Body Mass Index (BMI) Is Nothing to Take Seriously

Nintendo recently released the Wii Fit, which of course is designed to give you a way to have an at home workout and a general fun experience. Along the way to making yourself fit it tracks many things including your progress, what you've accomplished and your Body Mass Index. Telling someone their Body Mass Index isn't always a good idea, especially when you tell a 10 year old that she is obese. Typically, 10 year olds who are a bit hefty have to deal with classroom ridicule, automating that ridicule is something they just don't need.

The funny part about all of this is how irrelevant and how dated BMI measurements are. I personally am 5 foot 8 (stupid mother gave me the short gene) and somewhere between 165 and 170 pounds. I go to the gym 4 or 5 times a week, play softball / bball / flag football something year round. I consider myself to be in good shape. Other than my alcohol intake and the occasional shitty dining on the weekend I eat healthy as well. Yet when you plug in my BMI, I am considered overweight.

So lets take a look at some athletes to see how they stack up and just how poorly their bodies are.

Lisa Leslie: 6'5, 170: 20.2 Normal
Tayshaun Prince: 6'9, 215: 23.0 Normal
Diana Taurasi: 6'0, 172: 23.3 Normal
Roger Federer: 6'1 177: 23.3 Normal
Tiger Woods: 6'1, 185: 24.4 Normal (I have a difficult time believing either of Tiger or Federer's listed weight)
Michael Jordan: 6'6 216: 25.0 Overweight
Kevin Garnett: 6'11, 253: 25.8 Overweight
Lebron James: 6'8, 240: 26.4 Overweight
Tom Brady: 6'4 225: 27.4 Overweight
David Eckstein: 5'7 177: 27.7 Overweight (That 177 might be a lie)
David Ortiz: 6'4, 230: 28.0 Overweight (That 230 might be a lie)
Alex Rodriguez: 6'3 225: 28.1 Overweight
John Daly: 5'11 220: 30.7 Obese (220 in his dreams)
Shaq: 7'1 325: 31.6 Obese
Glenn Dorsey: 6'3 303: 38.9 Obese

Ok, maybe John Daly is obese, but Lebron, Jordan, KG and Arod are all overweight? That's a pretty laughable measurement system right there.

Numbers On Steroids: Bret Boone

Numbers on Steroids is a look at baseball players during the 90s to see if anything screams out at you. Mr. Boone was once the best power hitting second baseman in the league. How questionable was his success? Averages Say: Why the extra plateu in his mid 30s? At Bats Per Home Run Says: Lowest at Bats Per Home Runs at 37? Hmm.... Explaining It Away Yeak, this one is tough. Umm, late bloomer? He showed potential power early in his career and he just liked playing in Seattle a lot more than everywhere else? And umm, his career was kind of like a running backs in that it just all of a sudden fell off the map? Any of these convincing you? The Verdict Guy never hits more than 24 home runs in a season and then in his age 32 season he hits 37? And in SafeCo a pitchers park to boot? And he follows that up with 24, 35, 24 homer years still at SafeCo? And then he completely falls off the map in 2005 never to be heard from again? We've got a Screamer... Man Get Big Muscles In 30s. Hm...

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Comments

Anonymous said…

The military still uses this. I went in to MEPS at 5'7" 166 and if I weighed 4 more pounds I was ineligible for military service. This is laughable; at the time I was running the two mile test consistently under 12 minutes, could squat 1.5x my body weight, bench 1.25x my body weight, and deadlift 2x my body weight.

Then after all the tests they told me that they wouldn't let me into an engineering unit but they would let me be a humvee gunner. No thanks, Uncle Sam.

8:11 AM

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