So in short: BMI is a tool in a toolbox that an expert can use to guestimate a starting point in someone analysis, but is used by way to many non-expert people as an absolute value.
*For someone who is average in height. Edit: as someone didn't understand what I was saying the calculations do not, we'd have to have no muscle, no bones and increase the same ratio in height width and thickness, for BMI calculations to work with height. which humans don't do.
Went to a nutritionist about low blood sugar and brought up BMI, she rolled her eyes and gently told me to ignore that. It was really refreshing and I felt like she looked at me holisticly and im grateful.
The correct answer was.. Eat right and excercise and see where you weight settles as a lean muscular person. Its not worth shedding muscle to get to a particular BMI. The BMI will probably settle at the border of normal and overweight. Weight can be further tuned with diet and excercise quantities.
As an adult male who sits at 225 pounds at 12% body fat, I have struggled with this my entire life. I am built larger than 90% of people that I meet, and I lift weights to complicate the situation. I’ve had concerns dismissed by doctors. I’ve had the military tell me that I was failing, despite passing all of my PT tests with flying colors, and it literally has become almost a psychological issue. Thank you for at least having a conversation about it.
When I was in my early-mid 20s, my doctor kept calling me obese because my BMI was 31. Suddenly everything was about my weight. I'm a woman, by the way, and was (and still am) on medications that makes weight loss very difficult. But according to doc, all I needed was less food and more exercise, even while I was going through issues that left me with barely enough energy to get out of bed, let alone go for a jog around the block. I was so glad when that doctor retired and I was transferred to one that didn't focus so much on my weight.
Doctor Mike didn't say to ignore your doctor when he tells you to lose weight. Nor does he say that being obese is healthy. All he says is that BMI is not a perfect indicator of health and that doctors shouldn't rely solely upon BMI when coming to a medical conclusion. My guess is that you have other health issues besides a high BMI if you are on a bunch of medications. I'm not a medical professional, but your doctor is, and if your doctor is telling you to exercise, then you should find some means of moving your body. If you can't jog around your block, then swim or walk. Don't ignore your doctor just because you don't like or agree with what they are saying.
@@inlikeflynn7238 Clearly you're under the misinformed opinion that weight cannot be a symptom, which it often is, as are many, many doctors are of that opinion, that even Dr. Mike has called out for focusing too much on weight and not weight as a symptom. I mean it; Dr. Mike has LTIERALLY CALLED DOCTORS OUT FOR HARPING ON WEIGHT and ignoring the patients ACTUAL health.
@@happyfirechannel, I read her comment. I'm certain that I know it in its entirety. If I have missed the mark then by all means tell me in what way I have erred.
@@inlikeflynn7238her point wasn’t that you shouldn’t listen to your doctor if they’re telling you to lose weight. Her point was that many doctors (especially when the patient is a woman) get so obsessed with their patients weight that they begin to ignore any other factors. I had one doctor that any problem I brought up to him the solution was always that I needed to just walk more and lose weight. When I went to him bc I couldn’t walk properly due to a hip injury his solution was that I just needed to go for some walks and lose weight. Turns out I have hyper-mobility, which contributes a lot to my weight. People get so obsessed with the negative effects of being overweight that they forget that everyone is built to look different and sometimes weight is a symptom not a cause.
When I was in nursing classes, my teacher said: “BMI isn’t the end all be all. You want to look at their body type. Because some people will look skeletal losing weight based on it, and some people will look overweight and fall into the right category because of the way they carry their weight.” And I think about that a lot.
Exactly, that's why it's called "Indicator", it gives you a fairly good idea for general population, and unless you have very high muscle mass, it will actually be very accurate. 18.5-25 covers a loooooot of bodytypes.
Definitely true for me. I am naturally muscular and large-chested, so a healthy weight for me is at the very upper end of the “normal” weight range. I would look skeletal anywhere in the bottom half of the range.
@@pinkdoobie well, that's why it's a range ;) as you said yourself, you are large-chested and muscular and even with that your healthy weight fits "somewhere" within their "normal" range, even if it is within the upper limit ;)
When I was born, my moms doctor felt my knees and other joints, and told her I would become a giant. And he was right. I am heavy, but I have the skeleton to match. On the other side I have a colleahe who almost weighs the same, but he has far smaller bones and joints, and also has way more health issues.
@@pinkdoobieI am a 40h bra and my dexa scan said just my bones weight 128lbs. So 10+ lbs of boobs. 138 at 5'8 female. 138 is ideal weight. So no organs or fat... Cool cool
When I was in high school I was a gymnast and a dancer and was made of pretty much just solid muscle mass. I weighed 125 lb at 5'1 and my doctor told my anorexic mother that I was on the verge of being morbidly obese and used the BMI chart to prove her point. Aside from the fact that she was a very toxic doctor, it has always stuck with me that she was able to use that chart and ignore my muscle mass, my bone density or any other part of my body and just label me overweight when I very much was not. This resulted in years of body dysmorphia and issues with my mother not feeding me.
Doing some napkin math and looking at the charts, 125 lbs at 5'1" gives one a BMI of 23,6. For women this on the far end of normal spectrum, and achievable entirely through muscle mass for most. In order to be considered morbidly obese one has to have a BMI of 40 or more which, at that height, would mean something like 212 lbs. To say that the doctor used the charts to prove her point would be... Overly charitable. This woman deliberately lied about the charts, probably with malicious intent.
I'm gonna call bulshit on you being a woman who is not a drugged up bodybuilder being obese by BMI while being very low bodyfat. Yeah sure you probably had some extra muscle mass, but most likely not more than 10kg, not even natural bodybuilders if short women, get more than 15kg of extra muscle. And gymnasts do not grow as much muscle mass as bodybuilders do. The BMI 23.6 earlier commenter said seems more reasonable
@@Jaggaraz218Nope, there are doctors that will 100% say this, especially if they're part of a medical spa, but it's not limited to those. I was 20 pounds underweight and was told that my 18% body fat put me at risk of "skinny obesity" and I needed to buy their supplements to fix it. A good doctor wouldn't do that, or even maybe a mediocre one, but there are crappy doctors as much as there are crappy professionals in any field.
My very athletic rock solid daughter has been called overweight since she was a kid at all her physicals based on the BMI and I honestly think it affected her. Shes a swimmer and a water polo player. I saw her go through a phase where I think she didn’t eat enough. She’s 16 now and doing very good and apparently is now not overweight according to the BMI. We still hate it. My husband went off on a doctor once because we were sick of hearing that at every appointment.
Uch. In the old days in my culture they used to day "you'll grow into your body" and that was it. it was true, shame, trauma and eating disorders get in the way and nowadays we have health problems associated with "weight" that weren't around before. It was never the weight. Your kid is a powerhouse and they want to turn her into Kate Moss
I had that issue as well the bmi chart said one thing and the nurse still had to send the letter home. Our school nurses at least had the common sense to tell us were not and to not worry about it because as athletes who are health it's gonna be wrong especially for us short ones.
As a kid I was in the same boat. Athletic young girl that BMI called obese. But I will say, my parents assuring me that this isn't always accurate and they don't want me to worry about my BMI helped. I was still upset about it but support from my mom and dad kept it from developing into an issue.
@@coinwater8511 that’s great! We did the same for my daughter. We always talked about this BMI and how it doesn’t take into account muscle mass which is much heavier than fat. She understood and I think that helped her. She knows being strong is very important especially in the sport that she’s in. She’s a very confident 16 year old and we are so proud of her. A good support system for kids that hear that they are overweight or obese from doctors is what they need.
I’m in the camp where the number totally does NOT line up with the reality of my health. According to the BMI, I’m morbidly obese, but my doctor says if I were to get down to the “normal” range I’d be dead from malnutrition - he recognizes that it doesn’t work *for me* and worked with me to determine what’s a good weight range FOR ME. He knows it’s a tool and how to use it. I think it would be helpful if instead of a single scale, maybe it were calculated for different races - still not going to be good for every individual, but at least more accurate for people with different backgrounds
This sounds like pure fat logic. Even if you were a bodybuilder or an athlete with a lot of muscle mass, which I doubt, no one with literally any understanding of the human body would say that to you.
In France BMI is not everything even when you see a specialist for your weight. The body fat, the history of the person, health, the type of food eaten is more important than BMI which is just a tool among other. Great video, very informative
I was about to give the same answer than you. When i read the comment it feels like Americans are obsessed by BMI 🙀. Mine IS checked because i'm skinny but even when it's very low they don't make such a Big deal out of it and helped me with supplements if necessary but i don't end up with a tube to feed me for exemple.
@@ninanegri4794 Tbf America also has an insane scale of obesity. So its not a surprise if weight is often considered a problem. But yeah, if BMI is actually used that much without consideration of other factors, even by healthcare insurances, then thats kinda crazy.
This goes the other way too. I have been in a ball of pain and I've been told "go home, gain some weight, get your eating disorder under control". 1. I have costochondritis and the flares can feel like a heart attack. 2. I don't have an eating disorder. 3. They didn't do a single test (not blood or even listen to my chest). They just assumed I have an eating disorder and sent me home after an 8 hour wait. Turns out this time it was appendicitis during a chest flare up so I couldn't tell the pain apart. So many people assume I'm anorexic or bulimic, I'm not. I just have a lot of health issues that make eating really difficult. Maybe if the doctors fixed them I COULD GAIN SOME FREAKING WEIGHT!
Yeah, similar issues here as far as being underweight. As a guy, I was never accused of an eating disorder, but was often told to put on weight. I was generally around 17 BMI up until my 30s, but I was always in good shape (lots of sports, and a dance teacher for a long time). I just had a really small waist/hips. Now I'm at ~21.5 BMI, which is easily in the normal range, but I'm very much out of shape and obviously have plenty of belly fat. Now doctors don't encourage me to get in shape while they should, unless I point out to them the health issues I'm having for being overweight relative to my norm (which was pretty far from the average).
Yeah we (society) really over estimate weight as a predictor of health, at either end. My grandfather was over 300 pounds most of his adulthood-- he lived to 91.
Same here, 5'11 120lbs. Not an eating disorder, just don't get hungry like that! Hernia w/ esophagitis, hyperthyroidism, and anxiety I think all contribute
That’s crazy they assume you have an eating disorder because of your size. It could be because of so many other possibly serious conditions causing weight loss or affecting your ability to absorb the nutrients from food.
I once went to the doctor with severe abdominal pain (could barely walk, the pressure from contact with my clothes made it worse), and because my BMI was 31, my doctor (who was a woman) told me I just needed to lose weight. I had recently stopped lifting weights and exercising regularly due to the pain increasing in the last couple of months before that appointment. I told her that, but she insisted I needed to try to work out, and that would most likely fix the problem. Turns out I had (and still have) endometriosis, which runs in my family (which I also told her), but because BMI is such a major cop-out for some doctors/clinics, she wrote me off as just obese and lazy and that working out would fix my pain. It in fact didn’t do that.
Exactly! I couldn't breathe, told doctors at every turn it gets worse when I lose weight and they said lose weight and it'll get better. My sister had a slipped disk in her back and went undiagnosed because of her weight, some of which is inflammation.
so sorry for you two, I get dismissed too as a skinny person whose bmi is underweight… they need to stop following their books and start paying attention to people! hope y’all are doing ok now
@@Luke99Granato That is not a good excuse because being fat does not necessarily mean being unfit or unhealthy (coming from someone with lots of experience with this sort of thing). I can excuse most people not knowing this but if you are in the medical field and working with this sort of thing, you SHOULD know this fact. And if someone is complaining about *that* kind of pain paired with a known history of endometriosis, any competent doc would have at least thought to do a test.
When I was 21, I went in to clinic for a lung condition. I could squat 200 pounds, run a 10k, and ate very healthy. My blood markers were excellent. My doctor did not consider a single one of those factors- he just looked me dead in the eye and told me he thought my pneumonia was exacerbated by the fact that I was "chunky for a woman" and i "really needed to lose some weight" I weighed in, fully clothed, at 160 pounds at 5'7", which is an "overweight" BMI of 25. If I had weighed in at 158 pounds I would have come in at a "normal" BMI of 24.9. We can argue about whether i was "optimally healthy" or not, but you can't deny that BMI flattened me into a one dimensional object in his mind, defined exclusively by a single metric, rather than a whole human patient with a variety of factors that should be considered when evaluating my overall condition.
I've also noticed that BMI becomes more inaccurate the more you head from average height. The so called edge of "healthy" weights for someone tall is way too high and the weight for someone short is ridiculously low and they have a tiny difference in weight to be considered healthy.
The margins are really thin, so to speak, for us short people. I watched my 5'2 friend go from "overweight" to "healthy" in one day by fasting and deliberately getting dehydrated, and then go from that "healthy" weight (he did not look healthy) to "obese" in a single week just by eating like he was on vacation.
@themelonsoup same here. I'm 5'0 and even though I plan on continuing my weight loss (went from 184 to 164lbs) I don't plan on trying to reach the weight that BMI says is ideal.
@@mkg2124 I'm on the same journey (the oh so slow journey) at 5'1 and while I am very much overweight now, in highschool I was very much underweight. . .I didn't even weight enough to do the blood drive at the time.
When I was in high school, my doctor told me I was overweight because of my BMI. I reminded her that I was ballet and swimming, at least one of those classes, per day. She still told me to lose weight. Because of her I kept feeling fat, even though I was the fittest I've been in my entire life. There was a lot of problems with that doctor because she only cared to sell me on using birth control and not my overall health. I stopped going to her once I became 26 and had to pay my own health insurance 🙃
Gods, I’m so sorry. As someone who actually needs BC for a medical issue, that’s so fucked up. It is NOT something to just take lightly, it really can mess with you if it’s the wrong thing for you or just wrong one for you.
When he spoke about doctors citing BMI for every health condition experienced by obese people, my mind instantly leapt to a similar thing where doctors cite birth control (or lack thereof) to every health condition experienced by female patients.
This exact same thing happened to me. I was heavier due to muscle mass from swimming and dancing. It resulted in me developing and eating disorder that contributed to me losing my athletic abilities. I hope my doctor has changed her ways since then.
Honestly this makes me think that this person wasn't fat, but a normal weight+had a lot of muscle mass. You don't stay just fat and bones while doing a sport every single day, and high muscle mass is the single area where BMI as a scale fucks up the most.
When I was 180 pounds, I was definitely overweight. I dropped to 150 and was barely in the "normal" category. Then I started working out, weight training and getting a lot of walking in. I am now op to 162 and "fat" again even though my body fat is likely lower than it was at 150.
"Having a larger body isn't inherently harmful." - that is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard you say. As someone who had a lot of muscle, was fat shamed since puberty, and put on diets which then created the problem which they supposedly were going to "fix", I feel like a load of bricks are gone. I have always appreciated your efforts for unbiased and accurate information, no more so than with this video. I am so tired of being told to take pain medication and lose weight to fix everything. The body fat caliper is one of the tools that was used to fat shame me when I had no excess fat. When the measuring person at my middle school could not pinch any fat on my calves, instead of realizing I did not have a fat build up on my legs because I was a child who still ran and played basketball and played tag, they told me I had so much fat that it hardened and so put high numbers on my "official record".
