Episode 42: BMI is Bullsh*t
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Episode Transcription
Participant #1:
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Up-Beet Dietitians podcast. Hello, everyone. Today we have a very exciting topic, and based off of the episode title, you probably already know what it is today. We're going to be talking about BMI. We're going to be talking about kind of what it is, how it was created, what the purpose behind the creation of it was, kind of the flaws in BMI. A lot of the flaws in BMI, actually. That's probably why we have this episode. And then we'll be kind of discussing more accurate ways, which is kind of a spoiler, but more accurate ways that you can assess your home rather than just BMI. So let's get into it, because I already know we both have a lot to say today. So BMI, also known as body mass index, is the ratio of height to weight. More specifically, it's kilograms divided by meters squared. That's it. So it is currently used to diagnose if an individual is underweight normal weight, overweight or obese. And in the obese range, they have multiple classes of obesity. Class one, class two, and class three, which is then this class, or I guess this category more so from all the different ones, is used to evaluate an individual's risk for disease, which is controversial because there is no evidence that shows that weight causes obesity. There's only a correlation. And as you know, correlation does not equal causation. Yes. Right off the bat, this is already a big flaw with BMI. Not only does it say underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese, which is problematic in itself because what is a normal weight like everyone's meant to be diverse, but everyone assumes that if you are obese, that you have a high risk of disease. But if obese is just based on BMI, which is the ratio of height and weight, and that's problematic, someone who I'll get to this later, I think, who's like a bodybuilder whose BMI is like in the 40s, and they are class three obese, they probably don't have a very high risk of disease. So again, like Emily just said, there is no evidence that actually shows the causation of weight to disease. Yeah, just a correlation. Let's get into the categories more specifically, though. So like Emily said, there are a handful. So there's underweight, which is when your BMI is less than 18.5, there's a normal weight category, which is what we all are supposed to ideally be at. And that's when your BMI is 18.5 to 24.9. And then we've got three classes of obesity, anywhere from 30 to 40 and above. So those are the classes. And that's all I want to say about that? Those are the classes. I don't really know what else. Pretty straightforward. It's just, again, like your weight and kilograms divided by your height and meters squared. And if that seems pretty random, it's because it kind of is. So BMI was founded in the 1830s, so almost 200 years ago. So you can see how that's problematic by a Belgian physician, sociologist, astronomer, and mathematician. So again, problematic. Not a physician by the name that I'm going to pronounce wrong of Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetlet. I feel like it was French. No, Belgian. Belgian. Oh, Belgian chart.
Participant #1:
I can only do Spanish. Oh, yeah, me too. I have no idea how to do. But it's not created the category. I think the T is silent.
Participant #1:
I have no reason to think that just sounds cool. Okay. Anyway, it was known as the Kofl Index for a while, and the reason he did this was just to kind of, like, determine what the average man should be. And Emily, if I'm wrong about this, let me know. But it was like for an average white man, right? Yes, it was white European men. Okay, so I think we're going to get that in the BMI garbage section. But also this Jacques Quetlet guy also explicitly said that BMI could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual. So to say that someone is obese, which means that they have excess fatness is not why BMI was even created. So we can't make that correlation there. That's what made me one of the most like that part was like, one of the most frustrating parts of this individual explicitly said, do not use this to identify levels of fat or like, adipose socio in individual. It's not for that. Yet here we are 200 years later, which is wild to think about. Still using it to diagnose individuals of obesity. Right. And then making we'll get to this, too, but then shaming those who have this nonsensical BMI obesity diagnosis and telling them that if they get to a normal BMI, that will suddenly fix all life's problems, if that's how it works. It's so bizarre. Once your weight is nicely ratioed to your height, that's when you're healthy. And isn't it true, too, Emily, that it's more fatal to be in the underweight category than to be overweight or obese? Have you heard that before? Yes. Okay. Yeah, that was a true thing, too. Yeah. So why are we so hyper focused on people whose BMI is in 30s when we should be taking care of those who are struggling with, like, an eating disorder or rapid unintentional