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That's the apparent take away from an analysis of a recently published NE Journal of Medicine study.
So, all the talk about "skinny fat" and "I'm not overweight, cuz it's all muscle" may be moonshine.
I wouldn't hang my hat on this, but weighing less may simply be better than weighing more, regardless of whether that weight is fat or muscle. Did they have any participants who were heavily muscled without fat, I wonder?
N Engl J Med 2017; 377:1495-1497October 12, 2017DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc1710026
ArticleMetrics
To the Editor:
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) collaborators (July 6 issue)1 report that more than two thirds of deaths related to high body-mass index (BMI) were due to cardiovascular disease, which suggests that BMI-defined obesity has a major effect on cardiovascular disease. Some readers may wonder whether the perceived burden of obesity could have been even larger if an accurate measure of body fat, instead of BMI, had been used. Data from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, involving 30,000 persons assessed with a state-of-the-art method to determine adiposity, suggest that this may not be the case.2 We observed that BMI had a significantly higher discriminating capacity than body-fat percentage or fat-mass index for predicting mortality from cardiovascular disease, and our study provided a physiological explanation for this finding. Our data also strongly support the use of BMI for defining obesity at an epidemiologic level, particularly in relation to mortality from cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, these findings suggest that obesity may be defined as an excess of body weight according to height (high BMI), rather than as an excess of body fat (high body-fat percentage or fat-mass index), as is generally stated."
I'd probably be around 9-12% body fat range at 170, highest normal BMI for my height. Doable but I mostly float around the 180-190 range. I'm not lifting that heavy any longer. Really, I never was but I was a lot closer to that 300 pound magic marker of strongliness than I am now. It's both the combination of moonshine it's muscle and body type. Someone with my body type who lifts for general health reasons as I do can squeeze in under the overweight category. I don't run into a whole lot of people stockier than I am. I do run into a lot of men with more muscle than I have.
I had a bmi of 14.7-15 for a while and my risk of a heart attack was considerable, especially since I was pushing myself through insane amounts of exercise on so little. My blood pressure was extremely low and pulse was ridiculous (upper 30s at times). I also had heart arrhythmias going on, and orthostatic hypotension. Because my bmi was so low and I was exercising, I lost a good bit of heart muscle and was in danger of a heart attack. I met a woman when I was in an eating disorder treatment who DID have a heart attack due to low weight while exercising, and she had spent months in the hospital.
I think a bmi that is too low is as dangerous as too high.
I know this isn't directly related to the argument of body fat vs. bmi, but the focus often tends to be on obesity/high bmi but being too low in weight (and body fat) is becoming an increasing concern as well.
Any conversation that has the BMI involved should be ignored and thrown out.
For real. By that logic, I'm morbidly obese since my workout routine consists of powerlifting style strength training and cardio. I push heavy weight, have a bodyfat level of 10% and 6'2, 280 lbs. I'll pass on weighing less, especially since I would look sickly for my height.
Yes, that's pretty much what the study is saying, which was exactly the reason for my post: The results are quite surprising and quite contrary to what one would logically conclude.
But hey, who cares! Image is everything, as Andre Agassi has said.
This is what has me confused, my husband's BMI says he is obese, but even the doctor agreed that he is mainly muscle....
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Most people, including physicians, have very little appreciation of the meaning of statistics. Stats apply only to the group, not the individual. They should only be used to get an appreciation of possible relevant factors, not used to determine course of action. [This is why long shots sometimes win.]
Intuitive argument: given some bell shaped curve of all possible outcomes, the area under the curve (a two dimensional surface) represents 100% certainty. Any portion of that area represents the probability of the outcomes in that interval.
But each individual is represented only by a point on the graph- a zero dimensional object. A zero dimensional object has zero chance of occurring, statistically speaking.
You may have a .300 batting average, but you can't get 3/10ths of a hit in this at bat, so your average is actually meaningless for the one event.
One test may have a better track record than another test, but no test has a very good track record when applied to an individual person.
I still don't get how my husband can be categorized as obese with a 32 inch waist.
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