To think I’m not obese at these measurements?

[Lis1992]

I think according to BMI I could possibly be in obese category. I know BMI isn’t always a perfect measure though. I’m 5’4 and around 12.5 stone. Would you call this obese or overweight? I know I need to lose weight but it is a struggle

Walking a dog no problem and Zumba isn’t an indication of fitness.

I can walk 20km with a short break at a reasonable pace and can do a high impact exercise class no issues either.

You could say you’re overweight which is true but you’re bordering on obese.

The one thing I’d say, don’t kid yourself you’re healthy and don’t need to act on it. I’ve had 2 friends (in 40s/50) have a stroke and get type 2 diabetes. The stroke woman is size 5ft2, 18-20 and has additional stress, the other woman size 16 and 5ft9 but also has family history of diabetes.

Me, I’ve got an under active thyroid and also developed plantar fasciitis last year, I know I need to lose weight but the PF made it harder as couldn’t walk much at one point! Just joined WW though.

I got a shock a while back when i was sorting through some really old clothes. I the 80s my mum taught me that women weighed no more than 9 stone and that if you weighed more than 9 stone you must be fat and therefore need to diet.
At almost 6 foot with big feet, hands and shoulders i was intrinsically wrong and I don't ever remember a time whenvi didn't feel fat or too big or just wrong. In face bmi wise i was a perfect weight.
Iam now properly fat with a bmi in the early 30s.
Anyway, found these old 80s clothes. A size 16 bridesmaid's dresscthst i remember feeling ashamed about- my size 10 niece couldn't fit it it. And she is slim....i look stvher and see a slim, health girl.

And ut makes me so angry and sad.

Agree. Also people always bring in drinking and smoking even when irrelevant. Obviously slim people who drink and smoke are not healthy. But most don't, I would guess. Most women also aren't bodybuilders.

Weight is an emotive subject.

I agree with you @Gwenhwyfar. Grew up in the 80s and in my teens was a steady 7 stone and even 6.5 stone! You didn’t see as many overweight people then as now but snacking wasn’t encouraged as much if I recall and I was very active (no free bus passes for school!).

Clothes were more fitted for women, definitely at the waist.

I think waist measurement is only useful with clear instructions that it means measuring around the largest part of the belly. Otherwise too many people, myself included, think of the waist as the narrowest part of the body, which is conveniently above any belly fat.

I also wouldn't trust waist to hip ratio. I can put on a lot of weight and still have an ideal waist:hip ratio.

That's isn't true

"And mega bonus, nothing tastes as good as fresh food when you are at a nice level of hungry. A tasty apple, with the perfect balance of sweet and sharp after a vigorous walk is out of this world tasty."

Yeah, that's just not true for most of us. There is a reason why junk food is popular.

For the umpteenth time, sizing is complicated. It really is. If you want to know more, PM me. And be prepared to wait because it'll take ages for me to explain.

But I'm telling you, they are not carrying out size inflation because they want to lie to fat women and they're more dishonest than bed or chair companies. Why are people so invested in this? Why is it so important to believe that clothing companies are trying to lie to plus size women rather than adapting to expanding sizes like everyone else?

I get this every time. People REALLY do not want to believe it. But it's true.

"Agree. Also people always bring in drinking and smoking even when irrelevant. Obviously slim people who drink and smoke are not healthy. But most don't, I would guess. Most women also aren't bodybuilders."

It's denial isn't it. Although I disagree that most people don't drink. Most people in the UK do drink to varying degrees including slim people.

The carry on films are a good illustration of how bodies have changed. I remember the woman who often plays Sid James' wife being fat but now she looks pretty average. Hattie Jacques obviously still obese/morbidly obese. Body shapes have changed a lot over the decades. I wonder if the hormonal contraceptives available have influenced that? There was usually one fat child in a school. By today's standards that child would be chubby rather than obese. At secondary school it was the same but when I look at my dds' peers a large proportion of them are big in height and weight. Things have changed drastically.
I think we need to name fat and not use words like stocky, chubby, big boned, large framed etc. It only leads to denial of the issue. I need to lose weight too because I have too much lard say around my middle. I'm working on it.