weight loss? Or those who are elderly and losing weight for no reason and are at high risk of death? It's just the priorities. It's a good reflection of the fat phobia still very present in today's society and how we still associate their BMI, even though we already noted that BMI is not a good indicator off the bat, but if their BMI is 18, I'm sure some physician is flagging that. Someone's got to be flagging that. But they're more concerned about telling any overweight individual that they need to lose weight rather than anyone who is underweight. I think we learned this. Where in the elderly population you actually want to have a higher BMI? Yeah, I got that in the BMI is garbage section. We'll get to that. Okay, perfect. We'll get to that later then. But yes, our last point on what BMI really is, our explanation of why we use it, I guess more. So. It's like I just said, it's super inexpensive. All you need is a scale and like a way to get their height. And it's so simple and fast. It's a lot simpler and faster than assessing body composition or even like waste. Circumference takes a little bit longer. There's a higher margin of error for those types of things as well. Whereas BMI, we just know it's like height to weight. Boom. We can easily diagnose someone based on their weight. But let's get to the real good part of why BMI is garbage. I am so excited. This is going to be great. I am very passionate about this first bullet point. Take it away. Number one reason not number one first reason be my garbage. The race bias behind it. And I already talked about this. How the data collected to determine the different categories of BMI was conducted on a group of white European men. And if you know anything about research or science, you can't generalize one group of that specific. I couldn't find their ages. They're typically in their 20s. That's typically how the studies will go. 20 year old, 20s, white men as normal have the researchers. But specifically for this one, you can't generalize an entire global population. Under this one sample group, men's bodies are different than women's bodies. White individuals or people who are white have different it's been shown that they have different body composition kind of makeups compared to Asian individuals, black individuals, Latino individuals. Every single race has different body composition. That's just how they were built. And from a genetic standpoint, they're different. They're not going to all be the same. So kind of generalizing and applying that data to everyone is incredibly unfair. Incredibly unfair. And it assumes that the assumption that white men are like what everyone should look like, which is also insanely. Right? I'm trying to look like a white man in my dream.
Participant #1:
Yeah. So as you can already see off to a rough start, that's why I put this one first. I knew it would just get them hooked. Yeah. I don't really have much else to say about that item is inaccurate and gracious and 200 years old, and we just can't use it for every population. That's insane. Although I don't know if this is better or worse, but there are. I've seen different BMI qualifications for Asians. Have you seen that before? I have. It's like, lower. Yeah. Which is also like, I don't think that's a good thing. I don't know. I feel like it gets weird with people like me who are mixed. Like, which view my skill would I be on? Would you take the average BMI? I think I looked at it and I was horrified. I was like, oh, my God, so different. Well, that just proves the point, though. Like, you could be, I don't know exactly. But you could maybe be obese on an Asian BMI scale. And I would argue that your health is not really at risk because of your weight. Currently, neither of them are really taking that much heart to it unless we're making sure we're looking at all data points, not just BMI. Yeah. Actually, at the end we'll go over some different, like, more accurate, less biased ways to assess help. You might be wondering, like, okay, if we don't use BMI, then what do we use to assess if someone's healthy or not? So we'll get to that later. Stay tuned for the end. But our next reason of many of why BMI is hot garbage is that it assumes that we know someone's behavior and health status based purely on their body size. So fun. Yay. So fun. I'm so glad that we use BMI every single day in healthcare. And that insurance. I will get to that, actually. Never mind. We'll get to that. Yeah. So point number three of Oi BMI is trash. So it says unrealistic weight standards for both men and women. Women do not weigh the same as men, especially like, spoiler alert. Our body composition, our body fat percentage is just naturally going to be higher. Right? Like, we've got boobs. We're not supposed to be. I don't know what they do. Men don't do no. Not going to get into that thing today. No. Okay, Hone it in. I know. I was about to say no. Carry babies. We carry babies. Our boots are all the time. Sometimes it's just like. But yes, let's all make white men the standard to what we have to look like and be like and look up to and who gets to run the world.
