At a population level, it's great. For individuals, it can fail in all kinds of ways. For me: it is not very good because my body has very strange proportions. I'm 6'2", but my waist is barely higher than my 5'1" wife, and my torso is nearly the same length as my 6'7" brother.

In other words, for my height, I have a very long torso and very short legs. I think it should be relatively obvious that an inch of leg weighs significantly less than an inch of torso, so at a given level of body fat percentage, I'm going to weigh quite a bit more than someone my same height with more typical proportions, and thus my BMI reads me as more overweight than it otherwise would.

My point is not that BMI is bad or useless or anything else. My point is that it was designed as a population statistic and that it can be fraught when one tries to apply it to any individual with no nuance. A high BMI should cause one to consider and examine your health and weight. But it should not over-ride specific details about your physiology that point in the other direction.

> screening tool

People tend to think in absolutes. Even perfectly rational people fall logically foul to not considering outliers.

> I’ve been in the “overweight” BMI range with low body fat before. It’s not too hard to get there

Did you do that as a natural lifter? It’s hard for me to imagine most guys being able to get into the “overweight” range at < 15% body fat without some assistance.

The farther from average height you are the worse it is. If you are from some part of the world where the average height distribution is near the point BMI based itself you will perceive it to be so much better.

I am only 6' and only an intermediate lifter. I'm overweight, but BMI makes me look obese. It really only takes a normal person a year or so to get to three plates on squat with no supplements other than chicken broccoli and rice if they don't skip workouts. Assuming no injuries. That level of strength easily distorts bmi wildly if you are even a little taller than average.

Yeah, people don't want to understand that your body structure messing with BMI is quite real but only a few points. It's unquestionably "wrong" in scoring me higher than my wife despite the fact that she's the one with a few extra pounds. But it scores us both as normal, the difference doesn't matter.

Anything to pretend they aren't too heavy.

>Getting all the way to the obese BMI range while having healthy body fat is only happening for people with an extreme dedication to body building and diet

And sumo wrestlers.

The line seems to be drawn at (effortful) activity level more than anything else. And BMI doesn't say anything about that.

I think the vexation comes from the focus on an attribute that is not directly mutable, per one's agency, because that's easier to sell things related to. Versus action that you have a lot more direct control over (social or physical circumstances notwithstanding).