With the New Year fast approaching many of us will be going through the motions of pledging with all of our heart and soul that we’re going to get in shape and lose weight, starting as soon as our January 1st hangover wears off. Of course wanting to live a healthier lifestyle is never a bad thing, but new research is showing that some of what we base our weight on may not really be necessary.
Since being developed by a Belgian statistician 150 years ago, doctors have been using Body Mass Index (BMI) to determine whether or not a person is overweight, with BMIs between 20 and 25 as optimal, but anything over 25 as overweight, and over 30 as clinically obese. However recent research is showing that BMI calculations might not accurate anymore.
According to an article in The Week:
Recent research has cast doubt over BMI as a measure of health. In 2006, a study of more than 33,000 American adults revealed that life expectancy is actually highest for men with BMIs of 26 – well into what was regarded as the overweight category, and equivalent to a whopping 24lb extra for the typical man. For women, optimal BMI proved to be around 23.5, almost half a stone heavier than the supposed optimum. Such findings are leading scientists to abandon BMI in favour of a simpler yet more reliable measure of waist measurement.
But if the old BMI scale is now off …