Participant #1:
Okay. I was scared this would happen. We usually try to keep it not political on here, but it's okay. They probably figure that out, at least from my Instagram. Yeah, I don't do too much, but I don't think that we show up like white men, that's for sure. No, I'm not trying to be the other kind of point, though. Under setting on real weight standards for both men and women is the strong connection with disordered eating and eating disorders because there's already an obsession around weight and BMI is just kind of almost this contributing factor on that bias that you need to be in a specific weight range to be considered healthy and kind of in Hannah's case where she works with weight management, people will try to get within different ranges. And there are sometimes, I will note when maybe switching between different ranges is necessary more so for like surgeries if you're doing a transplant or stuff like that. But that's a different case where they're just trying to optimize to make sure that the organ that they're donating is going to the best kind of specimen. I'm so sorry. I just caught the person, I don't know, acceptor donor acceptor, recipient. Took me three times the charm. But there are some times where kind of shifts and bamboo. But that's like a different case. This is just general living. And there's that fixation. I remember I used to throughout Purdue, I would calculate my BMI all the time. Why does that not surprise me? One, I liked math. Two, we already know I had issues. And when you give me a number that I'm going to fix it and I would like freak out when it went up two points within a year or two and I freaked out over it. And then there was already dislike eating going on, but that was not helping everything going on. And I was just like,
Participant #1:
imagine. And I was being educated on how to become a dietitian and aware of kind of the behavioral side of it. People don't have that education. And then you kind of give them a tool and it's very easy to go and find a BMI calculator online or very easy to calculate if you like doing math like me. But it's just not great because it just coincides very closely with kind of weight overall and using that as an indicator of health. Right. And like you said, you lucked out in the way that you were in the process of learning to be a dietitian. And so you learned that BMI is garbage. But if someone was in your same shoes but then never went the same path as you, they could still be here 30 years later. Those BMI points and their food habits will reflect that, their exercise habits will reflect that, their body image will reflect that. And that is how eg start. Yeah, not great. Patients ask me all the time. It's so frustrating and it makes sense because of where I work. But they're always asking, well, they say, what does BMI mean? I'll tell them and they'll be like, okay, now what do I have to be at to be a normal, healthy weight? And I'm like, okay, here we go. Up. I've got a whole rant to go on with you. And it's so hard because in healthcare, it's not just dietitians. Like there are doctors and other medical professionals and really everyone else who might not have the same viewpoint as Emily or I do. And so they hear from me or Emily that BMI doesn't matter. But then their doctor tells them they have to be at a BMI of 25 or whatever to qualify for knee surgery or whatever. It might be 25. No, that was dramatic. It's usually 40 for knee surgery. I've never heard of that. No, it's usually 40. Okay. But yeah, the idea just stands. There's conflicting views on it. And not everyone knows all these reasons of why BMI is so bad. No, a lot of people don't. A lot of people don't even know how it was created. Exactly. That's why we're hoping that this episode will be spread around. And you also can educate other people on this. Make it go viral. Yeah. Okay. Our next little point goes back to what we said earlier about older adults. Older adults actually have different BMI specifications because we, as we get older, actually need to have more meat on our bones because if we fall or get sick or whatever, it takes a long time to recover if we're older. But we also don't want to have any kind of unintentional weight loss when we're older because that can just really lead to that decreased muscle mass and that decreased quality of life. You can't do your activities of daily living. And so, again, the BMI specs for older adults are different. And that just again proves the point that BMI makes no sense. How can we just change the numbers back and forth if you're older, if you're younger or whatever? Yes. It's not science based. It's just a ratio. Yeah. I don't really have much to add. Just know that if you're older and you're concerned about your BMI for whatever reason, it needs to be higher than 18.5. I think it's 23 is the cutoff for being underweight. Yeah. It just keeps adding on and on. I think we're constantly done with these reasons. No, the first one was one of my favorite in terms of the flaws. But these next couple of months are I feel like they really get the point across. So this next one and I already have an example set up that's going to really just elicit how this is. BMI does not take into account muscle mass, bone mass, water weight, your ratio of fat mass to muscle mass, waist circumference, anything. It just takes your height and your weight. And that's it. Let me tell you, this is kind of where. Let me tell you. So, Hannah brought up the bodybuilders who have a lot of muscle mass, but they're considered obese because muscle is heavy. That's just how it is. And when you have a lot of muscle, you weigh more. So compared to the average European Joe
Participant #1:
Sir founder,
Participant #1:
someone of their height, compared to someone who doesn't compete in body building competition, they're going to be way more. And they've oftentimes I've seen their placed in the obese category just because they weigh more, even though they have an insane amount of muscle mass and they worked really hard for that and tend to have a lower body fat percentage than most people. Their weight is high, so therefore they are obese according to BMI. Another example that I was originally thinking of, imagine a 63 man. Do you have that image in your head now? Imagine a 6’3” linebacker in the NFL, same height. One of them is a professional athlete who is shoving guys all day, 4 hours at a time, constant shoving. His body composition is going to look very different from someone who is not constantly shoving someone. I hope if you're a football fan, I like watching football, but I'm just imagine someone cringing at me saying, like shoving. I was just going to say, I love how your description of football is people just shoving everyone else around them.
