Via iStockphoto / @_the_joel_ TikTok
A woman who trains as a bodybuilder went in for a routine doctor visit. What happened during that appointment sparked a viral moment and a conversation around the popular body fat measuring system BMI.
‘You’re 5 Pounds Away From Being Obese’
TikTok creator Emily (@the_joel) shared her experience in a now-viral video with more than 3.6 million views. “Medically obese
might be taken seriously if the standards for it weren’t such a joke,” she begins.
Then she explains what happened.
“Went to the doctor today with a little sweatpants and sweatshirt action,” she says. “Can’t really tell what I look like. OK.”
Emily explained that she stands 5’4″ and weighs 165 pounds. The doctor looked at her numbers, didn’t ask about her training routine, and told her she was “5 pounds away from being obese.”
He then recommended she lose weight by “increas[ing] her activity levels and modify[ing] her diet.”
That might sound like reasonable advice, except Emily is a visibly muscular and fit strength trainer.
In her video, she includes a stitched-in photo of herself wearing workout clothes, where her toned physique made the doctor’s advice seem completely detached from reality.
“SOMEONE GET THIS GIRL A WEIGHT WATCHERS SUBSCRIPTION,” Emily joked in the caption.
BMI Doesn’t Tell The Whole Story
Emily didn’t say whether she pushed back at the doctor, but her video stirred up conversation about BMI.
The formula, Medical News Today notes, is outdated and not always safe to rely on.
BMI was created in the 1830s by Belgian mathematician Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. That was long before modern tools existed to measure fat, muscle, and overall health more accurately. And yet, many doctors still rely on this simple equation: weight divided by height squared.
Oxford professor Nick Trefethen once wrote to The Economist criticizing the formula, saying it doesn’t account for the fact that taller people carry weight differently than shorter people. According to him, BMI overestimates fatness in tall people and underestimates it in short people.
Even more recently, researchers have found that waist circumference may be a much more accurate predictor of health risks like diabetes. A team from the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit in the U.K. found that waist size, even in people who don’t technically qualify as obese, strongly correlates with type 2 diabetes risk.
In other words, a tape measure could reveal more than a scale and a calculator.
Commenters Say They’re Tired Of This
Many people who saw Emily’s video couldn’t believe what the doctor said. Some shared their own frustrating stories.
“My OBGYN brought up my BMI at my appt the other day… like girl I’m pregnant. How is that relevant?”
“My dad was complaining about lower back pain for months. They told him to lose weight. He lost weight. One day he went to the ER, eventually got a scan. The cancer had spread so far it was untreatable. He died a month ago,” another said.
Another person wrote, “Doctors have gotten lazy and want to blame everything on weight.”
And one just said what everyone was thinking. They wrote, “So you flexed on him, right? …Right!?”
BroBible has reached out to Emily via email for more information.