Decius wrote:

Illustrated BMI Categories

I was explaining to my boss that I am obese the other day and he refused to beleive me. Unfortunately most of the pictures in this archive are of women. They are pretty easy to fit into catagories. Overweight women are not unattractive. There are a few men. The guy who is just shy of normal looks almost malnourished. The overweight guys don't look overweight. Either guys hide fat better than women, or fat is way more dangerous on men 'causing the medical industry to set comparatively different standards.

BMI is and of itself is not a useful biomarker. It's really used to stratify other risk factors. This is why you'll see almost every pro athlete in the world have a high BMI. But the fact that they are so well conditioned and trained (and nourished) yields a lower overall risk factor for conditions that tend to be correlated with high BMI (diabetes, CVD, some cancers, back pain, etc). Obviously, you want your height/weight to be proportionate and anything over a 30 is probably not good (the guidelines are usually around 20, depending on age and male/female).

There's definitely a difference between male and female ratios, not just in aesthetics, but women tend to carry more fat on their bodies at any given height than men. Even more so for women of child bearing age. Ironically, the one time that BMI tends to be artificially low is if you're a smoker, and well... we all know what that means in terms of health.

RE: Illustrated BMI Categories - a photoset on Flickr