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Nargrakhan
2018-06-23, 11:15 AM
I'm looking for a chart of men comparing their height, weight, shape like these:

https://ibb.co/hWmXuo

https://ibb.co/idiCuo

Reason being these women charts proved really helpful for me in assigning NPC weights based on the body shape and type of sport the muscle mass was gained from. Say how tall or how much should an Amazonian Champion weigh, compared to a petite samurai swordswoman. That sort of stuff.

Please... no "body shaming" derailing.

Thanks in advance!

Nifft
2018-06-23, 11:49 PM
https://ibb.co/hWmXuo

https://ibb.co/idiCuo

Jessica Howard is cheating by standing on her toes.

I found you some celebs, but no athletes -- not even on the deep web (... which means 3rd page of Google results).


https://i.imgur.com/5VA5WmP.jpg

RedWarlock
2018-06-24, 12:02 AM
I believe I've seen the male counterpart to those charts before. I want to say they're from Sports Illustrated?

Slipperychicken
2018-06-24, 12:55 AM
Why not work with body-fat percentage? That's what really tracks how trim you look; height and weight give a pretty hazy image on their own. I'd probably go to one of the calculators for it, and map out the possible values which result in bodyfat under like 10-15%.

Do they do the necessary body-measurements for these athletes?

Kaptin Keen
2018-06-24, 02:12 AM
Honestly it's just height in cm minus 100 equals weight. I'm 181cm, I ought to weigh around 81kg. Now, I'm reasonably athletic, so I weigh more than that. But that's essentially all you need to know. I weigh 90, so I'm frankly pretty buff. If I weighed 100, I'd look silly.

And it's basically the same for women, btw.

Hand_of_Vecna
2018-06-24, 01:57 PM
You might find the site mybodygalleryformen.com useful. You can search by height and weight and get bodies with a variety of builds that fit those measurements.

halfeye
2018-06-24, 02:16 PM
Why not work with body-fat percentage? That's what really tracks how trim you look; height and weight give a pretty hazy image on their own. I'd probably go to one of the calculators for it, and map out the possible values which result in bodyfat under like 10-15%.

Do they do the necessary body-measurements for these athletes?

I don't think you can just do fat percentage, some people have more muscle than others too.

I also think the images of the women are not composed with a very strict attention to scale, there's one lady 5'3", and another next to her 4'8" and the difference in height between them appears to be over a foot, which would be incorrect if they were to scale.

Nifft
2018-06-24, 02:35 PM
I also think the images of the women are not composed with a very strict attention to scale, there's one lady 5'3", and another next to her 4'8" and the difference in height between them appears to be over a foot, which would be incorrect if they were to scale.

There's also a 4'11" girl next to a 5'1" girl, and the measured-shorter girl looks visibly taller.

So yeah, they didn't do scaling correctly.

(Also one girl is cheating by standing on her toes.)

Xuc Xac
2018-06-24, 07:51 PM
Honestly it's just height in cm minus 100 equals weight. I'm 181cm, I ought to weigh around 81kg.

That's just incredibly wrong. It's just a coincidence that the numbers line up like that at that one point. Do you think children and halflings should be weightless until they're over a meter tall?

Remember the square-cube law. Height is one dimension but weight is based on volume which is three dimensions. If you scale yourself up to twice the height, your volume and weight will go up 8 times.

Nifft
2018-06-24, 09:43 PM
That's just incredibly wrong. It's just a coincidence that the numbers line up like that at that one point. Do you think children and halflings should be weightless until they're over a meter tall?

YES.

That's exactly how it should be.

Babies should absolutely be anti-gravity devices.

Coincidentally, that would explain why Mars needs nubile women.

Kaptin Keen
2018-06-25, 01:24 AM
That's just incredibly wrong. It's just a coincidence that the numbers line up like that at that one point. Do you think children and halflings should be weightless until they're over a meter tall?

