When I hit 253, I'll be obese, just like pretty much everyone in the NBA.
Sadly, that's literally true in the US. The definition of obesity is dictated, by official US health policy, by BMI. Which means that every heavyweight bodybuilder on stage at the Mr. Olympia contest this past fall, at 4% body fat, is considered "obese" by official definitions.
BMI is an absolutely crap measurement. It's readily and easily replaced by far more accurate and useful measures (circumference measures for starters). While BMI remains vaguely useful in making obesity estimates of populations based on height/weight datapoints readily available in existing databases, it never was, and was never meant by even its first modern revivalists, to be used as an individual measure of fitness.
Sadly, that's literally true in the US. The definition of obesity is dictated, by official US health policy, by BMI. Which means that every heavyweight bodybuilder on stage at the Mr. Olympia contest this past fall, at 4% body fat, is considered "obese" by official definitions.
BMI is an absolutely crap measurement. It's readily and easily replaced by far more accurate and useful measures (circumference measures for starters). While BMI remains vaguely useful in making obesity estimates of populations based on height/weight datapoints readily available in existing databases, it never was, and was never meant by even its first modern revivalists, to be used as an individual measure of fitness.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1062684...
http://www.slate.com/id/2223095/
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_09.html