What matters to you? BMI? Dress size or way you feel?

[hangingoutattheendofmywick]

So I've been dieting and exercising since giving birth and it has gone really well. I feel better, more confident, everyone has commented on how much weight I've lost - I've started running and exercising and honestly feel great.
Then on Sunday I weighed myself and looked up my BMI. and it says I'm bloody Obese. As you can imagine this floored me. A feeling of how?! What's the point?! I would have to lose 2 stone now to be "healthy weight". I'm between a size 12 to 14 right now. I wish I hadn't weighed myself. Thought I'd come so far so now I'm just feeling pretty depressed.
Does your BMI matter to you?
Does your dress size?
Or the way you feel about yourself?
When I look in the mirror I think I look good - for the first time in years - but this BMI thing has just thrown me off.

For me it's how I feel.

I have lost 5 stone. I have today purchased some size 10 jeans, when they fasten I will be happy. I feel fantastic and that's what matters. January 1st I am calling target (slimming world) and I am starting 2017 feeling great, I may be officially overweight still but I don't care

You're a size 10 but are overweight? Is that possible?

It's all about how I feel. I'm 12 stone 5 after having my baby but I used to be 10.5. I'm usually a 10 now I'm a 12-14. I hate photos of me t the moment but I'm in no hurry to lose weight as I'm tearing around after a 10 month old and I'm knackered!

I tend to go by BMI but take it with a pinch of salt! It's not a perfect method. I know I'm feeling my best when I've got loads of energy and find it easy to get clothes in my size though.

I have never had a BMI as low as 25 as an adult, not even when I was a size 10 and a competitive runner. Even when I am not fat, I am dense. When I had to have an operation, I had to be shunted back to be weighed again, because the anaesthetist refused to believe the weight on my chart was correct.

Focus on how you feel and how fit you are. If you're going to measure, focus on your waist measurement - it should be less than half your height.

Feel - as everybody's frame and ideal weight is slightly different

go for lean and toned and Non Scale Victories

I go by my BMI.
I started a new lifestyle change last july and my focus was always to have a healthy bmi, what clothes size iam is irrelevant to me, i don't believe the sizing is accurate anyway, i have clothes (that all fit) ranging from a 14 to an 8!!

If you google bmi accurate you will get a lot of info about how it isn't as basically it can't tell if you have fat or muscle on you. I'm sure there was a report a couple of years ago about sports star being obese by their bmi figure and people like David Beckham were on it.
I know what my ideal weight is and it has me fitting in size 12/14 clothes but still classes me as over weight/ obese on my bmi. If you want a figure to work by that isn't just weight consider getting scales that tell you your body fat % as then you can see a better indication of what your exercise is doing for you.

For me it is how I look in clothes. I loiter in the overweight section of charts, my bmi is 25.6. But I have a waist and I try to eat healthily and mindfully.

Keep up with the good work op focus on how good you feel and ignore those numbers.

Do you keep a picture of you at your before weight? I find this really motivating. I don't ever want to go back to being 5st + overweight ever again. When I feel demotivated I look at my photo and give myself a moment to reflect on how far I have come.

Keep going op!

thanks for all your lovely replies. I will keep going - after my blip. Ive decided to ignore the scales entirely. I am almost happy with myself if I could just flatten my tummy a bit more - but after 2 C Sections that's quite hard. I do know that I don't dread seeing myself in the mirror or in photos now and I feel confident - so that's what i am going to focus on. Interesting what you said about the person couldn't believe you were the weight you were. Yonks ago i went to a bootcamp and the woman weighing me asked me to step on and off the scales about 6 times as she couldn't believe I was so heavy but looked as I did (the slimmest I have ever been) she thought there was a big mistake. I think I'm probably dense (in more ways than one!)

I'm dense too - I used to be so skinny (undiagnosed coeliac disease) and accused of having an eating disorder but was always weighed several times, then on different scales in the docs and hospitals as I was so much heavier than I looked...

I'm a bit porky at the moment but when I slim down to my 'happy' size (size 12 in every shop which means 10 in some as clothes sizes are weird too) I still weigh over 11 stone at 5' 5"

It's all about how you feel - well done you and carry on feeling great and proud of yourself!

At 145 lbs in sept I had a bmi of 24. I dont know what I weigh at the moment. I've had a couple of holidays since then but while the numbers add up for me it's how I feel in my clothes.

I know I eat very healthily. I still have my mum tum. I'm aiming for 138 for jan 1 st

I'm still a size 14. A 12 in vanity sizing and some of my dresses are16.

It's all how you feel.

It's about how I feel, usually, how my clothes that I've had for ages fit, and the actual weight I am.

