Comment by jermaustin1
8 hours ago
As a person who has been told I'm "morbidly obese" for decades now, I will say that doctors at almost every level look at your chart not you. I've been told time and time again that until I get my weight under control, my health will suffer.
I'm 5'8" and weigh on average 210lbs. My BMI isn't even morbidly obese, it is 31, which is just "regular" obese, but on top of that, a DEXA scan shows that I am actually only 25% body fat, with only 1lb of visceral fat.
Doctor's don't care about that, they see on the Epic chart that my BMI is > 30 and have to tell me some spiel about a healthier lifestyle so they check check off a checkbox and continue to the next screen.
I'd consider 5'8 and 210lbs morbidly obese. An average male at 5'8 should generally weigh about 150lbs and no more than 164lbs.
If I got rid of all of my fat and bones, I'd still weigh more than 150lbs. I have the most muscular 150lbs man inside of me.
Ideal body fat percentage is 18-24% - I'm at 25% (or was in November - might be +/- 2% since then - gained a few pounds weight, but not waist size).
So I would say I'm not morbidly obese or even regular obese based on the percentage of my body that is muscle vs fat.
Or that guy could be a burly bricklacker / concerete worker who can casually carry hundreds of pounds of weight all day every day in brutal conditions.
It's really hard to tell with the data provided.
burly - maybe, but I haven't done any hard labor most of my life. I ran track as a kid, and kept my high metabolism - (RMR: 2460kcal, TDEE: 3380kcal); well lost it when my thyroid failed, but medicated myself back to it. I eat what I want, but its a very high lean-meat diet (lots of chicken breast and turkey because my wife likes them), but I don't limit my carb intake either, as I mostly burn sugar for energy (according to my Respiratory Exchange Ratio).
Somehow my body is just amazing at working without any help from me. I don't even exercise much. Maybe a few pushups a day, up and down my stairs at my house a couple dozen times a day, and probably 5-10k steps a day max.
Huh. The standard in your case is to measure waist circumference if BMI is high. Did no doctor do that? As long as you are below 40” or 37” if Asian you are considered good to go.
None ever did.
On top of that, I'm not sure if that is a real indication of anything, either.
The reason to do that is to get an idea of your abdominal fat (which is the more dangerous place for fat to store), but there are two types of abdominal fat, one is dangerous (visceral fat) and one is completely benign (subcutaneous fat). And a measurement around your waist won't tell you which you have.
I personally have almost all of my fat subcutaneous, with only 1lb of visceral fat (which is right in the perfect range).
> Doctor's don't care about that
Literally all of them?
When humans talk, they use generalizations (and don't need to annouce them). Here it means that most doctors don't care about that.
Follow that rule next time you read such a statement in a context that's not formal math.
> most
That is not even true. We are talking anecdotal evidence here.
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> When humans talk, they use generalizations
All humans?
Sorry :)
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I can't say literally all, but in my experience with having to get a new GP almost every year because of health insurance changes, location changes, hospital consolidation buying my GPs practice, and multiple doctors retiring or just quitting medicine (my last GP was tired of medicine after practicing for only 3 years). Over the last 20 years, I've had almost 15 GPs across 5 states (NY, NJ, CT, TX, LA). I also have multiple auto immune diseases, so I have had a handful of specialists of various flavors (endocrine, oncology - not for cancer, cardiology, and urology), but only need them occasionally.
Almost every single start of every single appointment (including a follow up from just a couple days prior), they comment about my BMI. It is the rare time they don't that I remember. My last urology appointment the doctor was very congenial, didn't even go over the lab work, just said, everything is looking good, asked how I was feeling, everything good, alright, refilled my prescriptions and left.
I mean those stats arent good...