5 ms·

Go here https://www.cdc.gov/bmi/adult-calculator/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/bmi/adult-calculator/index.html and enter your height and weight. If you fall ab

Go here https://www.cdc.gov/bmi/adult-calculator/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/bmi/adult-calculator/index.html and enter your height and weight. If you fall above the healthy category, you are part of the obesity rate and are what most research points to when it comes to increased cardiovascular risk. Also for asians the numbers are slightly lower. I find that when I point this out, people often get mad. They feel they aren't obese. But the research doesn't support them, if you are anywhere outside of the "healthy" categorization you are at the same risk (that we know of so far) as "clinically obese" people.

hu3 2y ago
My result: 18.5 to 24.9. "Healthy Weight". I tried adding 10kgs and it said "Overweight". Seems ok to me. They even warn that BMI should be used along with other indicators.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  Mechanick, J. (2013). “What If” Being Overweight was Good For You? Endocrine Practice, 19(1), 166–168. https://doi.org/10.4158/endp.19.1.50042678317gx698 https://doi.org/10.4158/endp.19.1.50042678317gx698 The evidence that being overweight is healthier is a bit dubious, but the evidence that having a "normal" BMI is healthier than "overweight" is nonexistent.
orionsbelt 2y ago
Is it not the case that as BMI increases the risk increases? My BMI is not healthy - and I don’t deny that makes me subject to increased risk - but I would still think morbidly obese is far worse than obese which is worse than overweight, in terms of risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  That's essentially what "morbidly" means.
- Izkata 2y ago
  Not strictly. Over the past few decades I've occasionally but regularly seen evidence that "overweight but not obese" (BMI 25-30) might actually be healthier than a normal weight (BMI 18.5-25). In those studies obese did have a worse outcome than both. IIRC mostly they had to do with seasonal sicknesses like the flu, the theory being that your body can burn the extra fat during periods you aren't able to eat well.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> when I point this out, people often get mad. They feel they aren't obese We’ve normalised being fat.
- sundvor 2y ago
  Still remember my first time ever setting afoot in USA, Newark airport coming from Norway, in 1999, going to a tech conference. I saw more grossly obese people at that airport in the first ten minutes than I had back home in probably the previous year. It really stood out to me. It must be your general dietary makeup and lifestyle. All that corn syrup. Also, I don't see any reason why it would have gotten better since then. Just calling a spade a spade from an outsider's perspective..
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > must be your general dietary makeup and lifestyle. All that corn syrup It’s not just America [1]. Norway’s obesity rate runs at roughly half America’s [2]. But the trend across the world is increasing rates of overweightness, obesity and--most worryingly--child obesity. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41634611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41634611 [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity...
    - sundvor 2y ago
      It's been a minute since then, I've been in Australia for the past two decades as well - and yup, the trend is bad almost everywhere. Having read (well, listened to) Attia's excellent OUTLIVE, I've reversed my own (slowly turned bad) trajectory by switching my diet to the basics - all home made meals, making my own breads, lots of milk and eggs, meats (not in excess), exclusively extra virgin oil and pure butter in my cooking (zero blends/veg oil etc), and not buying any (sugar) snacks - combined with exercise. Oh and no alcohol for the past few years either - sacrifices had to be made. :-) Luckily my own kids are showing zero signs of obesity, they are very healthy.
- watwut 2y ago
KittenInABox 2y ago
I find obesity a weird problem societally because literature to get people to stop being obese on a population level just kind of sucks. All we know is stuff that doesn't really work. Shaming fat people, pointing out their fatness, or other public pressure doesn't do anything. Strict diets like keto or OMAD don't work on a population level (individuals can get great results but I'm talking enough to statistically move the needle as a population). Ozempic and other injectables seem like the best widespread treatment, but that doesn't tell us any causes.
- fwip 2y ago
  To the best of my knowledge, there's actually no diet that has been proven to yield long-term weight loss. (There are of course individual success cases.)
  - Enginerrrd 2y ago
    There are tons of diets that have been proven to work. Getting people to adhere to them long-term is the problem.
    - watwut 2y ago
      The issue is that people able to keep doing them long term end up in hospitals diagnozed with eating disorders. As in, inability to keep them long term is biological defense of organism that does not have genetic predisposition toward anorexia.
- the_gorilla 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - vkou 2y ago
    We tried a few decades of letting vendors feed us crap food, and it's led to an obesity explosion, maybe that's the problem. Let's give a few decades of strict control over food suppliers a try, and if that doesn't work, maybe we could look into alternatives.
ckemere 2y ago
Please correct me if I’m wrong, I believe that for aged women, being slightly overweight predicts longevity?
- watwut 2y ago
  In anyone afaik. The healthiest weight is to be slightly overweight. The worst results are for underweight people and for obese people. The curve makes nosedive in its ends.
cogman10 2y ago
I mostly get mad not because obesity isn't a problem, but because BMI is a bad way to measure it. It may work in the general, but it can give bad information in specific cases. I'm a good example of how it fails. I have long arms and legs which causes my BMI to be fairly low. However, my body fat is fairly high. I need to lose fat but were I to rely solely on BMI I'd think I'm fine. What I'd want instead of BMI is body fat percentage. I think that gives a much better measure of health problems.
pessimizer 2y ago
> I find that when I point this out, people often get mad. They feel they aren't obese. But the research doesn't support them, if you are anywhere outside of the "healthy" categorization you are at the same risk (that we know of so far) as "clinically obese" people. "Overweight" is longer-lived than "Normal," and "Grade I Obesity" isn't significantly less longer lived than "Normal." So what you're pointing out is misinformation, which is why people are annoyed by it. There is a case that "Normal" includes more sick and dying people because sick people often lose weight, but the difference still can't be as stark as reddit knowledge makes it out to be. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23280227/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23280227/ Conclusions and relevance: Relative to normal weight, both obesity (all grades) and grades 2 and 3 obesity were associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality. Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality. The use of predefined standard BMI groupings can facilitate between-study comparisons.
BeetleB 2y ago
> If you fall above the healthy category, you are part of the obesity rate No. If you fall above healthy, you are "overweight". You need a higher BMI to be classified as obese.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> I find that when I point this out, people often get mad. They feel they aren't obese. But the research doesn't support them, if you are anywhere outside of the "healthy" categorization you are at the same risk (that we know of so far) as "clinically obese" people. Depends. All cause mortality is notoriously lower for "overweight" people than "normal weight" people.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Really smells like one of those “some alcohol is healthier than none” things where there’s a subset of the otherwise-healthiest group that’s in the otherwise-healthiest group because they’re very sick.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    Why? "Overweight" and "normal weight" weren't determined by reference to what's better.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      A big 30-year Danish study that seems to be one of the main ones referenced for this purpose sure appears to be doing exactly what I worried it was: measuring the predictive power of BMI for mortality, not the healthiest weight for someone to maintain, which are different things. I see nothing in the abstract & methods about correcting for sick people tending to lose weight, and the healthiest BMI creeping up over time as mean population BMI increased, plus the U-shaped mortality curve, really do look like what you’d expect to see if they’re not accounting for that.
  - watwut 2y ago
    Normal weight and overweight were determined by percentage of population at some point. The boundaries are not about lifespan, they never were.

