Are some people really heavy or am I kidding myself?

[Ellessdee]

I know I'm a bit overweight. I'm a solid size 12. I weighed myself and did my BMI out of curiosity and it's telling me I'm obese. Is BMI wildly inaccurate or am I in denial re my weight? I used to weight train and do have quite a bit of muscle but also a layer of fat on top! Anyway, trying to pose weight, just wondering if I should be worried!

I’m 5’9” , a size I range from a size 8/10/12 depending on what ship and my bmi is 23.7. (I’m around 11stone 6lbs) Deemed near the top of a healthy weight.

I honestly think bmi is so outdated and shouldn’t be used by medical professionals.

Id completely ignore it OP. I’m pretty sure you are not in denial about your weight. A 12 is 1000% not obese. Far from it.

good for you button the words of someone good with words... it ain't all about you. The OP asked if some people weigh heavy and I and others say yes. 5'6" and 76kg. That is a BMI of almost 27. That is firmly in the 'overweight' category. I defy anyone to say this is either overly bulky or fat

small size 8 on top. standard size 8 lower half

Ohhhhh we've not played MN fat bingo in a while. Anyone me Tyne excessive snacking, portion sizes or big salads yet???

Mentioned *

Size 12 for 5’9” sounds far from overweight to me! That is what I’d call “Tall”, so
Sounds a healthy size.

Well, after reading everyone's posts carefully, I have decided that my figure is, in the words of my late Nan, 'bonny'. :-)
(Well covered but not grossly overweight!)

I don't think it's very accurate for me but to be fair I'm under the recommend height and have mesomelic dwarfism. Unfortunately health care professionals still use it on me though so I too have been an obese size 12 (I'm bigger and pregnant now anyway)

you sound like you are nearer the end of the bell curve. The further away from the centre of the curve, the less relevant BMI is. The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. It has been taken up as some sort of gold standard for measuring healthy height weight ratios. BMI is not totally independent of height and it tends to overestimate obesity among shorter people and underestimate it among taller people. Therefore, BMI should not be used as a guide for adults who are very short (less than 150 cm) or very tall (more than 190 cm) and the closer you are to these extremes, the less accurate it is.
For its inventor, the BMI was a way of measuring populations, not individuals — and it was designed for the purposes of statistics, not individual health. It is much less accurate for black and Asian populations and does not take individual factors in to account.

I am indeed under 150cm, but health care professionals never take this into account

At 5'9" and size 12, htf can you be overweight. Obviously got a HUGE HEART!

I think I’m heavy! I weigh 62kg and am 5’4”. This makes my BMI about 23 which is “healthy” but on the heavier side. I however am mostly a size 8 and have a 24.5” waist so I honestly don’t even think I’m just a little bit chubby. I do lift weights so some of that will be muscle but even when I didn’t I was always much heavier than I felt I should be for my size

my dd is 5ft and wears size 12 i am 5ft4 and wear size 14 i am 1 stone lighter than her but considered a healthy BMI she has a timy waist big boobs and bum i have a much larger waist but tiny bum and limbs, we are all different

I've started wearing Girl age 15 years trousers because they are adjustable waist which means I can get hour glass shape clothes after all. God knows clothes for hour glass shapes are very difficult to find otherwise.

Even though I'm middle aged & have middle age paunch & cellulite, thunder thighs & all. Maybe this just means the age 15 years clothes are for fat people nowadays, I suppose. I just met a 13yr old (girl, about 5'4" tall) with a 32" waist. Pretty normal now, I guess,

I have friends who are 3-4 stone overweight & very attractive, one does a lot of specific sports so has a small waist, too. I imagine her hourglass clothing woes are worse than mine.

You ARE obese. It's not somehting you can agree or disagree with, it's a clinical definition based on fact.
Your perception of yourself is slightly chunky, but you are clinically obese. Which illustrates the point entirely: most people have no idea what overweight and obese actually looks like.

Which is exactly why there is a HUGE range of what is healthy. For my height, the healthy range goes from 53kg to 72kg, which more than accounts for every ethnic make up possible.

Because there is no way she's a size 12, at 5 9 and over 14 stone!!

You're right to mention your race OP.

"Generally, non-Hispanic Black men and women have lower body fat percentages and higher muscle mass compared with non-Hispanic white people and Mexican Americans"

First article and it links to other research. There is a host of information on this elsewhere. Google BMI 'Black Women'.
www.healthline.com/nutrition/bmi-for-black-women

Nah, she could be. Some places have generous sizing and some people are, well, dense. In a polite, laws of physics way.

I was size 10, 13 stone, 14 years old, one of the countries leading athletes in my specialism and obese according to my BMI.

Of course that's an extreme scenario and I do have a large muscle mass, but if I was told to lose weight using the BMI metric alone (as I was told to do by a White GP who I had visited in baggy clothes and who had no knowledge of my sport) I'd have been on my way to an eating disorder as a young impressionable child.

Luckily our team medic contextualised this for me.

I'm no longer as lean but I am typically the same weight as women that wear 2/3 clothes sizes larger than me.

Agree with this. Obese is a medical term, not an insult. It’s also a lot smaller than many people think - people tend to have a mental picture of someone hugely fat when they think “obese” but in fact that’s not correct. A lot of people think that “overweight” is in fact normal and “obese” is huge.

Do you think that applies to the vast majority of people though?

I just didn't know you could be obese at size 12.

Can people stop quoting dress sizes. It’s a completely arbitrary numbering system that differs per retailer and in many cases, between the different clothing lines of the same retailer. A size 12 nowadays is probably equivalent to a size 14/ 16 back in the 80’s, which is why dress sizes are commonly known as vanity sizing. Marketeers know that people are focussed on these arbitrary numbers and just reassign numbers to clothes their that people are more comfortable with.

Can people stop quoting dress sizes. It’s a completely arbitrary numbering system that differs per retailer and in many cases, between the different clothing lines of the same retailer

Quoting dress sizes as measure of lardiness (or otherwise) is pointless anyway unless you also give the height.

@FatimaHatima the range is not sufficient to accurately accommodate all ethnic groups. The creators of the BMI and the health authorities acknowledge this. So why you think you know better is a mystery