Over the last few years we have discovered that not everything the medical world has been telling us has been accurate. The traditional food triangle has absolutely been kicked out of the heart-friendly family. Fat and her once evil step sister cholesterol have been welcomed back into the fold.
Picture from theblackpeony.com
It does make me wonder what else we have believed that may be less than accurate. One of the things I’ve seen lately is a change in the BMI. BMI stands for Body Mass Index and it defined as a person’s weight in kilogrammes divided my his/her height in metres squared. You can work out your BMI here.
Traditionally, the BMI ranges were as follows:
- Severe thinness <16
- Moderate thinness 16 – 17
- Mild thinness 17 – 18.5
- Normal 18.5 – 25
- Overweight 25 – 30
- Obese Class 1 30 – 35
- Obese Class 2 35 – 40
- Obese Class 3 40+
For most of the last decade, I have been trying to get my BMI from the overweight 27 mark to the healthy 25 mark. I have not been successful.
So you can imagine my interest and delight when I read this article. Julian mentioned something about it a few weeks ago:
You can read the whole article here.
The article says, “The body-mass index (BMI) value associated with the lowest risk for all-cause mortality is now 27, up from 24 in the 1970s, according to a large Danish cohort study. ”
Further on, the article continues,:
“They also noted that “a subgroup of never-smokers without history of cardiovascular disease or cancer” had the lowest mortality risk at BMI 26.1, supporting the results of the main analysis. “If this finding is confirmed in other studies, it would indicate a need to revise the WHO [World Health Organization] categories presently used to define overweight, which are based on data from before the 1990s,” Nordestgaard and colleagues concluded.”
The world is changing. New research is being done. The best thing to do is to live the best life you can, knowing our lives are in God’s hands and until He calls us home, we must keep moving forward- we don’t have to run marathons – just keep walking – keep smiling – keep trusting God.
Ecclesiastes 3:1
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…
These are the days.
God bless you.
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