Participant #1:
I know it's not strategic shoving. Yeah. Strategically shoving other guys, they trained really hard for that. Yeah. They need to be heavier to be able to put up with that for so long or else they're going to get thrown to the ground constantly and they're not going to be professionals because I guess you do have to be good. I was going to say maybe you can get by and like, no, maintain the NFL is really hard. They need to be built a specific way to constantly do that every single week and during practices. But BMI would consider them all obese because they're like 300 pounds. And that brings up a good point to what you kind of just said. Like if we had our skinny mini six foot three guy and we had our six foot three linebacker who is 300 pounds, you can't train that six foot three skinny guy to become a linebacker. He's just not built that way. Whereas the linebacker has probably always been a big guy his whole life. Yes, the big guy is probably the biggest boy. He was born to be a linebacker. So that just proves the point that bodies are diverse and there's no way that everybody at six foot three is meant to weigh the same. No, absolutely not. It's fine. We're fine. I've been fired up three episodes in a row now. That's what we know. They're good though. Yeah. Season three is real controversial. Okay, a couple more points here. The next one is also going to touch on a little bit already. But it's just the idea that some medical professionals will dismiss your health conditions because you have a high BMI. Like I've heard of patients going to the doctor for a sore throat and the doctor just says, oh, if you lose weight, that will fix all your problems. They don't get any treatment for the sore throat. I feel like that happens all the time. People don't realize how if you're overweight, like in the overweight category, overweight or up automatic weight loss. Exactly. No matter what the problem is. And it's always eat less. Yes. I had someone today who was a new patient to the clinic and she said that her doctor has been trying to get her to do Weight Watchers for months. For months, the doctor would just tell her to do Weight Watchers. That will fix all her problems. I've heard that one. I've heard them tell doctors have told them to eat 100 calories or less. Just eat less, like Emily said. I've heard them tell patients to do keto. I don't want to stereotype, but a lot of them do do this. They just take eat less because they don't learn nutrition or how to treat obesity in school. Just your regular old primary care doctor likely doesn't have any kind of continued training in weight management or obesity or anything like that. And so they just think that doing Weight Watchers will fix all your problems, even if your problem is a sore throat or lower back pain or whatever. Oh, my gosh. Lower back pain. It's always weight loss. It's always weight loss, knee pain, back pain. And I think we can say, I don't want to take on this, I suppose, but there's a correlation. Yeah. If you're carrying more adipose tissue, it's going to import more pressure on your joints. Yes. So they're going to have to work more and they might hurt, but that's not always the case. Yeah. And that's not an excuse for doctor to just say, oh, eat less and I'll fix it. How are we going to overcome that excess adipose tissue? And how are we going to overcome the barriers in life that are going to stand in the way of that person who is trying to lose weight? There's so much more to weight loss than just eat less, move more, which is an episode we kind of already touched on, I suppose. But just telling someone to lose weight and then picking them out is not helpful. No, it is not. And so this also leads to people who have higher BMI is avoiding going to the doctor because they are scared or they know they're going to get upset when they hear this. They know it's going to happen because whenever they go to the doctor every single six months or year or whatever, it's the same conversation. And it's probably just miserable. As someone who's never been in a large body, I can't really attest to that. But I've heard so many stories about patients saying this or even like on TikTok, for example. And I can just imagine how terrible it would be to go into your doctor and just like, get mad about your weight the entire time, every time you go and like, completely disregard your original concerns. And the option is just weight loss. That's why we're trying to make a change. And I know a lot of younger doctors are actually more aware of kind of the internalized weight bias that's very prevalent in health care. So that's good. That makes me hopeful for the future. But a lot of reflection is needed in all health care providers around. Wait. Yeah. Let's get into the next one. We have two more for you and then we'll leave you for now unless we think of more let you digest all this. Yeah. So this one is so bad. In my specific location ranges, those ones we kind of define at the beginning of this episode, they changed. They changed from 27 for women and 28 for men. And then they went down. They were lower to 25, both of them. So millions of people just became overweight according to BMI. Suddenly they've been overweight. Now they weren't before, but now they are. Yeah. Like if I went to bed tonight and BMI was 25, and then the next day I woke up and this BMI cut off, changed. I was suddenly overweight the next day. So all this data for that year shows that the number of overweight Americans was through the roof because more just naturally fit into the category. Because they lowered it by two or three points. Yes. And this is what makes me so mad is this decision was not based for the general, let's say, like for good intentions, in my opinion, I do not know personally, but based off of the facts does not seem like good intentions. It was based off of the change was based off of a report funded by pharmaceutical companies that make weight loss drugs. So if more people and more doctors thought they were overweight and need to lose weight for their health, then they can sell more drugs. Yes. If based on BMI that they have now changed, there are more overweight and obese people. That means there's more chances for them to prescribe these weight loss minutes. Because overnight at night, 78, millions more people became technically overweight. Yeah. They were probably like, oh, my gosh, they were wrong before. I need to lose weight now. Yeah. Because the guidelines change. This one is so bad. It's just again, another point that this is just a nonsensical number. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a number we can change and throw around and do whatever with. It didn't start off great. And it's just like getting worse. Not long ago, this whole thing happened in 98. Like we were only a year old. We were one. Yeah. He might have applied to us, but we could have woken up as fat babies. The next day
Participant #1:
I went to bed a healthy baby and woke up with that baby. I did not care. I don't think one year old me like, no, don't even know what I would do if I was an individual with, say like 27. That'd put me in normal range before 19, nine the amount of 27. Then the next year I go into my doctor's appointment. And how would it explain that to me? They probably say like a new research study came out. Well, people don't even second guess it. They just hear BMI. They know it's what everyone uses, and they're like, oh, okay, cool. People don't really understand the depth of it like we do. I don't even think we learned about this in school. Really? Oh, no. We learned to use BMI. Yeah. That's another thing to look back right there. Give me a call.
