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.

This is mumsnet where anything over a size eight is considered morbidly obese. Life is too short to worry about what other people look like. Concentrate on you.

I'm about the same weight but 5.6 height. We do eat healthy all meals cooked from scratch. But I do have a sweet tooth. Find it hard to resist resist a cake if we're in a cafe and I'm chocoholic. I need to go cold turkey. I lost loads around 18 months ago. What helped was not eating anything after 5 and drinking lots of water. Sometimes you think your hungry but you just need a drink.We all carry our weight differently though.

I agree sizing has enlarged massively.

I go by French sizing of my favourite brand - which hasn’t changed in 30 years.

Same with Rebel Wilson. God forbid a fat public figure lose weight for themselves, they'll have a massive amount of backlash for it.

I agree with you OP.

But on here, any conversation about a healthy weight and a healthy diet is usually shut down and called goady.

I think there's two different things here.
Yes, many people don't recognise just how slim a healthy BMI actually is, and think only visably obese people count as overweight.
Secondly, as women's weight increases generally, ideas of the size you 'should' be to be considered attractive have changed. Young women in particular are considered attractive at far bigger sizes than was the case in the 90s.
So, while we may have lost sight of what a healthy weight looks like, the good news is, we've also broadened our view of what an attractive one looks like to embrace a wider range of sizes.

But this is exactly the problem with so many people.
We have lost sight of what’s healthy to eat. 90% of what you can buy in the supermarket is processed crap.
If you are under 60 then you were probably brought up on a lot crap as a kid. I know I certainly was- sugary cereals every day for breakfast for a start.
You can eat LOADS and still be a healthy weight. It’s just not loads of what’s high sugar / high fat / processed carbs.
The problem is availability of crap food, busy lives to not actually be able to prepare properly nutritious food due to time / tiredness. And the cost of crap food versus unprocessed food.
Not sure how we are ever going to reverse it. Just more and more health problems due to obesity and more obese / overweight people. It’s really worrying to me!

I think it’s a complicated mix of issues tbh. On the one hand people are constantly advertised and pushed unhealthy food options. There seems to be a new Greggs opening all the time round here and fast food is literally designed to stimulate people’s predilection for salty and sweet foods. At the same time there does feel to be a bit of a pushback to try and normalise larger sizes under the umbrella of body positivity and arguments like there is no such thing as unhealthy foods, diets don’t work etc as opposition to the demonisation of anyone overweight and the negative connotations pushed about that.
It’s a mess tbh. Also, losing weight is bloody hard. Especially as you get older and when surrounded by miserable circumstances (cost of living, cold miserable weather). It can be understandably quite demoralising to fight off the pressures of unhealthy convenience eating and the standards put forward about what’s a healthy size and acceptable.

It's also worth noting that the 90s focus on extreme thinness, with many resulting eating disorders and almost no nice clothes for people over what was then a standard size 16, clearly didn't stop the population from getting fatter. So I don't know what the solution is, but shame and deprivation clearly aren't it.

@DarrellRiversCriminalBehaviourOrder

There is lots of research that shows fat shaming is completely ineffective in reducing obesity. As is the diet industry.

I'm not aware of any successful (on a population scale) campaigns

We have yes, not least because everyone gets obsessed with BMI. We also equate “looking healthy” with being healthy. I want to lose some weight but equally as a keen runner I’m fitter than I’ve ever been (resting heart rate in the 40s, VO2 max increased, times are faster), despite probably “looking fitter” in the past.

Some problems with culture as well men’s people are afraid to point out if someone is overweight or unhealthy and that needs to change.

YANBU. Just because the average size is a 16, doesn't make it healthy.

I find the opposite. Anything under a size 12 is considered to be unhealthily skinny slash ED territory here. I find MN representative of the general demographic that 60% of British are overweight or obese.