Remember the square-cube law. Height is one dimension but weight is based on volume which is three dimensions. If you scale yourself up to twice the height, your volume and weight will go up 8 times.

No, it's pretty accurate. It doesn't work for children, or anyone unusually tall or short, light or heavy. It's entirely possible it doesn't work for cultures that are physically smaller, like .. the inuits, or some such. But as a general rule of thumb, it's surprisingly accurate.

Xuc Xac
2018-06-25, 01:37 AM
No, it's pretty accurate. It doesn't work for children, or anyone unusually tall or short, light or heavy. It's entirely possible it doesn't work for cultures that are physically smaller, like .. the inuits, or some such. But as a general rule of thumb within a narrow range of cases, it's surprisingly accurate.

That makes more sense.

Blymurkla
2018-06-25, 04:06 AM
I believe I've seen the male counterpart to those charts before. I want to say they're from Sports Illustrated? You're right there's a male counterpart to these photos. I remember seeing them a couple of years ago, can't remember where. I know for sure it wasn't Sports Illustrated. Possibly a pop since magazine. I suspect they've been reprinted everywhere.

Couldn't find the exact comparing images to the two OP linked to, but this site (https://www.boredpanda.com/athlete-body-types-comparison-howard-schatz/) had much of the material.

MrSandman
2018-06-25, 04:23 AM
Honestly it's just height in cm minus 100 equals weight. I'm 181cm, I ought to weigh around 81kg. Now, I'm reasonably athletic, so I weigh more than that. But that's essentially all you need to know. I weigh 90, so I'm frankly pretty buff. If I weighed 100, I'd look silly.

And it's basically the same for women, btw.

The problem with that model is that, even if it were accurate (which, granted, for the height range 175-185 of a particular body build, it might be), it's too vague.

First, you offer no range to work with. What is a normal deviation of the pattern? is +/-10 kg acceptable or is it too much? Does the normal deviation change for higher or shorter people? Even the example that you give deviates more than 10% from the expected weight. What really is the value of a model for which you don't even provide one example that fits it?

But second and more importantly, if the opener has asked specifically for athletic body builds (notice the plural) and shown an example of what they are looking for that shows the heights, weights, and body shapes of women who do different kinds of athletic activities, it follows that they are particularly interested in knowing how a particular kind of exercise affects the body, and what sort of body types are more likely to excel in a particular exercise.

To put it in other words, people aren't going to weigh the same if they've spent their whole life doing rhythmic gymnastics than if they had spent their whole life lifting lorries.

Lvl 2 Expert
2018-06-25, 05:42 AM
Honestly it's just height in cm minus 100 equals weight. I'm 181cm, I ought to weigh around 81kg. Now, I'm reasonably athletic, so I weigh more than that. But that's essentially all you need to know. I weigh 90, so I'm frankly pretty buff. If I weighed 100, I'd look silly.

And it's basically the same for women, btw.

At that point BMI might be more useful. The range usually given as healthy was historically often used to determine fitness for military service, though ditched after it turned out some body builders and assorted overly muscular builds were getting thrown out as well.

So a lean runner would be near the bottom end of the scale, a fat free but muscular martial artist around the middle and a body builder, weight lifter or shot putter maybe even a bit over the top end. (Strong man competitors sometimes more than a bit.)

Kaptin Keen
2018-06-25, 08:49 AM
Ok.

In the dating community, that's the rule you go by. That's how shallow it is. I'm frankly somewhat distraught people seem to think I was being entirely serious - it's a rule of thumb that covers a broad majority reasonably well. What that effectively means is that even for the broad majority, it's only reasonably accurate.

I stand by my statement though, in the sense I meant it: If you want a quick tool for generalizations, it's perfect.

If you want to describe the statistical variance across all the variables involved, it's horribly off.

