We’ve lost sight of what is a healthy weight

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Was chatting to my husband yesterday about getting to a healthy weight.

I am 5ft3 and at start of year I was weighing 80kg (12st 8)

I have hired a PT, workout 3 x weeklyand started eating healthy and now weigh around 72kg (11st 4). I’m not restricting food types or on any fad diet. I’m literally eating a balanced diet and the correct amount to lose up to 1lb a week.

I’ve done a decent start but still want to get to below 10stone where I would be a healthy weight for my height according to BMI.

I literally look like a ball in photos I took at the weekend. So fat.

He thinks I look great and lovely. Which is very kind. I literally don’t get how done people can’t see that I look fat. He’s not just being kind.

we got chatting and I Said to him that people we watch on tv that we think are “normal” (not underweight) and are similar height to me probably weigh between 8-9 stone therefore how could he not see I was overweight and not looking great.

AIBU to think no wonder we are quite an overweight nation. We equate 8stone/9stone as “skinny” but actually isn’t that healthy for someone who is just over 5ft? There should not be any shame in trying to reach a healthy weight. I kinda feel like we have lost sight of what is a healthy weight.

at 11stone/12stone, I’m not my healthiest, I’m not my fittest, I don’t look good. I’m opening myself up to more health conditions. Clothes make me look like a beach ball. I’m quite large chested and instead of making me look sexy/attractive, I just look ridiculous and almost ball shaped.

It’s a very sad programme in my opinon

You’re absolutely right. It isn’t. I do however reserve the right to privately pass judgement on people stuffing themselves with cake at work and then moaning about how fat they are.

God these threads are tedious. Yes yes OP, too many lardy fatties around, lost sight of a healthy weight, disgusting, NHS, bla bla bla etcetera. Well done, you've really hit the nail on the head and said something that's definitely never been said 3 million times before on any other thread.

@crimsonpeak

If people invite comments/judgement then fair enough

Otherwise none of your business

People moan about being fat even when they aren't anyway

I’m 5’ 4 and the healthy weight range is something like 7 stone 10 to 10 stone 4 (approximately, going from memory here) which is a really wide range, in my experience it depends on your frame. I have a small frame so I feel best at between 8 and 9 stone, up to 9 and a half is ok too, above that I feel a bit bigger than I would like. Unfortunately right now I am way above healthy range it’s awful. But yes, I think our eyes adjust and we’re used to a slightly bigger average now. I think most people are probably not far off though in seeing what a healthy weight is.

It might be that your husband genuinely just finds you attractive even when a bit overweight and that’s fine! Experiments have shown that men notice weight gain more in strangers than in their partners. Men shown two photos of various women where one was altered to show weight gain identified which photos showed the women they did not know at a heavier weight, but presented with altered photos of their partners they were less likely to notice a gain.

Is it pro ana to acknowledge that there is a problem with the majority of the population being overweight or obse, though?

I am 5' 3" and about 10st 4. I am overweight and I look overweight and feel uncomfortable. I look best at about 8st 10 to 9st 3. Hardly pro ana to acknowledge that?

The lack of common sense displayed when people parrot 'BMI is outdated! BMI is nonsense!' is so fascinating to me.

I’ll bet it is.

I like the body neutrality movement, not the body positivity movement. It's about accepting we aren't perfect and seeing ourselves compassionately as well as recognizing what we can do. It's not about celebrating one or another body type. It's about taking the judgement, heat and shame out of bodies.

That's what I'm objecting to, all these pejorative, judgemental words like 'silly'. A working overweight body which is able to exercise a few times a week is never silly.

The only time my BMI has been in the normal range is during my late teens/early twenties and to achieve this I would eat one meal a day and that's it. Oh and my weight then was top end of normal so it's not like I was particularly skinny.

I really can't eat very much at all if I want to be a "healthy" weight

I have a wide skeleton

Give me strength. Best excuse I have ever heard for being overweight.

It also depends on your budget, and what you can afford to buy. I weighed 9 stone all my life., and my ideal weight is 8 stone. After spending time in hospital when younger, and hearing ppl say to me how skinny I looked I ate what I liked until my 40s. I used to think over weight meant like 20 stone. And no one really talked about weight loss then I went to my doctors for a routine check up and was told I was over weight at 12 stone. I lost 2 stone with weightwatchers a couple of times. But its expensive and I got bored of eating the same things. So I am back to trying to eat a smaller amount, and not drinking coke or eating chocolate. And Shepard's Pie is not junk food! I add any veg I have left to one of these and its a great budget meal.

It’s up there with ‘I’m just big boned’.

I agree I am afraid. My sister is very sporty, goes to the gym and eats healthily but gets so many comments about ‘being too skinny’. She is not and definitely has treats; her favourite food is pasta.

It’s the same for children. My mum thinks my daughter is too skinny. She is definitely not. My sister and my mum were both very slim children and she is definitely bigger then they both were. She is active but eats way more junk then I would like. I think it’s just we’ve got used to seeing people with a bit more meat on their bones.

I totally agree with you OP wnd I say this as some who is overweight but i would say theres a huge portion of society who might say people are overweight or chunky or big when they are actually morbidly obese. It's easy to kid yourself and I've done it myself and friends are doing it as well atm. It's easy to think "I could do with losing a bit" when actually it's about 3st or more you need to lose- which could easily be 25% of your bodyweight! Likewise I've seen friends and colleagues saying about others being skinny- they arent skinny just normal healthy body weight.