As a medium sized 26 year old black woman in the military who constantly worries about how much weight they’ve gained before taking my fitness test every year, I’m shouting from the mountain top, thank you! Health isn’t linear and I’m def not the same size I was at 18 that I am now. But! You’ve managed to say so eloquently what I’ve been talking to so many people in the military about for so long. ❤
When my husband was in the Air Firce there was a guy he worked with who was a body builder, he participated in body building contests for the Air Firce and the military kept listing him as over weight and trying to put him on a diet. It was hillarious because this guy could move a 500 pound tool box on wheels out to the tarmac to work on F-15s that all the other guys had to have towed just to do their work. BMI doesn't apply to every person in every situation.
I had a buddy in the Marine Corps that was shredded, like sub 12% bodyfat, and his goal was to get jacked enough that he "broke" his weight max and force the admin guys to measure his body fat. While he had a six pack.
I don't know how long ago and if the Air Force does things different but in the Army if we "failed" the BMI they would measure your neck, arms and waist to see if you were just built up.
They also do tape for situations like this. If you “fail” height and weight (aka BMI over 27) they will tape you around your waist and neck to make sure there’s not an excess of body fat, since they are aware that muscles can mess up the BMI calculation.
It’s so nice seeing a doctor talk about this. I remember being a little kid and being told my BMI was so high that I wouldn’t live to 20 (I’m 25). Now, every time I go to a doctor they tell me my disability will disappear if I lose weight. I was born disabled and have developed arthritis because of the way the condition has affected my body. My sister has been told she’s obese her whole life and that caused her to develop an eating disorder, when in reality she’s not overweight at all. She just has a lot of muscle mass, especially in the legs.
This feels like the story of my life, besides I have EDS and not arthritis! My sister also has tons of muscle and stuff, and I do too, I was always told I'd get better mental health and physical health if I lost weight, but come to find out, pretty much everything I have is due to genetic conditions, which unfortunately doesn't help my stomach and thighs tending to have more fat on appearance. If I just had some of my stomach fat on my damn ribs, I'd look "too thin" really lol. BMI is so dumb
@@lovelysakurapetalsyt that depends. If you eat more calories than your body burns, then that could be the reason for your fat. If your stomach and thighs “tends” to have more fat, then that could be something to consider. Fat is a result of overconsumption of calories.
@@lovelysakurapetalsytThe stomach and thighs naturally have more fat in women. For childbearing. Being overweight is a result of eating too many calories. Medications and conditions can make it easier to overconsume but the point still stands. Have these ‘genetic conditions’ been diagnosed or are you making excuses for yourself?
I live in Korea, here doctors are absolutely obsessed with just a very tiny BMI range as being healthy. Practically any health issue whatsoever will be blown off as a consequence if you do not fall within the confines of what they consider to be a healthy BMI.
That isn't just a Korean thing, that's a problem that runs throughout any country that uses BMI. Plenty of stories from 'Murica and various countries in the EU about doctors using it as the end all, be all and a way to say "get healthy" and ignore other problems.
Korean people and body structures are very similar so it's a more apt metric to apply universally over there. AKA, Korea is not a diverse place. I bet they still use gender though. You, and especially the Americans will not understand this.
I love that Dr. Mike always talks about weight in a very respectful way, not blaming overweight people and seeing them as complex humans and not just balls of fat (which is sadly the approach of many doctors). Thank you for making us feel seen, Doctor Mike, keep up the good work :D
But also fat people also need to be told to do something about it. Chronic illness is inevitable otherwise. Our first priority in health should be avoiding T2D. The default lifestyle and diet is a guarantee of T2D later in life.
Researchers did this without AI, I'm not sure we need one. We could do simple statistical regressions and set up some threshold for risk increase...right?
I am so lucky that my primary care physician, the first regular doctor I've ever had in my life, has never once used my weight to try and downplay any issues I've had. Not my depression, not my anxiety, not my dysphoria. She's always listened, acknowledged and done her best to properly treat me as a person and not a number on a scale. Is she perfect? Not even close, but I'd sooner cut off my foot than give up a doctor who actually cares.
Thats really cool to hear, as someone hoping to find a better doctor and treat my own dysphoria through medicine, and a taller individual who can easily be mistaken as overweight even though I exercise rigorously daily, I can only hope I'm that lucky.
I’m glad you are able to have someone like this. I too had two great drs, my primary and my gynecologist. They never brought up my weight with symptoms I was having that had nothing to do with why I was there, unless a specific symptom was caused from my weight, then it was mentioned. They always listened and took what I was saying seriously. They both knew I suffer with PCOS- Polycystic Ovarian syndrome, and know it causes a lot of unfortunate side effects that can be treated , but PCOS itself isn’t curable.
idk if that's an America or worldwide thing, for me I only get weighed by the nurse checkup prior to meeting the actual doctor. though, im severely underweight and need a way to cure my ED (which isn't anorexia btw, its been ruled out, but idk the exact one still)
Being overweight can cause depression, anxiety, and dysphoria. It’s called overweight for a reason, unless you’re an olympic level athlete it’s generally correct.
I am a healthy person, in my late 20s, doing amateur competition in a weightlifting sport. My BMI is juuust barely in the obese range, but I am MUSCULAR. Doctors can't seem to get over the fact, that my BMI is not ideal. They order blood sugar tests. Comes back perfect. Blood pressure test-> perfect. Complete bloodwork done ->perfect. The doctor at the checkup: "You should still lose around 20% of your bodyweight"..... Sometimes it feels like metrics can get in the way of common sense...
You should listen to them. Having excess body mass is detrimental if it’s that much. A lot of weight lifters need to loose mass eventually for health reasons, regardless if it’s not just fat.
You are allowed to refuse being weighed at the doctor and tell them you don't want a weight focused practice. This is important. I lost 20 years and was damaged by their narrow focus. Please advocate for yourself. You can find better care. It's hard, but possible.
"Doc, I bet I could bench press you." Or alternatively, Show them a video of you working out. If they don't believe you, invite them to come with you. I'm serious. Their hypothesis is that you're lying there's a very easy way to test that hypothesis. And in reality the best option is try to find one that gets it. They're hard to find because they're usually completely booked.
I recently developed Crohn's disease and it took a little over a year to get diagnosed because of BMI obsession. Before I got sick I had a BMI of 30 and over the course of a year lost 75 ibs and am now underweight. Every time I went to the doctor begging for help I would get comments about how good it was that my BMI was going down. Later on as my weight dropped too much for the formula's liking the narrative turned into how I must have an eating disorder. No actually, the whole time my small intestines were badly inflamed, non-functional and I had a partial bowel obstruction.
Sudden unexplained weight loss should always be a red flag to check for something wrong. It's disturbing that doctors either don't know or ignore this. I realize they don't get enough time with patients, but just looking at the chart to see how much was lost and hearing the patient say it was unintentional and describe symptoms should be enough. 😡
Sorry to hear that, I have family that has a similar disease (some stomach diseases make it so eating vegetables and fruits contribute to cancer faster in the body) hopefully you're going to a gastroenterologist for it. You're strong you got this!
Yea ,my friends mom's cancer was unnoticed for a while because around the time she also started trying to loose weight. So her losing weight was the goal but they didn't know it was also because of cancer. She sadly didn't make it ,even with chemotherapy , she died this easter. My friend wished to have gone to her because she was also already awake before her mom must have died.
I ran track in highschool and did fairly well. In college, though, my coach had me lift a bunch of weights and I gained 20lbs from 175 to 195. I'm 6'2". Over the summer after my freshman year I went to my family doctor for a checkup, and he told me I was getting a little overweight based on my BMI and that I needed to watch my diet based on a heightened A1C test. I told my physical trainer, who is also an M.D., this and she laughed. She set me up with one of those nuetral bouyancy clinics that measure body fat percentage. They told me I was at 3.8% and was at risk of injury for being so lean. This was offseason in September, so no need to be cut either. My trainer also ordered another round of bloodwork and found I was anemic which apparently can cause a false high A1C test. Doctors that can't pick up and factor in context clues like strenuous occupations, training, or other blood test indicators need to stop, it's lazy and disengenuous. If anything this taught me I need to start shopping for a different doctor from ones that look at things so one dimensionally. Ten years later I weigh 205lbs and with clothes on its 215 which is squarely in the middle of having an overweight BMI, but my doc can at least tell I'm healthy and fit.
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BMI is useful for assessing populations, not individuals. If a doctor needs to calculate your BMI to make their "recommendation", they haven't done their due diligence by specifically looking at your body composition with both a visual inspection plus blood work. That said, for patients that are clearly obese, doctors might choose to tell the patient their BMI number just to give them something to work towards lowering.
@@loganmedia1142 Trends in obesity-related diseases. Population-level BMI measures do correlate quite well to population-level disease rates that have ties to obesity.
My BMI says i am fat.. Well i am fat, so i guess it works in my case 1.5K likes for calling myself fat, is kind of nice. However there is a lot of positive feedback below
Thank you for bringing this up. I had a doctor evaluating me for a knee injury after a car accident tell me I just needed to loose some weight. The fact that my knee was bashed in the crash didn’t seem to matter. I was fat and therefore I didn’t need anything more than weight loss and exercise which was challenging because I was injured 🙄
Well yeah, athletic people have a far better chance of recovering from any knee injury. Especially serious ones like ACL tears. Ligaments get very little bloodflow so it doesn’t help if someone becomes obese and also doesn’t exercise. Not much you can do for knee injuries, usually they either heal on their own (provided the patient has a good diet and adheres to physiotherapy and lives an active lifestyle) or sometimes surgery will be performed to reconnect ligaments for example ( mainly in athletes). Only time urgent care is needed if its so out of place that it tears blood vessels. Which didn’t happen because you’re still here today.
I went through that exact same scenario. Smashed my knees against the dashboard and was told nothing was wrong and to just lose weight. Saw a different doc and now I have a partial knee replacement and had one surgery on the other knee and will likely require more. Some doctors are either blind or assholes. I hope you are doing well. I hate to hear of others going through what I have. It's such an awful situation. 💐 Good luck.
I got my physical done by a new doctor. I have a BMI that says I'm obese. I'm also a competitive strength athlete, and hover around 14% bodyfat. She looked at the scale, looked at the chart, looked at me and said "is that a good weight for you?" And when i said yes, we moved on.
I feel like its common knowledge that BMI assumes an average muscle mass, and hence is kinda useless for athletes. Thats even how I learned about it in school.
@termitreter6545 you're certainly right that it SHOULD be common knowledge, and I think we're getting closer to it being common knowledge. But I've had 2 doctors that told me I needed to lose weight while I had visible abs because my BMI was too high.
hello doctor mike! i have been watching your channel for 3+ years and as a teenager you have taught me so much. you even made me become the person i am today. i am more interested than ever in medicine, and the thought of it makes me really happy. words cant put into how much i wanna thank you for everything. you have amazing humor and a great personality, theres never a dull moment with you around. you have truly changed the world for the best. i never got to say how much i appreciate you since i always forget to because of your amazing videos. i hope you continue being awesome, good luck on your journey! love from greece❤
I feel like this just proves just because you are good at academics doesn’t mean you know how to apply things in IRL situations. Like…too many doctors use BMI honestly as a weapon, and too many of them cannot handle something off book, which REALLY harms disabled and chronically ill patients the most.
My doctor told me my lung was collapsed and I was anemic because I'm overweight. I was in to see her because I had lost 30 pounds over the last month without trying. I have my appt follow-up after a bone marrow biopsy with my hematologist/ oncologist next week. I'm glad I did not just believe my weight was the issue.
@@yuriy5376 Not fantastic, but at least I know it is not all happening because I'm fat! I'll also be finding a new doctor! Gotta find the positives. Thank you for asking. Truly.
My BMI has said I was overweight for the past several years...including when I had just begun recovery from anorexia. Now, I'm 3 years in recovery and facing a surgery being barred from me, based on a BMI that never even included me in the studies that created the measurement. My only hope is that the surgeon will accept a DEXA scan of body fat, and hell...maybe I'll even show him this video to encourage him to use a DEXA scan over BMI, especially for someone like me.
Yeah, someone close to me - same gender, similar height, very different build - weighed significantly more than my heavier-than-I-need-to-be weight at the peak of their anorexia. They'd even developed many of the other classic physical symptoms, but because they're naturally large, it wasn't clocked until they saw a psychiatrist for an apparently separate issue. Even now, they have trouble getting doctors to take their cardiac health concerns taken seriously, in spite of what's now in their medical notes, because apparently large + bradycardic = defying the odds and having a fit, healthy heart, yay!!!1!1, and definitely not a persistent ED-related arrhythmia.
BIA, DEXA, and caliper measurement are actually all pretty equal in terms of accuracy (~4% measurement error). The former have validity limitations (the tech doesn't always estimate fat mass correctly), whereas calipers have reliability issues (measurements can differ between clinicians administering caliper testing).
Well, you seem to be talking about the actual measurements themselves. By that standard, BMI would probably be even more accurate (depending on the accuracy of the scale and height measurement). It's the validity of any of those methods compared to risk assessments at large, or specific issues for the person that's really the question. You could map the type and position of all fat in the body, and even include its composition (in case you've got fat-soluble molecules that could cause problems if they get loose), but then we still wouldn't know for sure how it's going to affect your health. We'd have a good guess, but bodies are quite complex and you need ridiculous amounts of data to paint a truly accurate picture.
BMI always told me I was overweight, so I felt bad about my body and tried losing weight. Looking back at pictures from 10-15 years ago, I looked awesome! It's so sad that I felt so bad about myself when I actually looked good, and my health was never in danger. Now I would give anything to look like that again. To anyone who is concerned about their health, take a measuring tape and measure your waist. That's a great way to see if you're walking around with too much bad fat around your organs.
I was once so focused on my weight (and BMI) to the point that I collapsed due to anemia. I figured out that staying out late and eating late (usually at 2pm) would decrease my weight so I did that for a couple of months. My weight was normal but boy did I collapsed. I know there are other factors though. Since then, I took iron and supplements and my body got heavier. Looking back at those pictures now, I really am not proud at my body during those "healthy bmi" ranges. I look so thin and not healthy
I went to my previous doctor because I have a problem falling asleep and wanted to find out what the problem could be. The first thing I was asked was my weight. When the doctor found out I had a BMI of 26, the doctor suggested that I should eat more healthily and lose weight, it would help to fall asleep and it's not just the one doctor who says that bullshit, there are many who come up with that answer . In my case, it turned out that I have ADD where I have thoughts galore and it is so intensified in the evening when I try to relax and want to sleep, I have been given medication that helps and now have no problems falling asleep and by the way, I still have a BMI of 26.
When I was 12 I was told that I was obese by my doctor because of my BMI. That was the start of a whole chain reaction where I eventually developed a slight ED in highschool. Once I was completely alone in college, my ED started to get worse since no one was watching me eat anymore so I go almost a whole day without eating any. From there it would be almost three days before I'd have an actual meal and not just a microwavable instant potato cup.
And that's why higher weight is associated with negative health outcomes. Because people in larger bodies are shamed into starving themselves and damaging their health. I've never met a woman with a high bmi who wasn't restricting food, using starvation to "punish" herself, etc
@@funnybone_fuxia Dexa (Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) is basically a type of x-ray system that is used to measure bone density, as well as body composition.
