When I was in H.S. I was 5'2", 110 lbs (give or take)...My family physician told me if I could maintain that weight I would be "perfect" and that if I gained weight (even 10 lbs!) according to the BMI I would be unhealthy. So I spent a good deal of time focusing on/obsessing over maintaining my "healthy" weight...

I don't blame the BMI for a bad body complex but I agree the system is WHACK.

Any chart that has broad terms cannot be taken as truth. All they do is misdiagnois, and cause otherwise healthy people to have unhealthy views of their body.

@kielbasasausage: Those are my current stats and I feel enormous pressure to lose weight. If I gain even 3lbs, on my short-person frame, I'll go up 2 clothing sizes. Being short suuuuuuuucks.

Wasn't there some news story a few years ago about Shaq having a BMI in the obese category?

I will never forget the day when, after dropping sixty pounds, I calculated the BMI and found I went from morbidly obese to -- obese. It took another ten pounds before I was just "overweight."

"Overweight" on me is "Good God, are you dying?"

@kielbasasausage: Did your doctor actually use the word "perfect"? Is that doctor a man? I'm just curious.

The BMI doesn't take into account the fact that muscle weighs more than fat. I think it's long been assumed that it's not accurate for many people.

Kinda old new if you ask me...

@BiscuitDoughJones: Well now I feel like a fucking cow because I'm 5'2" and weigh 135. Time to purge...

@howdybeep: Yup. I went from obese to "severely overweight" after losing 50 lbs. I thought (as did my husband, friends, coworkers) that I'd gone from chubby to hot mama! Apparently not?

I'm sorry to put a damper on things but there is totes NO WAY pumpkin girl is 130'lbs at 5'0". If she is truly five feet tall she is 110 max.

@BiscuitDoughJones: Yeah, I'm the same height, and my friends can never understand why i wail and moan so much about gaining 5 pounds.

According to the BMI, I'm four pounds away from being overweight.
FOUR

@SarahMC: You probably have more muscle than me. I can't gain muscle no matter what I do. Probably has to do with Crohn's..

This shite is whack. Newsflash: you can be "normal" and still completely unhealthy.

Heart disease isn't born solely from extra weight. You can be a stick and still have a ticker that won't carry you into your golden era.

I'll go by actual health, thanks.

Boo on BMI.

At 6'0" and 125~130 pounds, I am not even on the BMI. :( (Women hate me for my weight. I hate myself for not being able to gain weight)

P.S. I thought ole Sarah was actually Nicole Ritchie. She doesn't look too buff to me. Tiny, yes. Super althelete toned? Meh, that's a stretch for me.

And did she exercise her boobies into bolivian?

One problem I have with her posting is that she doesn't mention that although the picture of Mindy at 125lbs falls within the "normal" range, at 5'8", Mindy could gain FORTY POUNDS and still be "normal" (5'8", 164lbs = BMI of 24.9).

Also @SarahMC: 5'2", 135 is "normal", too (BMI 24.7).

Ohh, and I just fucking puked because of that picture....

The BMI also doesn't take into account, oh, the entire Inuit population.

I'm pretty tall and I've only once been even close to the "normal" weight I sould be and I was till a couple pounds into the "overweight" realm. I looked like the walking dead. I came home from school and my mom started to cry. BMI is a load of horse shit.

Man, I totally didn't even KNOW how BMI was calculated or why I should give a damn until my GF explained it to me a few weeks ago. Bad math!

@petuniacat: Agree.

Which is why I am always telling people how much I weigh (155, 5-7) because I am sick of everyone thinking that a non-overweight girl "weighs, like 120." I have heard that come out of so many people's mouths.

If I dropped 20 pounds to meet my BMI ideal, I would seriously be dead. I hate, hate the BMI AND the fake weights that you read in magazines that just perpetuate this stuff.

I am 5'5" and 155 lb. My BMI puts me just barely into the overweight category, and I agree. I could stand to lose 5 pounds. I just lost 15 and feel great but I really can't argue with my BMI, and I don't think I could be happy at 280 pounds. Frankly, I would probably kill myself. Let's be honest-- it is not fun to have a huge spare tire around your middle.

@BiscuitDoughJones: I have friends who are 5'0" to 5'4" and it took me the longest time to figure out why they'd worry about 3 or 4 pounds. I'm 5'10" and can be a little slow. If it helps any, all of my damn pants are too short.

I have only once since I was 12 been in the "Normal" category, and during that time (18-20), I had to see a multitude of doctors b/c I refused to eat.

I am 5'5" and 155 lb. My BMI puts me just barely into the overweight category, and I agree. I could stand to lose 5 pounds. I just lost 15 and feel great but I really can't argue with my BMI, and I don't think I could be happy at 280 pounds. Frankly, I would probably kill myself. Let's be honest-- it is not fun to have a huge spare tire around your middle.@HeatherNumber1:

I've lost over 100 lbs in my life and probably have a smidge of body dysmorphia, but I can't tell you how comforting it is to me when I see a picture of a girl with a similar height and weight to me that looks JUST FINE.

@PantyWaist:

Did you really just say you would KILL YOURSELF if you weighed 280 lbs?

@serreca: Why yes, yes he was. My mother didn't understand my absolute refusal to ever go back to his office again. Poor choice of words on his part in front of a 14 y/o girl w/ body issues.

