To ask do you think people always look their best when a healthy weight

[Xoxoxxo]

Not fat shaming I’m very overweight myself and not been a healthy weight for a long time so can’t even imagine what I would look like at a healthy weight

60’s

Always? No.
it depends on so many things, not least WHY you’re at a ‘healthy’ weight.
as a late teenager my bmi was ‘healthy’ but there was nothing healthy about my lifestyle. I was anorexic and bulimic and would swing between starvation and purging and binging, I drank too much, I smoked, I took drugs and never slept. When I look at pictures of me then I look dreadful.
between 20-26 I had 4 kids and gained some weight and I think that’s the period I probably looked the best, I was slightly over a healthy nmi range but I ate well and didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs anymore. My ED was under control and it showed.

Ok - I’ll come back in 5 years! For now I think I don’t look older than my years (always been a healthy weight - low end of the range).

Generally yes, definitely. Obviously there are exceptions - a woman who is dressed up for the evening but a stone overweight is going to look better than she does if she is a stone lighter but just crawled out of bed after day 3 of flu.

My old GP used to say that as we got older, an extra 1/2 stone made people look younger but more importantly, it gave a bit of resilience in case of illness. Looking at friends who are an ideal weight, I think he was right - they do look older than their age.

Do you mean an extra 1/2 stone over top of healthy BMI or 1/2 stone over what has been their weight their adult life?

Not always

I'm in the middle of my BMI at the moment but I've recently lost 6kg due to stress and possibly the cancer I've got. Whilst I am fitting in size 10 trousers for the first time in six or so months I'm having to wear a belt and I just look scrawny. It's not a good look for me, I look much better closer to the top line.

I look best with a BMI around 24 (ish) high end of healthy. But I'm overweight at the moment. After a year, I'm no longer obese though and shedding the baby weight ('baby' is now 2 mind!)

Good question. This was in the 70’s so there were no references to BMI then. It would have been 1/2 stone over their ideal weight. My aunts were matrons and they used to say the same thing - those carrying a few extra pounds had a buffer, unlike people with no ‘spare’ weight who’d deteriorate more quickly.

The reason a healthy BMI is a given as a wide range is exactly to take all those things into account.

I am in the minority in that I think slightly chubby looks better than the mid bmi weight and I definitely think thin looks good at all.
About a size 16 for women and for men chunky but not overly muscly.
That said, looks are very much not what tends to attract me fancying wise.
I have been all sizes from 10 - 24 and am happiest around a size 16.

I think that for the vast vast majority of people, their best will be somewhere in the healthy weight range, whether that's the top, bottom or in the middle - and that will depend on height/build/muscle mass.

I disagree. People who have always been very thin do tend to look awful when they reach late age. You do need a little bit of fat, especially in your face, or it ages you.

@Frequencyi think Adele looked much better before she lost weight too. She looks quite dull and boring now. I don’t think it of everyone that loses weight but do with her.

Hmm, not sure about that.

Yeah I don't think so. The fat test at the gym, body composition scans and regular physicals with a doctor are a far better indication than BMI of healthy body weight for an individual. If I lopped off my boobs, I might fall into the "healthy" range, but my actual body fat / muscle ratio wouldn't have changed at all. In reality I would still be slightly overweight even though my BMI may look fine.

Likewise I had a friend who was overweight, then got very into fitness, dropped 2-3 dress sizes yet weighed the same as her overweight self - she lost fat, and gained muscle. Her BMI was still classified as "unhealthy" even though she was in actual fact very physically fit with hardly any excess fat on her body.

I also suspect BMI is based on white bodies. Just a hunch, though a quick Google tells me there is something to that hunch.

I remember reading that there are calculators that can be adjusted to factor in ethnicity. From memory, a white person is considered obese at 30 and a POC at 32.

I'd still think it's a smaller difference than that between somebody that trains and doesn't. I weighed myself on the day I took the below pic and was well into the 'overweight' category despite having visible abs.

That’s why the calculator asks your ethicity, it’s been updated

I’m surprised so many comments on too thin looks awful, the sad truth is so does too fat. It’s not just one way. And it validates what the op asked, which is does a healthy weight look best, and the answer is for most people yes. A healthy weight goes from a bmi of 18,5 to 24.9,, and depending on our body composition, it maybe someone looks best at 18,5 and someone else at 24.9. They are both healthy weight people.

then how good you look starts to decline the further away from those points.

as I said at the start, over weight and under weight, for most people is not the best look. But the right healthy weight for body type, be it 18,5 bmi or 24.9. Is generally the best for most people.

a healthy bmi could be 19 or 25, so there’s a huge range and t think yes people look better in this healthy range.

The trick is losing weight steadily and heavy weight training.

People are obsessed with BMI but I've heard women shouldn't use it as a guide.

This is from chatGPT -
BMI was originally based on male bodies, and it has important limitations because of that.
What BMI was designed for
(BMI) was created in the 1830s by Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet. His goal was to describe the “average man” at the population level, not to assess individual health.
Key points about its origins:
• Based largely on European men
• Never intended for diagnosing individuals
• Did not account for sex differences, body composition, or ethnicity
How that affects women
Because women generally have:
• Higher essential body fat
• Different fat distribution (hips/thighs vs. abdomen)
• Lower average muscle mass
BMI can:
• Label healthy women as “overweight”
• Miss health risks in women with “normal” BMI
• Fail to reflect hormonal and life-stage changes (e.g., pregnancy, menopause)
It’s not just about sex
BMI also performs poorly for:
• Athletes (high muscle mass)
• Older adults (muscle loss)
• Different ethnic groups (health risks occur at different BMI thresholds)
• Individuals with the same BMI but very different body fat percentages
What’s better than BMI?
BMI can be a screening tool, but not a full health assessment. Better context comes from combining it with:
• Waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio
• Body fat percentage (DEXA, BIA)
• Blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose
• Fitness level and medical history
Bottom line
BMI reflects male-centered, population-based assumptions and should not be treated as a definitive measure of individual health—especially for women.

yes they do.

God the arrogance of ya! How can you say this so definitely to a perfect stranger!

My BMI is 26 and I look better now than at the Lower end of my “healthy” BMI weight. I’ll see photos of myself from that time and I look so sick. Now I look well!