To think I shouldn't be THIS heavy??

[Lotsofsausage]

So to start, I know I am no supermodel. Fairly tall at 5'8, size 14, smaller waist, medium bust. Fairly curvy arse/ thighs but toned. I am fit and strong and exercise 4-5x per week, including strength training.

Now I know measurements and photos are a better gauge than the scales, and muscle is meant to weigh more than fat (but I thought that was bullshit).....I am 14.5 stone! I have a friend with the same body measurements as me and same height and she is TWO STONE lighter.
Can some people just be 'heavy'???

"I have been 12 stone before when I was very poorly and you could see al of my bones, hips sticking out etc. so I don't think that's necessarily a healthy weight for me?"

Difficult to know without seeing a photo. I think some people are just a bit removed from what we 'should' look like i.e. it's normal to have visible collar bones.
I remember a friend telling me she had been dangerously thin in her twenties and then she showed me a photo of what I thought looked like a healthy young woman. I think some women just have a preference for a plumper look.
Obviously, you might have really been too skinny at that weight, I'm just saying it could be a perception thing.

" No one ever tells you the truth! Unless you are lucky enough to have a Chinese grandmother, apparently."

Or teenage brothers. One of mine pointed out my moustache once. Nobody else would have done me that favour.

Thanks, but my frame really is not small- my dressmaker mother has a right old bitch at me every family wedding, in fact, over my shoulders and hips.

Kennehora is posting a lot of truth here.

Btw rugby playing men are NOT generally fine physical specimens, lol. Carlos Spencer and Dan Carter are sadly not the norm.

Gwen.... I'm absolutely DYING at that

My in-laws are pretty much all slim and clearly have extortionately fast metabolisms, but boy do they eat junk!!!

There is extremely little variation in metabolisms.

If there is such a thing as a "fast metabolism", it could afford them an extra 50-100calories a day according to Lyle McDonald. Big deal.

You see a tiny snapshot of their eating. They are not putting away calories over their TDEE if they are maintaining their weight.

"Gwen.... I'm absolutely DYING at that"

Well, I knew I had whiskers at the side of the mouth, but didn't know how obvious they were to other people. I use that twisty thing now and my brothers are too grown-up to give me any more home truths.
Ex-boyfriend once kindly pointed out how wrinkly I'd become in my late twenties. Most people say I look young for my age, so I'm not sure how helpful he was.

Oh, good that he's an ex. That's negging, pure and simple. I was in a gym a couple of years ago and a fella kindly told me I didn't look a day over 30. I was 30. Hmm.

I sprout a long black pernicious hair at the righthand corner of my mouth every menstrual cycle. You have reminded me to go get rid of it. Ta.

You see a tiny snapshot of their eating. They are not putting away calories over their TDEE if they are maintaining their weight.

I had a very very slim boyfriend while I was at uni. He was actually underweight, but he would swear that he ate loads and could never put weight on. And it’s true that he could easily put away a whole large pizza by himself when he wanted to... but then there were all those times that he’d just forget to eat for a day because he was too distracted doing something else. To him his appetite was ‘huge’ because he could eat a lot when he felt like it, but for me (someone who would literally never be able to miss a meal) I knew that he actually didn’t eat anywhere near as much as he thought he did.

It sounds very heavy to me in all honesty. I'm 5ft7 and I realise I'm very very light, by I weigh 8 stone. I eat health meals in realistic portions(We don't have huge plates). I cook from scratch usually do donylf have tjbbush in my general meals hut go way lots of cake and sweets as treats. I dont lift weights of run but i do equipment Pilates several times a week and have very lean and defined muscles.
I can tell I would never be very heavy.j was about 11 stonethe day both my children were born. My frame and body shape is tjny. I have size 4.5 feet and my hands are tiny. Wrists and abkles too.
There are definitely some proportion ratios where we look slimmer than we are. Our composition makes a difference. I have very low fat content, get this assessed properly by someone doing a full callipers measurement. Ethnic origin can make a difference as to bone density and weight with African bones being up to 30percent heavier than other races.
I'm guessing you are muscular and fit but do have some fat you could do without. Also honestly are upu the same size as your friend?

At the end of the say, if uou are happy and feel good dont worry about it. My guess it you arentcentirely as your probably wouldn't be asking if you were

IME yes you can just be heavier than you’d think to look at.

I’m overweight now but my lowest weight post age 16 has been ten stone at 5’ 5’’. At that weight I was a slim and toned size 8-10.

But I have a ‘swimmers frame’ - wider shoulders. Largeish hands and feet for a woman. Big head 😂

I think my frame/build helps me carry more weight better than some. As a skinny it meant I was a good bit heavier than other size 8 women.

As a fatty now I’m very overweight but whilst I am visibly overweight I’m not horrifically obese and am ‘only’ in a size 14 - my actual weight would suggest I should be much bigger than I am tbh but it’s ‘well distributed’.

