In an era where health is often reduced to numbers on a scale, Srasti Gupta stands out as a voice of reason and reinvention. As the Founder of Dietium, a research-backed health and wellness platform, she’s leading a quiet revolution — one that shifts the focus from weight loss to body understanding, from standardised charts to personalised insight. For decades, Body Mass Index (BMI) has been the undisputed king of health metrics. It’s the quick, simple number your doctor, your insurance company, and even your fitness app use to label you “healthy,” “overweight,” or “obese.”
But according to wellness expert and Dietium.com founder Srasti, our collective reliance on this single number is “not just outdated, but dangerously simplistic.”
In a recent interview, Srasti outlined her belief that we must fundamentally rethink this core pillar of health assessment. “We’re using a 200-year-old population-level tool, designed by a mathematician to describe the ‘average man,’ as a definitive diagnostic for an individual’s complex biology,” she explains. “It was never intended for that, and it’s failing us.”
Here are Srasti’s key arguments for why you are more than your BMI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu0kk0jMj38
What is BMI, and Why Is It Everywhere?
Developed in the 1830s by a Belgian mathematician named Adolphe Quetelet, BMI was originally designed to describe the “average man” on a population scale, not to diagnose an individual’s health. It’s calculated with a simple formula: your weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in meters (kg/m²). Its popularity in modern medicine comes from its simplicity. It is cheap, non-invasive, and gives healthcare providers a fast, standardised screening tool to identify potential weight-related health risks across large groups of people. The standard categories are:
- Underweight: Below 18.57
- Healthy Weight: 18.5 – 24.98
- Overweight: 25.0 – 29.99
- Obese: 30.0 and above
For populations, a rising average BMI correlates with a rising incidence of conditions like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. The problem arises when this population-level tool is applied as a definitive diagnostic for an individual.
The “Blind” Metric: Why BMI Fails the Individual
For Gupta, the spark began with a simple realisation: the Body Mass Index (BMI) — long considered the universal measure of health — no longer fits the modern individual. “BMI was never meant to define people,” she often notes. “It’s a population metric, not a personal one.”
This belief led to the creation of Dietium, a platform that integrates data science, AI, and evidence-based nutrition to decode how individual bodies truly work. By analysing parameters like body shape, waist-to-height ratio, and muscle-to-fat distribution, Dietium helps users see what traditional health tools can’t — their real metabolic health.
Srasti’s primary concern is that BMI is “blind” to the most important factors of your body composition.
“BMI is just a ratio of your total mass to your height,” she states. “It has no idea what that mass is. An elite athlete with dense, heavy muscle and a sedentary individual with high body fat can have the exact same BMI.”
This, she believes, leads to two critical errors:
- It penalizes the muscular and fit, labeling them “overweight.”
- It gives a false “all-clear” to those who have low muscle mass but a high, unhealthy percentage of body fat, a condition known as “sarcopenic obesity.”
Furthermore, Srasti insists that where your fat is stored is far more important than the total number on the scale. “BMI can’t distinguish between the harmless subcutaneous fat under your skin and the dangerous, metabolically active visceral fat wrapped around your organs. A person with a ‘healthy’ BMI can be at severe risk for heart disease if they carry most of their fat in their abdomen. BMI simply misses this.”
Moving “Beyond BMI”: What Srasti Recommends
So, if BMI is so flawed, what’s the alternative?
“I’m not saying to ignore it completely,” Srasti clarifies, “but it should be the start of a conversation, not the end of it.”
She believes in a “health dashboard” approach, where BMI is just one of many data points. “What I encourage people to track are the numbers that actually reflect your metabolic health.”
Her recommended metrics include:
- Waist Circumference: A simple tape measure is a far better indicator of dangerous abdominal fat.
- Waist-to-Hip Ratio (WHR): She calls this “one of the best predictors of cardiovascular risk.”
- Key Blood Markers: “This is the real data,” she insists. “What is your fasting blood glucose? Your triglycerides? Your blood pressure? These tell the true story.”
Gupta’s approach blends research rigor with user empathy. Her calculators and tracking tools are designed not just for accuracy but also accessibility — transforming complex health science into simple, actionable insights.
Under her leadership, Dietium has become more than a digital health tool; it’s a movement toward self-awareness. “The goal isn’t perfection,” she says. “It’s empowerment — helping people understand their bodies so they can make informed, sustainable choices.”
The Human Algorithm
With a background in nutrition science and a passion for technology, Gupta bridges two worlds — translating raw data into meaningful, human-centred design. Her work reflects a broader shift in global health thinking: from generic to personalised, from reactive to preventive.
Her message resonates across industries — from healthcare and wellness to insurance and fitness tech — as organisations rethink how they assess and promote health in a data-driven world.
The Future of Personalised Health : From Numbers to a New Framework
Srasti’s mission is to help people move from “number-chasing” to building sustainable health.
“The first step is understanding the tools,” she advises. “Find out your BMI, by all means. Use their New BMI calculator to get your baseline. But then, you must understand what that number isn’t telling you.”
She notes that this exact topic—the limits of BMI—is the foundation of a video series she has been working on. “We created this video series precisely to help people deconstruct this metric and see the bigger picture.”
Ultimately, she believes this new, holistic perspective is the key to lasting wellness. “This is the entire philosophy behind Dietium.com,” she concludes. “To stop obsessing over one flawed number and instead build a nutritional framework that looks at your entire biology, your lifestyle, and your personal health goals. Your health is not a single data point; it’s the sum of your entire life.”
Looking ahead, Gupta envisions Dietium as a global ecosystem for personalised well-being. Beyond BMI, beyond calorie counting, lies a world where every individual has the tools to understand their unique body blueprint.
“The future of health is personal,” Gupta asserts. “It’s not about chasing a number — it’s about decoding your body, your data, your story.”
About Srasti Gupta
Srasti Gupta is the Founder of Dietium, an India–based health and wellness platform pioneering data-driven, personalised nutrition. With over eight years of professional experience, she combines her expertise in nutrition science and data analytics to create solutions that empower individuals to understand and improve their health. Srasti holds a Master’s degree in Nutrition Science and Dietetics, along with certifications in Data Analytics and Health Informatics. Her career journey spans clinical nutrition, research, and health product design, where she has collaborated with leading healthcare startups and wellness organisations. Recognised among India’s emerging women health-tech entrepreneurs, she has been a featured speaker at wellness forums and a recipient of innovation awards for her contributions to digital health design. Her core areas of expertise include personalised nutrition, health data analysis, behavioural design, user experience strategy, and AI integration in wellness. At Dietium, Srasti leads product innovation, research collaborations, and strategic growth initiatives, driving her mission to redefine health understanding through data and design.
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