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 muscle mass and bone mass which contributes to high BMI instead of the fat mass. It would be incorrect to judge them by their BMI and call them overweight or obese.

2. Elderly start losing bone mass and muscle mass as they age, hence their body weight goes down; and as a result, their BMI reduces. If we were to go by weight and BMI alone, reduced BMI would look like a good thing. Whereas, in reality, reduced bone mass and muscle mass in elderly is a cause of concern. It leads to reduced strength and other risks. 

I suggest you to try getting your body composition checked and then make judgement of your health status. It is done using an instrument called Body Composition Analyzer (BCA). Some clinics have BCA. 

My goal of writing this post is to create awareness as to why one cannot rely on weight and BMI alone to judge one’s health status and label anyone as overweight or normal weight.

This article is meant for increasing awareness and not intended as a substitute for medical advice.

If you found this article useful, do share with your friends and family, so that they also benefit from the right information.

Thanks for stopping by.

Chandhini