I'm NOT fat

[TheJollyPostmansWife]

Name change as about to give all details as too late to text friends for advice. Visiting DHs family today, out for lunch where I had a prawn salad. After I finished I reached over to nick a bit of my dds bread and as I did so My DHs grandmother piped up 'not watching your figure then?'. This is not the first time she has been rude about my weight and to be honest I am really pissed off. We see them very rarely and I don't think she has any right to make personal comments at all - last time she said something she suggested I would lose my looks and therefore my husband if I carried on the way I was. I don't think it's important as I don't think anyone should comment on others appearance but for context I go to the gym 3-5 times a week, walk the dog at least an hour every day and see a personal trainer weekly. I am five foot one, 9 stone 3 and size 8. I'm not normally so sensitive but I don't want to see the woman again, she is elderly and not in good health and adores my dds. Aibu to refuse to see her? I would never stop the dds but we live the other side of the country which is obviously limiting.

Let it go! Laugh it off. She's old and there aren't many pleasures left at that age besides being as rude as you damn well want.

Laugh and say something about her weight back. Life's too short to bother getting upset about something so petty.

It's beside the point but I'm 8.5 stone and 5.3 and I'm a size 8 bordering on a 10. Something weird about the calculations..

As for the weight thing, no you're not fat, but at 5 ft 1 and 9 st 3, you have a BMI of 24.3, and you are only four pounds from the maximum you could weigh without being overweight. A healthy weight range for your height is 6 st 13 to 9 st 7. So you're at the top end of healthy weight.

Bloody hell! Is it any wonder woman end up with hang ups about their weight. OP, you sound in great shape and you keep fit. The rest is garbage.

< joins garlic on the gimmer bench > Those were the days of blue knees and frozen bums
We did daft things for fashion then too - and were criticised, of course.

Re the OP question: "fat" for me means obese, with rolls of fat, not just sliding above normal BMI.
The OP is within the recommended BMI range and exercises frequently. A healthy combination, not overweight in any sane world.
The fact that we have an obesity problem within the general population is no excuse to pile onto an OP who is NOT overweight

Let's not move the goalposts to requiring fitness model bodyfat, or bikini-ready < pushes away 1950s timewarp >

Oh for goodness sake, as explained, recent holiday, put on weight so clothes probably are slightly tight, have accepted title/op were poorly worded and self indulgent, realised I was being massively oversensitive and gotten over myself mostly. DH did bring up the situation earlier and mentioned GM has previously been blamed for causing a cousin I don't know to have an eating disorder, my only concern would be if we had more regular contact that dds might be affected. But we don't and hopefully they won't. I don't know her well enough/see her often enough to comment on redeeming qualities but she does love dds

Garlic they are drainpipes, not baggy old 501s (I could never wear those, I'm too bloody short :( ) they say 24" on the label. They also say size 8. They are proper scratchy denim (much warmer than today's flimsy offerings). They have indeed shrunk a bit but they have probably then relaxed back as the years went by. When I hold them up against a pair of size 4s bought this year - they are significantly smaller. I'm not relying on memory here, or bias, or wishful thinking. I have them. I can put them side by side with jeans bought in 2016. They are much much smaller (also, much much luckier and just basically better in all respects because they are the best ones ever).

Mango - Lycra innit. A blessing and yet also a curse.

Garlic - or black! My legs were permanently streaky. Happy days.

Life is too short to tolerate spiteful, nasty people who have nothing good to say about anyone - do you really want your child to be influenced by such nasty people.

Recently stopped speaking to my MIL on the same grounds!

dora I don't think you see the irony in making nasty comments about thin women, or making stupid comments on what they eat or how they exercise.

I've found the same uhtred. I'm early 30's, and I have various bits of clothing I had from my early teens onwards. And there's an obvious difference in size, my old size 6's are smaller than Dd's modern 4's. And don't start me on the ever expanding school uniform on sale.

garlic well put, you're absolutely right. My late wonderful DGM told me the only things that had changed from when she was a girl was technology and the cost of bread. Not human nature or people who want to believe in the emperor's new clothes. Rude is rude in 2016 as it was in 1616. You only have to read Shakespeare to know things haven't changed much through the ages!

I think we should change the thread topic from meanness to nostalgic real denim memories - when newly washed jeans were like cardboard and you had to walk with straight legs and good posture for at least 2 hours after putting a fresh pair on, waiting for them to relax a bit

I'm not surprised that #TheBestJeansInTheWorldEver (TM) are still going strong Uhtred, things were built to last then!

I am nearly 43 and I can still fit into a dress I bought when I was 18 in 1992. It's a TopShop size 14. If I go into TopShop now I fit into size 8 or 10.

Dress sizes mean nothing.

Speaking as someone who has struggled with eating disorders for over 20 years, I'm appalled to see the number of people on this thread who think it's OK or reasonable to blame someone's eating disorder on a one off comment made by a relative.

I won't go back through and pick names out but a pp said that her sister became anorexic and bulimic due to a one-off comment from a relative, someone else blamed their own anorexia on a rude comment from 'a much older cousin', and now OP is saying that a cousin of her husband's has an eating disorder for which the grandmother's comment is 'to blame'.

I have been anorexic and bulimic, on and off, since I was 14, and my weight has been significantly up and down within that time. I well understand how much we can take these personal comments to heart.