There is extremely little variation in metabolisms

"The Functional Significance of Individual Variation in Basal Metabolic Rate" study found 700 kcal difference in basic metabolic rate for individuals with the same lean body mass.That's quite a bit, I would need to run more than 10K to burn 700 kcal off, while someone else can eat the same and sit on their arse.

Could I please have the full citation?

I can only see one by the name which was done on lactating mice, which you surely don't mean- but it's late here, I probably have the wrong one (Antipodes).

Here on pages 901-902, they have summarised several other studies. The 700 kcal as I can see (not a scientist) comes from Weyer et al 2000 study.
www.abdn.ac.uk/energetics-research/publications/pdf_docs/195.pdf

The rugby blokes picture you posted, RiversGuise, may not be the society’s ideal of male form, however they are very fit and healthy. This is the point the ‘naturally heavy’ posters have been trying to put across. Being heavy does not automatically mean you are drowning in fat.

How can G5000 have 20lb more fat than her friend yet be able to wear the same pair of jeans?

How can I have a whopping 1.6st of fat more than the poster upthread at exactly the same height, but wear the same size 14 clothes?

I wasn't suggesting that I was healthy @ParadiseInDisguise , just that my colleague who is muscly weighs more than me and wears smaller sized clothes. We are both over what our BMI would be for healthy weight and yes of course she's the healthier person. I have no muscle tone at all and due to my age (50's) this will get worse, maybe dangerously so, if I don't get off my arse and stop eating chocolate. I do walk, but slow walks with a sniffy dog, and no strength training.

Apparently I'm too heavy but i think it's not an exact science. I'm 5'2 size 10 and almost 10 stone ! I should be 8 and a half stone according to nhs website. Oh well

dontforget the NHS website says 7st 3lb - 9st 10lb for you. That gives enough variation for different body types.

Thank you, Heidi, I'll read that tomorrow when I'm sober.

Those rugby.players are.carrying far.too much fat on their stomachs, surely.

Prequelle makes a good.point. BMI guidelines are. Already very generous in terms of the acceptable range IMO. I could gain half a stone or lose a stone and be 'normal.... it's a wide range and it does allow for some bulking, variations in body comp and bone density, etc. It's not generally going to send us into overweight territory because of water retention, period stuff, etc.

Thanks Prequelle... I think I was mentally grabbing the half way weight between the 2 as guide .
I have noticed I'm heavier now I'm older but the same size?!

No, those rugby players aren’t carrying too much fat. Goodness, this is the point! This is how their bodies are in a fit state. It might look big to you, a person with a small frame, but it doesn’t mean it’s big for them. It is their normal and their fit.

If they had that much excess fat like you seem to think, they would have been incapable of extreme physical exertion and endurance they demonstrate.

It must be mind boggling that not all people are born small and slim, some are born solid, stocky and strong (and heavy). Making them feel like an anomaly and that there’s something wrong with them if they can’t fit into size 8 (or go down to 9 stone) is just plain wrong.

I am not even going to comment on ‘this just eat less business’ you are persisting with, Rivers. That has been proven wrong so many times and should by now be completely discredited. But people just don’t seem to grasp that the whole issue is a bit more complex than counting how many calories one consumed.

it's probably because you are carrying more of the weight on your legs. Measurements are usually just done on 3 areas bust, waist and hips. It doesn't check your arms or legs.

I have skinny long legs and the trunk of my body is unfortunately chunky, so my measurements are quite high but weight on the scales is reasonable, 11st 4lb, 5ft 8.5" 40/32/39. I know someone my height and weight but she has much smaller measurements but thicker legs.

"Oh, good that he's an ex. That's negging, pure and simple."

Nope! He was just very straight talking. I appreciate it most of the time actually. Too many pussy-footers around, especially among women.

"No, those rugby players aren’t carrying too much fat."

Of course the ones in the photos are. Just look at their protruding bellies. You can tell that's not muscle.

This is how their bodies are in a fit state. It might look big to you, a person with a small frame, but it doesn’t mean it’s big for them. It is their normal and their fit.

Having grown up in a rugby town I went to school with people who went on to be pros. I used to drink regularly with the lads from a team in the super league. Some of them were like bloody bean stalks, then they started going to the gym, doing bulking diets, etc. Very little to do with their actual frame, just lifestyle choices. Skeleton accounts for about 15% weight only

It must be mind boggling that not all people are born small and slim, some are born solid, stocky and strong (and heavy). Making them feel like an anomaly and that there’s something wrong with them if they can’t fit into size 8 (or go down to 9 stone) is just plain wrong

Frames don't differ as much as you claim they do and as frequently as you seem to think they do. Disparities in frame that would account for BMI outliers would absolutely in the most part be caused by some sort of growth issue (excess growth hormone etc). Like I said previously, BMI has a wide range of what's optimal for each height, precisely to account for those small differentials in frame, breast size etc.