The My Profile tab in the Biggest Loser SlimCoach MyTrak system would seem to be straightforward enough. You enter your height, resting heart rate, and so on. However, what happens when you look at their proposed ideal BMI range?

There are two parts to the My Profile tab. The first tab, My Personal Info, has your name, address, city, state, and other similar information. It is pretty much all contact information. So I'm not showing that here.

The second part is the interesting one. This is the My Health Info tab. It looks like this -



So some of this like the birthdate, height, and weight, are filled in by the user. Other parts like the BMR, BMI, and so on are filled in by the system.

Your BMR is your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is how many calories your body burns in a day just by existing. If you lay on a bed all day long, doing nothing, this is what your body would burn up doing that. Normally you then add your "activity calories" to this in order to determine your total body caloric burn for the day, and match that against the food you ate.

Here is the basic formula to determine BMR:

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )

BellaOnline has a calculator for you to do this instantly -
BMR Calculator

According to this basic formula my BMR would be 655 + 574.2 + 310.2 - 202.1 = 1337.3 calories. SlimCoach's system reports 1335, which is close enough to account for rounding. So clearly that is what they are doing.

The BMI, or Body Mass Index, is another formula driven value. This is simply based on your height and weight and determines if you're obese or not. I have an online calculator for that here -

BMI Calculator

So again, they do get that right. My calculated BMI, based on a height of 5'6" and weight of 132 pounds, is 21.3.

However, they say:

"Your ideal BMI range is 21.5 - 23".

So they are claiming that I am now underweight!

The CDC states that a healthy BMI range is 18.5 - 24.9 - CDC Healthy BMI

What resource are they using which claims I'm now underweight? I am most definitely not underweight - I am pretty sure anybody looking at me in person would disagree with that characterization of my shape and weight.

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