But to ascribe something so complicated and difficult on a single comment made by another person is so reductive and insulting. We don't usually think it's ok to 'blame' a third party for someone's depression, self-harm, etc. etc. why is it apparently OK to do this in the case of EDs?

YANBU at all. I hate people that do this!! I was once at my sister-in-laws birthday party (was a size 8) with a chest infection so felt really rough and my SIL's auntie, who was about 5 stone overweight said to me "Jesus you look so skinny, you could be on an advert for comic relief!!!" Nice!!!! Cheers for that you fucking bitch! I didn't say that but soooo wanted to. Next time she's rude just say something sarcy back x

Ignore her (you'll never win against a barbed comment like that, perhaps just roll your eyes or better still pretend you didn't hear just smile - most effective I find), but don't retreat, even if she is annoying, she won't be around much longer. Unfortunately some women do seem to get ruder and odder as they age (of course none of us will ever become like that!).

Some people think it's acceptable when they're old to say what they want. Unless they have dementia or a mental health issue, it is NOT ok.
Being old does not give you the right to say unhelpful & unpleasant remarks. Your child witnessed that too.
I have a mother in law in her 80's who says things like that to me. She's been like that since her 60's. Blaming age is just an excuse for many people.
Have a answer for her if she says similar things again, be polite but firm.

Blimey, I'm 7 inches taller than you and weigh 9 stone 3, and I'm not a size 8, you must be very lucky!

I wouldn't worry about it, as long as you are happy with your figure, it really doesn't matter what she says. Enjoy that bread :D

Have a answer for her if she says similar things again,

PPs have offered the same reply as me: "Not watching your manners, then?"

On top of everything else, it's good for the DDs to see that we don't accept personal digs - because they're rude.

For all the body angsters: it might be time to post this again.

Photos of real women who are 5'1" and weigh 9st 3. Enjoy :)

Here you go doubters - muscle takes up less space than fat.

That is why some people are saying "well I'm 5 lbs lighter than you and I wear a bigger size so you must be lying".

You might be 5 lbs lighter, but you are probably fatter, therefore take up more physical space.

2 people the same weight: the one who trains and has a good muscle mass is physically smaller than the one who has low muscle tone.

This pic is the same woman, 2nd picture she is 9 lbs heavier.

Here is another representation of the same weight of fat & muscle.

The fat has a much bigger volume.

Please can we stop the forensic examination of the OP's stats?

This is an actual woman you're discussing, who came onto MN upset because someone had been rude to her.

The subject of the rudeness should be neither here nor there. If the rude person had commented on the OP having big feet, we wouldn't be having a discussion about the relative size of the OP's feet compared to her height, national averages, length of toes compared to sole, etc. She would just have encountered a rude sod.

OP, when someone is rude, they're saying nothing about you, and everything about themselves. That goes for the person you met in real life and some people on this thread too.

I got similar from DH's grandmother when she was visiting. Not about me though! About my 2 year old DS! I determined that since we would probably not see her again any time soon (she lives in South Africa), I would ignore it.

As for the rest of the comments, I think it's become fairly evident that most of the people who are saying the OP should lose weight or getting into ridiculous arguments about dress size have weight or body issues themselves.

You're perfectly justified to feel upset OP. But I think ignore is probably the best way to go.

Someone posted this picture of Rhonda Rousey earlier, for the whole fat vs. muscle and whether people who have muscle can be classified as overweight debate. I think she's actually a great example. She's late 20's, 5 ft 6 and her FIGHTING weight is 135 lbs. But she's said many times that her non-fighting "happy" weight, where she feels most attractive and healthy is between 150lbs-160lbs, which puts her at the upper healthy BMI to slightly overweight. Which is the case for most body builders I know when they aren't cutting for competition. They still carry the same muscle, but they've also got a healthy amount of fat.

People like that are the ones skewing BMI, and there's more of them then we like to admit.

What bothers me is the competitiveness of BMI that some people engage in - there is another thread running about what BMI constitutes 'slim' and lots of people are saying that to be slim you must have a BMI of 21 or under, that a BMI at the top of the healthy weight range is too high and then on this thread we have the doom-mongering warning that the OP is gasp only four pounds away from overweight! So even when we have a measure that gives us a range to take account of different builds and body shapes, some people completely ignore that and insist that women must aim for the lower end, that we must make ourselves smaller and smaller. Never mind that people at a BMI of 25 or even the terrible greedy pigs at 26 can actually be perfectly healthy, that such a BMI is associated with very good health outcomes, there are still people droning on and on that the only way to be is thin and insisting that their definition of thin is the kne by which everyone else must abide. Never mind your shape, your build, your muscle, your race or anything else which might influence it. A blanket imposition that we should ignore the fact that the medical profession gives us a range and instead narrow that range down as far as we can so that we don't disgrace ourselves by hovering within a few pounds of that terrible 'overweight' borderline. It all seems to come from the same viewpoint as the grandmother in the OP, that women's bodies are public property and that we all have the right to openly judge them because their weight is a reflection of their moral rectitude, that if they have a pound or two extra it is because they are sloppy, greedy, lazy, in feminine, inferior and that we should all call them out on it. Nowadays it's done under the guise of being for the sake of public health, but for al ot of people it's just the joy of being able to be smug and self righteous. There is clearly nothing wrong with the OP having a BMI of 24; you might feel uncomfortable with the same BMI but news flash: people are different and that doesn't make you right and her wrong!