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.

Well even if he does...some men quite like that, especially men from different cultures. Not everyone subscribes to Western beauty standards.

Personally I really don't like skinny men...

@TheOrigRights OP says her husband tells her she is beautiful. She does not believe him because she is fat. This whole thread is about the OPs very low self esteem.

Exactly. I am a fat woman. My husband would not reduce me down to a physical attribute but he absolutely finds larger women (whether fat or muscular) attractive. I loved very tall and slim men in my 20s, now I like them tall and thicker.
There is alot of self hatred and low self esteem on these sort of threads.

Yes @Seasonofthewitch83 because this thread is full of women who are incredibly proud of the fact they're thin. Is their greatest achievement. The idea that there are women who aren't thin, who don't hate themselves and have men who love and fancy them is too much for them to cope with.

I always like men who enjoy their food TBH, I think it's very attractive to have a healthy appetite, and a couldn't be doing with someone fussing about it or going on about weight and diet or making me feel bad about what I was eating.

Yeah, it's all gone a bit pear shaped (for want of a better word).

I am fat and still get chatted up. It is not true that men are not interested in fat women.

I think it was comedian Sofie Hagen who used the term 'Thin tokens'.

Society promises you all sorts of things if you only lost some weight. You will be more confident, more attractive, people will like you more, you will have a better social life etc etc.

So when a fat woman is happily living their life, not hating their body, in a happy relationship, a great career, it makes them FURIOUS. Because they feel like they EARNED those things by going to the gym and dieting and heres this fat woman getting it all for FREE? It completely invalidates their the whole promise.

I think this is true.

I think it was comedian Sofie Hagen who used the term 'Thin tokens'.

Society promises you all sorts of things if you only lost some weight. You will be more confident, more attractive, people will like you more, you will have a better social life etc etc.

So when a fat woman is happily living their life, not hating their body, in a happy relationship, a great career, it makes them FURIOUS. Because they feel like they EARNED those things by going to the gym and dieting and heres this fat woman getting it all for FREE? It completely invalidates their the whole promise.

100% this.

Slim isn't the same as short, tall or broad which are fixed. How slim a person is is just a way of describing how much body fat they happen to have at that time, which for most people can and does vary throughout their life time. If a slim person ate more calories than they burned, they would store them as fat and no longer be slim, just as a fat person would get fatter if they did the same. So in that sense there is no 'naturally slim'. At best there may be a predisposition to burn calories at a slightly faster rate and/or a body shape where you 'carry it well'.
I don't think anyone thinks slim people eat only 800 calories a day. They do think (know) that there's no permanent physical characteristic called 'slim' that you inherit like height or eye colour, and it's yours for life regardless of how much you eat. Slim people are restricting what they eat, either deliberately or from appetite, to the calories required to maintain their weight. No more, no less.

I don't think anyone thinks slim people eat only 800 calories a day. They do think (know) that there's no permanent physical characteristic called 'slim' that you inherit like height or eye colour, and it's yours for life regardless of how much you eat. Slim people are restricting what they eat, either deliberately or from appetite, to the calories required to maintain their weight. No more, no less.

When Ieas in my early 20s my lunch every day consisted of a cheese sandwich, a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar. I did no exercise to speak of. I was tiny, under 8 stone.

How slim a person is is just a way of describing how much body fat they happen to have at that time, which for most people can and does vary throughout their life time.

To an extent. But are you truly trying to say that people don't have different builds? A professional gymnast will have a very different build to a weightlifter, even accounting for their difference in training. Otherwise there really would be only one healthy weight for all people of a certain height with no variation, and even BMI doesn't pretend otherwise.

Yes. This is a similar line of thinking to the earlier poster who said gastric bands were "cheating" and decided that people who have them must always have tons of horrible loose skin as a punishment.

It just proves the point that its never truly concern about 'health'.

Of course it's not. That's arrant bollocks.

There is a massive perceived moral value to being at a healthy weight, especially among women.

Exactly. Two people might be the same height and have similar amounts of "flesh on their bones", but be different weights because one has a narrower build and smaller bone structure than the other. In that case, the thinner one is no more "restricting calories to maintain weight" than the other one. Plus, some people do have faster metabolisms than others.

I don't see why some people are so adamant that all slim people must be miserably restricting calories and rushing off to the gym every day. It's almost as though you're trying to prove a point that you can only be thin if you're miserable...

If someone turned around and said, "people are only overweight because they eat too much and don't exercise", there'd be a massive push-back, I bet...

I have huge tits, wide hips, a broad back, long legs and thick ankles and wrists. Big bones and big boobs.

This doesn't mean I can't be a healthy weight; there's no fat on a skeleton and bone is pretty light. But I will never be what is usually regarded as "slim" and I will never be a small person. Plenty of people are healthy at a size 8, but I am not one of them.

If someone turned round and said "people are only overweight because they eat too much and don't exercise", there'd be a massive push-back, I bet...

People say that all the time. Including on this thread. All over Mumsnet.

I think plenty of fat people agree that there are thin people who appear to be able to eat quite a lot of calories and remain, um, not fat. And they appear to be quite happy in that state. They presumably have bodies which are extremely efficient at using up the energy they are consuming. My own brother has been very thin all his life and eats an appalling junk food diet (and drinks quite a lot of booze) without doing any exercise, while I am probably twice his size, eating vegetables and seeds and sweating it out in gym classes.

It's what you get used to....My husband is used to eating only fruit for lunch and I'm now used to eating gluten free (believe me - I'd love a full of gluten baguette!) But sometimes I get a bit frustrated when people tell me that they don't understand why they've put on so much weight when they have a plate full of the quiche and sausage rolls that I'd love to be eating...

I suppose you adapt to an extent, but with no protein I would really not feel sated.

But ironically people are cooking a lot less despite the proliferation of cooking shows. Even the way these shows are ‘packaged’ has changed: much more glitzy/fast paced now (look at Jamie Oliver’s programmes for example) and not designed for you to actually follow the recipe, compared to (say) Delia’s very much more instructional cooking programmes from the 1970s. Do people (as a general/overall population trend) even still know how to cook healthy food, the way that they did back then? Home Economics classes being restyled as Food Technology also didn’t help; people need to actually know how to cook a stew, not how to make a Swiss roll in so many different iterations (from a product design perspective) that you’ve actually ruined it by the end. Most people don’t need to learn about stock rotation and how to design packaging. They need to be taught how to cook. I say this as a 37yo so hardly hailing from the Dark Ages here.

I did Home Economics at school and from what I remember we didn't cook things like stew. I can't remember much of it other than some dreadful cakes I made. I could bake ok at home, so not sure what went wrong.

The way people eat has changed from my childhood. We had family meals at the table, and I'd not see anyone walking down the street eating. Takeaways and meals out were rare events. A snack would be a piece of fruit or a biscuit.

Of course people have different builds. I never said otherwise. What I said was 'slim' is not a build and neither is 'fat'. They are just labels to describe the amount of fat people have, regardless of their (natural) build. A gymnast is not going to be slim for life on account of their build. If they eat more than they burn off they would get fat too.

I have to disagree there, although "slim" is a subjective judgement anyway. But yes, some people do indeed have a slim build and it means that even if they've got the same body fat percentage as a bigger built person, they'll still be visibly slimmer. Even at a healthy weight, I'd never describe myself as "slim"...too broad, too booby, too hippy. Not fat, but just not what I think most people would call "slim".

You can't reliably gauge body fat percentage just by looking at someone anyway. That's why we have methods for it.