To think a 84cm / 34 inch waist is not "slim"

[apenny4]

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I'm very open to being told IABU, in fact I'd be quite relieved to be told I have a warped view. Right now though I don't think a 34 inch waist is slim. To me slim is no larger than a size 10 so around a 27 inch waist max.

Unless you are a much taller than the average woman (average being 5' 4"?) I think a healthy (in the general sense of the word) waist is less than 30 inches.

However I have a small frame and have felt overweight whenever I've needed to wear size 12 bottoms (and that's still not over a 30 inch waist).

The irony is that I still think I'm at high risk of developing diabetes because my father has it and whilst not overweight I have a diet quite high in sugar.

Genuinely interested in people's views on this and whether my own view is out of kilter with the norm.

My waist is currently 29" and too wobbly for my liking. Definitely agree that sizes have changed. I found my measurements from the dinosaur era (1994) when I got measured for a dress and my waist was 22". Sadly there is no chance of ever going back there unless I win the lottery and indulge in vast amounts of liposuction. However, I now wear a size 12 bottoms whereas in the days of 22" I'm pretty sure I wore a size 10 from most high street shops.

In reply to the jeans comment, jeans were always odd sizes, in the good old days I used to wear Levis with the 'waist' of 28 as a 10 then gradually going to 30 for a 12 as I expanded in the last 20 years. No idea why these measured differently, perhaps because they sat lower on the hips than most skirts did. Modern jeans seem to follow similar measurements.

I have a 33inch waist and I am fat tight size 14 I need to loose 3 stone

I think it depends on your shape I still have a waist some people go apple shape and put little weight on their legs and hips. South Asian women tend to be smaller but do not get so pear shaped as European and American women.

jeans nowdays are nearly always too big in the waist looking at you Next
I wish they still made clothes how they used to - with a bigger difference between waist and hip.
A lot of tops are made straight up and down to accomodate the fact that the female shape is becoming less feminine.
Men traditionally have no waists.

I'm actually amazed that so many of you know your waist size. I go by bmi and know I need to lose a bit of weight - a stone or so. I'm also an athletic build, hourglass figure, had a number of really energetic team sports years as a teenager/ student when I ran around endlessly chasing footballs etc. Even then I was a size 12 and in all other respects entirely healthy - weight, exercise, diet etc. It's too simplistic to say that only size 10 and under is 'slim'. I understand bmi because it's linked to height and build, but judging slimness on clothing size is pretty naive to say the least.

^^that's true actually LittleLion. I will never, ever be under a 10 unless I become clinically underweight, because my height and body shape makes it pretty much impossible. I'm a 12 in some shops. I know people that weigh the same as me, who are much bigger but wear a smaller size because they're a different height.
I think comparing 'then and now' sizes has its place in looking at how attitudes to size & weight have changed over the years, but other than that clothes sizes are largely meaningless IMO.

I'm the same FourForYou - I'd literally eat nothing and have to exercise for 3 hours 7 days a week to stand even the smallest chance of squeezing into a size 10. My boobs are large and have been since puberty so I'd just look anorexic and very unhealthy. But there are plenty of size 10s out there who look entirely normal and healthy.

I would be really really fat at a size 12. I know tons of people who are clearly healthy and fine for their bodies at a size 12. I just have a very small frame. If I were to do actual dieting, I am sure I could be a size 6 with not too much trouble (and I would still be pretty healthy though a bit peckish).

Now you're just showing off Ambroxide!

I have diastasis recti and measure more than 34" round the middle. But I'm not actually fat. So waist size isn't everything. I hate my big tummy but am stuck with it.

YouGottaKeepEmSeparated I'm 5'7 and in the attached picture I was 9.1 stone. I think I look horrible. At the time I was in the midst of a manic episode and hadn't eaten properly or slept properly in months and was exercising 2 to 3 hours a day.

However at the same time, even at that, my waist was never below 27 inches.

Just because people have the same height, doesn't mean they have the same body shape or build.

DrCoconut I have diastasis recti as well as it adds at least 2 inches to my waist, and it makes a big difference when in the day I measure as we tend to bloat more then other people.

Well I'm nearly 40 and 5'4", my waist is 26" and frankly at my height a 34" waist would mean I'm absolutely overweight. Height makes a huge difference to this though, I can easily imagine a woman who is 5'9" or more being slim with a +30" waist. However... I do think many people are kidding themselves if they think a 34" waist could be slim on an average sized woman (in the UK the average height is a woman is 5'3" - 5'4").

When I first read the thread little I thought this was about men's waists, not womens. 34" is a bust/hip size for most women. I really worry about how people are going to age if they are overweight in their 20s/30s. Knees, hips, hearts don't do well with extra pressure on them.

Yes, everyone is different and I am not delusional about my weight. Even at my post Christmas chub level of a couple of pounds over 11 stone, I have prominent hip and collar bones and clavicle and a body fat percentage of about 28%.

If I was 10 stone, the fat percentage would be around 20% but my wide hips would probably still be a size 12. Significantly less than 10 stone and my body fat percentage would start to approach a level that is unhealthily low for a woman.