Some people still look amazing and glamorous and lovely but being overweight is not glamorous and lovely and even when I doll myself up I still at a size 16 felt like an elephant.

I've been a size 16 in the past year at 5'7 and I kept thinking awk I'm a bit chunky but then I got a shock when I worked out that I was obese and needed to lose more weight than I thought. A size 16 doesnt seem huge but reality is it's way too big for my health and at 5'7 I'm not a short woman either. I got to a size 12 and people were acting as if I was emaciated and saying how worried they were for me, it was ridiculous it's probably just the first time since I was 13 I was actually not overweight. My weight does go up and down and I use food as a crutch when I'm down and it's a big part off my socializing so I get it's so hard as well but I'm trying because I know it isnt healthy for me.

Obviously before some pedantic person harps in I'm not talking about all of society here but a lot of people are in denial about themselves and their family/friends.

It's crabs in a bucket mentality. People see others improving themselves and try drag them back down. It's hard if you're overweight to see someone else losing weight because it highlights the fact that it's doable, look, there's the evidence! So there's less of an excuse not to. So many people pretend losing weight is impossible for them and go to great lengths to try convince themselves and others of that 'fact'. You only have to spend a bit of time in fat positive spaces to see 'I ate 500cal per day for months and gained weight!'. They genuinely, totally believe that they can break the basic laws of thermodynamics, it's incredible.

The only indicator of whether you're eating too much or too little over time is your weight. If you eat something you will either burn it or store it. If someone is clearly overweight they've very clearly overeaten, that's how our bodies work.

Couple years back I went from nearly 170lb to 133lbs, have maintained around 135-140 ever since. I love being able to eat everything and anything I like whenever I want it, who doesn't? But I value being a healthy weight, being able to chase my kid around, liking what I see in the mirror and taking care of my longterm health more. Losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight doesn't mean you can't have treats, you just can't scoff as much as you want when you want and expect to be slim :)

I can't think how to phrase this without it sounding old and wrong.

But BIG CURVES (not really just curves - fat) out on show seems to be applauded and celebrated. Young girls seem bigger and far more confident in it than 'in my day'. While body confidence is to be applauded, I'm not sure confidence in showing off unhealthy body weight curves shoud be.

As I said to a pp... you obviously use a different interpretation of the word skinny to me. Skinny seems to be used interchangeably with slim now whereas I think of them as two different things. Skinny to me would be looking underweight with bones showing which size 10 people don't generally have. I am slim not skinny- as in I have a layer of fat over me and curves in the right places. Skinny seems to be used more by overweight people as a derogatory term to the slim.

I think BMI is a reasonable guide. I can still be in the healthy BMI at 11 stone myself due to my height and I would not look too thin. Reasonably slim(ish), yes, size 10-12 (in today's vanity sizing that is, which would be a 12-14 or 14-16 in past years). But the point I'm making is that I would be very reasonably covered at the top end (25) of a healthy BMI and so I think the BMI model has reasonably set parameters.

As i said delusional, get all that fat off the skeleton and we are pretty much all the same shape, if not size.

Sizes are so daft anyway, and so dependent on shops and vanity sizing.

I'm 5ft 9, and at a BMI of 22 I couldn't even zip up a size sixteen pair of skinny jeans in H&M, yet I was swimming in a Tesco size ten and could even fit into a random size six Primark dress.

That's why BMI is so useful, it's pure raw data about what's a healthy weight for a person's height. It's a rough guide but the best tool we've got. Sizing in shops is so arbitrary it's almost useless to talk about what a size sixteen is.

I think in embracing obese as standard is dangerous.

It isn't healthy- and of course being underweight isn't healthy either.

I haven't weighed myself for 15 years- I don't see the need.

What is a good weight for one person may not be ideal for another.
I wear the same 10/12 size clothes I did 20 years ago, and they are neither too baggy or tight. I can tell if I am starting to get a little rounder in the middle, and cut back a little- it never takes more than a few weeks to get rid of the slight podgeyness around my middle.

Sizes are so daft anyway, and so dependent on shops and vanity sizing.

Dress size is not and never has been a criterion for establishing whether someone is overweight.

This - I lost a bit of weight recently, bringing me down from the top end of the healthy range for BMI to the middle. BMI 22. I saw a bunch of friends yesterday, some said how well I looked - others, yes the ones who were a bit overweight themselves, warned me I was getting "too thin". I have, in the past, been very overweight.

If I were to compare myself to the women in my parent's wedding photos from the 1950's (which I unearthed recently) I am decidedly chunky. It really did make me realise how much we have normalised overweight.

I dunno why people think you can't have a large frame

If you stand Kylie next to the Rock, they don't have the same skeleton
Or Kylie and serena williams
No matter how much weight I lose, I am still wider then my friend who is a size 6 and 5ft 2, tiny feet and wrists. I'm 5ft 10 with size 8 feet
That's not delusional, I have photos from me as a child and I'm always the tallest and broadest (shoulders wise)
A coat might fit me everywhere else but I physically can't get my shoulders in it