Too Fat

After losing a fair amount of weight (75 pounds or so), I have a bit of a problem with excess skin.  The girls point a little further south than I’d like, and worse, the skin on my stomach is, well, rather hideous.  So, I’ve been setting up consultations with plastic surgeons.  I’m hoping to find one I like and plan to have a tummy tuck and breast lift later on this year.

Upon calling one surgeon’s office, the receptionist asked me for my current height and weight.  I told her, and heard her tapping away for a few seconds.  She came back to the phone to inform me that this particular doctor would not consider me for a tummy tuck, because my BMI was too high.  I would need to lose at least 30 more pounds before I could be a candidate.  But they could see me for a breast lift.

First of all, I can’t even imagine how silly I’d look with perky boobs and a huge flap of belly skin.  Secondly, if I had to choose only one procedure, I would choose the tummy tuck, without hesitation.  So, I told her I was more interested in the tummy tuck, and thus not interested in having the consultation at all.

It irritates me beyond all reason that a surgeon would use a ridiculous calculation like BMI, which tells you almost nothing about body composition and relative fatness, to decide whether to even schedule a consultation with someone.  I mean, to not even look at a person, and decide they are too fat is deplorable.

Just for interest, I decided to figure out what my BMI would be, at various percentages of body fat (which is actually a useful measure of fatness).  I have my body composition measured pretty regularly at the gym.  I don’t plan on losing any muscle, bone or blood, so it is unlikely that my lean body mass will go down (in fact, it may go up).  The lowest healthy body fat percentage for a woman is 14%.  This would be for athletes.  If my body fat percentage was 20% (top end of the “athlete” range), my BMI would be 27.4, smack in the middle of the “overweight” range.  If my body fat were at the top end of the healthy range at 31%, my BMI would be 31.5, which is in the “obese” category.

In fact to get to the highest “healthy” BMI, (24.9), my body fat percentage would have to be 12%.  At which point I’d likely have my hair fall out and stop menstruating.

I am a muscular person.  As such, I will weigh more than most people of a similar size.  Most people who look at me estimate my weight to be 30 pounds less than it actually is, simply because muscle takes up less room in the body.

I don’t know why I am so annoyed by this.  Perhaps because it is just such nonsense.  But more likely because after working so hard to lose the weight, I am still being rejected as “too fat”, by people who haven’t even seen me.  And that really stings.