Brother Oni
2018-06-25, 11:35 AM
No, it's pretty accurate. It doesn't work for children, or anyone unusually tall or short, light or heavy. It's entirely possible it doesn't work for cultures that are physically smaller, like .. the inuits, or some such.

It doesn't work for the Chinese or Japanese either (compared to western BMI charts, theirs are shifted about a degree to the left due to the average smaller size of the population), which makes your rule of thumb immediately not apply to at least 20% of the world's population.

As an example, I'm 1.70, giving my ideal weight under your rule of thumb as 70kg. That would put me at 4% body fat:

http://aretheyonsteroids.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/helmut-strebl-678x381.jpg?949f90


But as a general rule of thumb, it's surprisingly accurate.

As others have said, only with your narrow height range and ethnic origin. I presume from your location you're based in Denmark and looking at Denmark's demographics, I can see why your rule of thumb works for where you are.

Edit: That came out a bit harsher than I thought - I just meant that for where you're living, your rule of thumb works. It just falls down outside of where you are.

Kaptin Keen
2018-06-25, 11:43 AM
As an example, I'm 1.70, giving my ideal weight under your rule of thumb as 70kg. That would put me at 4% body fat.

My dad is 175, and weights something like 65. He's a slender guy, but he is at nothing even remotely like 4% body fat. But yes, if you're a anywhere outside a very broad statistical average, it doesn't work for you. As I've said.

I'm 181, weigh 90. I'm at the other end of the same spectrum from my dad.

And Helmut Strebl looks decidedly unwell, btw.

Lord Torath
2018-06-25, 11:43 AM
BMI has a problem in that it scales with height. If you take the BMI of someone who's 3.5 feet tall, and compare it with someone who has the same build, but is 7 feet tall (twice the height, eight times the mass), the taller person's BMI will be exactly double the shorter person's BMI. The way to fix this is to pick a "standard" height, and then multiply your BMI by the ratio of that standard height divided by your actual height.
I picked 1.68 m for my "standard" height.

Once you have that, you can look at the BMIs more independent of height. A weightlifter will probably have a BMI in the low-to-mid 30s. A runner in the low 20s. A gymnast will probably be in the mid 20s. You know, I should those women's stats in and see how they come out. That way my generalizations will be more accurate.

For those who are curious, BMI is calculated like this: BMI = Mass(kg)/Height(m)2. For my "adjusted" BMI, it becomes Mass(kg) x Standard Height(m)/Height(m)3.

If you want to use inches and lbs, you need to multiply by a conversion factor of 703.

Beleriphon
2018-06-25, 12:44 PM
Honestly it's just height in cm minus 100 equals weight. I'm 181cm, I ought to weigh around 81kg. Now, I'm reasonably athletic, so I weigh more than that. But that's essentially all you need to know. I weigh 90, so I'm frankly pretty buff. If I weighed 100, I'd look silly.

And it's basically the same for women, btw.

If you weighed 100 kilos, at 1.8m you'd look like Batman, or Superman, assuming you had a low bod fat percentage.

Kaptin Keen
2018-06-25, 01:08 PM
If you weighed 100 kilos, at 1.8m you'd look like Batman, or Superman, assuming you had a low bod fat percentage.

Yes - like I said: Silly. Right now, I look like a human being - not a cartoon character. And I honestly feel it's a sign of some remaining mental health that I do mostly cardio, because if I lifted weights, I'd ... end up looking like a cartoon character.

No offense intended to anyone here who's around 1.80 and 100, obviously.

Lord Torath
2018-06-25, 01:11 PM
Okay, here's the table. Note that my standard height is 1.68 m = 5'-6" = 66 inches

BMI = Mass/Height2. aBMI = Mass x Std Height/Height3
Multiply both values by 703 for height in inches and mass in lbs.