I went to the paediatrician about a year ago now to discuss my bleeding disorder, and right near the end, he commented that I should watch my weight. I just looked at mum and chuckled. I, as I did a year ago, play 2-3 games of field hockey a week, with two 1.5+ hour trainings a week + gym work. I feel like he was just going off my BMI instead of actually asking me what was healthy for me and what my lifestyle was like. We just need to find a better, but still inexpensive way to get accurate body fat measurements, because I know several people who would’ve taken this comment to heart a lot more than I did
People tend to forget that BMI grants you a RANGE - it isn't just a single number, even though fat activists like to treat it might it is. The range my height gives me is about 40 lbs. That's more than enough to account for things like muscle and bone density. Also, exactly who are these doctors mentioning BMI at every appointment? Mine has never come up and I've been both obese and a healthy weight. I get *weighed* at every appointment, but that's far from it being brought up randomly by my doctor.
What you're saying makes total sense. I am classified as obese and I can't stop hearing about it. It comes up in almost every doctor visit that I have. And if it doesn't it's on the sheet that I am given after the appointment. I have had to apologize over and over again. It is a topic that I do not like to bring up. And if you yell at me about it I get very uncomfortable. Which makes me less willing to come in. A notable example from my recent history would be this: I have endometriosis. I went to see a specialist on this matter. During the appointment all she wanted to do was talk about my weight. She suggested expensive and uncovered bariatric surgery to address my weight issue. All so her work could be easier. The entire appointment I felt judged and unwelcome. She only talked about the issue that I came there for upon our insistence. Needless to say I did not feel comfortable with her. I did not go back.
So… maybe eat less? I don’t know how to tell you this, but being fat is unhealthy. Do you know how hard doctors works? Obviously they want their job to be easier! Imagine how tired they are of constantly trying to help someone whos actively destroying their body and making your job harder…
@@socire72You know I wish it was that simple. If it was there would not be an entire diet industry. Alas, it is not as easy as you say it is. But since you know everything then I don't think you have to worry about it.
My doctor's obsession with my BMI around 2004 sent me over the edge into an eating disorder. I was 14, and I was only 4' 11". The BMI charts I've seen don't even go that short btw. Yes, I had always been a little chunky, but my doctor kept insisting that I needed to get down to 100 pounds. I stopped eating almost completely. I got down to 115 and looked like I was sick, like a wasting-away cancer patient or something. Skinny neck with tendons showing, sunken eyes, etc. No thanks. 🙃
Your take on the bias is spot on! As a figure of speech, I could go to my former GP with a broken ear lobe and she would attribute it to my weight. Also, I remember, several years ago, I twisted my ankle as I went to walk my dogs (just a misstep). It was sore but hey, I have a high threshold for pain (AuDHD). I just kept working (being on my feet all day). After a week or so, from one moment to the next, I couldn't walk. It was like something was stuck and I couldn't make a walking motion. Went to the GP and she was like, yeah no work for a bit and let it rest. I had to go back several times for work notes. At some point (this was like 3rd visit I think) she was like "take off your shoes and socks and stand up". I did and she was "you need arch supports". I told her I didn't and she kept insisting (due to my weight). She said she send me to a podiatrist. I said sure, send me, he'll say the same thing. Went there, explained everything, checked my feet and said I didn't need arch supports. My god, she is infuriating! I HATE going to her and I am glad I have a new GP. She has never taken me seriously. I even had to fight her (not physically, of course) to have my neck scanned because I felt it was 'growing forwards'. After A YEAR AND A HALF did she relent and I was once again proven I was right. But yeah, she just kept saying I needed to lose weight. Turns out: I had a car accident in 2005 and never received any physio for my whiplash and no one figured out I was hypermobile until October 2019! The hypermobility and the no physio for the whiplash has caused my neck to be unaligned. Nothing can be done about that. But if she had listened to me and stop focussing on my weight, I would have known this sooner.
With you being hyper mobile, which is not normal most of the time, you should try and find a specialist I believe a rheumatologist, who can test u, if u have ( hEDS) Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. There few different types of the syndrome. But it is dangerous to be un treated if testing comes back positive because it deals with a lot of your connecting tissues, skin, blood vessels, organs . Can cause ruptures.
you had me when you mentioned Insurance companies .I had a great Dr. who taught me about the Metrolpolitan Insurance weight chart. He was always opening a book to show research.
Thank you for this insightful video! Recently had a prenatal appointment where the doctor said BMI is a faulty science but then used it as a sole supporting factor into everything she suggested. It was conflicting and confusing. I won’t be going to that doctor anymore.
You forgot about hydrostatic weighing as a tool though it is also expensive. As a personal trainer we also use waist circumference, gender, race, and other measurements for bone density and muscle mass to have a more nuanced understanding and appreciation of our clients current health status.
9:32 "How about we put AI to good use here and have it find some patterns that allows us to better stratify risk?" In AI, the problem of finding (ethnicity-specific) BMI cutoffs for obesity is a kind of classification problem, and there are a ton of methods/algorithms for that (ROC curves, decision trees, SVMs, neural networks, etc.). Classification is typically a much less complex problem then the generative tasks (generating text/images/video) we've recently seen AI tackling, so it's really just a matter of getting the data.
I gently confronted my doctor about their hospital system using BMI in our charts. I'm 6 foot 200 pounds and probably about 14% fat but the BMI puts me in "overweight". I have six pack abs.🤣😂 My doctor sort of blushed and said "yeah… That kind of needs to go".
I‘m so glad my primary doctor doesn’t care about the BMI, but looks at the body as a whole. I got told to exercise more regularly, when I was in a slump and it showed (not just in my belly). My partner was told to get rid of at least five centimeters of belly circumference, not a certain number in kilograms. The proposed way to get rid of that was less sugar, more fiber and exercise.
I had to sign off my high-risk pregnancy doctor because he refused to believe I was not diabetic. I was approaching 300 pounds at delivery, leading up to that I had the 1 hour and 4 hour glucose tests (the first elevated by 5 points, the second was normal range). I have a material family history of diabetes. This doctor refused to believe I wasn't diabetic just because I was "morbidly obese" and my monthly (then weekly) check ups where all about scolding me for not checking my blood sugar and he's on this diet and I should do this to get healthy and it was all about my weight loss and how I HAVE to be diabetic because I'm so fat. Oh, and my baby HAS TO BE diabetic too because he was measuring 10 pounds. He made me feel like crap every visit. I have PCOS so I get my A1C checked yearly, I'm not diabetic, my pregnancy wasn't diabetic and my son's blood sugar was normal. It was so frustrating and stressful. Fat doesn't always equal diabetic or unhealthy.
absolutely ridiculous how many people are victimised for being fat, when they are perfectly healthy otherwise. better to be fat and healthy, than be thin and anorexic.
Thank you for setting the records straight about that measurement. As a short north american female, according to my BMI, I've been overweight my entire life: even in the healthiest moments when I was jogging 4-5 times per week and barely eating for diner to lose weight. Not only that, but women's body and weight can change a lot through a month, depending how close they are to their period. Meanwhile relatives and friends who don't exercise at all and manage to stay thin whatever they eat are considered "healthier". In a nutshell: what a person actually eat and how they exercise is much more important than a silly ratio and what our bodies look like.
exactly, someone would prob take one look at me and regard me as "healthy", but ever since I was 3yo ive had awful eating habits which led to my severe underweight-ness. I wish gaining weight was easy.
@@TamWam_If you’re severely underweight you’re not healthy. I’ve always seen underweight people be relentlessly bullied so if you never experienced that you probably aren’t
@@socire72 unfortunately i really am (im almost 20kg under), but i was fortunate enough to be somewhere that doesn't make fun of weights. the overweight people dont get bullied here either
Great explanation! I have osteoarthritis in my knees, hips, wrists, and thumbs. And while I appreciate the fact that every pound of weight I can loose helps my hips and knees, I am not sure how it helps my wrists, and thumbs.
I had one doctor up until last year since he only saw patients up to 21 years old. He was a cool guy, but in high school, I gained weight. I was at 125 lbs and 5’1, so still considered at a normal BMI. He specifically told me that he wanted me to weigh 118 lbs despite that, and ever since I’ve just been really self conscious about my weight and believe I have to 118 lbs. It’s been even harder ever since the pandemic since I am 30 lbs heavier than in high school, and am overweight according to BMI.
That's so dumb...like, if you're healthy you're healthy. You'd know if you were actually overweight if you were sweating all the time, out of breath a lot, have pains regularly in your abdomen, relatively noticeable stretch marks on your skin (particularly around your abdomen), intense callousing on your feet even if you don't walk a lot, occasional bouts of feeling light-headed if you get up too fast, and more. THOSE are the indicators people should be looking for, NOT just a number on your scale or BMI chart (of course being unhealthy but in the opposite direction, malnutrition, have different signs...so those should be looked out for too).
@@ChristoffRevan See, I was terribly sweaty and had really bad callouses even when I was underweight (thyroid issue), and after my hysterectomy, I didn't have abdominal pain until my doctor put me on weight loss medications. I'm glad I was able to get help for my long-term health issues before I gained 20 pounds in the first two years of the pandemic; I can just imagine what the response would be if I'd presented those same symptoms while weighing what I do today.
That doctor gave you the opportunity to learn that not everything every doctor says is the absolute truth. I have several doctors in my family. They are not particularly intelligent people. They were good at memorizing information for tests, but forgot it soon after. Their reasoning skills are lacking. They rely too much on outdated textbook information, and don’t keep up with current research. For example, they still prescribe statins for people who are being harmed by them. Your health is for you to learn about and monitor. A doctor should be a consultant. If what one says doesn’t seem right, go to another one or two or three. My opinion.
I agree with this - BMI needs overhauling. When I was in my mid twenties, I was 5 foot 4 inches, and I weighed about 8.5 stone. I was a small UK size 10, which is a size 6 in the USA. I was slim, fit and quietly proud of my physique. Yet I was told I was 'obese' and had to lose a stone. I knew this would make me unhealthily skinny. I was running and swimming before work, doing weights and a maximum perf aerobics class after work, and then doing water ski-ing on Saturdays and sailing on Sundays. To suggest I had to lose more weight was ridiculous - I had a ton of muscle on my body but no-one took account of that - and the negative judgement of me contributed to a somewhat crushed self-esteem and a raging ED. Thanking Weight Watchers for that. I had gone to see the group that one evening just finish my weight loss and say goodbye, but as far as they were concerned, my efforts were inadequate and they chose to humiliate me in front of the entire group who had turned up that night. I walked out in disgust and protest, and have never gone back, not surprisingly. I later overcame the ED, and trained to be able to diagnose EDs in others and compose treatment plans for them. Think I won that one. 🙂
That weight isn't even overweight on the BMI chart, let alone obese. I'm the same height and weight currently. I have no idea what your doctor was thinking telling you that! The BMI chart wouldn't have you as overweight until you reached 10.357 stones. I realize that it's less accurate at shorter heights, but it's not *that* far off.
I find many of the experiences shared here quite shocking. On a population level, it’s certainly useful. BMI can be harmful , however, when it’s used to drive young athletes into an eating disorder, or when any kind of health problem is attributed to the BMI.
If you are a young athlete how are you getting an eating disorder? By eating healthier things? Athletes eat what their body needs you aren't going to score as well if you're exhausted from malnutrition.
@@broken_elevator if you have visible muscles from purely sports and healthy eating I can assure you they do not care about bmi as much. I don’t know a single athlete who has an eating disorder personally. Given I am in American football so who knows.
As a small women obgyns always bring up that my bmi is too low for my body yet when I did put on weight it was all around the waist then I went back to my normal eating habits and exercise routine and lost that 10lbs again
I remember a family here in Australia got denied adoption because the husband's BMI said he was obese. Dude was a Surf Lifesaver and an Ironman Champion. Even personally when I was at my fittest doing manual labour, BMX and riding 300km a week on a BMX bike just going to and from work I was borderline overweight and apparently needing to lose 8kg more to be in the middle. I'm 5'6" and was 68kg at the time. If I lost 8kg I'd have been very unwell.
Yeah the problem I have is that there are BMI limits and cutoffs for certain medical procedures. For example, my local (rural) hospital had BMI cutoffs for being eligible to have a water birth, and also a higher cutoff for being eligible to give birth at that hospital at ALL. I always felt that was so ridiculous in so many ways - BMI not really being accurate for women at all, LET ALONE in pregnancy, and all the issues with it?? - madness to me. If BMI is not reliable as a standalone marker of individual health, these kinds of rules simply should not be
I'm surprised you didn't mention height to waist ratio. I feel like that is a better tool to predict risk of health complications as a higher ratio means excess visceral fat.
@@Zairanangbe a woman. It’s not unusual for a woman to have large boobs and a tiny waist, or wide hips and a tiny waist, or both large hips and boobs and a tiny waist. I’m three clothing sizes bigger on my bottom half because of how huge my butt is compared to my tiny boobs and narrow shoulders. You really need to look at the whole person.
@@bogeymanbear How much is muscle mass going to affect WAIST in the average person? Even literal bodybuilders have like 29-34 inch waists. If you have a 42 inch waist it isn't because you have the largest ab muscles on earth, it's because of fat.
I was always slightly underweight ever since I started walking as a toddler. Now I'm still on the very skinny side of just normal and I'm just glad that BMI isn't used as much in my country because it has also been used against me. I was once denied mental healthcare because they said I should first go to ED treatment when i never had an ED in my life. Took entirely too long to clear that up and even when i eventually finally got the help i needed they still made me jump on a scale every day and didn't let me participate in any physical activities. Which was the only good part about this because I'm really not athletic at all. I literally do nothing to stay skinny, my mom and her mom was the exact same way. Eventually they finally cleared me but this whole thing really damaged how well i could actually use my treatment because they didn't trust me and I never felt like I could trust them. Still makes me angry all of those years later how even my doctor who knew I was perfectly healthy despite my weight or rather that my weight is just not important was completely ignored in all of this. Wasted everyones time and it took a few more years until I finally got good treatment.
When I was studying dietetics in school, we were taught to use IBW as a better alternative to BMI, although I never understood that one either, because it's ALSO calculated based on weight and height alone and thus would have the same pitfalls as BMI.
A nurse told me that waist circumference was a better measure of obesity. Then she told me I was obese when she measured the WAISTBAND of my low-rise pants. So she actually measured the at the top of my pelvis. When I pointed out where my waist actually sits, she said that no one wears pants below their waistline. One of the reasons I generally avoid medical services.
This surpised me a bit. Where I live, in Scandinavia, we talked about BMI around year 2000, but it doesn't really come up much since the mid 2010's. Dr. Mike says here that the US seems to really have started to use BMI around 2019 - long after we here in Scandinavia had already moved past it. BMI is one of those things where if you are outside the normal it should trigger some scrutiny, but it doesn't say anything on its own. It should be used as a prompt for further testing - not as something that has any inherent value on its own.
Yeah that sounds whacky, in Germany I rarely see BMI being used. At most its usually when measuring entire populations, where it seems to be a bit more useful. Not much as a personal guidance though.
I was an athlete and suddenly, gained an excessive amount of weight, and horrible symptoms. I sought medical care and was met with the typical “oh you just need to diet and exercise! Have you tried WW?” Like I was already working out at least two hours daily, and kept a log of my calorie intake and docs still didn’t believe me. The BMI is the laziest metric medical industry uses. I was gas lit for 17yrs and finally found two pituitary micro adenomas!!! Ya brain tumors! Because of the lazy reliance on BMI and fat biases, I did not receive the care for my issues and now have permanent damage. Not to mention the amount of quality of life taken from me. And I’m lucky, because I am pushy and willing to educate and advocate for myself. Even with that it took 17+ years. I should at the very least get my money back! When I found out doctors and insurance code things just based on the BMI I started to refuse to be weighed at doctor visits unless it’s for anesthesia or medication dosages. If I’m there for pink eye, you do not need to know my weight. I really like how you explained this. You seem to actually, care. I mean that in a kind way. Trust me. I’ve met my fair share of doctors. Thanks for educating with kindness and honesty.
