I have a feeling you’ve seen the Instagram graphics stating the ridiculous-ness that is the BMI scale. And I agree, it’s bogus. And today’s episode I’m going to help you understand why that is.

The best place to start is who came up with the BMI scale. The BMI scale was created by a mathematician, astronomer and statistician, Adophle Quetelet, in 1832 to measure weights across a given population, never designed to measure an individual’s health or size. That's almost 200 YEARS AGO since the BMI scale was created! The BMI equation is weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared.

I learned in Fearing the Black Body, that Ancel Keys- the same Keys that created the fear mongering messages surrounding saturated fat that you’ve heard me mention before, is the same doctor who then took this scale, first called the Quetelet scale, renaming it to the BMI (Body-Mass-Index) scale. Keys even agreed that it was less than ideal scale, but “worked” nonetheless.

It’s also important to know the BMI scale was created by Quetelet based on measurements on white European men.

This is problematic in SO many ways. We know women have a different amount of body fat than men. And we know that different races and cultures have different body sizes, that the BMI scale in no way accounts for. But let’s dig in deeper...

In this episode we discuss:

The white supremacy origins of the BMI scale
How white people have been “controlling” their eating and fat for hundreds of years as a means of justifying slavery
The problems with the CDC graphs that have been used to show the “obvious” obesity epidemic
How profit and politics have been involved with the BMI scale and the changing categories
Why weight does not equal health
Addressing true health through healthy behaviors
Avoiding stigmatizing and worsening health through weight bias, explaining how correlation does not equal causation
What is weight cycling and why dieting only makes everything worse
The BMI scales inability to account for muscle mass
Quotes from the book, Health at Every Size
Reflections and final thoughts for you, how to move forward

Resources discussed in this episode:

Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings

Health at Every Size by Lindo Bacon

Anti Diet by Christy Harrison

Blog post by Rachel Hartley: https://www.rachaelhartleynutrition.com/blog/problems-with-bmi

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I have a feeling you've seen the Instagram graphics stating the ridiculous-ness that is the BMI scale. And I agree, it's bogus. And today's episode I'm going to help you understand why that is.   The best place to start is who came up with the BMI scale.