Athlete
Sport
Height (in)
Weight (lbs)
BMI
aBMI


Danielle Scott
Volleyball
74
185
23.8
21.2


Dara Torres
Swimming
72
150
20.3
18.6


Kathy Collins
Boxing
65.5
137
22.4
22.6


Olga Karmansky
Rhythmic Gymnastics
61
85
16.1
17.4


Connie Price
Shotput
75
210
26.2
23.1


Shannon Miller
Gymnastics
60
97
18.9
20.8


Stacy Dragila
Pole Vault
67.5
140
21.6
21.1


Cathy Sassin
Adventure Cycling
66
138
22.3
22.3


Dawn Ellerbe
Hammer Throw
74
240
30.8
27.5


DeLisha Milton
Basketball
73
172
22.7
20.5


Kim Chizevksy
Bodybuilding
68.5
135
20.2
19.5


Annika Sorenstam
Golf
65
120
20.0
20.3


Tarr Nott
Weightlifting
61
105
19.8
21.5


Tegla Loroupe
Distance Running
59
82
16.6
18.5


Tara Lipinski
Figure Skating
61
95
17.9
19.4


Lisa Leslie
Basketball
77
170
20.2
17.3


Cheryl Haworth
Weightlifting
69
297
43.9
41.9


Svetlana Khorkina
Gymnastics
65
105
17.5
17.7


Stacy Bowers
Triple Jump
66
130
21.0
21.0


Jennifer Parilla
Trampoline
61
120
22.7
24.5


Deena Drossin
Long-Distance Running
64
105
18.0
18.6


LeShundra Nathan
Heptathalon
71
175
24.4
22.7


Tobey Gifford
Sport Aerobics
63
118
20.9
21.9


Tabitha Yim
Gymnastics
56
85
19.1
22.5


Amy Acuff
High Jump
74
145
18.6
16.6


Stacy Sykora
Volleyball
70
135
19.4
18.3


Jessica Howard
Rhythmic Gymnastics
67
100
15.7
15.4

Note how two women with the same BMI have drastically different aBMIs. Jennifer Parilla and DeLisha Milton both have a BMI of 22.7. But Jennifer is a foot shorter, so her aBMI is 24.5, while DeLisha's is 20.5. If you magically scaled Jennifer up so she was as tall as DeLisha, she'd have a heavier build (and the pictures confirm this), but looking just at BMI, you'd assume they have the same build.

MrSandman
2018-06-25, 01:58 PM
Okay, here's the table. Note that my standard height is 1.68 m = 5'-6" = 66 inches


