doing it wrong? I have an athletic build similar to a soccer player, surfer, etc.
It puts me in the average range but close to obese. I have a six pack LOL.
I’m interested in other people’s experience with the tool.
Are you sure you’ve put in your actual waist measurement and not your hips? The ‘waist’ on most pants nowadays sits at or below the hip line and is therefore gonna be fairly wider than your waist. If you look up a graphic it should make sense
Now tell the doctors because as recently as this year one that I went to was talking about BMI.
It’s not doctors that need to know. It’s the insurance companies. They wrote the policies that pay doctors based on the BMI metric. Until those policy changes happen nothing will change.
Insurance companies quietly control so much and most people don’t realize it.
BMI has been antiquated for like 15+ years, so my guess is it’ll change when they die
Replacing BMI with BMI2 is fine, but it’s doesn’t change the fact that most Americans are overweight or obese, and the tiny, tiny sliver of people who have a high BMI from weightlifting are insignificant relative to the ~70% that are just plain fat
Yay, I’m a tiny sliver!
There’s also a lot of people who had essential muscles replaced with fat, thus evading the overweight designation while having an imminent risk of diabetes. This reflects that.
Help me out here. What’s BMI2 - searching gives me computer related stuff and running “BMI weight” just gives old BMI stuff.
They’re just calling this new thing BMI2 as shorthand
Oh, ok. Thank-you.
Seems like a good idea. Whenever I’m actively bodybuilding, my BMI is always shown as obese, and my weight shown as overweight, despite the fact that I’m 12% body fat. It’s annoying, especially if it has an impact on things like insurance costs.
yeah, been weightlifting for years, and the only time the BMI chart says I’m “healthy” is when I’m at my absolute shreddiest. Looking like I’m starving myself to shoot a nude scene in a movie. And I hate that. I know that when I’m at that weight, I may look great, but I’m also at my weakest. So I hate that this chart subconsciously bullies me into trying to maintain some ridiculous 9-12% body fat range, when that’s more of a body building competition range.
I’m guessing you’re a female? 9-12% definitely isn’t a healthy long-term fat percentage for women. Personally I think women look better with a little more padding anyways.
Explain that to the insurance company, that seems to be the relevant problem here.