I had to get a BMI below 25 to get a life-altering surgery - my BMI was 25.2. I had to get to 25 to even be considered for the surgery, then wait for 2 years because of COVID interference and other issues on that weight. As my body naturally laid around 25.2-25.4 it required constant dieting, removal of weight training from the exercising I was doing 5 times a week 45 minutes at a time, and finally resulted in a lovely visit from Anna Rexia to talk about my weight anxiety because calorie counting became too tiring to bear. And then I nearly got my surgery denied because I had an ED, and I had to push real fucking hard to explain that the ED stemmed DIRECTLY from the surgery and I really care NOTHING about my body fat content so long I can take some flights of stairs without issue. Nowadays my weight has bounced up higher than before because my body experienced starvation, I can't deal with food in the same way, and I haven't been able to pick up my old exercising routine that really flowed for me. For this personal reason among several more objective points I utterly despise health care's reliance on BMI.
I’m in the same boat! My surgeon at the consult literally told me they couldn’t perform it unless I lowered my BMI to a certain point. He said the reason was because of the anesthesiologist. I’m not sure the reason, but I’m currently doing crazy cardio and dieting to get to that.
@@marissa6425 I earnestly hope you'll reach your goal, and that your wait will be a lot less than mine. I'm of the belief that sustained hyperfocus on food in relation to body image will always be unhealthy, because our brains will create new patterns of reward that can easily make things spiral beyond our control. Take care of yourself, your body and your brain!
@@nananinanana656 TL;DR I think you should rewatch the video. Actual response: You say this to a person talking about a BMI of 25.2 (just cusping on overweight) with a current BMI of 27 who exercises 3-6 times a week, eats barely no processed foods (because that's where I elected to put my focus) and daily goes up four stories of stairs multiple times without breaking a sweat or becoming winded. You further don't know anything about my general body type nor fat-to-muscle ratio, and have no clue of my medical history beyond the above stated. It's a biological fact that starvation makes your body latch on to resources more, at least for a while, and I'm only two years out of over two years of food restriction. If my metabolism deregulates again then great, my base weight will decrease, but right now it's just a little higher than previous. Finally, you elect to chastise a person who has openly stated they have a history of an ED about food intake and lifestyles. I'll just presume you don't understand what harm that can do, since otherwise your comment would be unfathomably cruel, but let's just say it's ill advised.
@@thethirdtime9168 Instead of writing a cringy, triggered 5-paragraph, please rewatch the video. The doctor states that it is very possible to be considered obese, even at a BMI of 23-25. As per the video, obesity is dictated by the amount of visceral fat a person holds. Let your feelings aside and educate yourself! It might save your life. Obesity is a leading cause of death in America, as it tremendously increases your risks of heart disease and diabetes...
I remember having a check-up for my work, and the doctor started with pointing out my BMI was too high. I told him that was an easy fix, I would just have one leg amputated, keeping the height but lowering my weight, reducing my BMI. The doctor couldn't see the humor in it. 😄 So to "prove" I needed to take it seriously, he pulled up my labs, only to read all my values were what they should be. I might eat more than I burn, but I don't live on a diet of soda and fat as some people might assume based on my appearance.
I’ve noticed that middle and high school is a problem when it comes to mental health and BMI is part of the issue. Everyone already feels overly judged and the EDs really don’t help with kids being healthy and instead create more problems. I remember even as a kid who was skin and bones I was told I was starting to become overweight bc of my BMI. Nope I just took dance classes and did a lot of sports with friends at the park
Not to mention how INSURANCE groups use BMI to determine what’s covered and what’s not. They called my doctor to get me kicked from inpatient eating disorder treatment bc my BMI wasn’t in the anorexic range. I’m short for one thing and was a gymnast and runner. Very muscular and dense. It’s been…a decade…and I’m still mad about it bc it really hurt my recovery. It served to make me think I was actually fine shouldn’t be getting treatment. When even seeking treatment in the first place was a monumental task…only to finally get there and feel like I was in the right place and then be told you’re not “sick enough.”
Always thought it was funny how my BMI was always noted on my chart after every prenatal appointment. Tens of pounds of non-fat weight being calculated as such.
I have a BMI over 30 so i cannot get a hip replacement. I am not a fat person, but I was a body builder in college and am very heavy for my height. My doctor refuses to replace my hip (though it is collapsed and sublimates regularly causing me tremendous pain) because my BMI is too high, even though he has admitted to me that I do not appear fat and if he didn't know my bmi he would schedule me for surgery no problem. But insurance companies will not allow him to.
@@historianswag8517 I wonder if you could get a second opinion and/or ask the doctor if he could do a DEXA scan to send to insurance. Just a thought. I'm sorry you're in so much pain, and I'm sure that doesn't make being active any easier!
Thank you for this video; I think it's really important for people in healthcare to see. By my BMI alone I'm overweight, but I'm skinny with a high metabolism and have never looked even slightly overweight - if I were to skip a few meals, I'd still be technically overweight, but my ribs would all be showing! The biggest reasons I'm outside the range is because I'm tall and have relatively high bone density and muscle mass. I had a doctor once tell me my BMI was high so I should lose some weight, and I said "Um, have you looked at me?" and she rose her head from the chart for the first time, looked confused, and then asked my name and birthdate again to check if she had the right chart and just said "Never mind" about the losing weight. I tried posting once somewhere that BMI is a poor metric because of a few different reasons, but it got downvoted into oblivion because they probably assumed I had an agenda or was against science or fat-shaming. It's a linear scale (height) multiplied against a logarithmic scale (weight), so of course it only works if you're right smack in the middle and within a specific category!
as so often the problem isnt with the variable but with the categorization. BMI is fine for what it does (calculate height/weight ratio) as a comparative indicator, its just not very useful to add 'healthy' or 'overweight' labels to certain scores
I went to a doctor’s appointment a couple years ago that really put BMI into perspective for me. I showed up. the nurse asked me to step on the scale. I told her that was fine but asked her not to tell me the number and I faxed away from the scale. She took my weight and told me the number. Not a huge deal for me at this point, I’m several years into recovering from body dysmorphia and disordered eating. It doesn’t mess with me as much as it used to but it’s still not a number I want to know. We talk a little bit. Doctor will see you shortly. Doctor comes in, not my normal doctor but in the same practice (scheduled on short notice, I took who was available). we start to talking, and she says that I gained some weight and my BMI just crossed into overweight territory. I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. I wasn’t really listening. My head went to a horrible, spirally place. She left. My normal doctor came in, wasn’t expecting to see him, and he started talking to me. I told him what happened and was like “I started weight training and got really into it. It’s been really fun. I have abs how am I overweight?” I was in probably the best shape of my life. I climb. I lift. I train BJJ. He left for a second and came back with the original doctor who apologized. I accepted her apology but said I didn’t feel comfortable having her in the room for this conversation . She left. Then he explained to me that (1) my eating disorder diagnosis was in my chart and this shouldn’t have been brought up this way and (2) before bringing it up they should’ve looked at me and talked to me about my lifestyle. Then he explained what BMI was, what it was for, and why I wasn’t a good candidate for using it. I would love to say that that fixed it but I struggled hard for weeks afterwards. BMI is fine and dandy but please look at the whole person.
I knew a bodybuilder who agreed the person who decided to use BMI to make health decisions should be fired. Do I need to lose weight? Yes. Will I ever reach
@@grandvoid6940they might have wide prominent ribs. A big fat butt. Muscular legs and be very short. Probably just big wide ribs over all their visceral fat though lol
10:10 in order to get rid of BMI is to find an effective way of getting a muscle to fat ratio measure with a scale specific to different body parts for more accurate diagnosis....the ratio in the legs and the ratio at the abdomen should represent different interpretation
My BMI said I was underweight for YEARS. Now it says I'm at the perfect weight? even though I am still definitely skinny but I guess not too skinny now? LOL glad you're doing this topic Dr Mike!
I was hoping Dr Mike would address those of us who are underweight according to the BMI charts but I suppose it's fairly uncommon so I can understand why he didn't
I would consider myself underweight at 180lbs and 6ft 1inch ( and I look underweight cuz of muscle mass)… yet it says I am only just near topside of Normal at 23.75….. But even when I weighed 15lbs more the Doc never cared about it… I guess because he/she deals with real overweighters day in and day out.
When my daughter was in kindergarten the public schools took the BMI and sent them to the health department. We got a letter saying she was at risk for becoming obese. 🤦🏻♀️ I was not happy and they got a talking to. There is not one obese person in our family. Took the letter to her pediatrician on next visit and he shook his head. She’s now 24, 5’9 and about 125. We wonder why there may be so many eating disorders now in young girls, even adults?? BMI is bunk.
I didn't hear Dr. Mike mention another means for measuring body fat that is considered one of the most accurate methods: hydrostatic weighing. Hydrostatic underwater weighing is based on the Archimedes’ principle. This principle states that the amount of liquid a submerged object displaces is equivalent to the volume of the object. By measuring your weight on land and your weight underwater, test administrators can calculate your body’s density. Fat is lighter than bone and muscle, so your density can be used to calculate your body fat percentage. If your underwater weight is relatively heavy, it indicates a lower body fat percentage, and vice versa.
Unfortunately also a lot of doctors in the Netherlands only look to that stupid bmi number 😑. According to that I’m almost obese. I’m a female with (eu) size 36/38 and I’m 171cm tall….. I just have a lot of muscle.
I suffered with an €D for years, and even at my lowest weight-45kg- I still had more abdominal fat/visible “squishiness” that I was SO insecure about. People, especially women hold fat differently!
It doesn't take into account that no matter what I weigh my boobs weigh like 15 pounds and I have a big ole booty. In addition to not taking into account things like muscle mass. And doctors often think my weight is the cause of my symptoms, when it's not. It's another symptom. I'm 5'6" and have been 120 and have been 280. My back pain was just as bad at 120 as it was at 280. I couldn't breathe without an inhaler when I was 120 running a mile a day. I get muscle weakness and tremors no matter my weight and exercise level (except I'm more likely to experience them after working out, which is why I can't go to the gym before work). I know doctors/physicians have a lot going on and a lot to look at. But please remember to listen.
When I was in ninth grade PE, they made every single girl be weighed in front of the whole class and be told their BMI number. I was the heaviest--and the one with the highest BMI. Afterwards, I sobbed in the bathroom for an hour. Doctors, this is NOT HELPFUL. This only led to me having an unhealthy relationship with food, my body, and my peers. Focus on FUN physical activities and TASTY healthy food instead. It's 99% about how you feel, not the number on a scale.
My BMI is so much better ever since I lost my left leg, I'm glad I became healthier.
BMI be like "1/5 of the body is missing... EXCELLENT!"
AAHHH PERFECT NOW I KNOW WHAT TO DO 🙃
yeah if you like have the other part you can math it in😂 @starsx70
Thank you for making my day 😅
Right
So in short: BMI is a tool in a toolbox that an expert can use to guestimate a starting point in someone analysis, but is used by way to many non-expert people as an absolute value.
dont forget doctors, who have been pushing this and making way to big a deal about it
couldn't agree more. it has saved more lives to even consider it exclusion.
Pretty much. Thank you for nailing it .
@@FRIEDYOGURT-s4c- of course they have! They get a premium in adding an "obese" billing code paid by the insurance companies.
*For someone who is average in height. Edit: as someone didn't understand what I was saying the calculations do not, we'd have to have no muscle, no bones and increase the same ratio in height width and thickness, for BMI calculations to work with height. which humans don't do.
Went to a nutritionist about low blood sugar and brought up BMI, she rolled her eyes and gently told me to ignore that. It was really refreshing and I felt like she looked at me holisticly and im grateful.
The correct answer was..
Eat right and excercise and see where you weight settles as a lean muscular person.
Its not worth shedding muscle to get to a particular BMI.
The BMI will probably settle at the border of normal and overweight.
Weight can be further tuned with diet and excercise quantities.
As an adult male who sits at 225 pounds at 12% body fat, I have struggled with this my entire life. I am built larger than 90% of people that I meet, and I lift weights to complicate the situation. I’ve had concerns dismissed by doctors. I’ve had the military tell me that I was failing, despite passing all of my PT tests with flying colors, and it literally has become almost a psychological issue. Thank you for at least having a conversation about it.
When I was in my early-mid 20s, my doctor kept calling me obese because my BMI was 31. Suddenly everything was about my weight. I'm a woman, by the way, and was (and still am) on medications that makes weight loss very difficult. But according to doc, all I needed was less food and more exercise, even while I was going through issues that left me with barely enough energy to get out of bed, let alone go for a jog around the block. I was so glad when that doctor retired and I was transferred to one that didn't focus so much on my weight.
Doctor Mike didn't say to ignore your doctor when he tells you to lose weight. Nor does he say that being obese is healthy. All he says is that BMI is not a perfect indicator of health and that doctors shouldn't rely solely upon BMI when coming to a medical conclusion. My guess is that you have other health issues besides a high BMI if you are on a bunch of medications. I'm not a medical professional, but your doctor is, and if your doctor is telling you to exercise, then you should find some means of moving your body. If you can't jog around your block, then swim or walk. Don't ignore your doctor just because you don't like or agree with what they are saying.
@@inlikeflynn7238 Clearly you're under the misinformed opinion that weight cannot be a symptom, which it often is, as are many, many doctors are of that opinion, that even Dr. Mike has called out for focusing too much on weight and not weight as a symptom. I mean it; Dr. Mike has LTIERALLY CALLED DOCTORS OUT FOR HARPING ON WEIGHT and ignoring the patients ACTUAL health.
@@inlikeflynn7238 i think you missed the entire point of this comment
@@happyfirechannel, I read her comment. I'm certain that I know it in its entirety. If I have missed the mark then by all means tell me in what way I have erred.
@@inlikeflynn7238her point wasn’t that you shouldn’t listen to your doctor if they’re telling you to lose weight. Her point was that many doctors (especially when the patient is a woman) get so obsessed with their patients weight that they begin to ignore any other factors. I had one doctor that any problem I brought up to him the solution was always that I needed to just walk more and lose weight. When I went to him bc I couldn’t walk properly due to a hip injury his solution was that I just needed to go for some walks and lose weight. Turns out I have hyper-mobility, which contributes a lot to my weight. People get so obsessed with the negative effects of being overweight that they forget that everyone is built to look different and sometimes weight is a symptom not a cause.
When I was in nursing classes, my teacher said: “BMI isn’t the end all be all. You want to look at their body type. Because some people will look skeletal losing weight based on it, and some people will look overweight and fall into the right category because of the way they carry their weight.” And I think about that a lot.
Exactly, that's why it's called "Indicator", it gives you a fairly good idea for general population, and unless you have very high muscle mass, it will actually be very accurate. 18.5-25 covers a loooooot of bodytypes.
Definitely true for me. I am naturally muscular and large-chested, so a healthy weight for me is at the very upper end of the “normal” weight range. I would look skeletal anywhere in the bottom half of the range.
