What BMI do you consider to be fat, slim or skinny?

[waschunky]

Nc for this. Inspired by a family chat about size and what is considered the ideal now compared to when I was a teen in the 90s. Teenage Dd was saying how big bums and very chunky thighs are the ideal whereas I'm mentally in the idealised thigh gap era and an arse that's not got its own postcode.

It's obvious from reading threads on here that what is considered obese, overweight, slim, skinny, underweight varies and doesn't necessarily follow the BMI scale. What classes as fat now? When I was a teen fat was probably actually obese and now those obese are often deemed a little chunky or stocky. Normal bmi is seen as skinny by some. I never hear the word plump anymore. Pleasantly plump was how my sister referred to herself and she was at the top end of a healthy bmi maybe half a stone over the top end.

I'm not sure if I could accurately assess someone's size and weight against clinical parameters. There was a programme on tv yonks ago where participants were asked to say which outline they thought was theirs and they always chose the one that was one to two sizes bigger.

Views are probably skewed by the media but to me obese is still very fat, overweight is a little chunky, normal weight I've no idea, slim would be thigh gap, collar bones and cheek bones visible, skinny would be something I'll never be 😁 and probably in my mind is actually clinically underweight.

I don’t understand this. You don’t need to carry more weight as you age to not look ‘ridiculous’.

I know when I need to drop half a stone because when I lay down my stomach flops sideways and I have back fat. Because I’ve got thin legs I get away with it

If you look around at older women with low weight, they look very gaunt. I don’t feel I’m carrying too much weight at 91/2 though
Obviously being overweight in later years isn’t a good idea, doesn’t do any favours for knee and hip joints!
My BMI is about 24 so at the top end

@AdventuresOfCat but older people with a slightly higher BMI (in the overweight category as opposed to normal) have better outcomes and a lower rate of death
I would have to look up the study but basically
Say you're 80 and get unwell, and you lose a lot of weight
You've no reserves if you're at the bottom of your BMI. It happened to my Nan and she went down to 5 stone and never really came back from that

BMI isn't accurate

When you look at someone and consider if they are fat or yhin , BMI has nothing g to do with it. When I was growing up the Heroine chic was in fashion - how awful. Today I think a more athletic vibe is in vogue. I look back at old photos when I thought I was fat…… I was tiny!

Views are probably skewed by the media but to me obese is still very fat, overweight is a little chunky, normal weight I've no idea, slim would be thigh gap, collar bones and cheek bones visible, skinny would be something I'll never be 😁 and probably in my mind is actually clinically underweight

Never having had one myself, to my mind a thigh gap means pretty damn skinny, possibly underweight.

Generally the BMI categories tend to be around the right zone at a population level but there are some outliers with a build that doesn't sit precisely within those zones.

I'm currently on the cusp of being "overweight" having started heavier weight lifting this year. I've lost a bit of unnecessary fat, but gained muscle on my limbs. My 15" calf muscles are totally solid with no hint of wobble. Being a pear shape with slim upper body, small bust and slim face people tend to underestimate my density. The only way I'll have a thigh gap will be when I'm elderly and declining rapidly and that's not a good thing.

One problem with previous generations favouring thinner builds is that as lifestyles became less manual, a lot of lean women had low muscle mass which has not been good for general health into older age. I'd rather be strong than thin having watched the older women in the family spend decades struggling with osteo-arthritis and low muscle mass.

My general health measures are all good; waist: hips, blood pressure, heart rates etc, but I am keeping an eye on my body composition for the sake of my joints (family history of arthritis and I want to balance strength vs excess load on the joints) plus wanting to minimise "middle age spread" now I'm getting to that age zone where body mass tends to rise easily.

It is generally better to have lower BMIs in youth as it naturally increases through adulthood. I looked fine with a BMI of 20 going into adulthood, but in my 40s have no desire to go below 23 again. Being slightly overweight in middle age is not associated with adverse health effects. Obesity featuring high levels of visceral fat does at any age.

I wouldn't equate looking at someone and guessing what their BMI is to within a few points beyond generally looking thin, slim, some surplus fat and excessive levels of body fat.

BMI is outdated - it was originally designed for men, and doesn't take muscle to fat ratio into account. Me and my sister are similar in height and weight, but she's a rugby player and very muscular.

Thigh gaps are partly due to hip distance. I have no hips (even post dc's and menopause) so have never had a thigh gap even when underweight. I was at the front of the queue for athletic thighs though. No hips, all thighs.