Athlete
Sport
Height (in)
Weight (lbs)
BMI
aBMI


Danielle Scott
Volleyball
74
185
23.8
21.2


Dara Torres
Swimming
72
150
20.3
18.6


Kathy Collins
Boxing
65.5
137
22.4
22.6


Olga Karmansky
Rhythmic Gymnastics
61
85
16.1
17.4


Connie Price
Shotput
75
210
26.2
23.1


Shannon Miller
Gymnastics
60
97
18.9
20.8


Stacy Dragila
Pole Vault
67.5
140
21.6
21.1


Cathy Sassin
Adventure Cycling
66
138
22.3
22.3


Dawn Ellerbe
Hammer Throw
74
240
30.8
27.5


DeLisha Milton
Basketball
73
172
22.7
20.5


Kim Chizevksy
Bodybuilding
68.5
135
20.2
19.5


Annika Sorenstam
Golf
65
120
20.0
20.3


Tarr Nott
Weightlifting
61
105
19.8
21.5


Tegla Loroupe
Distance Running
59
82
16.6
18.5


Tara Lipinski
Figure Skating
61
95
17.9
19.4


Lisa Leslie
Basketball
77
170
20.2
17.3


Cheryl Haworth
Weightlifting
69
297
43.9
41.9


Svetlana Khorkina
Gymnastics
65
105
17.5
17.7


Stacy Bowers
Triple Jump
66
130
21.0
21.0


Jennifer Parilla
Trampoline
61
120
22.7
24.5


Deena Drossin
Long-Distance Running
64
105
18.0
18.6


LeShundra Nathan
Heptathalon
71
175
24.4
22.7


Tobey Gifford
Sport Aerobics
63
118
20.9
21.9


Tabitha Yim
Gymnastics
56
85
19.1
22.5


Amy Acuff
High Jump
74
145
18.6
16.6


Stacy Sykora
Volleyball
70
135
19.4
18.3


Jessica Howard
Rhythmic Gymnastics
67
100
15.7
15.4

Note how two women with the same BMI have drastically different aBMIs. Jennifer Parilla and DeLisha Milton both have a BMI of 22.7. But Jennifer is a foot shorter, so her aBMI is 24.5, while DeLisha's is 20.5. If you magically scaled Jennifer up so she was as tall as DeLisha, she'd have a heavier build (and the pictures confirm this), but looking just at BMI, you'd assume they have the same build.

Well, if you look solely at aBMI you'd think that Danielle Scott and Stacy Dragila have the same body build despite having seven inches and 45 pounds of difference, so I fail to see how this aBMI is supposed to help.

Perhaps it is better to just understand BMI as Body Mass Index and not assume any body builds from it.

Nargrakhan
2018-06-25, 02:33 PM
You're right there's a male counterpart to these photos. I remember seeing them a couple of years ago, can't remember where. I know for sure it wasn't Sports Illustrated. Possibly a pop since magazine. I suspect they've been reprinted everywhere.

Couldn't find the exact comparing images to the two OP linked to, but this site (https://www.boredpanda.com/athlete-body-types-comparison-howard-schatz/) had much of the material.

Yay! Thank you. This is what I was looking for. :)

That article even has the source material:

Athlete by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060195533

I can get a used book dirt cheap too. Must have for collection!

Lord Torath
2018-06-25, 02:50 PM
Well, if you look solely at aBMI you'd think that Danielle Scott and Stacy Dragila have the same body build despite having seven inches and 45 pounds of difference, so I fail to see how this aBMI is supposed to help.

Perhaps it is better to just understand BMI as Body Mass Index and not assume any body builds from it.The point is that if you magically enlarged Stacy until she was as tall as Danielle, she would have a very similar body mass. Muscle vs fat is something else, of course, but if they are close on that, they will have very similar builds. And looking at their images, you can see they seem to be similarly muscled.

The point is that you can take someone with a build you want for your character, and then choose a height. Using aBMI, you will then have a good idea of what your weight should be to match the build you want. If you want to base your character off Kim Chizevsky, but you want her to be taller but just as muscular, then you're going to want to choose your height and weight to get an aBMI of 19.5. If you wanted to create a 7-foot tall Amazon with Kim's build, aBMI tells you she should weigh about 249 lbs.

MrSandman
2018-06-25, 02:57 PM
The point is that if you magically enlarged Stacy until she was as tall as Danielle, she would have a very similar body mass. Muscle vs fat is something else, of course, but if they are close on that, they will have very similar builds. And looking at their images, you can see they seem to be similarly muscled.

The point is that you can take someone with a build you want for your character, and then choose a height. Using aBMI, you will then have a good idea of what your weight should be to match the build you want. If you want to base your character off Kim Chizevsky, but you want her to be taller but just as muscular, then you're going to want to choose your height and weight to get an aBMI of 19.5. If you wanted to create a 7-foot tall Amazon with Kim's build, aBMI tells you she should weigh about 249 lbs.

Just to be sure, are you talking about D&D BMIs or about real life BMIs?

If it's the former, I have no more to say, but if it's the latter, I've got some reservations about the whole model.

Lord Torath
2018-06-25, 03:20 PM
Just to be sure, are you talking about D&D BMIs or about real life BMIs?

