To not understand why people think size 16 is healthy?

[SerenaCat93]

Disclaimer, I am not skinny, I never have been. I have PCOS and have struggled with my weight my whole life so I'm not an armchair Kate Moss judging overweight people, I am overweight myself!

I used to be a lot bigger than I am now but I am currently a size 12/14 depending where I shop. I am still a stone overweight at size 12/14 and I am not a small woman, I am 5ft 8 with broad shoulders. If I got into to my healthy weight range I would be a size 10 on bottom and 12 on top probably. So I can't understand for the life of my why people think a size 16 is healthy? Even for tall/broad women it is still very overweight. It usually correlates to a BMI of about 30.

I used to be one of those people that thought BMI was bullshit because some of us have a lot of muscle/dense bones bla bla but actually it's not. My BMI is 27 and i have a lot of muscle, I'm athletic with huge quads and calves, strong core muscles but being brutally honest about it, I do still have a belly (apple shape) that shouldn't be there and if I lost it I would be in the healthy BMI range. Even with all my muscle mass and dense bones (My body composition scales tell me I have above average bone and muscle mass for a woman my size/age so I'm not imagining it) I would still be in the healthy weight range if I lost my belly.

I saw a post on FB where a woman showed a picture of a model wearing an outfit and then a picture of her wearing it and she's a size 16. She looked fantastic in it, she was beautiful and I'm not for one minute saying that being a size 16 makes someone look huge or that they shouldn't be wearing certain things because that's not true at all. Lots of larger women look incredible and wear fashionable clothes, as they should. This is purely about health. Lots of comments about how the clothes look better on a "healthy size 16" and when anyone pointed out that while the lady looked fabulous, a size 16 is NOT HEALTHY and is actually overweight/bordering obesity for many they were met with lots of laughing emojis and told they were being ridiculous/stupid. Conversely posters were calling the healthy weight model a stick/coat hanger etc. and saying how she looked half starved and was unhealthy, which she absolutely wasn't. She was a size 8, which is healthy and definitely not starved.

I know that size 16 is average in the UK. I thought people understood that average and healthy were different things though. The whole thing just baffled me to be honest so I'm interested in hearing other women's thoughts on it!

And yes im trying to lose weight but its hard. Im perimenopausal, i work long hours in a sedentary high pressure job where i dont take much break at lunch & havent got loads of time to exercise. I love food and really enjoy family meals & cooking. Its so so hard. Im not big enough for mounjaro, my bmi is 27.

I don’t understand why anyone else cares.

Good for you! I think it's important people understand these things than live in denial then get diabetes. I certainly wouldn't choose that for myself just so I don't ruffle some feathers either. Strange that you would but it takes all sorts.

Exactly same height / weight here (and a body fat percentage between 18% and 19%). I wear size 8 bottoms but size 14 top due to wide ribcage + boobs on top, going up to size 16 in some styles.

clothes size is a poor measure of health. My BMI is in the normal range, but I have clothes in at least three sizes all of which fit. This says more about the shop I bought them from than it does about my health.

Wow size 8 bottoms! I don't think I've ever been size 8 since childhood! But everyone's different (thankfully). It does make clothes shopping tricky though!

I agree with you. It does slightly depend on build though if you haven’t got the belly, you could be a 16 if you’re particularly muscular - most people aren’t though.

I’m a 10-12 (12 on bottom because I have a belly). I’m very small built though (but of average height) and i probably should be an 8-10 as I’m only just over 8 stone at 163cm.

Thry say that waist size is a big indicator of health, more so than bmi and it shouldn’t exceed 31 inches (or thereabouts) for women. I’m just about at the threshold, which is a size 12. No-one size 16 has a small a waist as that.

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng246/chapter/Identifying-and-assessing-overweight-obesity-and-central-adiposity

You don't even understand health or health measures; if you didn't you wouldn't be obsessing about dress sizes as if they're of any relevance. Nobody ever got diagnosed as a dress size.

I first encountered this mentality years ago when I was researching fitness and weight loss advice... born-again, modern day holy prophets saving deluded souls from their size 16 denial. Fucking everywhere, they were. At least fat people could be enjoyable company.

So, I posted before and I'm just going to follow up here:

Fat Shaming - not clever. That applies to everyone that says a size 16 is "huge". It isn't huge at all. Standard UK size used to be 14, now it's 16 but that's still not huge, size 32 is huge so get a grip.

Take into account that not everyone can diet. I did, I lost 2 stone, cycling 20km on the exercise bike every day and right at the peak I came down with a flare up of ulcerative colitis. I HAD to stop exercising, I HAD to change my diet, the only green vegetable that was recommended was green beans; no peas, no cruciferous veg, no lettuce, no onions, mushrooms, sweetcorn, no wholemeal products, granary products, seeds, nuts, etc, etc. Basically I had to eat stodgy easily digestible food for the duration of the flare to try and get it under control. My flare lasted 12 weeks and on eventual recovery I was I straight back at pretty much where I was before I started dieting.

