Let's talk about BMI

Today was my weigh in day.  I'm currently participating in a "Healthiest Loser" competition at work.  Every week we weigh in and the ones that have lost the largest percentage of their body weight at the end of the competition win money.  Pretty straight forward idea.  Up until my stall out of last week (0 lbs lost), I was actually in second then fell to third place, still not bad.  I decided to sign up for this compeition when I realized I gained 10 lbs during training for my half-marathon, eek!  Granted, I gained 10 lbs of muscle (I have never calculated my body fat percentage, I'm going off of how my clothes fit.  If I gained 10 lbs of fat, my clothes would have been tighter, which is no the case) but still, I wanted to be back at my pre-training weight. And in my dream world, I still have about 12 lbs to lose to hit my goal.  However, my weight loss has been stalled out for a LONG time (read: over a year) and remember, I'm super competitive so I figured this competition would be the perfect way to jump start losing again.

Anyway,  today I weighed in at 147 lbs, which is a total loss of 8 lbs since I started this competition.  Not too shabby!  However, I was shocked when I realized that according to my BMI I am overweight!?!  Huh???  At 5'4" and 147 lbs my BMI comes out to 25.2.  To be considered at a healthy weight your BMI should be between 18.5 and 25.

So in reality, I'm not that far away from being "healthy" but I find it upseting that I'm considered "overweight".  I feel this should be more of a continuum than such a cut and dry chart.  I feel this chart is saying to me "Yes, I know you're only 1.3 lbs away from your target weight range but you're still overweight." 

The other thing that really irks me about BMI is that is doesn't factor in muscle mass.  I have a decent amount of muscle on me, mostly in my legs from running, and muscle is healthy for you!  Muscle burns calories while resting and is more dense than fat (meaning, you may get thinner but still weigh the same, or more, because muscle is more compact).  I am positive that there are people out there who fall into the "healthy" weight range that I am more healthy than.  I work out 5-6 days a week and watch what I eat.  I may be "overweight" BMI but I'm pretty darn healthy!

I think I'm done even looking at my BMI.  It annoys me far too much.  I think I need to start keeping track of my measurements and track progress that way... we'll see.  I'm not really good with keeping up with that (I did that for about 2 months before and then forgot).  Being a scientist I need some empirical data to keep track up.  I know me, I can't be one of those people that tracks progress with how my clothes fit.  Maybe it's time for some research to figure out new ways to measure how "healthy" I am... 

<3 T