If it's the former, I have no more to say, but if it's the latter, I've got some reservations about the whole model.It works for both. Of course, in real life, people generally don't get taller than about 7 feet (yes, there are exceptions), and as they do, the square-cube law starts saying interesting things about required bone strengths. Plus, as has been mentioned before, BMI is purely a ratio of mass to height (squared) and says nothing about, say, fat-to-muscle ratio. As long as you understand the limits of BMI/aBMI, it can be a useful measure. If you try to say that anyone with an aBMI of 30 or higher is unhealthy, that's when you're reaching beyond what the model can show.

I primarily use aBMI for determining realistic masses for characters I'm creating. Also "realistic" (verisimilitudistic?) masses for humanoid monsters. In D&D, if Fire Giants are supposed to be built like dwarves, but the Monstrous Manual says that an 18-foot tall fire giant weighs 7500 lbs, you can quickly determine that said Fire Giant is in fact fairly stout, with an aBMI of 34.5. It's BMI is 113, which really doesn't give you a meaningful idea of the giant's build.

Shadowrun, for example, gives trolls a height of 2.8 m and a mass of 225 kg, and describes them as "very heavily built". That gives a BMI of 28.7, which seems fairly beefy. But the aBMI yeilds a result of 17.2, which means your troll is just a bit thinner than Olga Karmansky (4th from the left (https://ibb.co/hWmXuo)). Not exactly what you probably imagine for a big, buff troll.

Slipperychicken
2018-06-25, 03:55 PM
Shadowrun, for example, gives trolls a height of 2.8 m and a mass of 225 kg, and describes them as "very heavily built". That gives a BMI of 28.7, which seems fairly beefy. But the aBMI yeilds a result of 17.2, which means your troll is just a bit thinner than Olga Karmansky (4th from the left (https://ibb.co/hWmXuo)). Not exactly what you probably imagine for a big, buff troll.

I feel like it should be well-known by now that lore writers tend to just throw around impressive-looking numbers without thinking things all the way through.

Nargrakhan
2018-06-25, 04:05 PM
I feel like it should be well-known by now that lore writers tend to just throw around impressive-looking numbers without thinking things all the way through.

Totally agree.

However when you encounter a lore writer who DOES put a little effort in thinking things all the way through, it REALLY makes you appreciate the effort and gives them massive cool points.

Nifft
2018-06-25, 05:41 PM
Totally agree.

However when you encounter a lore writer who DOES put a little effort in thinking things all the way through, it REALLY makes you appreciate the effort and gives them massive cool points.

I'd appreciate a thread specifically to heap kudos upon such writers.

John Campbell
2018-06-25, 06:44 PM
BMI has a bunch of problems.

It's basically just a height-mass ratio with an exponent thrown in as a sop to square-cube law. But the exponent's too small. If you scale height linearly, with all the proportions remaining the same, mass scales with the cube. But BMI only uses the square. This means that BMI for tall people comes out significantly higher than BMI for short people of the exact same build. Now, tall people are generally not proportionately as wide as shorter people (compare Amy Acuff and Tabitha Yim; Amy is only a little wider than Tabitha, but a lot taller), so, as a rule, the exponent shouldn't actually be the full 3 that just scaling up would indicate, but 2 is still way too low. It should be more like 2.6 or so.

But even that's assuming that the taller people aren't wider in proportion, which is not universally true. Some people are Just Bigger. And BMI has no way of determining this. All it's got to work with is height and mass; it can't tell the difference between someone with a lanky frame, proportionately taller than they are wide, and someone with a stocky frame, proportionately wider than they are tall. All else being equal, the latter will have a significantly higher BMI than the former.

And BMI has no means of distinguishing between kinds of weight. Muscle has mass; it's actually denser than fat. BMI just assumes that any weight you're carrying, beyond a certain very low baseline, is fat weight. This means that athletes, who generally have low body-fat percentages but carry a lot of muscle mass, tend to come out in the "overweight" to "obese" range according to BMI.

Though it's still better than just subtracting a number from height to get weight.

gkathellar
2018-06-26, 07:41 AM
BMI has a bunch of problems.

