Fun with BMI calculators

So, I haven't used a BMI calculator in forever, but I decided to futz around with one today, just for the hell of it.

To put my weight in context, I frequently takes walks upwards of 3 miles, often upwards of 5. The limiting factor in my walks seems to be shoe comfort and chafing, if I'm wearing a skirt. If I'm wearing comfortable shoes and jeans, I haven't yet met my walking limit (in a single time period), but it's somewhere past 8 miles. I do suck at walking up hills and stairs, but I get myself around. A hill certainly hasn't stopped me from my urban hiking. :)

I wear about a size 20, give or take.

My blood pressure is in the normal range. My cholesterol is low.

Now for the punchline: I currently weigh anywhere between 235 and 245. I don't own a scale, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere around there. I am a towering 5'2.5". This puts me at a bmi of *drumroll* 43.2. Approximately. I am officially DEATHFAT.

I think that would make a good superhero name.

Yes, according to the bmi calculator, I'm going to keel over tomorrow. So then I had a thought. Well, I haven't been at this weight very long. For various reasons (grad school, moving, fiance is lazy and his laziness crawls onto me and sits in my lap thereby preventing me from getting off my fat ass and making as healthful food as I would like or exercising as much as I should not that I'm pointing fingers...) I have gained about 10 lbs since I moved to Seattle. My weight was consistently 220-225 for my junior and senior years of college. It was also this amount before I started a whole bunch of diets and then gained back all the weight.

Go go BMI calculator: 39.6

Hey! No longer DEATHFAT. Under a BMI of 40 I was merely SEVERLY obese, not MORBIDLY obese. Well then. I'd like to point out that during this time I was a VERY active college student with a job in a synthetic chemistry lab which required me to be up and about constantly. Every day. I didn't do the same level of LONG walking then as I do now, but I was walking everywhere because there were no buses and I had no car. Hmm. Ok.

Well, what about at my thinest, I wonder. In high school, I went on a bunch of diets. I did weight watchers and lost 18 lbs. I went on South Beach diet and lost about 40. In about 4 months. Aieeek. So, at my thinest I was 170 lbs. I wore a size 14 in jeans and, depending on the cut, could often fit into a size 12. In pictures from my senior year I look healthy (even though I was skating the edge of an eating disorder) and, though not skinny, not particularly fat.

Let's check out the BMI calculator's opinion: 30.6

Still obese. Had I dropped a mere four lbs lower, I would have traversed the boundary from obese to merely overweight.

It seems so silly. So incredibly ridiculous. I walk more than I did in high school. I certainly eat better. I'm happier and more organized. I have my shit together way better now than I did in high school. But in high school I was almost not obese.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this was. Does it have one at all? I feel like there should be some major change in my life, since I went from severly obese to morbidly obese. Start the sirens, this is one big girl. But really all I want is a cape with the initials DF. Oh, and to maybe not be told that I'm going to cack it tomorrow when I'm clearly not.

Unless a certain car of evil that almost hit me last week decides to run another red light when I'm in the crosswalk. Freakin' SUVs.