Too skinny? 6ft 3 147lbs (Advice needed)

iPete

BSRU wrote:

Last years British hill climbing champion is 6ft 2 and weighs 62kg(136lbs), hasn't done him any harm.
Not only is he fast up hills, his TT times are excellent.

But the level of dedication to look like that and maintain that weight is far beyond what I'd be willing to do. :shock:

Made me look fat and I'm 69kg @ 6 feet

BSRU

iPete wrote:

BSRU wrote:

Last years British hill climbing champion is 6ft 2 and weighs 62kg(136lbs), hasn't done him any harm.
Not only is he fast up hills, his TT times are excellent.

But the level of dedication to look like that and maintain that weight is far beyond what I'd be willing to do. :shock:

Made me look fat and I'm 69kg @ 6 feet

That probably goes for 99.9% of all cyclists, certainly does for me.

DeVlaeminck

BeaconRuth wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

.... you have ask whether it tells us anything useful at all.

Yes, it tells you how heavy you are compared to your height - an extremely relevant thing to know if you're an endurance cyclist (i.e. almost every cyclist except track sprinters).

Ruth

And why is it useful to know how heavy you are compared to your height? It is of no real relevance at all. How heavy you are yes, watts per kg even more so, but why the relevance of dividing it by height?

It was devised as a rough and ready population level measure of obesity - for that purpose it has faults but is of some value. As a measure of anything at all at an individual level it tells us nothing of value. If I am 12 stone and 7 feet tall and my twin brother 6 feet and 13 stone what does BMI tell us other than what our BMI is compared to other people. As we know you can be obese on the BMI scale yet have low body fat, you can be under weight yet register as healthy on the BMI scale, and taller people have higher BMIs for a given body fat percentage (on average). In other words it does not tell us if we are overweight or not.

Now how then is BMI "extremely relevant" ?

BeaconRuth

DeVlaeminck wrote:

And why is it useful to know how heavy you are compared to your height? It is of no real relevance at all.

So two people wish to become better cyclists. Both weigh 80kg. With regard to whether changing their weight would benefit their cycling at all it is highly relevant that one is 5' 4" tall and the other is 6' 4".

Ruth

NeXXus

Dreaming up uses for BMI.

DeVlaeminck

BeaconRuth wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

And why is it useful to know how heavy you are compared to your height? It is of no real relevance at all.

So two people wish to become better cyclists. Both weigh 80kg. With regard to whether changing their weight would benefit their cycling at all it is highly relevant that one is 5' 4" tall and the other is 6' 4".

Ruth

No what is relevant is how much muscle and fat they are carrying - and BMI is only an indirect way of estimating that and may give quite misleading results.

The guy that is 5'4 may have a freakish build with no extra weight to lose without losing power or becoming unhealthy. BMI is not a measure of how much fat OR muscle an individual has - it is a POPULATION LEVEL MEASURE designed to give a rough overview. Yes of course there is some correlation with individuals (otherwise it wouldn't work at a population level) but why would you use BMI to calculate how much weight an individual can lose when you could just take their shirt off and see what build they are ?

There is also the issue that you ignore that taller people generally have a higher BMI for a given body fat level - so if you want to use BMI as some kind of meaningful score (and if you don't then you are admitting you are wrong) you are going to be advising taller riders to compete at a lower body fat than shorter riders - why would you do that ?

bobmcstuff

I know I'm probably about to get flamed for this but I actually think BMI is quite useful. This doesn't really apply to the OP as I'm coming from the perspective of someone who has reduced theirs from 29.4 to 24.8 since January.

The "healthy" BMI range for my height is 55-75kg - that's a pretty massive range. I'll readily accept that it may not be relevent for elite athletes and so on, but given the size of the range it's hard to see how being in the "healthy" range would not correlate to being a healthy weight IMV... Probably 90%+ of people on this forum are essentially normal people who like to go cycling for fun, not top endurance athletes or professional rugby players so I don't believe the get-out clauses there really apply to most of us. Therefore for those reasons I think it's relatively useful in determining whether one is overweight.

People constantly rubbishing BMI is just another reason you can use to justify your weight and lack of losing any - "Oh BMI doesn't apply to people with XYZ body type" or "everyone says it's rubbish so I don't need to worry about it".

I guess what I'm trying to say is that people constantly rubbishing BMI is not really helpful for the majority of people (in general not necessarily on here, and by the sounds of it definitely not OP ) who should really think about losing a few pounds. There's nothing wrong with debating the relevance to particular sporting disciplines, but I think you need to be careful how you phrase it, because for most normal people the healthy BMI range really does correlate to a sensible weight for that person to aspire to, and blanket statements like "BMI is useless/it's a load of rubbish" is damaging for that.

*runs and hides*

Elijah2010

building muscle at 21 is easy your probably oozing testosterone if you put a stone on you would be better in the saddle simply because of being much stronger and yes im taking from experience much better to be 160lbs for your height .

BeaconRuth

DeVlaeminck wrote:

The guy that is 5'4 may have a freakish build with no extra weight to lose without losing power or becoming unhealthy.

Well I guess that if you think that someone who has a BMI of 30 because he's made of solid muscle couldn't become a better endurance cyclist by losing some of that muscle, then you're not going to see that BMI might be of some relevance to the question of ideal weights for endurance cyclists.