hu3 2y ago

My result: 18.5 to 24.9. "Healthy Weight". I tried adding 10kgs and it said "Overweight". Seems ok to me. They even warn that BMI should be used along with other indicators.

pessimizer 2y ago
Mechanick, J. (2013). “What If” Being Overweight was Good For You? Endocrine Practice, 19(1), 166–168. https://doi.org/10.4158/endp.19.1.50042678317gx698 https://doi.org/10.4158/endp.19.1.50042678317gx698 The evidence that being overweight is healthier is a bit dubious, but the evidence that having a "normal" BMI is healthier than "overweight" is nonexistent.

orionsbelt 2y ago

Is it not the case that as BMI increases the risk increases? My BMI is not healthy - and I don’t deny that makes me subject to increased risk - but I would still think morbidly obese is far worse than obese which is worse than overweight, in terms of risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.

throwway120385 2y ago
That's essentially what "morbidly" means.
Izkata 2y ago
Not strictly. Over the past few decades I've occasionally but regularly seen evidence that "overweight but not obese" (BMI 25-30) might actually be healthier than a normal weight (BMI 18.5-25). In those studies obese did have a worse outcome than both. IIRC mostly they had to do with seasonal sicknesses like the flu, the theory being that your body can burn the extra fat during periods you aren't able to eat well.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> when I point this out, people often get mad. They feel they aren't obese We’ve normalised being fat.