@@pinkdoobie well, that's why it's a range ;) as you said yourself, you are large-chested and muscular and even with that your healthy weight fits "somewhere" within their "normal" range, even if it is within the upper limit ;)
When I was born, my moms doctor felt my knees and other joints, and told her I would become a giant. And he was right. I am heavy, but I have the skeleton to match. On the other side I have a colleahe who almost weighs the same, but he has far smaller bones and joints, and also has way more health issues.
@@pinkdoobieI am a 40h bra and my dexa scan said just my bones weight 128lbs. So 10+ lbs of boobs. 138 at 5'8 female. 138 is ideal weight. So no organs or fat... Cool cool
When I was in high school I was a gymnast and a dancer and was made of pretty much just solid muscle mass. I weighed 125 lb at 5'1 and my doctor told my anorexic mother that I was on the verge of being morbidly obese and used the BMI chart to prove her point. Aside from the fact that she was a very toxic doctor, it has always stuck with me that she was able to use that chart and ignore my muscle mass, my bone density or any other part of my body and just label me overweight when I very much was not. This resulted in years of body dysmorphia and issues with my mother not feeding me.
Doing some napkin math and looking at the charts, 125 lbs at 5'1" gives one a BMI of 23,6. For women this on the far end of normal spectrum, and achievable entirely through muscle mass for most. In order to be considered morbidly obese one has to have a BMI of 40 or more which, at that height, would mean something like 212 lbs.
To say that the doctor used the charts to prove her point would be... Overly charitable. This woman deliberately lied about the charts, probably with malicious intent.
Garbage doctor, a stain on the profession. Very sorry for your experience.
>mother not feeding me
I wouldve just called CPS or even 911 at that point
I'm gonna call bulshit on you being a woman who is not a drugged up bodybuilder being obese by BMI while being very low bodyfat.
Yeah sure you probably had some extra muscle mass, but most likely not more than 10kg, not even natural bodybuilders if short women, get more than 15kg of extra muscle. And gymnasts do not grow as much muscle mass as bodybuilders do.
The BMI 23.6 earlier commenter said seems more reasonable
@@Jaggaraz218Nope, there are doctors that will 100% say this, especially if they're part of a medical spa, but it's not limited to those. I was 20 pounds underweight and was told that my 18% body fat put me at risk of "skinny obesity" and I needed to buy their supplements to fix it. A good doctor wouldn't do that, or even maybe a mediocre one, but there are crappy doctors as much as there are crappy professionals in any field.
My very athletic rock solid daughter has been called overweight since she was a kid at all her physicals based on the BMI and I honestly think it affected her. Shes a swimmer and a water polo player. I saw her go through a phase where I think she didn’t eat enough. She’s 16 now and doing very good and apparently is now not overweight according to the BMI. We still hate it. My husband went off on a doctor once because we were sick of hearing that at every appointment.
Uch. In the old days in my culture they used to day "you'll grow into your body" and that was it. it was true, shame, trauma and eating disorders get in the way and nowadays we have health problems associated with "weight" that weren't around before. It was never the weight. Your kid is a powerhouse and they want to turn her into Kate Moss
I had that issue as well the bmi chart said one thing and the nurse still had to send the letter home. Our school nurses at least had the common sense to tell us were not and to not worry about it because as athletes who are health it's gonna be wrong especially for us short ones.
As a kid I was in the same boat. Athletic young girl that BMI called obese. But I will say, my parents assuring me that this isn't always accurate and they don't want me to worry about my BMI helped. I was still upset about it but support from my mom and dad kept it from developing into an issue.
@@coinwater8511 that’s great! We did the same for my daughter. We always talked about this BMI and how it doesn’t take into account muscle mass which is much heavier than fat. She understood and I think that helped her. She knows being strong is very important especially in the sport that she’s in. She’s a very confident 16 year old and we are so proud of her. A good support system for kids that hear that they are overweight or obese from doctors is what they need.
@therabbithat
No. Childhood obesity is an epidemic. They are calling kids fat because they are far too big for their small frames.
I’m in the camp where the number totally does NOT line up with the reality of my health. According to the BMI, I’m morbidly obese, but my doctor says if I were to get down to the “normal” range I’d be dead from malnutrition - he recognizes that it doesn’t work *for me* and worked with me to determine what’s a good weight range FOR ME. He knows it’s a tool and how to use it.
I think it would be helpful if instead of a single scale, maybe it were calculated for different races - still not going to be good for every individual, but at least more accurate for people with different backgrounds
Race doesn’t make much of a difference. Outliers in height, athlete level muscle mass, and gender are more important
Morbidly obese is like >40 on the BMI, you must be really tall or something.
This sounds like pure fat logic. Even if you were a bodybuilder or an athlete with a lot of muscle mass, which I doubt, no one with literally any understanding of the human body would say that to you.
In France BMI is not everything even when you see a specialist for your weight. The body fat, the history of the person, health, the type of food eaten is more important than BMI which is just a tool among other. Great video, very informative
I was about to give the same answer than you. When i read the comment it feels like Americans are obsessed by BMI 🙀. Mine IS checked because i'm skinny but even when it's very low they don't make such a Big deal out of it and helped me with supplements if necessary but i don't end up with a tube to feed me for exemple.
@@ninanegri4794 Tbf America also has an insane scale of obesity. So its not a surprise if weight is often considered a problem.
But yeah, if BMI is actually used that much without consideration of other factors, even by healthcare insurances, then thats kinda crazy.
I know what’s wrong with my BMI. It’s not saying I’m in over weight. It says I’m too short.
So that's what it was 😭
If i was just 6' 8" id suddenly be healthy
Me too!@@SamNo27
XD
FACTS! BMI turns into a middle school bully when you're short. 😆
This goes the other way too. I have been in a ball of pain and I've been told "go home, gain some weight, get your eating disorder under control". 1. I have costochondritis and the flares can feel like a heart attack. 2. I don't have an eating disorder. 3. They didn't do a single test (not blood or even listen to my chest). They just assumed I have an eating disorder and sent me home after an 8 hour wait. Turns out this time it was appendicitis during a chest flare up so I couldn't tell the pain apart. So many people assume I'm anorexic or bulimic, I'm not. I just have a lot of health issues that make eating really difficult. Maybe if the doctors fixed them I COULD GAIN SOME FREAKING WEIGHT!
Yeah, similar issues here as far as being underweight. As a guy, I was never accused of an eating disorder, but was often told to put on weight. I was generally around 17 BMI up until my 30s, but I was always in good shape (lots of sports, and a dance teacher for a long time). I just had a really small waist/hips. Now I'm at ~21.5 BMI, which is easily in the normal range, but I'm very much out of shape and obviously have plenty of belly fat. Now doctors don't encourage me to get in shape while they should, unless I point out to them the health issues I'm having for being overweight relative to my norm (which was pretty far from the average).
Yeah we (society) really over estimate weight as a predictor of health, at either end. My grandfather was over 300 pounds most of his adulthood-- he lived to 91.
Same here, 5'11 120lbs. Not an eating disorder, just don't get hungry like that! Hernia w/ esophagitis, hyperthyroidism, and anxiety I think all contribute
That’s crazy they assume you have an eating disorder because of your size. It could be because of so many other possibly serious conditions causing weight loss or affecting your ability to absorb the nutrients from food.
@@sistermadrigalmorning233how tall was he? Just curious.
I once went to the doctor with severe abdominal pain (could barely walk, the pressure from contact with my clothes made it worse), and because my BMI was 31, my doctor (who was a woman) told me I just needed to lose weight. I had recently stopped lifting weights and exercising regularly due to the pain increasing in the last couple of months before that appointment. I told her that, but she insisted I needed to try to work out, and that would most likely fix the problem.
Turns out I had (and still have) endometriosis, which runs in my family (which I also told her), but because BMI is such a major cop-out for some doctors/clinics, she wrote me off as just obese and lazy and that working out would fix my pain. It in fact didn’t do that.
Exactly! I couldn't breathe, told doctors at every turn it gets worse when I lose weight and they said lose weight and it'll get better.
My sister had a slipped disk in her back and went undiagnosed because of her weight, some of which is inflammation.
so sorry for you two, I get dismissed too as a skinny person whose bmi is underweight… they need to stop following their books and start paying attention to people! hope y’all are doing ok now
Endometriosis is awful! I'm sorry your doctor was so incompetent.
Well in fairness if the doctor told you to lose weight it’s probably because she looked at you and you looked fat.
@@Luke99Granato That is not a good excuse because being fat does not necessarily mean being unfit or unhealthy (coming from someone with lots of experience with this sort of thing). I can excuse most people not knowing this but if you are in the medical field and working with this sort of thing, you SHOULD know this fact. And if someone is complaining about *that* kind of pain paired with a known history of endometriosis, any competent doc would have at least thought to do a test.
When I was 21, I went in to clinic for a lung condition. I could squat 200 pounds, run a 10k, and ate very healthy. My blood markers were excellent. My doctor did not consider a single one of those factors- he just looked me dead in the eye and told me he thought my pneumonia was exacerbated by the fact that I was "chunky for a woman" and i "really needed to lose some weight"
I weighed in, fully clothed, at 160 pounds at 5'7", which is an "overweight" BMI of 25. If I had weighed in at 158 pounds I would have come in at a "normal" BMI of 24.9.
We can argue about whether i was "optimally healthy" or not, but you can't deny that BMI flattened me into a one dimensional object in his mind, defined exclusively by a single metric, rather than a whole human patient with a variety of factors that should be considered when evaluating my overall condition.
I've also noticed that BMI becomes more inaccurate the more you head from average height. The so called edge of "healthy" weights for someone tall is way too high and the weight for someone short is ridiculously low and they have a tiny difference in weight to be considered healthy.
The margins are really thin, so to speak, for us short people. I watched my 5'2 friend go from "overweight" to "healthy" in one day by fasting and deliberately getting dehydrated, and then go from that "healthy" weight (he did not look healthy) to "obese" in a single week just by eating like he was on vacation.
I know I am overweight, but the goal weight based on BMI for my height is something I haven't seen on the scale since I was in middle school.
@@themelonsoup Omg literally. It says I have to be like 120 lbs, and like…no way. Only time I was that weight was in HS when K starved myself.
@themelonsoup same here. I'm 5'0 and even though I plan on continuing my weight loss (went from 184 to 164lbs) I don't plan on trying to reach the weight that BMI says is ideal.
@@mkg2124 I'm on the same journey (the oh so slow journey) at 5'1 and while I am very much overweight now, in highschool I was very much underweight. . .I didn't even weight enough to do the blood drive at the time.
When I was in high school, my doctor told me I was overweight because of my BMI. I reminded her that I was ballet and swimming, at least one of those classes, per day. She still told me to lose weight. Because of her I kept feeling fat, even though I was the fittest I've been in my entire life.
There was a lot of problems with that doctor because she only cared to sell me on using birth control and not my overall health. I stopped going to her once I became 26 and had to pay my own health insurance 🙃
Gods, I’m so sorry. As someone who actually needs BC for a medical issue, that’s so fucked up. It is NOT something to just take lightly, it really can mess with you if it’s the wrong thing for you or just wrong one for you.
When he spoke about doctors citing BMI for every health condition experienced by obese people, my mind instantly leapt to a similar thing where doctors cite birth control (or lack thereof) to every health condition experienced by female patients.
This exact same thing happened to me. I was heavier due to muscle mass from swimming and dancing. It resulted in me developing and eating disorder that contributed to me losing my athletic abilities. I hope my doctor has changed her ways since then.
? Doing ballet or swimming once a day doesn’t mean you weren’t fat.
Honestly this makes me think that this person wasn't fat, but a normal weight+had a lot of muscle mass. You don't stay just fat and bones while doing a sport every single day, and high muscle mass is the single area where BMI as a scale fucks up the most.
When I was 180 pounds, I was definitely overweight. I dropped to 150 and was barely in the "normal" category. Then I started working out, weight training and getting a lot of walking in. I am now op to 162 and "fat" again even though my body fat is likely lower than it was at 150.
"Having a larger body isn't inherently harmful." - that is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard you say. As someone who had a lot of muscle, was fat shamed since puberty, and put on diets which then created the problem which they supposedly were going to "fix", I feel like a load of bricks are gone. I have always appreciated your efforts for unbiased and accurate information, no more so than with this video. I am so tired of being told to take pain medication and lose weight to fix everything.
The body fat caliper is one of the tools that was used to fat shame me when I had no excess fat. When the measuring person at my middle school could not pinch any fat on my calves, instead of realizing I did not have a fat build up on my legs because I was a child who still ran and played basketball and played tag, they told me I had so much fat that it hardened and so put high numbers on my "official record".
Your profile pic says it all. Don't just look at one statement he made in isolation.
As a medium sized 26 year old black woman in the military who constantly worries about how much weight they’ve gained before taking my fitness test every year, I’m shouting from the mountain top, thank you! Health isn’t linear and I’m def not the same size I was at 18 that I am now. But! You’ve managed to say so eloquently what I’ve been talking to so many people in the military about for so long. ❤
When my husband was in the Air Firce there was a guy he worked with who was a body builder, he participated in body building contests for the Air Firce and the military kept listing him as over weight and trying to put him on a diet. It was hillarious because this guy could move a 500 pound tool box on wheels out to the tarmac to work on F-15s that all the other guys had to have towed just to do their work. BMI doesn't apply to every person in every situation.
I had a buddy in the Marine Corps that was shredded, like sub 12% bodyfat, and his goal was to get jacked enough that he "broke" his weight max and force the admin guys to measure his body fat. While he had a six pack.
I don't know how long ago and if the Air Force does things different but in the Army if we "failed" the BMI they would measure your neck, arms and waist to see if you were just built up.
They also do tape for situations like this. If you “fail” height and weight (aka BMI over 27) they will tape you around your waist and neck to make sure there’s not an excess of body fat, since they are aware that muscles can mess up the BMI calculation.
how many body builders drop dead in their 30s though? it aint healthy either
if you use combination of BMI and waist to hip ratio you get enought accurate metric
It’s so nice seeing a doctor talk about this. I remember being a little kid and being told my BMI was so high that I wouldn’t live to 20 (I’m 25). Now, every time I go to a doctor they tell me my disability will disappear if I lose weight. I was born disabled and have developed arthritis because of the way the condition has affected my body. My sister has been told she’s obese her whole life and that caused her to develop an eating disorder, when in reality she’s not overweight at all. She just has a lot of muscle mass, especially in the legs.
This feels like the story of my life, besides I have EDS and not arthritis! My sister also has tons of muscle and stuff, and I do too, I was always told I'd get better mental health and physical health if I lost weight, but come to find out, pretty much everything I have is due to genetic conditions, which unfortunately doesn't help my stomach and thighs tending to have more fat on appearance. If I just had some of my stomach fat on my damn ribs, I'd look "too thin" really lol. BMI is so dumb
@@lovelysakurapetalsyt that depends. If you eat more calories than your body burns, then that could be the reason for your fat. If your stomach and thighs “tends” to have more fat, then that could be something to consider. Fat is a result of overconsumption of calories.
@@lovelysakurapetalsytThe stomach and thighs naturally have more fat in women. For childbearing.
Being overweight is a result of eating too many calories. Medications and conditions can make it easier to overconsume but the point still stands.
