College Students: Wrong Ones Worried About Weight?

A sample size of 310 students is extremely small to draw conclusions generalizing to all college students. I don't have access to the full article that describes their methodology, so I'm not sure what type of sampling methodology they used (convenience, random, etc), whether they weighted their data, or if their study is just descriptive data of their college students at Cornell. All play a huge part in interpretation of the data results.

On a personal note, I am morbidly obese and 145 pounds would be the high end of a normal BMI for me. At this point in time, that seems TOO unrealistic for me, but I do consider it to be my "final" goal. I don't even look at the final goal right now because I get overwhelmed, so I look at my smaller goals along the way and check those off as I hit them. These smaller goals are giving me the confidence I need to reach that final goal, but I still have a long way to go.

First, this study is likely based on BMI. An "overweight" person might just have more than average muscle. It's not too difficult to have more muscle than the average person, who does not lift weights, work hard or eat foods that make one strong.

So, many of these "overweight" people might very well be right in deciding that they should remain "overweight", when the study authors' "proper weight" would mean crapping away their muscles or even bone density.

William Blake wrote that, "To generalize is to be an idiot." Yet, that is exactly what these studies do, particularly those that take account with BMI. They have sacrificied accuracy for expediency, and achieved nothing.

Second, I see nothing wrong with media portrayal of healthy bodies. It is good to have an ideal, that we should aspire for peak health. However, they are displaying men at body fat percentages well below 10%, and women who are entirely too thin, with not enough fat or muscle. These are not healthy ideals. I would rather see muscular men and women with healthy amounts of fat. Something to which we could all aspire.

Agreed, BMI is quite a dodgy way of looking at your health. It's a good place to start but you need to go a lot further than that before deciding what to do (if anything!)

We're currently running an online survey (mainly UK) that has just over 1300 respondents so far (90% women). And I'm very happy to say that the average 'desired loss' and 'loss period' both lie within a healthy range.

There's still a lot to do with the data - but initially this seems to suggest that our respondents are being pretty realistic.

Excellent points about sample size and BMI. And Weightlossguru, it's great to hear that your online survey is finding plenty of folks with healthy weight loss goals!

Since an earlier article (I think it was here) said that men were moreoverweight but less worried about it than women, and here we see that normal-weighters want to be thin more than overweight people, it looks as if there are two ways of looking a weight and after the college stuff is out of the way, more men and fewer women suscribe to the "don't worry about a few pounds" system, while more women are still in the "never too thin" mentality. Therefore I would guess that something that happens to people after college turns more men into the kind who compare themselves to real people, but women stay in the same old habit of comparing themselves to models and actors.
The average American attends college from age 20 to about 23, getting a two-year certificate, and goes no further, or tries for a Bachelor's but never gets past year three. Thus college age is now the early 20's.
What happens in the middle 20's? Usually marriage and parenthood. So becoming a husbad and father stops the typical man from comparing hmself to celebrities but nothing comparable happens when a woman becomes a wife and mother. I wonder why not.

I think its alarmist to be upset that overweight people have goals that are not "healthy" weights. I teach my clients to set goals that are realistic and achievable. If that means that one is not yet in the "healthy" range, so be it. If one is concentrating on healthier eating and exercising, I believe one will be better off than eating a starvation diet and over-training in order to get to the "healthy" weight. This might sound like rationalization to some, but I am about 12 pounds "overweight" according to BMI even at my lowest weight, but if I try to get below that, it takes hours of intensive daily exercise and I have to eat so little that I feel weak, ill and lightheaded constantly. That feeling is not my definition of "heatlhy". I would rather be slightly overweight, physically fit and mentally healthy than eating disordered and weak!

rhoda said:
The average American attends college from age 20 to about 23, getting a two-year certificate, and goes no further, or tries for a Bachelor's but never gets past year three. Thus college age is now the early 20's. [...]

Just wondering if you had a cite for this? I've been trying to find the actual percentages but my Google fu is failing me. Cheers!

What is with BMI anyway? In the 80's when I was still only 5"4" my "healthy" weight was 135-145 - now I'm being told I should weight 125lbs at 5'5" according to BMI!!! I have a friend who is 5"9" who is convinced she should only weigh 135 - and has to run marathons to keep that low weight! Even when I was running 8 miles a day and playing soccer I never weighed less than 145 lbs. I even had a body composition done and my body fat was too low! Honestly I think the BMI scale is ridiculous and far to low for most people. It is really only suitable for people with tiny frames and slender muscles - not for those of us with larger frames and muscles! There are athletes that are considered obese on the BMI scale! It should be scrapped entirely - body composition is the BEST indicator of your healthy weight. BMI is built for defeat - don't use it! Go with what YOUR body shape and size requires. Women shouldn't be able to see their abs or their jawbones - we're SUPPOSED to be soft and round! And an extra 5 or 10 isn't the end of the world and you shouldn't have to starve or workout yourself out to death to get rid of it. Your body will tell you what it needs!

