The illustrated BMI Categories

[angi]

I stumbled upon this site and found it interesting. I can't stand phobias of any kind, and fatphobia is no exception. It is interesting to see an honest portrayal of weight and the differing body shapes of men and women. Of course I realize this is probably the last place to post this on...but there was an Asian guy (I think!)

http://flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/1490420406/in/set-72157602199008819/

"D" is obese at 5'4" and 185lbs and a BMI of 31.8.

All I can say is HOLY COW LOOK AT THOSE GUNS!!!!!!

[ellencho]

How do 300 lb women do triathlons? After 15 minutes on the rowing machine my arms are ready to fall off.

[angi]

I dunno, but it appears as though she trains for it like anyone else. She posted this in response to people giving her crap about her photo on the BMI slideshow:


The Fat Girl on a Bike blog started as a way for me to write about my experiences specifically related to biking. When I took the plunge for my first triathlon a little more than a year ago, I decided to write about it there because it gave my friends and family a way to follow me.

I’m painfully aware of how people can interact in a completely anonymous atmosphere, so I tried to carefully edit the blog because I didn’t want to constantly deal with two issues — diet and weight loss. I have a very low bullshit tolerance, and those sorts of conversations piss me off very quickly.

It disturbs me to no end to see how focused we as a society have become on those two issues. What the hell gives you the right to go up to a fat person and offer diet advice or ask if they’ve lost weight? On the flip side, what the hell gives you the right to go up to a naturally thin person and tell them they should eat something? Our bodies ARE NOT PUBLIC PROPERTY.

Here’s the truth about being fat. We’re told we’re unhealthy (but there is no real finite definition of the word), and we need to lose weight. We’re told losing weight is simple: eat less and exercise.

So we eat less and exercise. But when we exercise, we’re told we’re grinding down our joints and are going to hurt ourselves. So we’re supposed to slowly walk and subsist on rice cakes and Diet Coke.

And when we don’t lose weight, it’s because we’re somehow sabotaging ourselves, because we hate ourselves — otherwise we wouldn’t be this fat in the first place! And there’s only one cause for being fat — we just eat too goddamn much. So get off the couch, fatass, and exercise!

OMGWTFBBQ!1!1!11 Like a dutiful drone, I went and followed those instructions. I went and exercised. I had fun. I exercised for three years and then decided to do something a little unusual. I did a triathlon. And I liked it so much, I did seven more in one year. And wrote about it. And posted pictures. And talked about how I felt. And talked about how others made me feel. And talked about it from the perspective of the fat chick who’s usually last. And talked about the fun I had. And talked about the bad things. And I didn’t hold back.

Somehow, that became permission for every asshat on the web to dissect my entire life based on a picture or reading one or two blog entries.

Lately the bullshit barrage has been much harder for me than usual. I’m super stressed out from my own REAL life and I’m trying to handle a buttload of stuff on very little emotional reserve (surprise, I have mental health issues too!)

The last straw was a very lengthy discussion on another blog, specifically discussing me based on photos from the BMI project. That’s why I decided to take a break for a while by turning the blog private until I’m ready to face the intarweb again. I also asked Kate to remove my photos from the project, possibly forever.

The biggest reason I don’t discuss diet and weight loss with strangers is I lived for 17 years as a calorie-obsessed bulimic who spent much of my spare mental energy trying to see how many grams I’d be able to lose if I just puked up 4 percent of last night’s dinner. Constantly reading and hearing about eating, weight, obesity, etc., have recently rekindled all sorts of eating disordered thoughts and behavior and I will NOT let that happen to me again.

There are factors in my life that make weight loss much more complicated than you’ll ever know (as is common with many other people of varying sizes). So you know what? I stopped obsessing over it because I wanted to enjoy my life rather than be ill all the time. I’m not exactly thrilled with my size, but I’d much rather be a confident fat woman than a ridiculously insecure not-so-fat woman.

The thing that irritates me so much about this is that I just want to write about my racing habit because that’s how I remember and enjoy it afterward.

So why is my blog fodder for the whole internet dickwad population to come out and rip me to shreds and make theoretical claims about me and my body? Why is it important to pontificate over the definition of the terms “athlete,” “fitness,” “health,” “obesity,” “triathlete,” and generic “fatass”?

I never used to have a problem with people criticizing me, because my job always invited it. But I knew that criticism was based on my JOB, not ME. In fact, I appreciate job criticism because it helps me do it better.

But this shit is 100 percent personal, based on one fucking picture. Not a series of pictures, but one fucking picture. And people claim it’s not personal, by saying it’s not me their criticizing, it’s just my fat. Guess what, my fat is part of my body. And when you shit on my body, you’re shitting on me. And I’m not into that sort of freaky shit.

Based on those pictures, some anonymous fucktard can make a public assertion that I’m unhealthy, weak, sick, in need of medical attention, grinding my joints to a pulp, not an athlete, not a triathlete, lying about what I eat (which I never discuss online), lying about the levels of exercise I do (which I also don’t discuss in intimate detail), self-hating, and a whole host of other things.