Have these ‘genetic conditions’ been diagnosed or are you making excuses for yourself?
I live in Korea, here doctors are absolutely obsessed with just a very tiny BMI range as being healthy. Practically any health issue whatsoever will be blown off as a consequence if you do not fall within the confines of what they consider to be a healthy BMI.
That isn't just a Korean thing, that's a problem that runs throughout any country that uses BMI. Plenty of stories from 'Murica and various countries in the EU about doctors using it as the end all, be all and a way to say "get healthy" and ignore other problems.
Korean people and body structures are very similar so it's a more apt metric to apply universally over there. AKA, Korea is not a diverse place. I bet they still use gender though. You, and especially the Americans will not understand this.
@@leadpaintchips9461Well, it’s not like it doesn’t help to be in a healthy range
@@socire72 The problem is that it doesn't actually show a healthy range.
I love that Dr. Mike always talks about weight in a very respectful way, not blaming overweight people and seeing them as complex humans and not just balls of fat (which is sadly the approach of many doctors). Thank you for making us feel seen, Doctor Mike, keep up the good work :D
But also fat people also need to be told to do something about it.
Chronic illness is inevitable otherwise.
Our first priority in health should be avoiding T2D. The default lifestyle and diet is a guarantee of T2D later in life.
Exploring alternative approaches such as AI risk stratification makes a lot of sense.
Researchers did this without AI, I'm not sure we need one. We could do simple statistical regressions and set up some threshold for risk increase...right?
I am so lucky that my primary care physician, the first regular doctor I've ever had in my life, has never once used my weight to try and downplay any issues I've had. Not my depression, not my anxiety, not my dysphoria. She's always listened, acknowledged and done her best to properly treat me as a person and not a number on a scale. Is she perfect? Not even close, but I'd sooner cut off my foot than give up a doctor who actually cares.
Thats really cool to hear, as someone hoping to find a better doctor and treat my own dysphoria through medicine, and a taller individual who can easily be mistaken as overweight even though I exercise rigorously daily, I can only hope I'm that lucky.
I’m glad you are able to have someone like this. I too had two great drs, my primary and my gynecologist. They never brought up my weight with symptoms I was having that had nothing to do with why I was there, unless a specific symptom was caused from my weight, then it was mentioned. They always listened and took what I was saying seriously. They both knew I suffer with PCOS- Polycystic Ovarian syndrome, and know it causes a lot of unfortunate side effects that can be treated , but PCOS itself isn’t curable.
idk if that's an America or worldwide thing, for me I only get weighed by the nurse checkup prior to meeting the actual doctor. though, im severely underweight and need a way to cure my ED (which isn't anorexia btw, its been ruled out, but idk the exact one still)
If you are overweight hopefully she has brought that up in regard to depression and anxiety because that could certainly is a risk factor
Being overweight can cause depression, anxiety, and dysphoria. It’s called overweight for a reason, unless you’re an olympic level athlete it’s generally correct.
I am a healthy person, in my late 20s, doing amateur competition in a weightlifting sport. My BMI is juuust barely in the obese range, but I am MUSCULAR. Doctors can't seem to get over the fact, that my BMI is not ideal. They order blood sugar tests. Comes back perfect. Blood pressure test-> perfect. Complete bloodwork done ->perfect. The doctor at the checkup: "You should still lose around 20% of your bodyweight"..... Sometimes it feels like metrics can get in the way of common sense...
You should listen to them. Having excess body mass is detrimental if it’s that much. A lot of weight lifters need to loose mass eventually for health reasons, regardless if it’s not just fat.
You are allowed to refuse being weighed at the doctor and tell them you don't want a weight focused practice. This is important. I lost 20 years and was damaged by their narrow focus. Please advocate for yourself. You can find better care. It's hard, but possible.
"Doc, I bet I could bench press you."
Or alternatively, Show them a video of you working out.
If they don't believe you, invite them to come with you.
I'm serious. Their hypothesis is that you're lying there's a very easy way to test that hypothesis.
And in reality the best option is try to find one that gets it. They're hard to find because they're usually completely booked.
@@steggopotamuswhat a power move that would be.
Muscle mass has an even higher density than water. And certainly more than fat.
I recently developed Crohn's disease and it took a little over a year to get diagnosed because of BMI obsession. Before I got sick I had a BMI of 30 and over the course of a year lost 75 ibs and am now underweight. Every time I went to the doctor begging for help I would get comments about how good it was that my BMI was going down. Later on as my weight dropped too much for the formula's liking the narrative turned into how I must have an eating disorder. No actually, the whole time my small intestines were badly inflamed, non-functional and I had a partial bowel obstruction.
Oh man. That’s awful. I hope you continue to heal and keep that under control so it doesn’t bother you so badly.
Sudden unexplained weight loss should always be a red flag to check for something wrong. It's disturbing that doctors either don't know or ignore this.
I realize they don't get enough time with patients, but just looking at the chart to see how much was lost and hearing the patient say it was unintentional and describe symptoms should be enough. 😡
Sorry to hear that, I have family that has a similar disease (some stomach diseases make it so eating vegetables and fruits contribute to cancer faster in the body) hopefully you're going to a gastroenterologist for it. You're strong you got this!
Yea ,my friends mom's cancer was unnoticed for a while because around the time she also started trying to loose weight. So her losing weight was the goal but they didn't know it was also because of cancer. She sadly didn't make it ,even with chemotherapy , she died this easter. My friend wished to have gone to her because she was also already awake before her mom must have died.
I ran track in highschool and did fairly well. In college, though, my coach had me lift a bunch of weights and I gained 20lbs from 175 to 195. I'm 6'2". Over the summer after my freshman year I went to my family doctor for a checkup, and he told me I was getting a little overweight based on my BMI and that I needed to watch my diet based on a heightened A1C test. I told my physical trainer, who is also an M.D., this and she laughed. She set me up with one of those nuetral bouyancy clinics that measure body fat percentage. They told me I was at 3.8% and was at risk of injury for being so lean. This was offseason in September, so no need to be cut either. My trainer also ordered another round of bloodwork and found I was anemic which apparently can cause a false high A1C test. Doctors that can't pick up and factor in context clues like strenuous occupations, training, or other blood test indicators need to stop, it's lazy and disengenuous. If anything this taught me I need to start shopping for a different doctor from ones that look at things so one dimensionally. Ten years later I weigh 205lbs and with clothes on its 215 which is squarely in the middle of having an overweight BMI, but my doc can at least tell I'm healthy and fit.
Thank you for doing this video. I had heard of BMI but never been educated on what it was and how it works. You educated me with one 10 minute video.
The insights in Woman's Weight Loss Secrets: The Unspoken Truth blew my mind! I’ve tried so many different things, but this book gave me real, actionable steps to see results. Highly recommend!
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BMI is useful for assessing populations, not individuals. If a doctor needs to calculate your BMI to make their "recommendation", they haven't done their due diligence by specifically looking at your body composition with both a visual inspection plus blood work.
That said, for patients that are clearly obese, doctors might choose to tell the patient their BMI number just to give them something to work towards lowering.
Assessing what in populations though?
@@loganmedia1142 Trends in obesity-related diseases. Population-level BMI measures do correlate quite well to population-level disease rates that have ties to obesity.
My BMI says i am fat.. Well i am fat, so i guess it works in my case
1.5K likes for calling myself fat, is kind of nice. However there is a lot of positive feedback below
LMAO
I think thats the point. In most cases it is correct. And then there is the little percentage of trained people with a lot of muscle…
same here brother!
How many classmates would measure your wrist without even asking?
@@tiananesbitt7156 i would hope none
Thank you for bringing this up. I had a doctor evaluating me for a knee injury after a car accident tell me I just needed to loose some weight. The fact that my knee was bashed in the crash didn’t seem to matter. I was fat and therefore I didn’t need anything more than weight loss and exercise which was challenging because I was injured 🙄
Well yeah, athletic people have a far better chance of recovering from any knee injury. Especially serious ones like ACL tears. Ligaments get very little bloodflow so it doesn’t help if someone becomes obese and also doesn’t exercise.
Not much you can do for knee injuries, usually they either heal on their own (provided the patient has a good diet and adheres to physiotherapy and lives an active lifestyle) or sometimes surgery will be performed to reconnect ligaments for example ( mainly in athletes).
Only time urgent care is needed if its so out of place that it tears blood vessels. Which didn’t happen because you’re still here today.
I am so sorry that happened to you. Hope you healed up well. I myself just recently recovered from an ankle injury that I got at work.
I went through that exact same scenario. Smashed my knees against the dashboard and was told nothing was wrong and to just lose weight. Saw a different doc and now I have a partial knee replacement and had one surgery on the other knee and will likely require more. Some doctors are either blind or assholes. I hope you are doing well. I hate to hear of others going through what I have. It's such an awful situation. 💐 Good luck.
A, of all the rings that happened, this happened the most. B, obviously if you're fat and you have a knee injury you will benefit from weight loss
Loosing weight can do miracles for knee pain sometimes. And also good quality shoes.
I got my physical done by a new doctor. I have a BMI that says I'm obese. I'm also a competitive strength athlete, and hover around 14% bodyfat. She looked at the scale, looked at the chart, looked at me and said "is that a good weight for you?" And when i said yes, we moved on.
I feel like its common knowledge that BMI assumes an average muscle mass, and hence is kinda useless for athletes. Thats even how I learned about it in school.
@termitreter6545 you're certainly right that it SHOULD be common knowledge, and I think we're getting closer to it being common knowledge. But I've had 2 doctors that told me I needed to lose weight while I had visible abs because my BMI was too high.
@@brianfox340 Yeah that just sounds whack to me. Im german, and at least here ive never heard stuff like that.
0:22 no way she’s 3’ 3.5”
This lady is a gnome
hello doctor mike!
i have been watching your channel for 3+ years and as a teenager you have taught me so much. you even made me become the person i am today. i am more interested than ever in medicine, and the thought of it makes me really happy. words cant put into how much i wanna thank you for everything. you have amazing humor and a great personality, theres never a dull moment with you around. you have truly changed the world for the best. i never got to say how much i appreciate you since i always forget to because of your amazing videos. i hope you continue being awesome, good luck on your journey!
love from greece❤
I feel like this just proves just because you are good at academics doesn’t mean you know how to apply things in IRL situations. Like…too many doctors use BMI honestly as a weapon, and too many of them cannot handle something off book, which REALLY harms disabled and chronically ill patients the most.
My doctor told me my lung was collapsed and I was anemic because I'm overweight. I was in to see her because I had lost 30 pounds over the last month without trying. I have my appt follow-up after a bone marrow biopsy with my hematologist/ oncologist next week. I'm glad I did not just believe my weight was the issue.
How did it go?
@@yuriy5376 Not fantastic, but at least I know it is not all happening because I'm fat! I'll also be finding a new doctor! Gotta find the positives. Thank you for asking. Truly.
I am SO glad you finally made this video.
My BMI has said I was overweight for the past several years...including when I had just begun recovery from anorexia. Now, I'm 3 years in recovery and facing a surgery being barred from me, based on a BMI that never even included me in the studies that created the measurement.
My only hope is that the surgeon will accept a DEXA scan of body fat, and hell...maybe I'll even show him this video to encourage him to use a DEXA scan over BMI, especially for someone like me.
Yeah, someone close to me - same gender, similar height, very different build - weighed significantly more than my heavier-than-I-need-to-be weight at the peak of their anorexia. They'd even developed many of the other classic physical symptoms, but because they're naturally large, it wasn't clocked until they saw a psychiatrist for an apparently separate issue. Even now, they have trouble getting doctors to take their cardiac health concerns taken seriously, in spite of what's now in their medical notes, because apparently large + bradycardic = defying the odds and having a fit, healthy heart, yay!!!1!1, and definitely not a persistent ED-related arrhythmia.
BIA, DEXA, and caliper measurement are actually all pretty equal in terms of accuracy (~4% measurement error). The former have validity limitations (the tech doesn't always estimate fat mass correctly), whereas calipers have reliability issues (measurements can differ between clinicians administering caliper testing).
Well, you seem to be talking about the actual measurements themselves. By that standard, BMI would probably be even more accurate (depending on the accuracy of the scale and height measurement). It's the validity of any of those methods compared to risk assessments at large, or specific issues for the person that's really the question. You could map the type and position of all fat in the body, and even include its composition (in case you've got fat-soluble molecules that could cause problems if they get loose), but then we still wouldn't know for sure how it's going to affect your health. We'd have a good guess, but bodies are quite complex and you need ridiculous amounts of data to paint a truly accurate picture.
BMI always told me I was overweight, so I felt bad about my body and tried losing weight. Looking back at pictures from 10-15 years ago, I looked awesome! It's so sad that I felt so bad about myself when I actually looked good, and my health was never in danger. Now I would give anything to look like that again.
To anyone who is concerned about their health, take a measuring tape and measure your waist. That's a great way to see if you're walking around with too much bad fat around your organs.
I second that. your belt is the only really reliable tool to measure if you lost (the important, aka fat) weight or not.
Out of curiosity, do you remember what was your bmi back then?
I feel really bad for you guys, in the country I live in we dont use BMI at all and I honestly didnt know it existed til I saw smth online about it
My story is so similar. And because of BMI I got into the vicious cycle of losing and gaining weight.
I was once so focused on my weight (and BMI) to the point that I collapsed due to anemia.
I figured out that staying out late and eating late (usually at 2pm) would decrease my weight so I did that for a couple of months. My weight was normal but boy did I collapsed.
I know there are other factors though.
Since then, I took iron and supplements and my body got heavier.
Looking back at those pictures now, I really am not proud at my body during those "healthy bmi" ranges. I look so thin and not healthy
I went to my previous doctor because I have a problem falling asleep and wanted to find out what the problem could be. The first thing I was asked was my weight. When the doctor found out I had a BMI of 26, the doctor suggested that I should eat more healthily and lose weight, it would help to fall asleep and it's not just the one doctor who says that bullshit, there are many who come up with that answer . In my case, it turned out that I have ADD where I have thoughts galore and it is so intensified in the evening when I try to relax and want to sleep, I have been given medication that helps and now have no problems falling asleep and by the way, I still have a BMI of 26.
I’m in Culinary school currently and we just went over BMI and BMR in my Nutrition class this past week. Perfect timing!
When I was 12 I was told that I was obese by my doctor because of my BMI. That was the start of a whole chain reaction where I eventually developed a slight ED in highschool. Once I was completely alone in college, my ED started to get worse since no one was watching me eat anymore so I go almost a whole day without eating any. From there it would be almost three days before I'd have an actual meal and not just a microwavable instant potato cup.
ED - Erectile Dysfunction?
@@suzanneemerson2625
no..
in this case it means “eating disorder”
And that's why higher weight is associated with negative health outcomes. Because people in larger bodies are shamed into starving themselves and damaging their health. I've never met a woman with a high bmi who wasn't restricting food, using starvation to "punish" herself, etc
@@suzanneemerson2625i thought that as well
My BMI a few months ago said I was obese.
Got my Dexa soon after and I was 17% body fat at 202. Okay BMI
Could you explain a little more about what a dexa is?
@@funnybone_fuxia Dexa (Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) is basically a type of x-ray system that is used to measure bone density, as well as body composition.