So when you're "fat shaming" people because they don't fit into the ideal mould of being less than a size 16, bear in mind that you don't actually have a clue what you're talking about. Yes, I have gone back on the diet now and I am back on the exercise bike and I am starting again but being punched back to the beginning through not fault of my own is a bitter pill to swallow without being fat shamed because of it.

Rant over.

Other people’s bodies are none of your business

You see I find it very hard to believe that you are a stone overweight at size 12/14 at 5 ft 8, but if you say you are then ok.

I am 5 ft 6, size 14 and right in the middle of healthy weight range. Weight is different on different people. Size 16 is definitely not very overweight and BMI 30 unless you are very short.

You are right that weight is carried very differently on different people. I was three stone overweight and a size 14. I was 5’7” and weighed 14 and a half stone. I could even fit into size 12 trousers that were somewhat stretchy. I had no rolls of fat. I’ve seen others at the same weight who look morbidly obese. Dress size says relatively little.

OP claims to be a reformed former size 16 and explains at great length why she found it acceptable at the time, and now claims not to understand how anyone could think that and makes snarky comments about it. ("I certainly wouldn't choose that for myself just so I don't ruffle some feathers either. Strange that you would but it takes all sorts.")

I just think she might not be very bright. Or is very un-self-aware not to have spotted the contradiction. But mostly just wanted to tell fatties they’re fat in case they hadn’t noticed.

With my build I would look better at a 16 than I would at anything smaller.

It's just a classic (if somewhat long winded) case of "reformed fatty syndrome" (apologies, I don't mean to offend, it's not my term... it's just how this mentality is often referred to and I think it's pretty self explanatory). That's why, when I was losing weight, I made a firm mental note never to start going around lecturing and trying to reform other people who were clearly not yet in the headspace, as if they all had to work to my personal schedule and be ready when I was... and as if they somehow didn't know weight loss would bring health benefits but they'd finally understand if they heard it from me.

It isn't about health anyway because the fixation is on the nearly worthless measure of dress sizes, as it so often is. Size 16 isn't healthy or unhealthy, it's just a unit to help you find the right clothes and it varies between brands, styles, preferences for fit and everything else. Plenty of people simply won't buy something if they can't fit into a certain size.

If health is the real concern then better to encourage people to adopt healthier habits whatever their size or weight because the evidence does show that consistent healthy habits improve health outcomes even if you don't lose weight or are A Size 16.

I’m a size 16 to 18.

I don’t give one shiny shit whether you think my body is healthy or not. I know my own health, my doctors are happy and I am happy.

I find reformed fatties as bad as ex smokers or born again Christians. Just because they’ve seen the light they want to go around shoving it down everyone else’s throats. But of course if anyone had dared to try and ‘save them’ when they were fat they’d have been as annoyed as the rest of us.

Maybe try having a nice piece of cake instead of coming on here fat shaming people OP.

It's strange how it is acceptable to not only talk about people doing other unhealthy things but also be very nasty and judgemental about it. Drug addictions, self-neglect, alcohol misuse, smoking. But when it comes to conversations about being overweight they're completely shut down with accusations of fat shaming. Why is someone becoming overweight from emotional eating better than someone using drugs to self-medicate? Or someone lacking the motivation to clean themselves and their home worse than someone lacking the motivation to lose weight?

@JLou08 I think those things are clearly objectively different. Using drugs, assuming you mean illegal drugs, causes harm beyond the harm to the person taking them. Also the harms of taking them are much more severe and immediate than overeating. Similar for someone who is unable to manage basic self care and keeping their home clean, the immediate risk of harm is greater. The behaviour will impact on others, if a home is unclean then anyone else in the home will suffer. It will eventually attract mice, rats, other pests that will impact on others directly. A person who is unable to drop a few pounds is not causing any issue for anyone else.

They're impacting people who use the NHS and the tax payer. The costs to the tax payer and NHS due to obesity are higher than the costs relating alcohol and drugs.
I don't think either should be demonised but you can't say obesity is objectively different to other health risks.

Health risks are objectively different from each other, almost by definition. And I didn’t realise that this was restricted to just the health implications of these things. The social impact of drug use can’t be discounted.

Clearly obese people are massively harming the NHS and using up money that could be spent on better causes. I don’t think it’s fat shaming to say that as it’s not speaking about any one individual. But generally speaking, in the lives of any one obese individual, they are not causing any direct harm to any other person. Unlike those other comparisons. I think the other part of it is that everyone has to eat. Smoking, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, none of those have an element where the person must do those activities but not make the mistake of doing it a little too much. If any of those become an issue for you, it is possible to just completely stop. You can’t avoid eating, so you are confronted with the issue multiple times a day. That seems notably different to me.

But regardless of all that, no one can actually “shut down” anyone else from commenting on obese people. Of course people can say it’s fat shaming but no one can stop you from continuing to discuss it. As this thread and the many others on the topic of obesity and the issues it causes society show.

I didn’t say anything about making women feel shit about anything. I just commented that overweight or underweight isn’t usually healthy. 🤷‍♀️