Does Your BMI Even Matter?

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Executive Producer: Doctor Mike
Production Director and Editor: Dan Owens
Managing Editor and Producer: Sam Bowers
Editor and Designer: Caroline Weigum
Editor: Juan Carlos Zuniga

* Select photos/videos provided by Getty Images *

** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional **

[gressorialNanites]

My BMI is so much better ever since I lost my left leg, I'm glad I became healthier.

[dalyxia]

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.

[livinthelamb]

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.

[projectmicky]

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.

[christygaiser]

I know what’s wrong with my BMI. It’s not saying I’m in over weight. It says I’m too short.

[GirlAcrossTheWorld]

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.

[hnortonford]

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.

[Alex-cwrz]

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.

[nomeanpeople]

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.

[YaGotdamBoi]

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.

[Resellersruineverything]

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!

[brianfox]

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.

[berthavillalobos]

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.

[Someone-tnur]

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.

[saralopezCR]

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

[GaarasBFF]

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 🙃

[realong]

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.

[deebee]

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".

[kajerlou]

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.

[Setrany]

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 Sometimes it feels like metrics can get in the way of common sense...