Ban BMI!!!!

i also think it's worth pointing out that this study was conducted at Cornell University, an Ivy League school. most of these kids are likely to be solidly middle-class, upper-middle class, or even from the ranks of the social elite. moreover, they're likely to be high achievers if they've made it to an Ivy League university. among women, ideas of acceptable body size and weight tend to become more draconian as you move up the socioeconomic and achievement scale. this is one of the reasons many anorexic girls are perfectionists and overachievers in all areas of life. combine this perfectionism with the increased pressure to be thin among higher social strata, and the mantra "you can never be too thin or too rich" manifests itself.

Julia asks:"What is BMI anyway."

Here are some personal musings on the topic which may be valid, or not :-)

BMI has become a controversial and button-pushing subject. For some reason, when it is mentioned on weight related sites, it gets people’s underwear in a bunch, and some underwear is in a bigger bunch than others.

BMI stands for Body Mass Index. It is determined by dividing the person’s weight by the square of their height (in metric units). As I understand, its history is partially actuarial — life insurance.

I was once told that life insurance is a bet. You are betting you are going to die, and the insurance company is betting you are going to live! If you think you are going to win your bet, double your insurance. From a life insurance point of view, if you are mostly dead, you are nevertheless still alive, and the company doesn’t have to pay up.

The BMI scale has been divided into underweight, normal, overweight, and obese ranges. The obese end can be extended up to morbidly obese, but on the underweight side one of the cruel ironies of life is although you can store excess weight, you cannot store negative weight, like a bank account, to draw upon.

The boundaries between the divisions are very sharp, but I would rather look at them as more blurry. There really are few if any sharp divisions in nature. A little on one side of the number or the other is not really that significant in the specific individual.

As an overall measurement of a decent body size for your height, I feel the BMI scale, although not perfect, does fulfill its original purpose, and does predict statistically the average life span of the individual.

For more fitness oriented purposes, using body fat percentage and waist-to-hip ratio, in addition to the BMI, should give you more than enough data to mull over.

From a health point of view, having a normal BMI, normal body fat, and a normal waist-to-hip ratio seems to give you the best chance for a long healthy life. If you are more visually oriented, just get a good full-length mirror and brace yourself!

It's often recommended that obese people aim to lose 10% of their weight for drastic health benefits rather than looking at and being discouraged by the "ideal" weight-- which perfectly well might not be ideal for them.

I read in my weight management consultant book, although this doesn't fit much for the youngest crowd that an obese person should not aim for the healthy weight range, but the lowest weight they've been able to maintain for a full year after age 21. There is a change in the lean body mass in the body if you spend years carrying around extra weight... Plus it is better to lose some weight healthfully than it is to just worry about some arbitrary number -- so being alarmist about it is a bit silly.

I think all this shows is how uneducated college students are about what is a healthy weight!

Interesting point about the socio-economic background of the test group... and I agree with Nic but i think it's more universal. Imagine if you asked a bunch of people what they thought was a healthy BMI ! That would yield some bizarre results! I asked around a bit and got anywhere from 17 to 35. Close but not really.

I agree with Dr. J. BMI is an excellent indicator of overall health. The range allowed for normal weight is fairly wide and allows for differences in genetics.

Only men who lift weights regularly or bodybuild can simply ignore BMI. They should focus on body fat percentages.

Most women do not have the testosterone needed to have a overweight BMI based on muscles alone. Regardless of how much she strength trains.

Michelle, I used to weigh over 330 pounds and now weigh less than 195 at 6 foot tall. I still have 10 pounds to go. You can do it just aim for 1 pound of weight loss a week. Slow and steady wins the race.

Julia, I'm sorry to tell you that, unless you have a high testosterone level, you should weigh less than 145 pounds.

Unfortunately, before fat appears on your body it heads to your omentum first. So that extra softness is a sign that your internal organs are covered with fat.

After you achieve a healthy normal BMI start to focus on a healthy body fat percentage.

To lose weight blindly may cause more serious illness than to be overweight. A research shows that to be a little overweight is good for health. Many big people looks more healthy than some skinny ones. Take a look at those big people at largeplace.com. Big can also be beautiful.

Dr. Kal said:
I agree with Dr. J. BMI is an excellent indicator of overall health. The range allowed for normal weight is fairly wide and allows for differences in genetics. [...]

My body fat indicates that I should aim above my "healthy weight" range for my goals. And I doubt I'll be losing significant lean body mass as often happens since I only have 8-12 lb of fat to lose to get there. As of last week I was 166 lb and 26.4% body fat, hydrostatic weighing. I'm 5'4. I don't look particularly muscular, although I do exercise a LOT and have a larger frame. I imagine someone who looks muscular might have a more dramatic state...