@nomorecheeseforme Ok, so those instructions measure around the narrowest part of my body where I don't put on much weight anyway. Gives a completely false sense of security.

@Gwenhwyfar I don't think I'm wrong in my recollections. I also don't remember more than a handful of overweight children at my children's schools. I was shocked when we had a holiday to the north of England in the early 00's - by the number of overweight children on the beach.

Conversely I have quite a few friends who have maintained their 20 something weight (8 to 9 stone). Compared to those of us who have gained a couple of stone, they are far more lined.

My grannie and her friends were probably all a good size 16. Another thing that helped a generation or two ago was that women had their clothes professionally altered to hang and fit perfectly.

"You didn’t see as many overweight people then as now but snacking wasn’t encouraged as much if I recall and I was very active (no free bus passes for school!)."

Snacking was beginning to be more widespread. There was a belief that you shouldn't eat in the morning because it would spoil your appetite for lunch, but chocolate in the afternoon was becoming popular. If you remember the advert 'a finger of fudge is just enough' they had to persuade parents that it wasn't too much to spoil a child's appetite. Now, some people think snacking is compulsory!

"But I'm telling you, they are not carrying out size inflation because they want to lie to fat women and they're more dishonest than bed or chair companies."

I never said they're lying to fat women particularly. They're lying to all of us. They're trying to flatter people into buying their clothes. I see it as the same thing as pricing something at 1.99 instead of 2 because at first glance the customer will think it's around 1.
I don't particularly blame the clothing industry, but I think the government should step in.
I've presented statistical evidence of size inflation on MN and had people tell me it's not true.

I think the instructions on how to measure your waist are for overweight women and men. A healthy sized woman can SEE her waist so you measure your visible waist.

Sorry OP - I suspect this thread is quite a wake up call for you. I am your same height and have been the same weight (and a stone more at my heaviest) and it was definitely obese.

To put it into a bit of perspective for you 12.5stone is 189lbs. That's 11lbs (just shy of 1 stone) less that 200lbs. At 5'4 no one should be weighing nearly 200lbs!

You likely don't notice how big you've got because the weight has crept up and like people have explained vanity sizing has really skewed our perceptions of ourself. When I was your size (I'm an hour glass shape for reference) I was a size 16-18. That was 6-7ish years ago before the oversized trend had kicked off. Now clothes are so massive that I struggle to find anything that actually fits me.

At my highest I was 209lbs after just having my first baby. That's almost 15 stone. I was wearing a size 20-22. I lost a load of weight and got down to 10.3 stone (145lbs) and while I did feel so much better about. Shelf I was still fat. Unfortunately I wasn't able to lose any more weight because I got pregnant again. I was much more careful with my weight during my 2nd pregnancy and only put on 24lbs. That was a few years ago.

I now weigh 8.3 stone (116lbs) and feel so much better and my confidence is miles better than what it was when I was big. At 8.3 stone I still feel a bit fat but that's mainly due to flabby excess skin I now have to carry around with me as a painful reminder of how fat I let myself get. If the skin and flab that I can't lose through diet was gone I would likely weigh 7.6 stone which I would consider to be a normal healthy weight for my height. I now wear a size 8, but the oversized cuts and vanity sizing of clothes means that they are often so big I can't fit into them (some stores don't stock anything less than an 8) or as was the case recently I had to purchase an XXS from Mango. I have never seen an XXS item of clothing in a U.K. adult shop until this year. It's not because people are getting smaller, but because the clothes are getting bigger in the size we used to buy, so they have to now introduce even smaller sizes to get us back to the sizes we had before.