sundvor 2y ago
Still remember my first time ever setting afoot in USA, Newark airport coming from Norway, in 1999, going to a tech conference. I saw more grossly obese people at that airport in the first ten minutes than I had back home in probably the previous year. It really stood out to me. It must be your general dietary makeup and lifestyle. All that corn syrup. Also, I don't see any reason why it would have gotten better since then. Just calling a spade a spade from an outsider's perspective..
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > must be your general dietary makeup and lifestyle. All that corn syrup It’s not just America [1]. Norway’s obesity rate runs at roughly half America’s [2]. But the trend across the world is increasing rates of overweightness, obesity and--most worryingly--child obesity. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41634611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41634611 [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity...
  - sundvor 2y ago
    It's been a minute since then, I've been in Australia for the past two decades as well - and yup, the trend is bad almost everywhere. Having read (well, listened to) Attia's excellent OUTLIVE, I've reversed my own (slowly turned bad) trajectory by switching my diet to the basics - all home made meals, making my own breads, lots of milk and eggs, meats (not in excess), exclusively extra virgin oil and pure butter in my cooking (zero blends/veg oil etc), and not buying any (sugar) snacks - combined with exercise. Oh and no alcohol for the past few years either - sacrifices had to be made. :-) Luckily my own kids are showing zero signs of obesity, they are very healthy.
watwut 2y ago

KittenInABox 2y ago

I find obesity a weird problem societally because literature to get people to stop being obese on a population level just kind of sucks. All we know is stuff that doesn't really work. Shaming fat people, pointing out their fatness, or other public pressure doesn't do anything. Strict diets like keto or OMAD don't work on a population level (individuals can get great results but I'm talking enough to statistically move the needle as a population). Ozempic and other injectables seem like the best widespread treatment, but that doesn't tell us any causes.

fwip 2y ago
To the best of my knowledge, there's actually no diet that has been proven to yield long-term weight loss. (There are of course individual success cases.)
- Enginerrrd 2y ago
  There are tons of diets that have been proven to work. Getting people to adhere to them long-term is the problem.
  - watwut 2y ago
    The issue is that people able to keep doing them long term end up in hospitals diagnozed with eating disorders. As in, inability to keep them long term is biological defense of organism that does not have genetic predisposition toward anorexia.
the_gorilla 2y ago
[flagged]
- vkou 2y ago
  We tried a few decades of letting vendors feed us crap food, and it's led to an obesity explosion, maybe that's the problem. Let's give a few decades of strict control over food suppliers a try, and if that doesn't work, maybe we could look into alternatives.

ckemere 2y ago

Please correct me if I’m wrong, I believe that for aged women, being slightly overweight predicts longevity?

watwut 2y ago
In anyone afaik. The healthiest weight is to be slightly overweight. The worst results are for underweight people and for obese people. The curve makes nosedive in its ends.

cogman10 2y ago

I mostly get mad not because obesity isn't a problem, but because BMI is a bad way to measure it. It may work in the general, but it can give bad information in specific cases. I'm a good example of how it fails. I have long arms and legs which causes my BMI to be fairly low. However, my body fat is fairly high. I need to lose fat but were I to rely solely on BMI I'd think I'm fine. What I'd want instead of BMI is body fat percentage. I think that gives a much better measure of health problems.

pessimizer 2y ago

> I find that when I point this out, people often get mad. They feel they aren't obese. But the research doesn't support them, if you are anywhere outside of the "healthy" categorization you are at the same risk (that we know of so far) as "clinically obese" people. "Overweight" is longer-lived than "Normal," and "Grade I Obesity" isn't significantly less longer lived than "Normal." So what you're pointing out is misinformation, which is why people are annoyed by it. There is a case that "Normal" includes more sick and dying people because sick people often lose weight, but the difference still can't be as stark as reddit knowledge makes it out to be. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23280227/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23280227/ Conclusions and relevance: Relative to normal weight, both obesity (all grades) and grades 2 and 3 obesity were associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality. Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality. The use of predefined standard BMI groupings can facilitate between-study comparisons.

BeetleB 2y ago

> If you fall above the healthy category, you are part of the obesity rate No. If you fall above healthy, you are "overweight". You need a higher BMI to be classified as obese.

thaumasiotes 2y ago

vundercind 2y ago
Really smells like one of those “some alcohol is healthier than none” things where there’s a subset of the otherwise-healthiest group that’s in the otherwise-healthiest group because they’re very sick.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Why? "Overweight" and "normal weight" weren't determined by reference to what's better.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    A big 30-year Danish study that seems to be one of the main ones referenced for this purpose sure appears to be doing exactly what I worried it was: measuring the predictive power of BMI for mortality, not the healthiest weight for someone to maintain, which are different things. I see nothing in the abstract & methods about correcting for sick people tending to lose weight, and the healthiest BMI creeping up over time as mean population BMI increased, plus the U-shaped mortality curve, really do look like what you’d expect to see if they’re not accounting for that.
- watwut 2y ago
  Normal weight and overweight were determined by percentage of population at some point. The boundaries are not about lifespan, they never were.