@@funnybone_fuxia 10:21
I went to the paediatrician about a year ago now to discuss my bleeding disorder, and right near the end, he commented that I should watch my weight. I just looked at mum and chuckled. I, as I did a year ago, play 2-3 games of field hockey a week, with two 1.5+ hour trainings a week + gym work. I feel like he was just going off my BMI instead of actually asking me what was healthy for me and what my lifestyle was like. We just need to find a better, but still inexpensive way to get accurate body fat measurements, because I know several people who would’ve taken this comment to heart a lot more than I did
People tend to forget that BMI grants you a RANGE - it isn't just a single number, even though fat activists like to treat it might it is. The range my height gives me is about 40 lbs. That's more than enough to account for things like muscle and bone density. Also, exactly who are these doctors mentioning BMI at every appointment? Mine has never come up and I've been both obese and a healthy weight. I get *weighed* at every appointment, but that's far from it being brought up randomly by my doctor.
What you're saying makes total sense. I am classified as obese and I can't stop hearing about it. It comes up in almost every doctor visit that I have. And if it doesn't it's on the sheet that I am given after the appointment. I have had to apologize over and over again. It is a topic that I do not like to bring up. And if you yell at me about it I get very uncomfortable. Which makes me less willing to come in.
A notable example from my recent history would be this: I have endometriosis. I went to see a specialist on this matter. During the appointment all she wanted to do was talk about my weight. She suggested expensive and uncovered bariatric surgery to address my weight issue. All so her work could be easier. The entire appointment I felt judged and unwelcome. She only talked about the issue that I came there for upon our insistence. Needless to say I did not feel comfortable with her. I did not go back.
So… maybe eat less? I don’t know how to tell you this, but being fat is unhealthy. Do you know how hard doctors works? Obviously they want their job to be easier! Imagine how tired they are of constantly trying to help someone whos actively destroying their body and making your job harder…
@@socire72You know I wish it was that simple. If it was there would not be an entire diet industry. Alas, it is not as easy as you say it is. But since you know everything then I don't think you have to worry about it.
My doctor's obsession with my BMI around 2004 sent me over the edge into an eating disorder. I was 14, and I was only 4' 11". The BMI charts I've seen don't even go that short btw. Yes, I had always been a little chunky, but my doctor kept insisting that I needed to get down to 100 pounds. I stopped eating almost completely. I got down to 115 and looked like I was sick, like a wasting-away cancer patient or something. Skinny neck with tendons showing, sunken eyes, etc. No thanks. 🙃
Find a competent doctor
Your take on the bias is spot on! As a figure of speech, I could go to my former GP with a broken ear lobe and she would attribute it to my weight.
Also, I remember, several years ago, I twisted my ankle as I went to walk my dogs (just a misstep). It was sore but hey, I have a high threshold for pain (AuDHD). I just kept working (being on my feet all day). After a week or so, from one moment to the next, I couldn't walk. It was like something was stuck and I couldn't make a walking motion. Went to the GP and she was like, yeah no work for a bit and let it rest. I had to go back several times for work notes. At some point (this was like 3rd visit I think) she was like "take off your shoes and socks and stand up". I did and she was "you need arch supports". I told her I didn't and she kept insisting (due to my weight). She said she send me to a podiatrist. I said sure, send me, he'll say the same thing. Went there, explained everything, checked my feet and said I didn't need arch supports.
My god, she is infuriating! I HATE going to her and I am glad I have a new GP. She has never taken me seriously. I even had to fight her (not physically, of course) to have my neck scanned because I felt it was 'growing forwards'. After A YEAR AND A HALF did she relent and I was once again proven I was right. But yeah, she just kept saying I needed to lose weight. Turns out: I had a car accident in 2005 and never received any physio for my whiplash and no one figured out I was hypermobile until October 2019! The hypermobility and the no physio for the whiplash has caused my neck to be unaligned. Nothing can be done about that. But if she had listened to me and stop focussing on my weight, I would have known this sooner.
I hope you're doing better now.
XD "Broken ear lobe." I'm stealing that, if I may.
@@batya7 I am as well as can be. Thanks. Sorry about the rant 😅
@@quiestinliteris by all means, go for it 😜
With you being hyper mobile, which is not normal most of the time, you should try and find a specialist I believe a rheumatologist, who can test u, if u have ( hEDS) Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. There few different types of the syndrome. But it is dangerous to be un treated if testing comes back positive because it deals with a lot of your connecting tissues, skin, blood vessels, organs . Can cause ruptures.
BMI is very accurate for most people who aren't super in shape or muscular.
100%. If someone has 40BMI and looks like a barrel, I don't think a doctor is required to see the problem.
you had me when you mentioned Insurance companies .I had a great Dr. who taught me about the Metrolpolitan Insurance weight chart. He was always opening a book to show research.
Thank you for this insightful video! Recently had a prenatal appointment where the doctor said BMI is a faulty science but then used it as a sole supporting factor into everything she suggested. It was conflicting and confusing. I won’t be going to that doctor anymore.
South Asians BMI at 24: _I'm in danger_
As a white person, your bmi needs to be like 23 just to be fully fertile
Yeah
@@therabbithat source/link?
@@therabbithat source: trust me bro
yeah south asians store more visceral fat for some reason and not necessarily due to diet
You forgot about hydrostatic weighing as a tool though it is also expensive. As a personal trainer we also use waist circumference, gender, race, and other measurements for bone density and muscle mass to have a more nuanced understanding and appreciation of our clients current health status.
I stay fit and I use body fat calipers because my BMI is 25.5 but my body fat is sub 20%.
9:32 "How about we put AI to good use here and have it find some patterns that allows us to better stratify risk?" In AI, the problem of finding (ethnicity-specific) BMI cutoffs for obesity is a kind of classification problem, and there are a ton of methods/algorithms for that (ROC curves, decision trees, SVMs, neural networks, etc.). Classification is typically a much less complex problem then the generative tasks (generating text/images/video) we've recently seen AI tackling, so it's really just a matter of getting the data.
I gently confronted my doctor about their hospital system using BMI in our charts. I'm 6 foot 200 pounds and probably about 14% fat but the BMI puts me in "overweight". I have six pack abs.🤣😂
My doctor sort of blushed and said "yeah… That kind of needs to go".
I‘m so glad my primary doctor doesn’t care about the BMI, but looks at the body as a whole.
I got told to exercise more regularly, when I was in a slump and it showed (not just in my belly).
My partner was told to get rid of at least five centimeters of belly circumference, not a certain number in kilograms. The proposed way to get rid of that was less sugar, more fiber and exercise.
I had to sign off my high-risk pregnancy doctor because he refused to believe I was not diabetic. I was approaching 300 pounds at delivery, leading up to that I had the 1 hour and 4 hour glucose tests (the first elevated by 5 points, the second was normal range). I have a material family history of diabetes. This doctor refused to believe I wasn't diabetic just because I was "morbidly obese" and my monthly (then weekly) check ups where all about scolding me for not checking my blood sugar and he's on this diet and I should do this to get healthy and it was all about my weight loss and how I HAVE to be diabetic because I'm so fat. Oh, and my baby HAS TO BE diabetic too because he was measuring 10 pounds. He made me feel like crap every visit. I have PCOS so I get my A1C checked yearly, I'm not diabetic, my pregnancy wasn't diabetic and my son's blood sugar was normal. It was so frustrating and stressful. Fat doesn't always equal diabetic or unhealthy.
absolutely ridiculous how many people are victimised for being fat, when they are perfectly healthy otherwise. better to be fat and healthy, than be thin and anorexic.
Thank you for setting the records straight about that measurement. As a short north american female, according to my BMI, I've been overweight my entire life: even in the healthiest moments when I was jogging 4-5 times per week and barely eating for diner to lose weight. Not only that, but women's body and weight can change a lot through a month, depending how close they are to their period. Meanwhile relatives and friends who don't exercise at all and manage to stay thin whatever they eat are considered "healthier". In a nutshell: what a person actually eat and how they exercise is much more important than a silly ratio and what our bodies look like.
Not enough talk about how a woman’s weight and many things with her health change throughout the menstrual cycle.
exactly, someone would prob take one look at me and regard me as "healthy", but ever since I was 3yo ive had awful eating habits which led to my severe underweight-ness. I wish gaining weight was easy.
@@TamWam_If you’re severely underweight you’re not healthy. I’ve always seen underweight people be relentlessly bullied so if you never experienced that you probably aren’t
4-5 times a week of jogging is not special. It’s good… but doesn’t prove anything. Was expecting something like HIIT or resistance training…
@@socire72 unfortunately i really am (im almost 20kg under), but i was fortunate enough to be somewhere that doesn't make fun of weights. the overweight people dont get bullied here either
I wish more Dr thought like you, and look like you, I'd go to more of my appointments!
Great explanation! I have osteoarthritis in my knees, hips, wrists, and thumbs. And while I appreciate the fact that every pound of weight I can loose helps my hips and knees, I am not sure how it helps my wrists, and thumbs.
I had one doctor up until last year since he only saw patients up to 21 years old. He was a cool guy, but in high school, I gained weight. I was at 125 lbs and 5’1, so still considered at a normal BMI. He specifically told me that he wanted me to weigh 118 lbs despite that, and ever since I’ve just been really self conscious about my weight and believe I have to 118 lbs. It’s been even harder ever since the pandemic since I am 30 lbs heavier than in high school, and am overweight according to BMI.
BMI gets bafflingly inaccurate the further away you are from average height.
That's so dumb...like, if you're healthy you're healthy. You'd know if you were actually overweight if you were sweating all the time, out of breath a lot, have pains regularly in your abdomen, relatively noticeable stretch marks on your skin (particularly around your abdomen), intense callousing on your feet even if you don't walk a lot, occasional bouts of feeling light-headed if you get up too fast, and more. THOSE are the indicators people should be looking for, NOT just a number on your scale or BMI chart (of course being unhealthy but in the opposite direction, malnutrition, have different signs...so those should be looked out for too).
@@ChristoffRevanThe first sign is needing an additional knotch on the belt or a new pair of pants not more serious health indicators.
@@ChristoffRevan See, I was terribly sweaty and had really bad callouses even when I was underweight (thyroid issue), and after my hysterectomy, I didn't have abdominal pain until my doctor put me on weight loss medications. I'm glad I was able to get help for my long-term health issues before I gained 20 pounds in the first two years of the pandemic; I can just imagine what the response would be if I'd presented those same symptoms while weighing what I do today.
That doctor gave you the opportunity to learn that not everything every doctor says is the absolute truth.
I have several doctors in my family. They are not particularly intelligent people. They were good at memorizing information for tests, but forgot it soon after. Their reasoning skills are lacking. They rely too much on outdated textbook information, and don’t keep up with current research. For example, they still prescribe statins for people who are being harmed by them.
Your health is for you to learn about and monitor. A doctor should be a consultant. If what one says doesn’t seem right, go to another one or two or three.
My opinion.
you’re a real gem, such a great video. Informative and humanizing, I will be sharing this with the people in my life
I agree with this - BMI needs overhauling. When I was in my mid twenties, I was 5 foot 4 inches, and I weighed about 8.5 stone. I was a small UK size 10, which is a size 6 in the USA. I was slim, fit and quietly proud of my physique. Yet I was told I was 'obese' and had to lose a stone. I knew this would make me unhealthily skinny. I was running and swimming before work, doing weights and a maximum perf aerobics class after work, and then doing water ski-ing on Saturdays and sailing on Sundays. To suggest I had to lose more weight was ridiculous - I had a ton of muscle on my body but no-one took account of that - and the negative judgement of me contributed to a somewhat crushed self-esteem and a raging ED. Thanking Weight Watchers for that. I had gone to see the group that one evening just finish my weight loss and say goodbye, but as far as they were concerned, my efforts were inadequate and they chose to humiliate me in front of the entire group who had turned up that night. I walked out in disgust and protest, and have never gone back, not surprisingly. I later overcame the ED, and trained to be able to diagnose EDs in others and compose treatment plans for them. Think I won that one. 🙂
That weight isn't even overweight on the BMI chart, let alone obese. I'm the same height and weight currently. I have no idea what your doctor was thinking telling you that!
The BMI chart wouldn't have you as overweight until you reached 10.357 stones. I realize that it's less accurate at shorter heights, but it's not *that* far off.
Congrats on being able to turn it into something positive!
@@GreenIsTheWayForward That's really kind of you to say. Thanks!
I find many of the experiences shared here quite shocking. On a population level, it’s certainly useful. BMI can be harmful , however, when it’s used to drive young athletes into an eating disorder, or when any kind of health problem is attributed to the BMI.
If you are a young athlete how are you getting an eating disorder? By eating healthier things? Athletes eat what their body needs you aren't going to score as well if you're exhausted from malnutrition.
@@aworthy2780young athletes tend to have a higher bmi due to muscle mass, so they may under eat in order to lower their bmi
@@broken_elevator if you have visible muscles from purely sports and healthy eating I can assure you they do not care about bmi as much. I don’t know a single athlete who has an eating disorder personally. Given I am in American football so who knows.
As a small women obgyns always bring up that my bmi is too low for my body yet when I did put on weight it was all around the waist then I went back to my normal eating habits and exercise routine and lost that 10lbs again
I remember a family here in Australia got denied adoption because the husband's BMI said he was obese.
Dude was a Surf Lifesaver and an Ironman Champion.
Even personally when I was at my fittest doing manual labour, BMX and riding 300km a week on a BMX bike just going to and from work I was borderline overweight and apparently needing to lose 8kg more to be in the middle.
I'm 5'6" and was 68kg at the time. If I lost 8kg I'd have been very unwell.
300 km on a bike every week cannot be good for your joints good lord
Denying a child a parent because you think they’re fat is absurd. I hope that adoption agency got a big fat fine or a lawsuit.
Yeah the problem I have is that there are BMI limits and cutoffs for certain medical procedures. For example, my local (rural) hospital had BMI cutoffs for being eligible to have a water birth, and also a higher cutoff for being eligible to give birth at that hospital at ALL.
I always felt that was so ridiculous in so many ways - BMI not really being accurate for women at all, LET ALONE in pregnancy, and all the issues with it?? - madness to me. If BMI is not reliable as a standalone marker of individual health, these kinds of rules simply should not be
BMI underestimates women, not overestimates. So your point is working against you…
I'm surprised you didn't mention height to waist ratio. I feel like that is a better tool to predict risk of health complications as a higher ratio means excess visceral fat.
Is it better though? What about all those people who are just wider?
@@loganmedia1142How would you be wider, but not with excess fat?
@@Zairanangbe a woman. It’s not unusual for a woman to have large boobs and a tiny waist, or wide hips and a tiny waist, or both large hips and boobs and a tiny waist. I’m three clothing sizes bigger on my bottom half because of how huge my butt is compared to my tiny boobs and narrow shoulders. You really need to look at the whole person.
@@Zairanangmuscle mass? Lol
@@bogeymanbear How much is muscle mass going to affect WAIST in the average person? Even literal bodybuilders have like 29-34 inch waists. If you have a 42 inch waist it isn't because you have the largest ab muscles on earth, it's because of fat.
I was always slightly underweight ever since I started walking as a toddler. Now I'm still on the very skinny side of just normal and I'm just glad that BMI isn't used as much in my country because it has also been used against me.
I was once denied mental healthcare because they said I should first go to ED treatment when i never had an ED in my life.
