Weight and BMI (Body Mass Index) could be misleading!
Does that sound surprising? Let’s try to understand it better. Usually, there is a lot of focus on weight and BMI. What we fail to understand is that both these measurements do not give us a complete view of body composition. What do we mean by body composition? The components that make up our body, that is: fat mass, muscle mass, bone mass and water. What does a weighing scale tell us? It simply tells us the sum total of weight of all these components. But that does not give us insight into how much each of these components contribute to our body weight. We need to understand the contribution of each of these components to make a judgement of a person’s healthy status and to know what is it that we need to work on to improve the overall body composition and subsequently feel energetic and perform at one’s peak capacity (at school/ work/ home). Let’s look at two scenarios and understand how BMI could be misleading. 1. Athletes may have high BMI, but it is because of their high