Is my opinion on what is obese wrong?

[Thewheelweavesasthewheelwills]

This is me recently on a family day out at a big park which I was fit enough for.

I know I need to lose some weight and I have finally started to eat better. I got into a terrible habit of eating way too much chocolate when cluster feeding on the couch and didn't stop! I am now watching what I eat. I hate cal counting but I think I need to for a while to make myself accountable. I am aiming to lose about a stone.

Anyway, my app says I am obese. I would have said I was over weight yes but not obese. But I read on here a lot that we all have the wrong idea of what is overweight/ obese these days so maybe I was deluding myself?

YABU - you are obese, that is what it looks like
YANBU - you are not obese just a little fat

@Ponoka7 - that is insane re the sizes. I was an 8-10 many moons ago (teens/early 20s) - now I’d say I’m a 10-12 and we’re talking a 25-30 year gap so am not sure that wholly correct.
I am v small built, not short but slim wrists, small feet etc and I am big as a size 12 as all the weight is round the middle where it shouldn’t be! To be proportionate I really need to be an 8-10, but then my face is too thin (was ok when younger as had plumpness of youth).
Obese is def a medical term but I know your waist shouldn’t be more than 30inches if you want to limit risk of getting diabetes

I'm 5ft 3 and was 13 stone 6 at the start of the year and was most definitely obese. I'm now just under 11 stone and am now 'just' overweight but fucking hell it's hard as you get older to lose the weight. I wish I'd done it when I was your age rather than waiting until I was iny mod 50s because it's a real fucking slog!

The image that obese conjures up in most people's heads is very different from the clinical term. I tend to think of rolls of fat and large waists which you don't appear to have yet at your weight and height you are medically quite significantly overweight. It just shows how warped our perception of a healthy/normal body is getting as the average size increases. Conversely, I have a bmi of 22 - so right in the middle of the 'healthy weight' category yet I am a size 8 (I'm 5ft3) which by today's standards is seen as really slim/skinny rather than the normal size the average woman should be!

I do think ideas of obesity and even overweight, have changed drastically over the years. When I was a kid there really were not many overweight children in my school, maybe a couple in each class. I work in a school now and there are quite a lot of children who are pretty overweight for their age. This is not me 'having a go' at children, it's just a fact in the school I work in and it's a worry. We've been doing 'a mile a day' when we walk round the sports track four times at some point during the day and it's worrying how many 13 year olds just can't manage it without stopping to catch their breath. It's not a run, it's walking.

30" is a general guide in that you are usually ok if your waist is 30" or less. But it depends how tall you are. It would be 34" before it's an issue for me at 5'7", 36" for 5'11", 32" for someone who is 5'4", 30/31" for someone who is 5'1".

I carry my weight on my bust and limbs which is better than on your belly, though I find myself fighting not to be more apple shaped in middle age.

Wearing a size 10-12 in clothes doesn’t make you not obese. At my height I would definitely fall into at least the overweight category if not obese.

No scale works 100% for every single person but BMI is actually a pretty good barometer for the average person. I can pretty much guarantee that the OP doesn’t have so much muscle mass that it is throwing off BMI.
Muscle is a lot of work to build and maintain, your big standard pudgy person who comes up as obese on the BMI chart is highly unlikely to be the outlier.

BMI is increasingly recognised as not being ideal. So are women's clothes sizes (they vary immensely)! Waist measurements give some indication of being overweight or not, but we must also bear in mind that being overweight isn't the only thing which can cause health risks! For overall health it's more realistic to look broadly at what you eat (so get enough nutritious food, have some treats but don't overdo it, don't become a slave to it), drink alcohol in moderation, don't smoke, make sure you exercise (and ideally do some exercise which really gets you out of breath as well as more relaxed activity) and try to find ways to incorporate happiness/destressing into your normal routine (start small if you're struggling with that). Good luck!

Ignore dress sizes. They have never been used to determine obesity and size disparity has gone insane over the last ten years.

If you need to know your actual size, get a tape measure.

I agree that building and maintaining muscle is a lot of work, I worked bloody hard to build mine and even harder to maintain. And it's even harder work to build more now, believe me. But the fact its hard work doesn't mean that BMI doesn't take muscle mass in to account. It also doesn't take loose skin (from losing over 10stone) or big boots (I wish, my pecs are bigger than my boobs) in to account.

BMI is useless for me, because I'm a muscly outlier AND need to lose fat (moot point at the moment as I'm pregnant and had HG for six months). By BMI, I would need to lose a lot more fat than I actually have.

I lost around 100lbs of fat, built muscle, and then relayered fat on top (thanks long covid!). I have ended up a similar weight to my pre-loss amount, though with a radically different figure and size.

BMI is best used as one of the dimensions of physical health. Aerobic capacity, heart rate, blood pressure, waist to hip ratio and waist measurement to height ratio should be used together as a six point check.

It is a BMI definition not a looks wise. I’d your BMI is over 30 you’re obese. Personally I looked at actuary calculators and BMI 25-29 there is a very marginal
impact on life expectancy (months). BMI 30+ the effect is much bigger (years). My hope os to maintain a BMI under 30 I.e overweight.

the smallest I have been was 24.5 BMI but I was doing a lot of training for club sports. My body fat was 20% as we tracked it. I don’t think women are supposed to
be much under that! Plus I was a size 10-12 so not big given I am tallish. So I know
my BMI is always going to be on the high side! Under 30 is a good target for me.

Just out of interest, here's a label from a late 80s M&S skirt - 25 inch waist for a size 10!

Nobody will be surprised. We all know sizes have changed to accommodate people getting fatter.

It's a myth that the reason is to fool and flatter fat women into thinking they're slim, but I've learned that nobody wants to accept that. Don't know why, though.

You do look as if you’re just in the obese category. I think how small a skeleton is in my mind and then compare that with a persons actual size and in my mind’s eye I see how big they really are.

Omg! That would have hung off me back then. I was max a size 8 in late teens and even smaller age 16. I checked recently and back then at 5’ 7” I was on the 1st centile. Now I’m BMI 36 a size 20. Ill health 😭

Waist circumference is better than bmi. Low risk = <80cm I think for women.

‘Overweight’ is a very narrow window of up to 2 stone over healthy weight. After that every weight counts as obese. So whilst the overweight will look pretty similar size-wise, people looking very, very different can all measure as obese.

so today M&S size 8 is 25.5 inch waist 35.5 hips.
I’m very apple shaped
36 inch hips/bust, slim arms, slim legs and zero cellulite but 32 waist which was bigger until i had a medical and was told very clearly I needed to lose a couple of stone which has proved very hard.

I would also keep in mind women are also generally taller. I tower over my older female relatives and they aren’t short for their peer group!
so maybe sizes have got bigger but not ratio/proportion wise for clothes (not for people obviously there is a general trend to obesity!)

Honestly, you look more than a little fat to me. I'm barely in the healthy BMI bracket myself and I'm pudgy for sure but can wear size 12 clothes. We are so used to seeing fat people we no longer know what healthy looks like. It looks a lot thinner than we think!

There is clinically obese (BMI of 30+) and then colloquially obese.

I would never describe you as obese but I would guess you have a BMI around 30.

Obese colloquially I would be thinking more morbidly obese (BMI above 40), so fairly significantly above class I obesity.

Ye! Spot on analysis

'Obese' is a medical term referring to BMI - opinion, or what you look like, doesn't come into it. It's just numbers. So I wouldn't worry about the terminology really. You've said that you know you need to lose some weight, so just focus on getting to a size you're happy with and don't worry about the precise medical distinction between obese and overweight.