It's basically just a height-mass ratio with an exponent thrown in as a sop to square-cube law. But the exponent's too small. If you scale height linearly, with all the proportions remaining the same, mass scales with the cube. But BMI only uses the square. This means that BMI for tall people comes out significantly higher than BMI for short people of the exact same build. Now, tall people are generally not proportionately as wide as shorter people (compare Amy Acuff and Tabitha Yim; Amy is only a little wider than Tabitha, but a lot taller), so, as a rule, the exponent shouldn't actually be the full 3 that just scaling up would indicate, but 2 is still way too low. It should be more like 2.6 or so.

But even that's assuming that the taller people aren't wider in proportion, which is not universally true. Some people are Just Bigger. And BMI has no way of determining this. All it's got to work with is height and mass; it can't tell the difference between someone with a lanky frame, proportionately taller than they are wide, and someone with a stocky frame, proportionately wider than they are tall. All else being equal, the latter will have a significantly higher BMI than the former.

And BMI has no means of distinguishing between kinds of weight. Muscle has mass; it's actually denser than fat. BMI just assumes that any weight you're carrying, beyond a certain very low baseline, is fat weight. This means that athletes, who generally have low body-fat percentages but carry a lot of muscle mass, tend to come out in the "overweight" to "obese" range according to BMI.

Though it's still better than just subtracting a number from height to get weight.

Where's the "like post" button? I need to like this post.

But yeah, and all of this is without even getting into the different types of muscle, the different distributions, etc. I believe this (https://mymodernmet.com/howard-schatz-beverly-ornstein-athlete/) is a slightly more complete collection of the set of images of Olympic athletes posted upthread, and in any case it illustrates the point nicely. Our whole modern concept of "fitness" tends to be an aesthetic set of considerations, not functional ones.

halfeye
2018-06-26, 11:58 AM
BMI has a bunch of problems.

It's basically just a height-mass ratio with an exponent thrown in as a sop to square-cube law. But the exponent's too small. If you scale height linearly, with all the proportions remaining the same, mass scales with the cube. But BMI only uses the square. This means that BMI for tall people comes out significantly higher than BMI for short people of the exact same build. Now, tall people are generally not proportionately as wide as shorter people (compare Amy Acuff and Tabitha Yim; Amy is only a little wider than Tabitha, but a lot taller), so, as a rule, the exponent shouldn't actually be the full 3 that just scaling up would indicate, but 2 is still way too low. It should be more like 2.6 or so.

But even that's assuming that the taller people aren't wider in proportion, which is not universally true. Some people are Just Bigger. And BMI has no way of determining this. All it's got to work with is height and mass; it can't tell the difference between someone with a lanky frame, proportionately taller than they are wide, and someone with a stocky frame, proportionately wider than they are tall. All else being equal, the latter will have a significantly higher BMI than the former.

And BMI has no means of distinguishing between kinds of weight. Muscle has mass; it's actually denser than fat. BMI just assumes that any weight you're carrying, beyond a certain very low baseline, is fat weight. This means that athletes, who generally have low body-fat percentages but carry a lot of muscle mass, tend to come out in the "overweight" to "obese" range according to BMI.

Though it's still better than just subtracting a number from height to get weight.

I agree, BMI has to go, it's a silly pseudo measure that makes no sense. The main thing BMI has going for it is that the measurements can be made without touching (which is actually a big deal), and you don't need to be good at maths to work it out.


Where's the "like post" button? I need to like this post.

Not having that button made you and I reply, so no button FTW.


Our whole modern concept of "fitness" tends to be an aesthetic set of considerations, not functional ones.

Real obesity is a real problem, with real health consequence for the obese, it's not something that saying "BMI is rubbish let's forget the whole thing" is going to fix. Almost nobody actually wants to be fat, there are just activities that some of us don't want to or can't give up that have that consequence.