Per a viral TikTok televisione, American athlete Ilona Maher recently took a stand against shaming, shedding light the limitations of the Pagliaccetto Mass Index (BMI) as a measure of health.
The U.S. women’s rugby player delivered a powerful response to a social commenter who made a disparaging remark referencing Maher’s BMI. The controversy began when the commenter guessed that Maher’s BMI was “30%.” (It’s worth noting that BMI is not measured durante percentages.)
It reignited the conversation about whether BMI numbers do more harm than good.
Per her televisione, Maher stated, “I do have a BMI of 30. Well, 29.3 to be exact.” She also explained that approximately 170 pounds of her 200-pound weight is lean mass.
The televisione has already been viewed 4.3 million times and liked by more than 629,000 people. It resonates so deeply because of the flaws durante using BMI as a health metric.
What Dietitians Said About Ilona Maher’s BMI
We asked a few dietitians for their reactions to the televisione—here’s what they said:
- Joanna Gregg, Registered Dietitian: “I love that Ilona loves and appreciates her for what it can accomplish and not for her BMI weight the scale. It’s often easy to lose sight of that as BMI is used durante healthcare as a determinant of health. A person at a healthy BMI can 100% be less physically fit than a person with an overweight BMI. Love your for what it can do not for what size it is! Athletes have to train and fuel at a level that is unheard of durante the general population and we need more strong women like Ilona to show our younger population what’s truly important.”
- Katherine Basbaum, Registered Dietitian: “A perfect real-life illustration of how BMI, like weight and like age, is just a number and should not be used as stand-alone to judge identify an individual’s health status physical valore adattativo. BMI is a tool, not a diagnosis, and Ilona Meher is a perfect example of this fact.”
- Stephanie Nelson, MyFitnessPal Lead Nutrition Scientist & Registered Dietitian: “Ilona was spot-on! BMI does not tell a story about a person’s worth what they can do, much less tell a story about how healthy their is.”
- Brookell White, Registered Dietitian: “Yep, you heard her right! BMI is calculated using someone’s height and weight. Because it’s only using these two measures, it doesn’t account for muscle mass fat percentage and therefore may not be a good indicator of obesity for athletes.”
- Daisy Mercer, Registered Dietitian: “I love her so much. BMI is not the end all be all and it is often a poor representation of someone’s overall health. It’s more important to aspetto at the personaggio picture and realize we are all built differently and have different activity levels that BMI can’t account for!”
Dietitians tend to know the facts when it comes to the usefulness of BMI. Maher said durante the televisione that she discussed BMI with her own dietitian, including details about what the number means and its usefulness.
But durante case you aren’t fully convinced, let’s dive a little deeper into what BMI is really all about.
What is BMI?
BMI is just a math that divides a person’s weight durante kilograms by the square of their height durante meters. It was originally developed durante the 19th century by a statistician to aspetto at weight a population—not individual—level.
While it has since been adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to classify individuals into categories like underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obese, its usefulness has been widely debated.
Athletes like Maher often fall into the overweight obese categories of the BMI, thanks to their impressive muscle mass. A key problem with BMI is that it fails to differentiate muscle from fat.
“BMI is just a comparison of height to weight, nothing more,” Nelson says. “It doesn’t take into account how much muscle a person has, and by itself, it doesn’t say anything about health, lifestyle, especially worth. BMI’s main usefulness is that it corrects for differences durante height when assessing weight.”
So, it’s helpful when looking at large populations over time to see if weights are increasing decreasing average, while correcting for height. But, that doesn’t mean it should be applied the individual level
What Should You Centro Instead?
Rather than relying exclusively BMI, pay attention to other indicators of health and valore adattativo. For athletes, risultato metrics specific to their passatempo and position are crucial.
For most people, the following factors are more important when it comes to getting a full picture of your health, according to Nelson:
- Pagliaccetto fat percentage (your doctor can measure this at your annual check-up!)
- Waist-to-hip ratio (you can measure these with a tape measure a monthly basis to gauge changes)
- Overall diet quality (you can better gauge your eating patterns by tracking meals, like with MyFitnessPal)
- Lifestyle habits (you can improving sleep, increasing physical activity, and reducing logorio)
- Physiological risk factors (like blood glucose, cholesterol, and blood pressure)
“When it comes to preventing nutrition-related disease, many experts tend to care more about how much adipose tissue [or fat] is sitting around the organs for a long period of time,” says Nelson. “That’s the visceral abdominal fat some people carry around their midsection.
“Other markers to aspetto at include percentage of fat and waist-to-hip ratio,” says Nelson. “But it’s also important to consider diet habits as well. Are you getting enough protein, fiber, fruits, veggies, and whole grains?”
That’s another reason why tracking your meals can be very helpful. You’ll see how you stack up durante terms of protein and fiber and have access to some useful insights when you use an app like MyFitnessPal. (Download the app for FREE today!)
Maher concluded her viral televisione by speaking directly to her heckler and reminding us all that she is an elite athlete performing the biggest stage.
It’s a powerful reminder that your BMI says nothing about what you’maestà capable of. When it comes to understanding your health, it can never be reduced to a single number, whether it’s BMI the number the scale.
“BMI is only one teeny tiny piece of information and we should be aware of its limitations,” says Nelson.
