If you need to put air in your BCD at any time during a dive (wetsuit) - you're overweighted. If you're uncomfortable making any dive without a BCD - you need to go back in your training and find out why, take corrective action and continue self training.
IMO, all OW students should be taught initially without BCD's - they're a crutch and a way to cover up improper training in weighting.
BCD's are a luxury item and ought to be thought of as such -
Well, not so much a luxury item as a specialty device. Not all dives can or should be conducted without a BC. However, I'm thinking that over half (maybe 75% to 80%) of all recreational dives are likely conducted under conditions where a BC is not actually needed. In that context a BC is not a luxury item, it is just in the way! But, that's only true if the diver knows how to competently plan and conduct a dive without the BC. This is where the weight management comes into play and where habitual BC use interferes with the learning process.
One of the things that must be done to dive without a BC is the diver must shed the pervasive fear of being under-weighted. Fundamentally, I think that is the main handicap of the BC. It teaches divers to fear being under-weighted but to not fear being over-weighted. In fact, when you get down to it, most divers actually
want to be a bit over-weighted, just not by more than the BC can handle. This is the fundamental origin of the over-weighting problem.
If you think about it logically, being 5 pounds under-weighted is fundamentally similar to being being 5 pounds over-weighted. A little fin kicking will easily hold your station in either case. The only difference is that when under-weighted, the diver needs to put their head down. This is an initially unfamiliar body position for most people, but which all divers should be comfortable with, and to dive no BC it is a necessity. If I'm in a lot of neoprene diving without a BC, I will not even be able to get underwater unless I'm willing to put my head down and kick until deep enough to compress the suit.
Q: When diving without a BC, is it better to be a little too heavy and spend the whole dive kicking to stay up off the bottom (silting everything out in the process), or to be a little too light and spend the last 3 minutes kicking down to hold your safety stop?
A: When diving without a BC, it is better to error on the side of being a little light rather than being too heavy.
This is the exact opposite motivation inherited from BC diving. A BC teaches divers to fear being too light, whereas diving without a BC teaches divers to fear being too heavy.
Which fear is more valuable?
Well, I say the fear of being too heavy is the more productive fear, as you will be more likely to end up too light instead of too heavy. If you are too light, nothing really bad is going to happen. If you are way off, maybe you fail to complete a safety stop, or even fail to get down in the first place and have to get out and try again to get the weighting right. Either way, if doing no deco recreational diving, the diver is most likely going to be just fine.
If the diver fears being to light, they will habitually over-weight themselves to remain comfortably removed from that which they fear. What are the consequences of that? Not severe as long as there are no BC failures and the error is within the capabilities of the BC. For many divers, that means being 20 pounds overweight will normally not be a big problem and that condition can become a normalized deviant condition. After all, they have a 30 pound lift BC and are diving a 2mm shorty, so it has been working and they have done many dives without consequences. It doesn't become a problem until they have BC failure, or switch to a steel tank on a steel back plate, when unexpectedly, they are now in trouble and at risk for drowning. Too heavy is more dangerous than too light. Bottom line, there are far more serious consequences resulting from a diver fearing being too light than there are from a diver having a healthy fear of being too heavy in the water.
This is the lesson that modern training in a BC fails to imprint of students. I don't think that mid-water skills training will change that. While, I'm sure that it will ultimately be better than training while kneeling on the bottom, it will not modify what divers fear and try to avoid. They will still want to error on the side of being over-weighted, and I don't see a way to change that without learning to first dive without a BC.
How did I do this time? Did I adequately explain this without rubbing folks the wrong way?
. I certainly don't have the lung capacity to counteract my W/S compressing at depth (4XL 7mm) as well as gas consumption. 