Have you even gone into a museum and seen clothes from 100yrs or more prior? They're TINY! Only a small fraction of people these days would fit into them (and no it's not all because we've all become taller). 5'4 is and was always a very common height, but I would struggle to find someone at 5'4 now that's older than 20 who could fit into a woman's dress from the 1800-1900's.

Anyways, I hope this thread hasn't upset you too much, but hopefully given you a gentle push into the right direction for 2023

"I don't think I'm wrong in my recollections."

Without photos, I can't judge.
Your gran being a size 16, size 16 then or size 16 now?

It's a bit strange that while people in the 80s were much thinner than now, you say that in the 60s they were much fatter?

Yes you are obese.

I completely agree with this. I was very surprised and had to bite my virtual tongue on a post yesterday about children's school snacks.

I was shocked to see how many parents were sending their children to school with a bag of crisps, pom bears, pack of biscuits, Haribo, etc into school every day (sometimes twice a day!) and then with lunch on top of that and likely an after school snack before dinner. It's crazy!

I learned throughout my weight loss journey that we do not need snacks. We eat far too many carbs, refined sugar and processed foods. Look up intermittent fasting and a paleo / keto diet. The information out there about the way our ancestors ate and the food we eat now and consider normal is very eye opening. It was a big wake up call!

It's about where you carry fat. So from a health perspective, it's more dangerous to carry extra weight around your natural waist. It doesn't mean that you're completely fine if you know your belly is far flabbier than it should be but your waist is ok. Just like the fact that my BMI is currently in the healthy weight section but I'm overweight for me.

There is a huge difference between being a professional body builder and doing regular, sensible weight training. You do not need to maximise your muscle bulk to be healthy, you do not need to risk overstraining muscles, ligaments or tendons, or getting stress fractures. Moderation is better than any extreme and moderation is unlikely to result in people having an extremely high bmi.

Actually as a healthy sized women (BMI 21), I can’t really see my waist. That’s because I’m rectangle (banana) shaped and there’s not much difference between my waist and my hips.

I’m very similar height and weight to you, I also feel overweight and today is the day I’ve decided to do something about it (again). I too walk the dog and but actually it’s just not enough, I need to do more, so today I altered the online shopping and removed the easy option high calorie foods and added in extra veggies and fruit.

it’s quite surprising that obese is so close to just feeling overweight but I do think dropping over that line also means it’s probably easier to get back from being very obese, a wake up call if you like. I did SlimmingWorld twice in last few years, never went hungry and lost two stones the first time and 1.5 the second, can’t do it now due to food autoimmune allergies so am trying to do my own version of it on my own. I’ll go back if I can’t manage on my own but I’m very limited on foods I can’t eat now. I’d definitely give that a go for the motivation and if your short on time they do meals in Iceland frozen food shops.

I’m 5’6”. I got to 12.5 stone and was shocked when I found out my BMI. I was not what I saw in my head as ‘obese’, I was fine with my size. I felt healthy, I regularly walked miles and went to gym classes often. I felt I moved more than most people I know.

Now I’m under 10stone and in the middle of a healthy BMI. The difference in how healthy and energetic I feel is incredible. I literally bounce off of the walls, I easily run and cycle for miles most days. I am still a bit squidgy round the middle and have solid thighs - I could easily shed a stone and not look too skinny. I have adjusted what I consider to be a healthy body. I look at photos of me at 12.5 stone and can’t believe I thought I looked fine.

I think you sometimes don’t see your own weight. It creeps on over time and you still feel the same. Maybe a few pounds overweight, but nothing much. Don’t be deceived - use a BMI calculator and get an objective view.

You don’t mention your ethnicity or age, but I make your BMI 29.8 - ie extremely close to obese. The NHS says:

^Healthy weight range for your height:
7st 10lb - 10st 6lb^

So set yourself a target and work down until you’re at an in range weight. I’m a couple of inches shorter than you and weigh stones less. I’m sure you’ll feel better if you lose some weight, even if you think you’re feeling ok now.