Took entirely too long to clear that up and even when i eventually finally got the help i needed they still made me jump on a scale every day and didn't let me participate in any physical activities. Which was the only good part about this because I'm really not athletic at all. I literally do nothing to stay skinny, my mom and her mom was the exact same way.
Eventually they finally cleared me but this whole thing really damaged how well i could actually use my treatment because they didn't trust me and I never felt like I could trust them. Still makes me angry all of those years later how even my doctor who knew I was perfectly healthy despite my weight or rather that my weight is just not important was completely ignored in all of this. Wasted everyones time and it took a few more years until I finally got good treatment.
When I was studying dietetics in school, we were taught to use IBW as a better alternative to BMI, although I never understood that one either, because it's ALSO calculated based on weight and height alone and thus would have the same pitfalls as BMI.
I have a friend who at 130lbs was skin and bones and her doctor told her she could stand to lose another 10 or 15 lbs, she was 21.
That’s awful. I loathe situations like that.
Some doctors just wanna watch the world burn
Ah, BMI, the Fico score of the healthcare world.
A nurse told me that waist circumference was a better measure of obesity. Then she told me I was obese when she measured the WAISTBAND of my low-rise pants. So she actually measured the at the top of my pelvis. When I pointed out where my waist actually sits, she said that no one wears pants below their waistline.
One of the reasons I generally avoid medical services.
Omg that nurse is ridiculous!😂
You avoid medical services solely for the fact they can get it wrong, just like you?
You should change the doctor/nurse but not forgo the health services altogether just for one looney.
I had a nurse measure my “waist” at my hips and declared me obese. My love handles are wider than my rib cage 😭😂
Yes, there exist people in the medical field who are not intelligent. Most nurses I have known range from overweight to obese in middle age.
This surpised me a bit. Where I live, in Scandinavia, we talked about BMI around year 2000, but it doesn't really come up much since the mid 2010's.
Dr. Mike says here that the US seems to really have started to use BMI around 2019 - long after we here in Scandinavia had already moved past it.
BMI is one of those things where if you are outside the normal it should trigger some scrutiny, but it doesn't say anything on its own. It should be used as a prompt for further testing - not as something that has any inherent value on its own.
Yeah that sounds whacky, in Germany I rarely see BMI being used. At most its usually when measuring entire populations, where it seems to be a bit more useful.
Not much as a personal guidance though.
Thank You Dr Mike. That was very informative. Love your channel.
I was an athlete and suddenly, gained an excessive amount of weight, and horrible symptoms. I sought medical care and was met with the typical “oh you just need to diet and exercise! Have you tried WW?” Like I was already working out at least two hours daily, and kept a log of my calorie intake and docs still didn’t believe me. The BMI is the laziest metric medical industry uses. I was gas lit for 17yrs and finally found two pituitary micro adenomas!!! Ya brain tumors! Because of the lazy reliance on BMI and fat biases, I did not receive the care for my issues and now have permanent damage. Not to mention the amount of quality of life taken from me. And I’m lucky, because I am pushy and willing to educate and advocate for myself. Even with that it took 17+ years. I should at the very least get my money back!
When I found out doctors and insurance code things just based on the BMI I started to refuse to be weighed at doctor visits unless it’s for anesthesia or medication dosages. If I’m there for pink eye, you do not need to know my weight.
I really like how you explained this. You seem to actually, care. I mean that in a kind way. Trust me. I’ve met my fair share of doctors. Thanks for educating with kindness and honesty.
I had to get a BMI below 25 to get a life-altering surgery - my BMI was 25.2. I had to get to 25 to even be considered for the surgery, then wait for 2 years because of COVID interference and other issues on that weight. As my body naturally laid around 25.2-25.4 it required constant dieting, removal of weight training from the exercising I was doing 5 times a week 45 minutes at a time, and finally resulted in a lovely visit from Anna Rexia to talk about my weight anxiety because calorie counting became too tiring to bear.
And then I nearly got my surgery denied because I had an ED, and I had to push real fucking hard to explain that the ED stemmed DIRECTLY from the surgery and I really care NOTHING about my body fat content so long I can take some flights of stairs without issue.
Nowadays my weight has bounced up higher than before because my body experienced starvation, I can't deal with food in the same way, and I haven't been able to pick up my old exercising routine that really flowed for me. For this personal reason among several more objective points I utterly despise health care's reliance on BMI.
I’m in the same boat! My surgeon at the consult literally told me they couldn’t perform it unless I lowered my BMI to a certain point. He said the reason was because of the anesthesiologist. I’m not sure the reason, but I’m currently doing crazy cardio and dieting to get to that.
@@marissa6425 I earnestly hope you'll reach your goal, and that your wait will be a lot less than mine. I'm of the belief that sustained hyperfocus on food in relation to body image will always be unhealthy, because our brains will create new patterns of reward that can easily make things spiral beyond our control. Take care of yourself, your body and your brain!
Your body is not naturally fat, you need a lifestyle change. In the 1800s you would have been thin like everybody else.
@@nananinanana656 TL;DR I think you should rewatch the video.
Actual response: You say this to a person talking about a BMI of 25.2 (just cusping on overweight) with a current BMI of 27 who exercises 3-6 times a week, eats barely no processed foods (because that's where I elected to put my focus) and daily goes up four stories of stairs multiple times without breaking a sweat or becoming winded.
You further don't know anything about my general body type nor fat-to-muscle ratio, and have no clue of my medical history beyond the above stated. It's a biological fact that starvation makes your body latch on to resources more, at least for a while, and I'm only two years out of over two years of food restriction. If my metabolism deregulates again then great, my base weight will decrease, but right now it's just a little higher than previous.
Finally, you elect to chastise a person who has openly stated they have a history of an ED about food intake and lifestyles. I'll just presume you don't understand what harm that can do, since otherwise your comment would be unfathomably cruel, but let's just say it's ill advised.
@@thethirdtime9168 Instead of writing a cringy, triggered 5-paragraph, please rewatch the video. The doctor states that it is very possible to be considered obese, even at a BMI of 23-25. As per the video, obesity is dictated by the amount of visceral fat a person holds.
Let your feelings aside and educate yourself! It might save your life. Obesity is a leading cause of death in America, as it tremendously increases your risks of heart disease and diabetes...
I remember having a check-up for my work, and the doctor started with pointing out my BMI was too high. I told him that was an easy fix, I would just have one leg amputated, keeping the height but lowering my weight, reducing my BMI. The doctor couldn't see the humor in it. 😄 So to "prove" I needed to take it seriously, he pulled up my labs, only to read all my values were what they should be. I might eat more than I burn, but I don't live on a diet of soda and fat as some people might assume based on my appearance.
I’ve noticed that middle and high school is a problem when it comes to mental health and BMI is part of the issue. Everyone already feels overly judged and the EDs really don’t help with kids being healthy and instead create more problems. I remember even as a kid who was skin and bones I was told I was starting to become overweight bc of my BMI. Nope I just took dance classes and did a lot of sports with friends at the park
Not to mention how INSURANCE groups use BMI to determine what’s covered and what’s not. They called my doctor to get me kicked from inpatient eating disorder treatment bc my BMI wasn’t in the anorexic range. I’m short for one thing and was a gymnast and runner. Very muscular and dense. It’s been…a decade…and I’m still mad about it bc it really hurt my recovery. It served to make me think I was actually fine shouldn’t be getting treatment. When even seeking treatment in the first place was a monumental task…only to finally get there and feel like I was in the right place and then be told you’re not “sick enough.”
Always thought it was funny how my BMI was always noted on my chart after every prenatal appointment. Tens of pounds of non-fat weight being calculated as such.
lol, how ridiculous!
Right?!? So ridiculous
I have a BMI over 30 so i cannot get a hip replacement. I am not a fat person, but I was a body builder in college and am very heavy for my height. My doctor refuses to replace my hip (though it is collapsed and sublimates regularly causing me tremendous pain) because my BMI is too high, even though he has admitted to me that I do not appear fat and if he didn't know my bmi he would schedule me for surgery no problem. But insurance companies will not allow him to.
oh my god thats horrible D:???
I'd find another doctor and have them write to the insurance company. The can fight it
So you were a body builder in college, but not anymore, yet it’s still the reason for your high bmi?
@@Nathan47223 The doctor literally said he doesn't appear fat. Why are you like this?
@@historianswag8517 I wonder if you could get a second opinion and/or ask the doctor if he could do a DEXA scan to send to insurance. Just a thought. I'm sorry you're in so much pain, and I'm sure that doesn't make being active any easier!
Thank you for this video; I think it's really important for people in healthcare to see. By my BMI alone I'm overweight, but I'm skinny with a high metabolism and have never looked even slightly overweight - if I were to skip a few meals, I'd still be technically overweight, but my ribs would all be showing! The biggest reasons I'm outside the range is because I'm tall and have relatively high bone density and muscle mass. I had a doctor once tell me my BMI was high so I should lose some weight, and I said "Um, have you looked at me?" and she rose her head from the chart for the first time, looked confused, and then asked my name and birthdate again to check if she had the right chart and just said "Never mind" about the losing weight. I tried posting once somewhere that BMI is a poor metric because of a few different reasons, but it got downvoted into oblivion because they probably assumed I had an agenda or was against science or fat-shaming. It's a linear scale (height) multiplied against a logarithmic scale (weight), so of course it only works if you're right smack in the middle and within a specific category!
as so often the problem isnt with the variable but with the categorization. BMI is fine for what it does (calculate height/weight ratio) as a comparative indicator, its just not very useful to add 'healthy' or 'overweight' labels to certain scores
I went to a doctor’s appointment a couple years ago that really put BMI into perspective for me.
I showed up. the nurse asked me to step on the scale. I told her that was fine but asked her not to tell me the number and I faxed away from the scale. She took my weight and told me the number. Not a huge deal for me at this point, I’m several years into recovering from body dysmorphia and disordered eating. It doesn’t mess with me as much as it used to but it’s still not a number I want to know.
We talk a little bit. Doctor will see you shortly.
Doctor comes in, not my normal doctor but in the same practice (scheduled on short notice, I took who was available). we start to talking, and she says that I gained some weight and my BMI just crossed into overweight territory. I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. I wasn’t really listening. My head went to a horrible, spirally place.
She left. My normal doctor came in, wasn’t expecting to see him, and he started talking to me. I told him what happened and was like “I started weight training and got really into it. It’s been really fun. I have abs how am I overweight?” I was in probably the best shape of my life. I climb. I lift. I train BJJ.
He left for a second and came back with the original doctor who apologized. I accepted her apology but said I didn’t feel comfortable having her in the room for this conversation . She left.
Then he explained to me that (1) my eating disorder diagnosis was in my chart and this shouldn’t have been brought up this way and (2) before bringing it up they should’ve looked at me and talked to me about my lifestyle. Then he explained what BMI was, what it was for, and why I wasn’t a good candidate for using it.
I would love to say that that fixed it but I struggled hard for weeks afterwards.
BMI is fine and dandy but please look at the whole person.
I knew a bodybuilder who agreed the person who decided to use BMI to make health decisions should be fired. Do I need to lose weight? Yes. Will I ever reach
How could you see your ribs through your shirt if your above 25? Not trying to be rude or anything, I'm just curious.
@@grandvoid6940 they could be short with muscular legs maybe
@@grandvoid6940they might have wide prominent ribs. A big fat butt. Muscular legs and be very short.
Probably just big wide ribs over all their visceral fat though lol
@@nataliaalfonso2662 perhaps
I find that hard to believe
10:10 in order to get rid of BMI is to find an effective way of getting a muscle to fat ratio measure with a scale specific to different body parts for more accurate diagnosis....the ratio in the legs and the ratio at the abdomen should represent different interpretation
My BMI said I was underweight for YEARS. Now it says I'm at the perfect weight? even though I am still definitely skinny but I guess not too skinny now? LOL glad you're doing this topic Dr Mike!
Same,but opposite
I was a fat baby,and I never lost the fat, even though in bmi I am underweight,I feel like I need to loose weight
I was hoping Dr Mike would address those of us who are underweight according to the BMI charts but I suppose it's fairly uncommon so I can understand why he didn't
I would consider myself underweight at 180lbs and 6ft 1inch ( and I look underweight cuz of muscle mass)… yet it says I am only just near topside of Normal at 23.75…..
But even when I weighed 15lbs more the Doc never cared about it… I guess because he/she deals with real overweighters day in and day out.
Today I have a BMI of 18.6 (healthy). But if I lose just 400 grams (0.88 pound) I'm considered underweight and doctors start worrying.
@@jimbstars yeah 180 at your height is twig-like
As a nurse of 13 years, I must say Dr. Mike, this was very well explained for the first time. 🎉
My BMI is off the chart, yet I am in perfect health.
When my daughter was in kindergarten the public schools took the BMI and sent them to the health department. We got a letter saying she was at risk for becoming obese. 🤦🏻♀️ I was not happy and they got a talking to. There is not one obese person in our family. Took the letter to her pediatrician on next visit and he shook his head. She’s now 24, 5’9 and about 125. We wonder why there may be so many eating disorders now in young girls, even adults?? BMI is bunk.
I didn't hear Dr. Mike mention another means for measuring body fat that is considered one of the most accurate methods: hydrostatic weighing. Hydrostatic underwater weighing is based on the Archimedes’ principle. This principle states that the amount of liquid a submerged object displaces is equivalent to the volume of the object. By measuring your weight on land and your weight underwater, test administrators can calculate your body’s density. Fat is lighter than bone and muscle, so your density can be used to calculate your body fat percentage. If your underwater weight is relatively heavy, it indicates a lower body fat percentage, and vice versa.
I live in the Netherlands and when we calculate BMI they usually say that it isn't perfect, it is also on the goverments site.
Obviously, no single number is going to be perfect. That shouldn't even need to be mentioned.
Unfortunately also a lot of doctors in the Netherlands only look to that stupid bmi number 😑. According to that I’m almost obese. I’m a female with (eu) size 36/38 and I’m 171cm tall….. I just have a lot of muscle.
I suffered with an €D for years, and even at my lowest weight-45kg- I still had more abdominal fat/visible “squishiness” that I was SO insecure about. People, especially women hold fat differently!
It doesn't take into account that no matter what I weigh my boobs weigh like 15 pounds and I have a big ole booty. In addition to not taking into account things like muscle mass. And doctors often think my weight is the cause of my symptoms, when it's not. It's another symptom. I'm 5'6" and have been 120 and have been 280. My back pain was just as bad at 120 as it was at 280. I couldn't breathe without an inhaler when I was 120 running a mile a day. I get muscle weakness and tremors no matter my weight and exercise level (except I'm more likely to experience them after working out, which is why I can't go to the gym before work). I know doctors/physicians have a lot going on and a lot to look at. But please remember to listen.
When I was in ninth grade PE, they made every single girl be weighed in front of the whole class and be told their BMI number. I was the heaviest--and the one with the highest BMI. Afterwards, I sobbed in the bathroom for an hour.
Doctors, this is NOT HELPFUL. This only led to me having an unhealthy relationship with food, my body, and my peers. Focus on FUN physical activities and TASTY healthy food instead. It's 99% about how you feel, not the number on a scale.
Wtf, how is this real...
Why did they do that? Why wasn't it in a private setting where people could feel more comfortable?
Same when I was at school, though bmi wasn't used then. I was 2nd heaviest girl but the tallest! It all went on a lovely humiliating graph.
@@pixie3458 Did they cancel out, leaving a healthy BMI?