If you lose 20 lbs of muscle, you’ll probably lose a lot more weight. That’s a lot of muscle to lose and your doctor would be rightfully worried about you.

If you gain 20 lbs of just muscle as easily as you make it sound like it can happen, I’ll be very impressed!

I mean this is the nicest way possible with no malice or condescension (seriously) but I don’t think you understand what 20 lbs of muscle is.

I disagree. There are adjustments for gender and age. You do have a point about race differences. But they just means that you have to be mindful when calculating risks when you look at the patient. Overall, it’s still a great measure. You’ll be hard pressed to find a clinically significant difference when you start looking at obese individuals (by BMI) regardless of gender/race.

I know what BMI is. I was trying to understand why that user thought it was idiotic. I’ve found it very useful for adults and children. However, for pediatric patients, the standard scale doesn’t apply, and percentiles are more useful. Lean patients with high BMIs are outliers and that is obvious clinically.

My point being, people keep talking about how BMI is a terrible metric but for most of the population, it is very useful.

What is your experience with the BMI system that makes you call it idiotic?