FitnessFixation.com

Even hobos need good running shoes. This guy so pronates.

This morning someone at the gym was asking me about the normal range for BMI for ladies. I mumbled something, and then said, “I dunno. It’s not accurate for me, so I don’t pay attention to BMI at all.” See, I learned shit like normal ranges while studying to be a trainer, and then promptly forgot it because I find averages based on populations to be crap in so many ways.

Then I got home, and cracked open the little magazine I get from the body that certified me (American Council on Exercise, should you be curious) and found an article titled: “Is the Body Mass Index Still Relevant?” (Not online yet, as far as I can tell.) In the feature, BMI is compared to phrenology, the 19th century practice of determining stuff about people by the bumps on their head. Ha! Now ask me why I had to learn it for my certification exam…

But here’s another study about why BMI is dumb for lots of us. I often show up as bordering overweight on BMI. My kid also does poorly, even though you’ll see some nice photos of her un-overweight self on this blog. We are dense. Um, muscle-wise, that is.

The ACE article has a couple preferred ways to study weight and health links, like the good old skinfold test (can you pinch an inch?) and this freaky one called the Bod Pod. Is that a pilotless drone I see?

But here’s my question: why do you want to know your BMI? As an individual, you might be interested because you wanna know your current state of health. I can tell you that chances are, if you have Type II diabetes, you might want to lose weight. If you hold a good amount of excess weight around your middle, work on that diet and exercise. But don’t most of us sort of know when we aren’t in the healthiest place for weight?

If you are studying your BMI to gauge your fitness progress (charting over time) you might get some good info, but I say: get a mirror and some clothes that fit at your good weight. If they get all snug, cut out a couple cupcakes. If they fit nicely, stop panicking. If you want to get bulky, you can use the opposite equation. Oh, it’s not very scientific, but whatever, beyotch.

Same goes for the inaccurate scale: water retention, muscle building, and hormones all make that magic number fluctuate like my current moods. Fuck your scale. I’ll come over and kick its vacillating ass.

And just so you know, this is all spoken by someone who was smacked down by Disneyland food and now has to cut back on the multiple daily desserts and the salty insanity. Because that’s the other little thang, you don’t always drop to an ideal weight and just live there happily, smooching on Gabrielle Reece and munching your boneless skinless chicken breast. Or at least I don’t. All kinds of things, from injury to getting older to a longterm sugar attack to the full moon can change my workable formula. It’s a process for me, a study in balance, a journey. I’m a hobo riding the rails of body composition, occasionally spraining an ankle while hopping the cake car, and at other times finding that perfect campsite to kick back and revel in my can of beans-and-wieners eating, harmonica playing, body satisfaction. Hey, what’s your hobo name? Mine’s “Cathair Nicki”. My kid made that up. Or “Woodeye Jones” using the John Hodgman-based generator (I heart him).

Woo hoo. Oh, and here’s your longass quiz for your pirate name, greedypants.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 10:02 pm and is filed under blah blah, exercise, healthy crap, weight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.