Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by eightpersimmons 4740 days ago
This is one of the most frustrating things about how we, as a society, talk about obesity - we act like you can know something meaningful about a person's lifestyle and health from a single glance. Not to mention the related assumption that a thin body is inherently desirable and worth striving for.

A measurement like BMI, which is a great way of looking at a population, is a terrible way of understanding an individual, and the use of weight and BMI as a stand-in for health is infuriatingly wrongheaded.

2 comments

I'd argue that most people - other than knowing they're overweight - know little about their lifestyle as well (or at least they don't know it as well as they'd like to think).

The prevalence of quantified self & self-tracking is starting to change this & when you're able to measure & track inputs better, you're better able to correlate the results with them as well.

> we act like you can know something meaningful about a person's lifestyle and health from a single glance.

Based on your sibling comments (which as of this moment consist of "you're still eating too much food and not exercising enough"), I agree.