I have a bmi of 18 and think I am slim rather than skinny 🤷‍♀️. I think people at the top end of 20s BMI + would be fat

I hear you. It's definitely changed.

I work for a university. Obviously I'd never say a word in real life, but the amount of young women who must be plus size happily flaunting everything in crop tops and skin tight clothing is something to behold and I don't believe it looks good.
Don't flame me, I'm happy for them. I'm just pointing out the difference. ...
...as 20 years ago when I was a student, we were all trying to be skinny and I felt pretty big as a size 12 at my heaviest. .

To answer your question, skinny BMI is 20 or below.
Overweight BMI would be 25/26 (for me).

It’s similar to other measures like waist circumference in that different populations experience negative health impacts at different levels

No health measure or cut-off you can capture as a ranged value is going to be perfect - and you often seen here discussions around what is the “right” value for treating hypothyroidism or “diabetic or not” in the end we are measuring something on a ranged scale and making a cut

This is nonsense. Yoru thighs not rubbing together is normal and not an indicator of being underweight!? Evolution obviously wouldn'f have created a situation where that occurs in normal circumstances. 🤣

Thighs can touch when you stand still without rubbing together when you walk. Chub rub is a different thing.

It's quite normal not to have a thigh gap and unhelpful to suggest otherwise.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/nov/03/thigh-gap-pressure-point-women-self-esteem

Ok... I come from a family of medical types and in fact one of my cousins has done quite a lot of research into weight, so we have had some fascinating conversations. And some of what follows you can confirm if you have access to the medical research sites, but forgive me, I don't want to identify myself by linking articles (most of them are behind paywalls anyway).

Several takeaways:
BMI ranges are very, very wide. Anyone who thinks they look slim at at the top end of the range is probably kidding themselves. However, it is NOT TRUE that being a "normal" BMI is healthiest. Actually, people classed as "overweight but not obese" live longer on average. And what's more, women live longest in the lower levels of the "obese" range -- at BMIs of 30-35, statistics show.

In fact, we sort of knew this already. Women naturally have a higher body fat ratio and lower muscle ratio than men, but women still live longer than men. And the main reason for that is in fact that women are less likely to suffer from weight-related problems like heart attack and stroke.

On the other hand, very heavy and bulky athletes like weight lifters (and, yes, sumo wrestlers) die younger than other men. According to my dear cousin, researchers are still scratching their heads over quite how all this works, but they do know several things:

• Less than you might hope of your body mass is muscle created by doing more exercise than the people around you (what’s called skeletal muscle mass) – most of your body is water, fat, and lean mass (like bones etc) and most of the muscle in your body is non-optional muscle, so to speak: cardiac muscle and smooth muscles (in the organs like the uterus). A body builder or sumo wrestler who weighs 200 kg might have 30 kg more skeletal muscle mass (smm) than a normal person of the same height, but the rest of the weight difference is not smm.
• In fact, weirdly, and I am not sure I fully understood what my cousin was saying, but basically the latest research suggests that the more smm you build up by exercise, the more your body will also increase your fat levels. In any case, the evidence is extremely clear that bigger men die younger on average: body builders and sumo wrestlers die much younger (like 20 years younger on average) than their fellow men of the same generation and ethnicity. Dunno that anyone has studied female body builders yet.
• One thing medical research has long established is that being physically much larger is a danger to your health even if you are a pro athlete. Men who claim that “it’s all muscle” are just wrong, but also, the evidence suggests that even as far as it might be muscle, the extra weight puts a lot of strain on the heart, lungs, and other organs (not to mention the joints).
• Medical research has also shown that exercise has very little impact on your weight and actually not that much impact on your total skeletel muscle mass. It mainly makes you look slimmer by developing muscles that pull you in like shapewear. Yes, muscle weighs more than fat, but again, the difference is simply not enough to shift the scale much – even for a sumo wrestler, the maximum seems to be about 30kg (out of 200+kg of weight). Exercise is of course very good for you – but if you want to lose fat, you have to eat less.
• P.S. My cousin and his colleagues also point out that GPs really aren’t all that well-informed on this kind of weight-health thing. It’s not much studied in medical school and of course they graduate and don’t necessarily read much research after that. He likes to point out that there are actually still doctors out there now advising people with high cholesterol to avoid eggs, even though ample evidence proved as early as the 1980s that food cholesterol does not increase blood cholesterol. My cousin, who, yes, can be a bit condescending, always tells me that one of the superfoods you should eat when trying to lose weight is eggs: for protein, essential minerals (especially iron), and satiety (ie not feeling hungry) eggs give you more bang per calorie than any other food.

