this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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No, BMI is directly a function of weight.
Obesity is quantified using BMI by medical organizations because there isn't an effective way to quantify it otherwise, but it's in the same way as using IQ is a shorthand for intelligence or the DSM is used to describe mental illness. It needs a qualified professional to use the raw data point in combination with other factors in order to tell you if your body fat is actually unhealthy.
High body mass does also add its own strain independent of fat, but the actual intent of the term obesity is about whether you have a level of excess fat that lowers health outcomes, not size by itself. (It also wasn't actually ever intended by it's creator as a measure of health, just as the broad stroke data point it is.)
It's a thing in a good number of humans. Once you do pretty much any strength training (or just heavy lifting) at all, BMI loses its value pretty quickly. It's a rough indicator.
The DSM is definitely not intended to be stand alone. It is a set of general guidelines and definitions to inform the evaluation of a mental health professional. Most people check a good number of boxes on a good number of those checklists. The checklists are a tool to be used in collaboration with the professional judgement of the doctor. Almost every individual checkbox is "checked" or not based on the doctor's subjective evaluation.
Muscle mass and general body composition are part of it. Some people are naturally bigger and healthier at more weight than others. Some are naturally smaller and healthier at levels that would be unhealthy skinny for others. Presence of other obesity related illnesses are another. If you're showing signs of heart disease, breathing issues, etc, in addition to being big, that's a sign that losing weight will improve your health outcomes. BMI is a very rough yardstick that is used for the purpose of evaluating populations over time. It is not a good way to look at the health of a single individual without context.
"Gym rats" means anyone who's ever played a sport. Or done a job with manual labor. Or did any of many other things. BMI is "unscientific as fuck". It was literally never intended to be used anything like how it's used. It was solely intended to give a broad strokes single number for size relative to height (in a very limited initial population). There is no actual basis for its use anywhere.
The entire DSM was designed for the sole purpose of being used by a doctor. It was never intended to be used to self diagnose, or in literally any context outside of being used by a professional. The doctor's part of the equation is the whole point and the only thing that makes the DSM useful in any way. It is not standalone. It is a tool to enable doctors to have a consistent framework and process to do their job.
But anyways, this is all way off topic.
The entire point is that treating very rough, loose yardsticks as the "truth" for complex phenomena is nonsense.