90% of US has a poor diet, and 25% don’t exercise

Re:90% of US has a poor diet, and 25% don’t exercise by dpark on Monday January 24, 2022 @09:19PM (#30067065)

No. You have to have a ton of muscle to flip the bmi scale into overweight. Certainly professional bodybuilders will do that. Casual bodybuilders generally don’t.

The set of bodybuilders who have enough muscle to put them into the overweight category is a tiny portion of the population. There is a larger portion of the population who has a lot of muscle and a lot of fat, but that’s still pretty small.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:90% of US has a poor diet, and 25% don’t exercise by s1artibartfast on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @12:38AM (#30068520)

BMI is just a very rough approximation used to fit body fat.

Any amount of muscle can slip someone into the overwight category if they are already close. For a 5-10 male, the difference between dead center normal BMI and pre-obese is 20 lbs, not a crazy amount for a casual but consistent weightlifter.

BMI 'works' because it just looks at the total population, and doest care if it doesn't fit edge cases.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:90% of US has a poor diet, and 25% don’t exercise by dpark on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @01:46AM (#30068908)

> Any amount of muscle can slip someone into the overwight category if they are already close.

Yeah, but that’s hardly the muscle at fault. If someone has 20lb of extra fat and 10lb of extra muscle, it seems a lot more honest to say the fat is why the person’s BMI is high.

To be clear, BMI is definitely a very “rough and dirty” estimate. Certainly there are healthy people with a BMI classified as overweight.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:90% of US has a poor diet, and 25% don’t exercise by shishy on Monday January 24, 2022 @11:17PM (#30067945)

fair enough! those communities always seems bigger when you're surrounded by them... :)

[ Parent | on HN ]