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Is BMI accurate way to look at your weight/help

So I am wondering if there is more accurate way of calculating your body mass index. I am a woman in my mid 60s I have recently lost about 22 pounds seem to sell my BMI is still up there around 25. Is there a better or more accurate calculation I can use? Is a BMI considered informative to the medical community?
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649848 tn?1534633700
COMMUNITY LEADER
There are numerous BMI calculators available online that are very easy to use... all you have to do is enter the information required and the calculator gives you an answer.  

It's hard for us to say what your BMI "should" be since we don't know what your height or weight is or what you started out at.  

Here's a calculator on the NIH site:  https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm

The problem with BMI is that it can over-estimate the amount of fat one has, especially, in muscular athletes, etc because it doesn't allow for the amount of muscle and water in our bodies.

Although doctors use the BMI for various reasons, I, personally, go by my weight and the way my clothes fit to determine actual weight loss/gain.  Sometimes, if we're doing a lot of exercise, our weight might not change a whole lot because exercise builds muscle.  We all know that a pound is a pound, but muscle molecules are packed tighter than fat molecules so takes less muscle mass to make a pound that it does fat mass - it's like comparing a 1-pound rock (muscle) to 1 pound of feathers (fat).  The 1 pound rock will take up a relatively small space, but the pound of feathers will take up quite a bit of space.

If the scale says you're going down and your clothes are getting loser, you're on the way down and if you have more to lose, you're probably good to keep doing what you're doing as long as it's healthy...
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2 Comments
Thank you. Good common sense
You're welcome and feel free to join our weight loss challenge if you like... I post a weekly weigh in every Sunday morning.  
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