{"id":12455,"date":"2024-09-06T14:00:07","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=12455"},"modified":"2024-09-06T14:25:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T14:25:07","slug":"time-to-say-goodbye-to-the-b-m-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=12455","title":{"rendered":"Time to Say Goodbye to the B.M.I.?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Researchers have long faulted the body mass index as an unreliable indicator of health. A replacement has been gaining support: the body roundness index.<\/p>\n

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Move over, body mass index. Make room for roundness \u2014 to be precise, the body roundness index.<\/p>\n

The body mass index, or B.M.I., is a ratio of height to weight that has long been used as a medical screening tool. It is one of the most widely used health metrics but also one of the most reviled, because it is used to label people overweight, obese or extremely obese.<\/p>\n

The classifications have been questioned by athletes like the American Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher<\/a>, whose B.M.I. of 30 technically puts her on the cusp of obesity. \u201cBut alas,\u201d she said on Instagram, addressing online trolls who tried to shame her about her weight, \u201cI\u2019m going to the Olympics and you\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advocates for overweight individuals and people of color note that the formula was developed nearly 200 years ago and based exclusively on data from men<\/a>, most of them white, and that it was never intended for medical screening. A Black nutritionist once called it the \u201cbull**** measure index.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even physicians have weighed in on the shortcomings of B.M.I. The American Medical Association warned last year that B.M.I. is an imperfect metric<\/a> that doesn\u2019t account for racial, ethnic, age, sex and gender diversity. It can\u2019t differentiate between individuals who carry a lot of muscle and those with fat in all the wrong places.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cBased on B.M.I., Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a bodybuilder would have been categorized as obese and needing to lose weight,\u201d said Dr. Wajahat Mehal, director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program at Yale University.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as soon as you measured his waist, you\u2019d see, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s 32 inches.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So welcome a new metric: the body roundness index. B.R.I. is just what it sounds like \u2014 a measure of how round or circlelike you are, using a formula that takes into account height and waist<\/a>, but not weight.<\/p>\n

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Researchers have long faulted the body mass index as an unreliable indicator of health. A replacement has been gaining support: the body roundness index.Move over, body mass index. Make room for roundness \u2014 to be precise, the body roundness index.The body mass index, or B.M.I., is a ratio of height to weight that has long been used as a medical screening tool. It is one of the most widely used health metrics but also one of the most reviled, because it is used to label people overweight, obese or extremely obese.The classifications have been questioned by athletes like the American Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher, whose B.M.I. of 30 technically puts her on the cusp of obesity. \u201cBut alas,\u201d she said on Instagram, addressing online trolls who tried to shame her about her weight, \u201cI\u2019m going to the Olympics and you\u2019re not.\u201dAdvocates for overweight individuals and people of color note that the formula was developed nearly 200 years ago and based exclusively on data from men, most of them white, and that it was never intended for medical screening. A Black nutritionist once called it the \u201cbull**** measure index.\u201dEven physicians have weighed in on the shortcomings of B.M.I. The American Medical Association warned last year that B.M.I. is an imperfect metric that doesn\u2019t account for racial, ethnic, age, sex and gender diversity. It can\u2019t differentiate between individuals who carry a lot of muscle and those with fat in all the wrong places.\u201cBased on B.M.I., Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a bodybuilder would have been categorized as obese and needing to lose weight,\u201d said Dr. Wajahat Mehal, director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program at Yale University.\u201cBut as soon as you measured his waist, you\u2019d see, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s 32 inches.\u2019\u201dSo welcome a new metric: the body roundness index. B.R.I. is just what it sounds like \u2014 a measure of how round or circlelike you are, using a formula that takes into account height and waist, but not weight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12457,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12455"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12458,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12455\/revisions\/12458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}