How does your health measure up? Criticism of long-time tool used to track progress
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Body mass index, a long-time tool used to measure a person's health, may soon be out the door as some health professionals push for a system they say is more accurate.
Body mass index, a long-time indicator of a person's health, is drawing criticism from athletes and health-care professionals.
Colten Sloan trains five days a week for three hours a day. He is Plains Cree, 6-foot-3 and roughly 335 pounds.
He sounds like he'd be considered healthy, but by body mass index, he’s not.
“I would probably be in the morbidly obese (category). Like, 'You're going to die' inside of the BMI,” said Sloan, who is Canada's first Indigenous strongman.
“And then the training isn't just lifting weights like we do conditioning work and everything," he said of his workouts as a professional strongman.
In addition to that, Sloan works as a carpenter, which keeps him moving and lifting all day long.
"So yeah, I really disagree with BMI, just because someone being my size and mostly muscle (would be) labelled as morbidly obese, but I'm not,” said Solan.