Oh, on a more personal note, about thigh gap – when I was in uni my roommate was anorexic and also an over-exerciser – I mean actually hospitalised for it – but never developed thigh gap. I, on the other hand, in the past decade gained nearly 3 stone on medication, making me heavier than ever before in my life, and still had very visible thigh gap. She’s actually wider-hipped than me, by the way. I think this is to do with how your muscles wrap around your thigh bones or something…

What do you mean by low weight? Underweight or just thin?
And what do you mean by older women?

I probably only think of people with a BMI over 30 as fat although in the late 20s people can look fat if they haven’t built up much muscle and they are apple shaped rather than pear shaped. Under 20 slim

My BMI was in a normal range when I had a serious eating disorder too. I am not sure i would've been classed as anorexic-my friend who was a much smaller build was, and we ate the same (ana-buddies).

I am a stocky, heavy build-I was a large baby, heavier than my friend (same height) when ED had taken me over, I put muscle on easily, and people often guess my weight as a lot lighter than it is. I put a photo of me up in a sports bra and knicks on in another thread about BMI (I think it was called 'AIBU BMI doesn't apply to everyone') as I am still classed as overweight now.

I am derailing the thread now!

I am not quite sure of the question as BMIs are so different for each person. In a way, It's good that teen girls/young women don't feel as much pressure to be stick thin as they did when I was that age in the 90s, but of course there are health issues associated with being over weight and I don't think the body positivity role models are great for that either when a lot of them to me look unhealthily large.

Here's a photo of me a month ago with a BMI of 30. I'm only five foot. I don't FEEL massively overweight? The clothing is loose but my waist is really small.

Anyway, I'm on MJ now because the GP said I need to lose 2 stone to be in a healthy range. I find it really hard to see myself as overweight - although when I'm abroad, it's very clear that English people are absolute chubbers compared with people elsewhere.

Build has SO much to do with things!

I'm 5'6 with short legs and big boobs. I'm a small size ten, BMI of 20. Yet I look chunky. My friend, 5'10, size 16 but long slim legs and small boobs looks far slimmer than me. You'd have to see both of us in very tight clothes to tell which one of us was overweight and which was skinny (and at 64 and 70 respectively, we are NOT going to be slipping into Bodycon dresses any time soon).

Urgh, can we stop with the ‘many professional athletes have BMIs that would class them as obese’ nonsense. A very tiny minority of super heavyweight weightlifters, powerlifters and rugby players might do. But the vast majority of athletes, even in strength and power-based sports, have normal BMIs because carrying an ounce more timber than you need for your discipline is generally detrimental.

I think it’s well established that our perception of “overweight” and “obese” is very at odds with past generations or clinical assessments.

When I was obese and telling people I was losing weight, they were aghast and said I was “a bit chubby” and no way was I obese. Absolute bollocks. I was twenty pounds into obesity, never mind being overweight.

The average person is now overweight and so our comparisons/benchmarks have changed in line with that.

Yes I fully believe they do.

My opinion is not a popular one but society's changing depiction of 'normal' is doing terrible things for our health and wellness.

I'm delighted to see a huge departure from just one body type being celebrated (I mean how ridiculous was that as a concept?) however obese being considered curvy or whatever is equally stupid. Our bodies still have the same plumbing and expecting our hearts etc to perform the same function under massive stress is asking for trouble.

Some of the threads highlight it - one husband was demanding his overburdened wife drive him to work everyday... It was a 20 minute walk!

I've heard furious insistence from friends that their doctor was bullying them by stating they are in the obese category.

I've had the other experience where, after cancer treatment I gained upward of 60lbs the doctor told me not to worry and I was probably underweight when I began. I was already in the overweight category and now heavily obese. The next conversation was around cholesterol medication. I actually needed to lose the weight but that didn't even seem to merit a suggestion.

I think it's a really tricky area because it's a health issue but feels like a personal attack on your attractiveness. I feel that's where the lines get blurred. Of course many people look absolutely gorgeous at heavier weights but that doesn't mean it's good for you.

I think society is getting to a dangerous place.

The report shared by @waschunky is really interesting - the international comparators in particular, showing that France has half the levels of overweight people as the UK. So when we think that French people are skinny compared to us - we are right.