I shall go and spend my time more fruitfully.

Ruth

BeaconRuth

bobmcstuff wrote:

I know I'm probably about to get flamed for this but I actually think BMI is quite useful. This doesn't really apply to the OP as I'm coming from the perspective of someone who has reduced theirs from 29.4 to 24.8 since January.

The "healthy" BMI range for my height is 55-75kg - that's a pretty massive range. I'll readily accept that it may not be relevent for elite athletes and so on, but given the size of the range it's hard to see how being in the "healthy" range would not correlate to being a healthy weight IMV... Probably 90%+ of people on this forum are essentially normal people who like to go cycling for fun, not top endurance athletes or professional rugby players so I don't believe the get-out clauses there really apply to most of us. Therefore for those reasons I think it's relatively useful in determining whether one is overweight.

People constantly rubbishing BMI is just another reason you can use to justify your weight and lack of losing any - "Oh BMI doesn't apply to people with XYZ body type" or "everyone says it's rubbish so I don't need to worry about it".

I guess what I'm trying to say is that people constantly rubbishing BMI is not really helpful for the majority of people (in general not necessarily on here, and by the sounds of it definitely not OP ) who should really think about losing a few pounds. There's nothing wrong with debating the relevance to particular sporting disciplines, but I think you need to be careful how you phrase it, because for most normal people the healthy BMI range really does correlate to a sensible weight for that person to aspire to, and blanket statements like "BMI is useless/it's a load of rubbish" is damaging for that.

*runs and hides*

Hallelujah.

Ruth

wavefront

bobmcstuff wrote:

- that's a pretty massive range. I'll readily accept that it may not be relevent for elite athletes and so on, but given the size of the range it's hard to see how being in the "healthy" range would not correlate to being a healthy weight IMV...

I'm 6ft, 66 kgs (11% body fat), and according to BMI I'm a healthy weight. I'm doing a big multi day event next year where I'll lose 3-3.5 kgs specifically for it (down to 6% body fat) and I'll still be healthy according to BMI. If I put on 18kgs now, going up to 84 kgs I'll still be healthy.

And that is where I've the problem with BMI. If I go up to 84kgs' I'll have to become incredibly sedentry and overeat, and for me to achieve that, I'd have to be very unhealthy. I know I'll also be incredibly skinny and probably look anoxeric when I lose the weight next spring so is that healthy? The range is far too large, and I think gives many people (general population) the permission to sit around, stick to the 'rules' of BMI rather than the spirit and say, 'hey I'm classed as healthy, I don't need to do anything about it.'

Not shooting you down in flames btw. Just feel it's relied on too heavily to determine whether you're a healthy weight or not.

Elijah2010

what it boils down to is reserves much better to be a little more powerful in my opinion

bolingbroke

wavefront wrote:

I'm 6ft, 66 kgs (11% body fat), and according to BMI I'm a healthy weight. I'm doing a big multi day event next year where I'll lose 3-3.5 kgs specifically for it (down to 6% body fat) and I'll still be healthy according to BMI. If I put on 18kgs now, going up to 84 kgs I'll still be healthy.

And that is where I've the problem with BMI. If I go up to 84kgs' I'll have to become incredibly sedentry and overeat, and for me to achieve that, I'd have to be very unhealthy. I know I'll also be incredibly skinny and probably look anoxeric when I lose the weight next spring so is that healthy? The range is far too large, and I think gives many people (general population) the permission to sit around, stick to the 'rules' of BMI rather than the spirit and say, 'hey I'm classed as healthy, I don't need to do anything about it.'

I'm 6ft1 and 79kg and I'd say I'm in really good health. I reckon I could probably gain and maintain another 5kgs and still feel the same. So I don't think gauging anything from yourself is a good idea. People come in many different builds and metabolisms.

DeVlaeminck

BeaconRuth wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

The guy that is 5'4 may have a freakish build with no extra weight to lose without losing power or becoming unhealthy.

Well I guess that if you think that someone who has a BMI of 30 because he's made of solid muscle couldn't become a better endurance cyclist by losing some of that muscle, then you're not going to see that BMI might be of some relevance to the question of ideal weights for endurance cyclists.

I shall go and spend my time more fruitfully.

Ruth

Oh ffs! Please don't tell me what I'm thinking stick to addressing what I actually wrote.

Of course WEIGHT is important in cycling but BMI is not a good way of determining an ideal weight. Individuals have different builds regardless of fat and muscle so while the OP who may be perfectly healthy and perform well is classed as an unhealthy BMI others may find their optimum is well into the healthy weight band and a few may actually be classed as overweight or borderline overweight.

As for Bolingbroke's post you seem to agree with - yes for many people BMI will apply as a ready measure of healthy weight just as 220-age will be a roughly accurate gauge of MHR - I'm assuming you adopt a similar approach when you coach and use that rather than try and determine the actual value for the individual?

wavefront

bolingbroke wrote:

I'm 6ft1 and 79kg and I'd say I'm in really good health. I reckon I could probably gain and maintain another 5kgs and still feel the same. So I don't think gauging anything from yourself is a good idea. People come in many different builds and metabolisms.

I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence, and also agree what I gauge from myself is only relevant for me. But that is sort of my point, BMI is just far too general, and I fear than many use BMI as an indicator that their lifestyle is healthy rather than their weight.