My (F26) BMI is currently in the obese range at 36.5, and I made the mistake of using BMI as a tool to find out how much weight I would have to lose. To have a normal BMI I would need to go from my current weight of 206lbs to under 140, which I haven’t been since I struggled with an eating disorder as a teen. My goal weight of 180 is still in the obese range, and to get to an overweight BMI I would have to weigh less than 170. I think this is doable, but it still feels soul crushing to know how much work it will take for my BMI to reflect how I actually feel, when I was feeling so encouraged by finally losing weight in the first place.
For some background, I have PCOS which makes it especially difficult to lose weight due to hormonal imbalance. With this diagnoses I was able to get some medical help for weight loss and normalized my high testosterone levels. Since then, I’ve been making slow progress, but I feel like I will never be at a healthy weight without taking drastic measures. The kicker is that one of the treatments for PCOS is weight loss, but I’m not sure this will treat the disorder for me as I had the same symptoms as a teen. The extra kicker is that to get diagnosed, I had to find a doctor who would admit that my “high-normal” testosterone levels (45ng/dL in a max range of “normal” 48ng/dL) were indeed a symptom. Because statistically and by the numbers, my levels were normal. And this feels like the same problem with BMI. Normal and healthy for me just may not look the same to the statistics of the medical world and BMI.
All of my stats, BP, blood glucose levels, and now hormones, are well within normal ranges. So I guess I’m just wondering if I should even be using BMI to measure my progress, if I won’t ever feel healthy because of it? Right now, I feel extremely healthy. I cycle 4+ times per week, have been food tracking, am sleeping better and have more energy than I did since I started making an effort to lose weight. I feel more confident in my skin, and less focused on feeling “fat”. I feel like my body is strong, but now my goal of 180lbs seems somewhat pointless if my BMI will never reflect the health that I feel. Especially because to be in a normal BMI range, I’d need to reflect my teenage, eating disordered, three-season athlete body between 110-140lbs. That feels like way bad math to me I guess. I’m still going to keep pushing, but I’m just frustrated with BMI as a measure of my progress, when it doesn’t reflect half of the emotional and even physical progress I’ve made. And I’m secondly frustrated by the fact that my doctor will use it to bin me into a certain category, and that I’ve been at least in the overweight bin for my whole adult life, even at physically healthy places. And the idea of medical professionals binning me is especially frustrating, after having to fight to say that yes, my testosterone is high for me, please help.
This is such a mental struggle, so can’t there be a better marker for weight loss? Is BMI helpful? sings I just don’t knooowww
TL;DR - BMI is a bad measure of progress, but I checked mine and am torturing myself with it anyway.
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