The BMI Project
Posted by Sherry , Tuesday, May 18, 2010 Tuesday, May 18, 2010
A friend of mine posted this link on her facebook page today: http://theshapeofamother.com/save-our-daughters/
I've really been enjoying the links and information I've found through the site. I won't go into all the gory details but it should not be surprising to those of you who have daughters (or even those of you who are daughters!) that one of the driving forces behind me getting the Lap-Band is my desire to be healthy and set a good example for my daughter. Not just in how I look, but also in how I think of myself, how I judge myself and how I judge others.
One of the links I found on this site was to the "BMI Project". It is essentially just a slideshow of photos of different women of all shapes and sizes and how they fall into the BMI scale.
Now, I understand that so many of us have personal goals to be in the 'normal' range of the BMI chart. I admit that I have one for myself. Just today my trainer asked me about my goal weight and after telling him the number, I followed it with "because that would put me right in the middle of the 'normal' BMI range for my height."
Its immensely difficult for us to put aside all of our previous notions of what a 'normal' body should weigh and/or look like. I'm not suggesting that we'll all be able to just ignore the BMI charts in our weight loss journeys or not take them into consideration when deciding on whether or not we are at our 'goal' weights.
I'm just asking you (as I'm asking me) to take some time to check out this BMI Project site and take what you see into consideration when setting those goals and more importantly, when you find you are 'judging' yourself.
Thanks for posting that - that's pretty cool!
I have always hated BMI because it will say that a bodylifter is morbidly obese because he/she carries "too much" muscle. It isn't really an accurate health gauge in a lot of cases; I know there's been a number of blogs about this recently. I spent a lot of my 20's in the 150's and 160's and for my height, looking at BMI, I was overweight and even obese. But my bodyfat, through all of that, was always under 25% - which is healthy. I was muscular and was penalized according to the BMI scale, though. I have been having a hard time with setting a goal, a specific goal, for myself because I am not shooting for a look or a BMI declaration of health or even a size of pants. I am shooting for healthy, able-bodied and feeling good. And you can't put numbers to that. My one thing is that I want my body fat to be reasonable - and that will happen when I get into the 180's. Gen had a blog the other day talking about the waist/height ratio and that system seems to have better merit, I think.
Rambling.
Again, thanks for sharing - that's pretty cool stuff to see!!