@BiscuitDoughJones: I know right! I am 4'11" and 112 lbs I wear a size 5 but if I even smell a chocolate cake I'll be in that omg I'm fat stage.

Yes, yes. Bingo girls, you've nailed it: that chart does not account for height, nor body frame. I'm 5'6 but very small framed, like it's me and the 5' gals in the size 6 shoe section, with me towering over them like some freak. I cannot support weight gain due to my frame being small. My BMI is right in the middle of the healthy range, but common sense should prevail.

@lolly71: Tis True. I am also 5'10" and I swear my weight fluctuates 3-4 lb's in any given day.

@lolly71: I think it's not just height but the way you're put together, too.

I'm 5'7", and weight fluctuation that is really just part of the normal ebb and flow of water, etc., in a woman's body takes me from "Rowrr" to "are you swollen?" to "wasting away" in the blink of an eye.

I feel your pain on pants but I guess in the other direction. All of mine are hella long until I wear like 4" heels. I think it's because my legs are kind of normal to short and my torso and neck belong on a giraffe.

The obsession with weight itself is stupid for the exact same reasons. I can be in great shape, with a lot of muscle, and weigh 5 pounds more than when I am weak, flabby, with an extra roll of fat.

@thegreatladies: We have the same body.

I can't say that I agree with the original post. For one, the judgment that she is doling out is based entirely on whether these women look to her like they are going to "drop dead." That's unfair because she's not a doctor, and because a lot of the dangers of being unhealthily overweight stem from the added stress on your body. Your bones are stressed from the literal weight, your heart is stressed and possibly covered in dangerous fat deposits. You may be ingesting too much sugar rather than proper nutrients and slowly creating a diabetic emergency in your bloodstream.

Frankly, you just can't tell from a picture whether someone is healthy or not, and especially since a lot of people ARE overweight we are getting much more loose with our approximations of what 'normal' is. That is as much as fallacy as assuming a very thin person is healthier than a plumper person, simply based on what they look like.

@lolly71: Another 5'10"er and I agree... my weight goes a little up and down constantly, and I don't even notice half the time.

It's nice sometimes, but then I wonder if I'll be one of those people who just wake up with an extra 20 pounds and don't know what happened.

BMI is just an estimate and manages to make most people feel like shit. If you really want an body fat percentage reading, you'd have to pay thousands of dollars for hydrostatic weighing (where they dunk you in a tank of water.)

@thegreatladies: I'm the other way - I have the upper body of a 5'6" woman and the legs of a 5'11" woman. I'm like a walking exquisite corpse.

Apologies if this was already mentioned, but it is pretty commonly known that BMI does not really work as a measurement for certain groups of people (like athletes or the elderly).

Anyway, who pays attention to their weight anymore? Obsessing over measured body fat is where it's at, ladies.

According to BMI I am currently underweight, but I've never been healthier in my life. I'm just a small framed person. Though at 5'3, I freak out if my weight goes close to 110. I like being below 105.

I'm currently 5'7'', 143 pounds with a BMI of 22.4%

Sad but true- the first time my BMI was within "normal" range, I cried. My new obsession became trying to get down to 18.5% BMI. Oh, body issues.

It's great that you guys have addressed the ridiculousness of the BMI calculator. I saw some of those overweight pictures and had to laugh. Mind you, I am in the overweight category, but believe I belong there. At the same time, if these girls are overweight then I am obese. As for the morbidly obese, I have to disagree. Being a triathlete, but carrying that much extra fat, is still detrimental to your health. Nonetheless, she is awesome. All that the category suggests is that it's going to affect you down the road healthwise. I'm not a doctor, but I am pretty sure the human heart isn't equipped to pump that much extra blood.

Oh, and to the curvy girls, subtract some extra pounds for the breasts and thighs!

@lolly71: It sucks on both ends, don't it? Reminds me of Skeelo:
"I wish I was a little bit taller,
I wish I was a baller,
I wish I had a girl who looked good
I would call her.."

The frame thing is important. I'm very tall and have medium-frame so even at 135 I can appear underweight.

This BMI calculator is interesting [www.halls.md]

@lolly71: Oh my God, me too. Whenever I sit down next to my "short" friends, I'm suddenly perfectly at eye level with them. And of course, I got all the height at around age 12, so I have vivid memories of my mom and I pulling at opposite ends of my blue jeans, trying to stretch them out just a half-inch longer...

@thegreatladies: I also have the long torso & neck - I'm 5'8", and being relatively tall + having a long torso means that ordinary shirts turn into belly-baring shirts, and tunics hit at the widest part of my hips, rather than lower down, where they'd actually be flattering.

@jordan_baker:

that's where i am too, 155 and just under 5'7". I checked BMI and thought, okay, need to lose at least 20 lbs. I wear a size 6-8 though, and I try to go by that more than weight. I have a kangaroo pouch and my bum IS a little bigger than normal but I am Hispanic, my ribs would take center stage if I lost enough weight to shrink my ass to a small size. I'm afraid my internal organs have to be more important than my bum. But it has taken me a long time to get to that point.

i'm sure there's someone on here who knows more about this than i do, but... my understanding is that the BMI measurement was developed to do statistical analyses of populations, and that it's not terribly useful in assessing an individual's health. can anyone confirm?