Interesting about the fat around the middle and sugar consumption. I almost never drink fizzy pop and cook from scratch about 80% of the time, but I do eat cake, biscuits and chocolate almost daily, but not huge amounts at a time.

littlelion, I know mine because I bought online clothes for my Xmas present :)

And people can also appear very different. I am lucky enough that I hold weight very well. I had a consultant tell me I looked "fit and healthy" when I had a BMI of 29.5! And it wasn't from muscle. I was actually quite overweight. My mother, who weights upwards of 17 stone and wears what in the UK would be size 28 or 30, is constantly being directed to the wrong section in US departments stores, where the plus sizes are in "women's" and normal sizes in "lady's". She asks for women's and people seem to assume she must just not know the proper word and direct her to the non-plus sizes.

I've recently due to health problems lost a great deal of weight, and have had someone say "You must be a healthy BMI now" ... actually, no, at that point I was 27.3. I'm now down to 25, but my waist is 34".

www.google.co.uk/search?q=1940s+teens&client=tablet-android-google&prmd=isvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp64TM46jKAhVDOBoKHcfKDG4Q_AUIBygB#imgdii=HMlIi46mUTqK3M%3A%3B9NDDKI4avYgFaM%3A%3B9NDDKI4avYgFaM%3A&imgrc=9NDDKI4avYgFaM%3A

This is what a size 10 used to look like

But why is the waist measurement not put with a height measurement? Surely acwaist measurement is fairly abstract on its own?

www.health-calc.com/body-composition/waist-to-height-ratio

This shows a 5f2 person needs to consider action for a waist measurement that is fine for someone of 5f8

Not all women go in that much at the waist. I'm really straight up and down. Waist of around 30 but with slim hips. The problem is that whatever shape clothes are they won't fit everyone. There is no right and wrong body shape and it isn't always because people are 'fatter than they used to be' and rofl at tyre idea that a generation ago the average woman had the figure of Kate Middleton

This is what a size 10 used to look like

The size 10, 12 etc when did it actually come in? My mum goes on about different sizing when she was a child (so 50s)

There's a lot of denial on this thread. And I get it, because I've been that fit and fat person who was convinced a size 10 would look "wrong" and "unnatural" on me.

When I was a size 12, BMI of 24, I was running marathons and was very fit indeed. I convinced myself that 10st 10ish was right for me at 5ft 6ins because I had huge boobs (32G) and I was muscular. I was also working out every day and eating well (ish) - just eating too much.

Anyway, one day I decided I wanted to shift a few pounds to see if being lighter improved my race times. Lo and behold, I found that having a BMI of 21 not only shifted minutes off my PBs, but I actually looked a hell of a lot better too. I then maintained that new weight, very happily, until getting pregnant again.

Unless you're extremely tall, size 10 rarely looks thin, and certainly not "anorexic." Of course there are exceptions, but they are few and far between. Size 10, in current sizing, isn't especially small at all.

It's just that the idea of average has become incredibly warped IMO, and it really is going to start having an increasingly major impact on a population level.

Oh, and you know what else about the older styles? Wearing corsets was much more common. My mother gave me her wedding dress to try on when I was getting married, and while we are both well-endowed and thus the boobs fit, the lower part of my ribcage was far too big. By a good 7-8 inches! She said, "Oh, I used to wear corsets a lot". Apparently her waist was so small my father could encircle it with his hands and touch thumbs and forefingers. That sort of thing doesn't happen without body training.

Actually, running, I think individual body shape really does have an influence on what size you wear. Back when I was young, people used to say I was "tall and skinny", but I'm only 5' 3.5" and I just looked tall because I was so thin. My BMI was 19.6, but I wore sizes 12-14. I can't even imagine how small I would have to be to fit into a 10. I'm not sure it's possible - I had not much more than skin over the bones on my pelvis, to the point that I would often get pressure bruises from sitting on wooden chairs.

Not sure if your post was aimed at/ inspired by my post Running but if it was I suggest you read it again. I said that plenty of size 10s look perfectly normal and healthy.

But as you raise it, I often look at marathon runners and think they look quite scrawny - men and women. Sorry. Perfect for racing, in the same way that whippets or greyhounds are, but not what everyone desires.

I take your point about aesthetics and pb running but I'd guess that in terms of health, given your suggested lifestyle, there's very little difference in how healthy you are at BMI of 24 and at 21

When I was 14 years old I couldn't wear a size ten as it was just to small and would stretch over my hip bones ( they used to stick out) so I always wore a size 12 I was 5f7and 8 stone. As I have got older I have got hgotier but stayed in a size 12 even though I was getting bigger.

So some 30 years on and I've reached 9 and a half stone finally i can get out of my size 12 jeans into my dds old size 10 jeans - yeah right as if that makes sense a stone and a half bigger and drop a size

It's nonsense, absolute rubbish. I went shopping for jeans and asked for a tape measure and even the jeans labeled with 32" waist were 34" or 35" so didn't fit.