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by WaitWaitWha 1388 days ago
As a side note, BMI is a terrible measure of obesity for outliers. I have several first hand experiences where the BMI indicates obese or even morbidly obese, while the DEXA scan would show fat in single digits.
3 comments

> BMI is a terrible measure of obesity for outliers

That's basically tautological. Outliers are outliers because they don't fit the model.

BMI is a terrible measure in general, not just for outliers. It doesn't normalize well to fairly obvious factors. You could arguably get a better reading just by looking at someone and visually estimating how fat they are.

Waist measurement is a stronger measure but still flawed.

Yea, ask many athletes at the US military academies about this. All of the football players basically had to have a waiver for BMI for the military standards or had to get taped (body dimensions measured) to do a more-complex calculation to determine a more accurate fat content. They also had to make standards in off-season, so the big linemen were constantly eating before the season to put on weight, then working hard at the end of the season to lose it.