Participant #1:
Yeah. And we're calculating it every day. We did it in our HK classes. We did it in MNT. Like, every day we're calculating BMI for some case study or something. So much. There's so much wrong in so many places. Yeah. Well, we've got one more bad thing, and it kind of goes along with the one above. I'd say actually it goes more along with the whole dismissal of health care. But insurance companies will actually sometimes charge higher premiums for those who have a high BMI because of the whole idea that if you have a high BMI, you're at a higher risk of everything, apparently diseases and death and all that. So that's a little bias as well, that even if you are in a larger body, that is a higher risk of disease. I just don't think it's right for insurance, too. No, do that. I don't think so either. That is so wrong. Yeah, that's the same idea as like, if you're in a larger body, you have to pay more for clothing, you have to pay more for extra room on a plane, you have to pay more for insurance. Now just because you reside in a larger body and you're scared to go to the doctor because they're just going to tell you to eat less or do Weight Watchers, which is when they then turn to the toxic diet culture because they're desperately trying to lose weight, because not only is their doctor telling the lose weight society isn't telling them to lose weight with a fat phobia everywhere. Also, I think some places do charge more for the bigger sizes. Well, our clothing company, they charge more, so we have to charge our people more, which is frustrating. I'm like, let us charge them all the same. Yeah. Literally our merch, it costs more for us, too. So I think it's like two X and three X and above. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So those are the reasons why BMI is bullshit. If someone tells you what your BMI is, you should just tell them you don't give an S. Yeah. So let's go over some better ways to assess health, because a ratio of Hyped away is not it. So we keep saying that your weight doesn't matter. And I guess we're not even really saying that because it is true that your body composition does play a role in your health. If you have very little muscle mass and excess fat mass, that is more likely to lead to disease than just being at a higher weight. And so assessing body composition is a way better way to assess someone's health. But the problem is that body composition is more expensive to test. It is, again, like, a higher margin for error to assess. It's just not as easy as, like, what's your right, boom. Here's an estimation of your risk for disease, but it can be done in a few ways. They have those fancy Dancy scales you can get on that assess, like, your muscle and fat mass. You can do, like, a skin fold test, which is a little less accurate. Dexa scans, that kind of stuff. I love Texas. You too, member. Were you in the class with me when I got in the Bod pod in MNT? Was it MNT? I feel like it was 438. That weird one where, like, nutrition assessment. Yes. We had different TAs for that. I remember. Oh, well, yeah. I got to use the Bod Pod. It was so cool. Oh, nice. Yeah. I got to use DEXA when I was at U of I. Very scary. I had no muscle in my arms. I was like, wow. But I was like, my leg smells good, but it's because I run. It was a good measure of health for me. Not that I don't really use weight at all. I weigh myself three times a year. Maybe, but it was cool to see if I ever do a DEXA again. I don't know when I'll have access to one, but it's cool to see that. Yeah, that's cool. The Bod Pod was cool because it was kind of scary because they had to sit down. Yeah. I wear, like, spandex in the sports bra, and I put on this swimmers cap. So I was in the entire class. That looks ridiculous. And then we did the whole thing, and it wouldn't even work. I didn't even get the results. What? Yeah, I was pissed. So I, like, wore Spandex in a sports bra and a swim cap in front of everybody for no reason.