Although BMI is helpful for the average person-- it's been showed time and again it is a flawed indicator... especially in the active populations.
Can you cite your reference to the idea that most women cannot be out of the average BMI's with a lot of strength training? I simply have not seen that study with those results, but I would love to analyze it.

Dr. Kal said:
Julia, I'm sorry to tell you that, unless you have a high testosterone level, you should weigh less than 145 pounds.

Unfortunately, before fat appears on your body it heads to your omentum first. So that extra softness is a sign that your internal organs are covered with fat.[...]

Great - so now we are all supposed to be worried about fat on our internal organs, too? Geesh...

I'm 5'4" woman and weigh somewhere in the range of 155 lbs. I weight train and it would be difficult and very unhealthy for me to drop below that. I have broad frame, am in good health, and any attempt lose more fat would almost surely result in losing muscle, too.

I'm not sure what your rational is for bodybuilding men getting a free pass to ignore BMI if bodybuilding women don't. I also don't get why it's a good idea to worry about BMI before body fat percentage, which I thought was always held as the more important number. My attempts to think of reasons why you might be giving that advise only end up with negative conclusions about your possible views of women and body image.

If you are a medical MD, I think it's a very bad idea to be telling people they should be losing weight with only the knowledge of a name, height, gender, and weight. So many factors go into a healthy weight that I have hard time imagining how you could possibly know them all by an anonymous post.

Heather said:
. I'm 5'4. I don't look particularly muscular, although I do exercise a LOT and have a larger frame. I imagine someone who looks muscular might have a more dramatic state...[...]

Heather - Hi! It looks like we have the same body type and some similar hesitations about "Dr. Kal's" thoughts on BMI.

I'd like to know whether the women in the study who wanted to be underweight actually said "I want to be underweight" or if they just said "I want to weigh X", where X would make them underweight. The article kind of makes it sound like the former. I suspect the latter, but the former wouldn't surprise me...

Amy said:
If you are a medical MD, I think it's a very bad idea to be telling people they should be losing weight with only the knowledge of a name, height, gender, and weight. So many factors go into a healthy weight that I have hard time imagining how you could possibly know them all by an anonymous post.[...]

Silly, when you graduate from medical school they give you magic x-ray glasses that tell you exactly what all the wimminfolk (even ones you've never even seen in person) are supposed to weigh, and the knowledge that for optimum health (except that by "health", 99.44% of all men really mean "sex appeal"), women should never be squishy! They should be corrugated!

Dr. Kal said:
Julia, I'm sorry to tell you that, unless you have a high testosterone level, you should weigh less than 145 pounds.

Unfortunately, before fat appears on your body it heads to your omentum first. So that extra softness is a sign that your internal organs are covered with fat.[...]

Extra softness... No, you misunderstand. When I weighed 145 lbs. my body composition came back with too little body fat (I was 3% under what was then considered normal). I have very large leg and butt muscles which is where most of my weight is centered, as well as D cup breasts (which you men don't have to contend with - 10 lbs right there man)! I was running 8 miles a day, playing competitive soccer, walking to school, etc. etc. There is no way I could have weighted less at the time.

The reason I had the body composition done was because my adoptive mother (who was a tiny little starved model when she was a teenager) decided I was a fat cow and was taking me to doctor after doctor to lose weight. Every doctor told her I was fine - I had wide hips, large leg muscles, no extra body fat. The school nurse told her to lay off there was no weight for me to lose!

How can it possibly be healthy for a 5'9" woman to weigh 135 lbs when she has to rely on artificial sweeteners, avoid anything resembling a carb or fat, and run 10 miles a day to maintain that?

My female relatives in India eat a reasonable amount of fat, bread, milk and meat, they certainly don't run miles a day, and on average live into their 90's - and every one of them would be considered overweight by BMI, some even obese! The men are the same way! They eat natural unprocessed food, they do their own housework and childrearing, and live long lives. And are never threatened with BMI-early-death-fear.

Please, any body generalization is cruel and unfair - we each need to find what is healthy for us individually - and for me it is 145 lbs at 5'5" - even if it means I can't work in New Zealand!

Oh and BTW - the BMI scale (like most medical scales and predictions) was based on MALE physiology - having breasts is enough to push you over into overweight.

Medicine still does not acknowledge that female physiology is very different from a man's.

rhoda said:
The average American attends college from age 20 to about 23, getting a two-year certificate, and goes no further, or tries for a Bachelor's but never gets past year three.

I'm not sure where you are getting this information. Based on the American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2006, 8.6% of 18-24 year olds and 28.8% of 25-34 year olds have at least a bachelor's degree. If you look at just associate degrees, 4.8% of those aged 18-24 years and 8.2% of those aged 25-34 years had an associate's degree in 2006.