You're right. I have a small frame.
I see people who are the same proportions as me - same height and look slim, but put us next to each other and you can see our wrists and ankles are different sizes, or even looking at knee caps.
For me, the lower end of the BMI range is healthy, for my (also slim) friend her healthiest weight is more in the middle (this is supposition, I actually have no idea). BMI is a blunt tool but for the vast majority of people it is an accurate indicator of whether your weight is within a healthy range.

Totally agree.
Bread and pasta and rice eaten in huge quantities by so many people.
So so bad for you esp with wheat being so GMO now- it causes so many gut problems too and people just don’t realise.

i’m a healthy weight on the smaller side and get backhandedly skinny shamed a lot. just last week a colleague which i barely know said ‘that’s because you’ve got no fat on you to keep you warm’ said with nice intentions but i’m a healthy weight and people are skewed to think that ‘skinny’ adults are the unhealthy ones

What do you propose?
Leave people alone and focus on yourself doesn’t seem to work well either.

I'm amazed anyone still believes it! The obesity Paradox is based on calculations that removed cancer from the mortality causes. It's utter, meaningless bullshit. Probably deliberately curated to reach a pre-determined conclusion. A lot of so-called science is like that because of how research is funded. But if you remove one of the main killers of humans from your study, a killer that's closely linked to being over-fat, then your study is worthless.

That’s not really shaming though is it. She’s not saying you’re unhealthy.

Regulation of the food industry (in particular in relation to UPFs and marketing) would be my suggestion, along with the incorporation of our need to move into everything from the school curriculum to town planning. We have somehow created a food environment in which the majority of people are unable to live healthily- that's not due to individuals' lack of will power, it's a public health emergency caused by an increasingly obesogenic environment.

Totally agree. So many people with diseases like autoimmune disorders and a host of other things that are as a result of gut dysbiosis related to the proteins in grains. We are not designed to encounter plant proteins in such concentrated form. They lead to thinning of the gut lining and the lectins, saponins etc. leak into our blood and lymph and affect us adversely.

If flour and sugar and to a degree, dairy, were removed from all of us overnight, we would all be so much healthier in a matter of weeks but it's designed to be addictive.

Plant oils are horrifically toxic too but salty, oily sweet stuff hits our pleasure centres and acts like fricken crack. It cannot and should not be legislated about. Education and people understanding far more than they do, is the answer.

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

You may be wider but you won't be heavier for your size by more than a few pounds due to your "big frame".

Most people's weight is carried in their soft tissue -- muscle, fatty tissue, their organs so blaming extra weight on your bones is not accurate. You can have a gigger frame and wider hips but this not account for lots of extra weight.

I agree with comments above about what even is a healthy diet too. It’s so confusing. We are bombarded with fad diets, points, shakes, ultra processed foods. Should we eat low fat/low sugar/low carb? Should we eat 800 cals a day or is that a fad too? What about diabetics?

also regarding my goals. It’s mostly around health. And I can feel the difference already. I can keep up with my kids more and my resting heart rate is down by about 10 beats according to my Apple Watch. Since I started exercising. Im approaching menopause and I’m really scared… people around me are starting to get issues… from cancer to knee issues. Diabetes too. Sleep issues. And a few heart scares too just in my friendship group.

my secondary goal is around the way I look.

@PurpleWisteria1

I dont propose anything

I dont really care if people choose to be fat or smoke or take drugs or do any exercise

If I did, I would propose keeping people out of poverty and banning junk food.

Yes I think this is true.

Take my high street in inner London. In the 80s it had McDs, Wimpey, a couple of pubs with pub food and that was it. Now it’s wall to wall food places - delis, cafes, restaurants, 3 sushi bars, juice bars, sandwich shops, 2 health food shops, gelateria - probably 40-50% of the retail spaces are now serve food in some form.

Whenever you turn on the TV or open a magazine there’s endless cooking shows/recipes.

When you add the explosion of junk and ultra processed food, and the implosion of exercise, it’s not really surprising there’s a problem.