Finding your ideal weight

[shootingstar]

Intriguing article.

I realize these are athletes competing internationally, but some sound obsessive about their weight. Wonder what happens once they drop out of the competitive circuit.

And this statement near end:

“I know an individual who is one of the fittest ultra-sport athletes,” he said. “She competes in 100 milers, and her body fat is close to 20 percent.”

Yet, he said, “she is one of the most talented athletes I have ever seen.”

Are they inferring her BMI appears high or low but she's strong?

(And I'm making these comments when I haven't weighed myself for past 3 wks. or so. I'll get around to it.)

[OakLeaf]

To be able to compete at that level in any sport, you have to be "obsessive" (I think focused is a better word, since winning is their occupation) about your body. For them, gaining three pounds would be the equivalent of, I don't know, making an error in calculating the load of a bridge that gets corrected before anyone gets hurt, but not before it costs someone a whole lot of money. You wouldn't call an engineer "obsessive" for wanting to avoid that kind of error.

I don't think they said anything at all about BMI (although if you wanted, you could calculate it for the male athletes). Athletes know enough to know that BMI is irrelevant.

But it's more than a little annoying that for the male athletes they gave height and weight only, and for the unnamed female athlete they gave body fat percentage only (which hers was very high for an athlete, but well within the acceptable range for a non-athlete or even a weekend warrior).