Participant #1:
That would traumatize me. I just wanted to know because I was way more into, like, weightlifting than I am now. I'm still in love with it, but I was, like, obsessed. And so I really wanted to know my muscle mass and, like, my number. Yeah, because those machines are expensive. You don't just have them on hand. I did it, like, three times, and it kept saying it wouldn't work. I think it was five months. Maybe if you ever go back to Purdue, you'll be like, you owe me a bot pod or a DEXA. I should get, like, a year off my loans for that experience. That's Mitch Daniels. Or just at least the interest rate. Maybe because of my I was traumatized. I had to get naked in front of the entire class, basically. And I sit there for, like, an hour for nothing to happen. It's terrible. Actually. Wasn't that bad. I'm not one who is, like, against wearing Spanx in the sports bra. I'd, like, wear that to the gym on a regular basis. But still, it was the principle of the thing. Exactly. All that for what? For what? Just to know that I am not even accessible. Maybe I just have too much muscle mass. The bod pod couldn't rationalize it. We've never seen this much muscle mass. You were just too built. I was ripped to shreds. I was just obese. Bodybuilders we're talking about. That was me.
Participant #1:
So anyway, body composition, I don't really have anything to add to body composition. I think that's plenty. The next measurement that we could use, which I actually like because I feel like this is a bit more user friendly, is waist cirumference and waist to hip comfort ratio. So all you need is a measuring tape. And obviously there's always user air. We were actually trained how to measure was in hip circumference in some of our health and kinesiology classes. But you'll probably get a general idea. And the more you practice it, or if this is something you want to utilize for kind of seeing changes in yourself, you'll practice and get better at it. So essentially, waist circumference is at the smallest area of your waist. It's typically around your belly button or on your ribs. Then hip circumference is the longest circumference around your bootay. So you can measure either of them, kind of see if you see any changes there. And then also the waist to hip ratio. I forgot. I know there was a standard. There's a standard with waist to hip ratio. And I'm blinking on what it is right now. I think it's zero eight for women, 1.0 for men. That sounds right. Yeah, it sounds like men are boxes. Women. Exactly. Women have shape. Reason number 500. Why I don't want to be a white male. I'd rather have my curves and little tiny baby calves. Just kidding. There are plenty of white guys who have nice calves. Like the 63 line back. Yes, that's curves. Another way to assess someone's health is their lab values. Like their blood glucose levels, their lipid profile, hormones, all those kinds of things. All the fun stuff. Yeah, I love labs. I do, too.
Participant #1:
Okay. The last one is like a dietary recall. So that's what we use on a regular basis. Just like getting a really good idea of what someone's eating that can help us assess. Like if they're getting enough of the macronutrients, enough micronutrients, enough water, and so we can't necessarily see how it's affecting their body necessarily, unless we do get their labs or their body composition or any of that. But it's just a good, easy, cheap way to see how someone's food might be picking the house. Yeah. So these are all much better ways to measure health compared to BMI. Highly recommend kind of taking these more into account rather than whatever your BMI is. Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm definitely overweight if not obese. Like, BMI is garbage. Yeah. And I would argue that I'm a pretty healthy individual in general. Yeah. And also, we didn't go over this even, like, family history like that in my genetics, because, let's say I'm obese. Technically, some would say that I'm at a super high risk now of getting type two diabetes. That's probably not true because I have no family history of it. It's not my genetics at all. Again, I'm also a very healthy person. I eat really well, exercise regularly, and just because I'm in the scenario obese, I'm not a high risk. That's a good point, because now I'm thinking about the alternate way because I think I'm in the normal weight range. I don't know. I haven't calculated in years, but I have a family history of diabetes, so I'm probably at more risk than you for diabetes. Plus, like, are you using the Asian scale or the other scale? I'm using our white European dude scale, not our Asian scale. Made me traumatize me back. I'm calculating it right now. My BMI is 27.4. Holy cow. You calculated that so quickly? Oh, I do it every day, so I'm pretty good at it. I don't think I've calculated one BMI from one of my patients. It's not a trait that I'm proud of. I want to feel mine. I would have been healthy, but now I'm overweight. I don't even know how much I weigh. Guessing I haven't weighed myself since I went to the urgent care. Last time I thought I had coded some meters is two point 54. Right. I do it the inches away and then just multiply by seven 3.1. Just way faster. Okay. So take your weight. All right. How am I weight? Divide it by your height and inches. Yes. Divide it by your height and inches again, and then multiply that by 