While some say I should just ignore it and move on, I challenge you to see how you’d be doing in this sort of situation. I sincerely doubt you’d be able to ignore it that easily.

That said, the blog will be back, but not for a while. I need the break to focus on myself, not worrying about the constant distraction of buzzing flies ripping my life to shreds in ways they’d never say to my face.

[blockthebox]

I heard that bigger people make for better bikers than thinner people. Don't know how true this is.

[Candide]

It's common knowledge that apart from cases like athletes and body builders (mainly because BMI doesn't take into account body fat %), BMI is fairly accurate in showing whether one's overweight or not. That gallery simply supports this. BMI isn't meant to measure how happy/insecure you are with your body weight.

It's also common knowledge that when you make your personal information public, particularly on the Internet, you're gonna cop a lot of shit for it (unfair, but so is life). Which I'm sure a confident fat woman who's secure with her body weight should handle like a breeze, instead of ranting like mad on a blog.

[angi]

Actually, I thought the whole thing illustrated how the BMI isn't really all that reflective of how we interpret body size since every individual carries weight differently. Some of the people who were "overweight" looked smaller than some in the "normal" category and many of the "obese" people looked chubby but certainly nowhere near what most people think of when they hear the word obese. I think, if anything, it illustrates how garbage the notion it is that a 5 pound difference in weight can denote healthy or unhealthy.

The person who posted their blog isn't so much ranting like a mad woman, rather just expressing her irritation that she posted her blog to be inspiring to others and instead got a bunch of garbage for it. Who cares if she is fat? Why would any reasonable person go on to some random person's blog and treat them like garbage? You can be confident in yourself, but the outside world's crap can still get to you at times...I mean isn't that what so many are complaining about on these very pages?

[Candide]

Actually, I thought the whole thing illustrated how the BMI isn't really all that reflective of how we interpret body size since every individual carries weight differently. Some of the people who were "overweight" looked smaller than some in the "normal" category and many of the "obese" people looked chubby but certainly nowhere near what most people think of when they hear the word obese. I think, if anything, it illustrates how garbage the notion it is that a 5 pound difference in weight can denote healthy or unhealthy.


Umm BMI says whether you're too thin/normal/overweight or obese (with certain disclaimers as mentioned). It can be interpreted that if your BMI goes over a certain range, you're more at risks of health issues. That's it. It's about risks and likelihood. You can be a high risk case and yet are lucky enough to not have any health problem. It isn't everything about health and fitness. An athlete with a life threatening disease is still gonna drop dead earlier than an overweight person with no serious illness. My cardio fitness now is worse than 6 months ago when I weighed 6kg more, because I haven't done many long distance runs recently, although my speed and agility have improved.

The problem is people using the number (like stats) to suit their own agenda. The media (on behalf of their advertisers) drum it up so that they can sell people more diet and exercise fads. People who have BMIs in the high risk ranges spin it to make themselves feel good.

My opinion on body image and weight is the mirror test. Get naked and stand in front of a mirror. Do you like your own body? Yes/No. Do you think you can improve it? Yes/No. Do you want to improve it? Yes/No. Fuck everyone else.


The person who posted their blog isn't so much ranting like a mad woman, rather just expressing her irritation that she posted her blog to be inspiring to others and instead got a bunch of garbage for it. Who cares if she is fat? Why would any reasonable person go on to some random person's blog and treat them like garbage? You can be confident in yourself, but the outside world's crap can still get to you at times...I mean isn't that what so many are complaining about on these very pages?


There's ranting, and there's expressing your disapproval of the way you're treated. You can't claim you're a strong confident woman in one breath then show the whole world how much you're hurt deep down by some comments on the Internet.

[kimtae]

Actually, this is what you wrote:BMI is fairly accurate in showing whether one's overweight or not.
Overweight being a highly subjective term, BMI is largely useless for most healthy active people, non-athletes included because not only does it not take into consideration body-fat composition but it also ignores muscle mass, bone structure, and body type. It's a hundred year old bit of social "science" that should have been retired along with things like "Fletcherizing" (http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Fletcher), "magnet therapy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_therapy), and psychic surgery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_surgery). It's utterly useless and causes more distress than it does any good.

[kikiandlala]

I heard that bigger people make for better bikers than thinner people. Don't know how true this is.



Big on which part? Lance Armstrong and the rest of those bikers are certainly bigger than horse jockeys and figure skaters, but they're sticks compared to almost any other athletes about.

Kimtae is right, though I don't think BMI is absolutely worthless. If you got to a fitness trainer and
ask to get a fitness test done, what they do is hook you up to the ol' electrodes and run a current
test on your body as muscle conducts pretty well. If you're too well-insulated, then it's likely time
to start burning off some calories. I'm a fairly skinny guy, but I came out just better than a rubber
suit and I can see where it's coming from so, plus I could FEEL that I wasn't as healthy as I was a year ago.