She weighs 105lbs...

Oh, NICE just totally invented their definition of malnourishment did they?

I have no idea why some people are so resistant to the idea it's not usually good to be underweight.

No you just misunderstood it

What do you take "defined as any of the following" to mean? At the very least it's supposed to be a trigger for further investigation.

The BMI healthy range is broad, yes, because it's designed to encompass the vast majority of the population. It already takes into account different builds and frames for all but serious outliers.

It is - FOR MOST PEOPLE - very hard to maintain a BMI of below 18.5 and be taking in all the correct nutrients in the same way it is very hard for most people to have a BMI of 27 and have good cardiovascular health.

This all started because people were touting an underweight BMI as "just the slim end of normal" which is objectively false. I don't care if someone else's granny had a BMI of 16 and a 15 inch waist and ate seven meals a day. This is the mirror image of the weird bits of fat activism.

as a population, people in the uk are fatter than they were forty fifty sixty years ago - and not just the cohort who are obese skewing the average . What is perceived as a normal healthy weight is heavier than it would have been
Individuals often get heavier as they get older (I got told at menopause you tend to plump up scrag down and it’s just genetics)

If you look at the context these are Nice guidelines wrt caring for malnourished adults in hospitals, care homes and community care. Offering advice on oral, enteral tube feeding and parenteral nutrition support.

Yes.

OK, fine, I misunderstood that part - apologies. But a BMI of below 18.5 is, for most people, correlated with having nutritional problems or other health issues.

If you enter an underweight BMI on the NHS calculator it tells you to contact your GP, that you are at greater risk of various health issues, and their page on gaining weight healthily warns you that if you're underweight you may be struggling to get enough nutrients.

Most people shouldn't be underweight according to BMI, I don't think it's crazy that my doctor didn't (and doesn't) like my BMI going below the cutoff and it really grinds my gears when people treat it differently to being overweight.

Did YOU not read the message immediately prior to yours where I apologised for misunderstanding, or...?
But I stand by my point that being underweight makes you far far more likely to be malnourished. In the same way having a BMI of more than 25 makes you far far more likely to have health issues as well.

And actually the only reason I contributed to this thread is the OP stating a BMI of 18 is "slight frame but not underweight". Which is objectively factually inaccurate however we want to define malnourishment.

I was joking. I knew what you meant. Look at public information films from the 1970s and the children look skinny by today's standards.

The public information films we'll never forget - BBC

All (very nearly) of the children are white.

Handily, it also eliminates the inevitable outcome of seeking to maintain such a low BMI over the adult years. The height loss from osteoporosis.

There are several factors that cause osteoporosis.

Some people who are underweight may be ill or have an ED or not be eating enough nourishing food. In other cases they’re healthy and simply have a small frame or a fast metabolism.

You can be a regular weight or overweight and malnourished,

Most people in the UK don’t though.

Yes. However, if you use a risk calculator and only add weight into it, the risk aged 80 for a given BMI

16.8 is

The ten-year probability of fracture
Major osteoporotic
21 %
Hip Fracture
14 %

18 is

The ten-year probability of fracture
Major osteoporotic
20 %
Hip Fracture
13 %

and the risk at a BMI of 25 is

The ten-year probability of fracture
Major osteoporotic
17 %
Hip Fracture
6.8 %

and BMI of 37.8 is

The ten-year probability of fracture
Major osteoporotic
11 %
Hip Fracture
3.5 %

Add into that the increased numbers who smoked, who have entered menopause earlier, not used HRT, developed assorted medical conditions and the risks would be even higher, particularly for those who had already significantly increased their risk through dieting.

It's swings and roundabouts, though, really. I mean, OK, statistically you're more likely to get osteoporosis if you are underweight. If you're overweight you are more likely to have a stroke, develop diabetes, get some types of cancer, develop liver disease or joint problems.

I'm a little bit underweight by the charts and mentioned osteoporosis to my doctor. Her take on it was that if you are underweight because you're dieting, yes, osteoporosis is a definite risk. If you are underweight because that's your natural body shape and you are not in any way restricting food then crack on and don't worry about it. I've never been on a diet in my life and weigh a little bit less than 105lbs and am a little bit taller than 5'4" (these stats have been pretty much exactly the same for my whole adulthood, barring pregnancy). I'm probably more likely to get high cholesterol tbh because I eat plenty of butter and cheese (so far all good). Your diet and genetic makeup are probably the defining factors more than your weight, even though they are clearly highly correlated in most people.

Yeah, I googled and the dimensions/weight etc don’t seem to reflect her reported real height/weight etc.

That was probably in the script before the film was even cast.

My mum is 5 foot 1 and was 7st for most of her life, currently 6 stone 4 (she’s 90 next week )

7.5 stone is normal for a young, slim woman at 5ft4...

I'm 5 ft 2 and was sub 7 stone on my 21st birthday and early twenties. Ate like a pig as well.

God, it was glorious.

I saw a clip from an old newspaper in which there was a photograph of Vivien Leigh being weighed before a flight (apparently this used to be a thing?!) and the caption stated that "her weight is 48 kilos", which is around 105lbs. She was 5'3".

She wasn't unhealthy looking, but definitely petite... and I'm quite sure there were some very unhealthy eating habits in Hollywood even then, so I wouldn't take it as necessarily normal.

I do wonder from time to time how different my body would be if I didn't have access to all the snacks we get in corner shops, train stations, etc. I imagine in 1940 it would be quite hard to snack between meals unless you were making the snacks yourself. Nowadays it's hard not to!