7.3. .1 that is much faster. Yeah. In the normal range. Yeah. But I have a family history of diabetes, so I am at risk of diabetes for weights. Yeah, we're all at risk. Bad family history, but you wouldn't know. Well, I am very privileged with privilege, which is foreshadowing another episode coming up. Yes. We need to do thin privilege and also fat bias. Yes. Which should we just combine them? I think we should just combine them. I feel like we can. Yeah. Let us know. Guys, what do you want? Do you want to spend a whole hour going up the village? Because I'm sure we could. Yeah. I could easily do an hour on behalf of you. Yeah. So easy to do that. We'll see how the outlines look, and we'll decide, go on social media. It's awful. People are so mean. I just recorded a YouTube video that I'm going to post next week, which will be out the time you guys hear this on the whole calorie deficit thing. I'm so excited to post it. Because every one to it. Yes, because every single person spoil it goes into the YouTube video. If you want to hear my thoughts on a calorie deficit. Yes, go check out Hannah's YouTube channel. If you have not already go, it'll be out by now. And like all of her videos. Yeah. Thanks, girl. So let's give our final thoughts. BMI is just a starting point and it's one data point and there is much more to help than your health, your height to weight ratio. And we should not be using it to diagnose obesity. Yeah, it's a 200 year old ratio equation that's great for it by an astronomer who even told everyone he was like, hey guys, just doing this for kicks and giggles. I'm not Saturday. I'm bored. Let's take all these European dudes. We should not use this for our diagnosis. Proceeds. Leave it's not legitimized. I think it was 1980. We started using it for the diagnosis of obesity. Leave it to us. This is a really dumb question that I don't know the answer to. Do they use BMI in other countries in the same way that we do? I feel like they don't. I feel like it's an easy way to categorize Americans and not only blame the increase in weight and time increasing obesity prevalence, but it's an easy way to categorize all the prevalence of that and then sell drugs. You guys know those like those terrible pictures of the United States with the States of different colors based on the amount of obesity? Those are just based on BMI. That's all it is. So like all those red States and yellow States, it's just based on the ratios of heights to weights in those States. It doesn't say anything about health. No. And as we know, BMI is insanely flawed. And so in that way, those charts are insanely flawed. Yeah. There could be a whole state of professional athletes and they would be considered obese. I just feel like this episode is very woke of us. We're just being very woke today. Yeah. We're talking about a lot of controversial things that I feel like five years ago, people are not talking about it as much. But that is why we are here, because we're not going to sugarcoat it. No. I mean, five years ago I would have seen that American chart of like, all the beef people in Alabama. And I was like, oh my gosh, we got to do something about that. Meat, vegetables. Oh, yeah, that was absolutely my mindset five years ago. And then you start going into the field and start this is a conversation for another time. But we have some critical thought, which people don't think dietitians have, but we have some critical thinking process. We're like, is this the best we can do? People just think that we're just having everyone eat more veggies and funded by Big Food. They've not gotten my salary from Big. Where is my stipend from them? Big Gluten. I've gotten all these my title comments. Big Gluten. We do not make enough to be back, right. If Big Glue or Big Corn want to pay me, I will gladly accept it because at this point, it's not even worth being woke when everyone still hates us. Anyway, that's another episode we've got content for just like decades. Yeah. You guys are never getting rid of us. Yeah, it'll be great. It's going to be in our 60s doing this. I'm going to be like ranting about BMI. Why is this still around? You know it will be. Yeah. Some people remember it. Yeah. Bonus question. Bonus question. Okay, this one, Emily, is your time to shine. Because I don't have a huge preference on this. But the bonus question is Hot Cheetos or Takis. Which one is better? And of course, like, why I love both of these. If anyone wants to send me bags of these, send them my way. You'll automatically be my favorite person. I am Team Hot Cheetos because that was a childhood staple that I just grew up with. Not because I was allowed to eat them because my parents were the kind of strict. I was like, no junk food in the house, so I had to enjoy it at my friend's house. But I feel like the crunch is better with hot Cheetos. Also, you know this. I hate getting my hands dirty so much. I despise it. Hot Cheetos are easier to eat. I think you've seen me do it where I stick my tongue in the active making a TikTok. I was like, I was thinking of doing did anyone else do that? A girl at work that I work with does it. Maybe I will do a video like that. Or it's just absolutely roasted, like my hot chocolate. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was one of the Roasters. I take flame for that one. That's okay. But hot Cheetos are easier to eat without a hand. More crunch factor. Also, I feel like there's not. I feel like Takis sometimes. People too much seasoning and I'm just like, they like stain my hands sometimes. And I'm like, this is too much. But I will never say no to either of them. Fun fact though, I can eat almost an entire bag of hot Cheetos without any sips of water. That makes me a little scared of you. I had a video when I was like, not eight. I was in middle school sometime in middle school where my friends recorded me just eating like bags and they were like, for some reason a competition with my other friends. Who takes this? The in water first? I would have been scared of 14 year old. Yes. That is my super power to this day is I can handle any amount of hot Cheetos without water. I might start like, sweating and crying, but I will not do it. That's impressive. What about you? I don't think I know this answer because I've never had a talkie before in my life. Oh, my gosh. I know. I don't know. Do they DoorDash Takis I don't know. I will somehow get Takis to your house. Well, the thing is, I don't eat a lot of spicy foods because I don't like being in pain when I eat, and I just can't tolerate it. I really want to like hot foods. I can appreciate how good they can taste and that it can really just be a whole different world of food I don't get to enjoy. But no matter how much I try, I've been trying for a long time to like it. I just can't like hot foods so I could eat a couple of hot Cheetos and enjoy it. And I appreciate how good they are. But I can't eat more than that without being uncomfortable and wanting to like milk. So I by default have to go with Hot Cheetos. I've never had a Taki, but that answer is not very dense or credible or should be used for anyone else's decision to eat a hot Cheeto over a Tati. They have small bags of Takis that you could get. Okay, Rosly costumes, because if you don't like it, you can give it to him. Okay, perfect. Then you can give it to him if you don't like it. I think he likes hot Cheetos. We've got, like, the variety packs before that will come with the Hot Cheetos, and he'll eat all the variety pack of hot Cheetos. What is that? No, it's just like, if you get, like, a big old thing of chips and it comes like the lays and the Fritos and how the cot Chico. Sometimes the niece does and I eat all the boring salty stuff. Those are still good. Any salty chip is good. Are you more sweet or salty? I don't think I know this about you. I switched to salty after College. I did know that we talked about this thing, which was not good for my health, because I had access to dessert at every meal when I was in dining court. Not to say that eating dessert is bad. It was just I did not have a good relationship with food, and I harassed that abuse my access to food. I know whenever we'd eat together, we'd always get dessert, but it was like fun because you'd come to the dining coach. I felt like I was like, bringing you out. I was like, come to my restaurant When's the dining. I loved it because I had my lunch that day. Yeah, I missed the dining courts. Purdue has good dining for food. Yes. I kind of want to go back just to experience the food again. Me too. We're, like known. We were known for dining courts. I think there was a ranking. We were in top five in the country. Yeah, I worked one of them for my entire time there, so that's definitely a fact. Yes.
Participant #1:
Get Utah. Somehow, I don't know how many I'll give Ross money to go buy. Takis. Maybe they'll just sponsor us and then we can both get free talking. I would absolutely take a Taki or hot cheap sponsorship at any time. We don't even need like a paycheck. We just need like, actual product. Just give me bags of either of them and I will be happy. Yeah. We will give you a shout out just to send us like, just a bag each even not even like, ridiculous quantities. And then we can do a live of Hannah eating Takis for the first time. Like when I had the big Mac for the first time. We had the big Mac for the first time. Yeah. Whenever you should go next. I should not have them until you come visit next. We can do it together. I feel like you could do it before. I'm sure there's something else you haven't had that we could try. You have to wait to experience talking. I've made it 25 years and not have to wait a few more months. We just don't know that. The first time I had tattoos was at Bobby's house and they had like a big bag and I ate like, all I love potato chips and that kind of stuff. So I can appreciate how good those are. Yeah, they are very hot. I will know from a hotness scale they might be hotter than, like, hot Cheetos. Really? Yeah. But I think it's because of the amount of seasoning they put so much compared to hot Cheetos. Yeah. Anyway, we should wrap this up. We always do this. So we hope you enjoyed today's episode about BMI. Let us know your thoughts. Also let us know kind of your thoughts on that Ben privileged fat phobia episode. If you want one or two episodes, we can obviously do a part two without we could probably make an entire episode about that or at least an entire episode, an entire podcast about that. But thank you for tuning in and we will see you next time. I'm glad we're just, like letting it happen now. We're just committing to it. I'm just going to claim I'm seeing you guys. Okay, guys. Thanks for listening. See you next week. All right. Bye bye.