I'm not going to argue that there may be something to Americans attending college not directly out of high school, but based on statistics, I feel that those individuals who have associate degrees in their early 20's will pursue a bachelor's degree and get one. If I really wanted to, I could look at past trends, but I have other things to do.

Dr. Kal said:
Michelle, I used to weigh over 330 pounds and now weigh less than 195 at 6 foot tall. I still have 10 pounds to go. You can do it just aim for 1 pound of weight loss a week. Slow and steady wins the race.

Thank you for the kind words. My new trainer that I started with in May is extremely encouraging and helpful. Since we teamed up, I've lost 40lbs, so that's an accomplishment itself. Congrats on your success!

This is a really interesting study. When I was very overweight, my initial "goal" weight was around 130 lbs (I'm 5'3"). I just wanted to be the same weight as my sister, who was about a size 6-8 and was healthy. When I did reach that weight, I wasn't satisfied and I wanted to weigh less. I got down to about 105 lbs and I lost my menstrual period, but I looked more like the "Hollywood Ideal" at that weight, so I wanted to stay underweight so I could look super skinny.

However, my doctor told me that even though at 105 lbs, I wasn't technically very underweight according to BMI, I WAS very underfat and I had to gain weight to prevent osteoporosis. I gained 15 lbs and was a good healthy 120 lbs for a while, but my body image was kind of distorted. I still felt that I looked "fat" in comparison to the super skinny girls in magazines and on TV. So I upped my running mileage and cut back on carbs and got back down to 100 lbs. Right now, I'm around 100 lbs and I'm definitely underweight and VERY definitely underfat (9% body fat is too low for a woman. So, Dr. Kal, it is NOT only men who weight lift that have to worry about getting too low of bodyfat for BMI to be accurate. It depends on your body composition.). I need to gain weight for health reasons, but for some reason, I feel like that I LOOK "normal" according to media standards. It's indeed very messed up.

On the other end of the spectrum is my mom, who has been obese most of her life. Whenever she tries to lose weight, she sets a goal weight of "200 lbs", which is still quite overweight for a 5'2" woman. I think people who are very overweight may feel daunted by setting a healthy goal weight right away because it feels too difficult to achieve. I know that when I weighed 190 lbs, 130 lbs seemed impossible. But if you break down your ultimate goal into little pieces of 10 lbs or so, it doesn't seem so difficult.

BMI is not a scale of health. You can be healthy with an overweight BMI. However, you would be healthier with a normal BMI.

There are healthy people who smoke. There are smokers who live into their 90's with Lung Ca or COPD. They would be healthier if they stopped.

The average woman does not have the testosterone to attribute her overweight BMI to lean mass. If your BMI is in the overweight range, it is not because your breast, legs, butt, or frame is large. It is because of fat.

You can stilll be healthy with an overweight BMI. I was just saying that by achieving a healthy BMI you would be healthier.

Dr. Kal said:
BMI is not a scale of health. You can be healthy with an overweight BMI. However, you would be healthier with a normal BMI.[...]

If you are healthy - how can you be healthier? If a woman is losing her menstrual period and she is in her BMI range how can that POSSIBLY be healthier? You are not making sense. That is what I mean that BMI is more damaging than helpful. Yes, sorry to say but being a DD breast size can definitely tip you over - remember BMI is based on MALE physiology - NOT female!

BTW - fat weighs a lot less than muscle. Some of women folk do have large muscles - it's called being descended from farm people. At no point in time will I ever be healthier in my BMI range. That is just too low for me.

My point again is, the BMI is NOT a good tool for everyone and should be scrapped - each person's individual makeup is what needs to be taken into account when determining if they are overweight. It is causing too many people to obsess over their weight in a mentally and emotionally unhealthy way and is forcing people to become skinnier than some of them should be.

Oh and anther point I missed...

BMI is not a scale of health.

Then why would 1) Health insurance companies use it and 2) why should we use it at all

Dr. Kal, you made my point for me. BMI is of no use as a gauge for health! Why use it!?

What this all proves is that Bodyfat % is the only indicator that matters, no matter the build-type.

Also, why don't insurance companies use BF% instead of BMI? It'd be a lot better for them to estimate risk that way.

I don't think these results seem surprising as people have been image conscious for a long time. I don't think it will go away either. Looking good is something that will always be in demand.

As far as overweight women still aiming for a body weight that would keep them in the overweight classification, I believe that it's because attempting to lose weight can be SO overwhelming and discouraging. Goals seem so distant and unobtainable. I guess they/we are just trying not to disappoint ourselves. I know that I want to be a certain size, I'm just not realistically sure if I'll ever make it. Most college girls that come into college overweight have been dealing with this issue for a very long time, so, with that being said, they are used to not meeting their goals and they are tired of disappointing themselves and those around them.