I don't bother with my BMI, I try not to measure myself and clothes sizes are a bloody joke anyway these days.

I know I'm carrying far too much weight around my middle just now, and therefore have a dreadful muffin top - this makes me cross with myself, so I should be doing something about it. BUT I just bought a pair of wide-elastic waisted trousers, and needed the size 12 because the 14 would be too loose very quickly. Ridiculous! There's no way I'm a genuine size 12 now!

Join the club! Size 12 - 14 here too and an obese BMI. However, I do know why. I'm lift a hell of a lot of weights in addition to cardio 5 times a week. I eat very healthy (low carb, high protein & fat, lots of veg with every meal), and while I could cut down on the wine, I feel fantastic! My regular GP always laughs when she weighs me because I weigh more then her, but she's larger then me.

Honestly I feel the healthiest I have in my entire life. Much better then when I was 25 with a BMI of 17.

I'm trying to lose a little weight now, to be honest though, because my old clothes are feeling a little tight (a few weeks of indulgence! oops). But I suspect I won't get much below obese, much less into a healthy BMI.

It's about how I feel in my skin.

To be honest, I think it sounds like you might simply be used to seeing yourself at such a high weight, that you feel super slim in comparison now. That's fantastic, but it doesn't mean that you are actually at a healthy weight yet - just that you are a healthIER weight than before.

There's a bit of wiggle room with BMI, but 2 stone over the healthy weight range is still significant.

The "fat vs muscle" argument is very widely abused when it comes to BMI. Yes, for athletes and weight trainers who do a significant amount of sport or weight lifting, it will skew their BMI.

Someone who does zumba/yoga/jogging a few times a week is not going to have the muscle mass for it to skew their readings.

You'd have to be basically training for an iron man before it made any real difference.

It's the same for the healthy eating argument. Healthy eating is great, but the quantity is just as important - people tend to vastly over estimate their calorie needs. If you think that the average woman needs what, 1800 calories a day you have to bear in mind that the "average woman" is also a size 16 and about 5 foot 3. So basically the average woman is obese and an unhealthy weight. Averages aren't great indicators to go by!

I go with how I feel mostly....I am classed as obese (5ft 5ins, size 16, 198lbs) (since coming off the pill I have put a stone on that I can't shift)

I certainly don't look my weight (the nurse checked her scales twice when I got on them), have an actual curvy hourglass figure...

I exercise 5 nights a week (military fitness, zumba, kickboxing and swimming) and eat pretty well (no alcohol, low carb, lots of fruit/veg etc) and have been told I have a pretty high muscle mass.

I would rather be able to flip a tractor tyre, swim 2 miles in under 45mins, do pull ups and press ups, and kick the crap out of someone - all at an unhealthy BMI....

I would rather be able to flip a tractor tyre, swim 2 miles in under 45mins, do pull ups and press ups, and kick the crap out of someone - all at an unhealthy BMI....

Agree with you. I love being able to go home and lift my 20 kilo DS over my head to make him giggle. I love swimming for an hour and a half straight without feeling winded. I love when I add some more kilos to the bench press or the leg press, or in general lift more!

I could never do any of that when I had a healthy BMI. I was fit, but not fit like I am now.

Do I look like a supermodel? No, like you I've got an hourglass figure, and I do have some fat over my muscles so they aren't as defined as they could be if I lost some weight, but now I've actually got boobs and a butt! Which I never had with a healthy BMI. I feel....womanly...(not saying thin women aren't womanly, just saying I feel more womanly) then I used to.

The only thing that bugs me is my tummy because I have a four inch gap in my ab muscles, and it makes me look wider and more bloated then I am. But I'm on week 3 of a 12 week exercise program to close that gap, so fingers crossed.

Interesting thread, I used to go on how I felt in my clothes but now seem to obsess about my belly size which obviously varies in bloat depending on time of month and what I eat.

Could it be that if you weigh heavier then you look it could be too much visceral fat?

How I feel, definitely. Does anything else really matter? I've been told by doctors and nurses that BMI is a load of bunk, as it's such an individual thing. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to have surgery a few years back because my BMI put me in the 'obese' category, but the surgeon said that it's pretty easy to look at someone and tell if they are obese (ie. their weight detrimentally affects their day-to-day life) and I didn't fall into that category, plus I'm as healthy as a horse! Barely get so much as a cold.

BUT at the moment I DON'T feel good. I've always hovered around a size 16-18 which has suited my proportions and I've felt good (I'm 6ft tall too, just well built and sturdy!) but now I'm in the realms of 20-22. I had DS1 3 months ago and I'm really struggling with the baby weight. I feel sluggish, wobbly and unattractive. Plus I've put on weight around my face, which I hate. But it's so hard to get motivated to start running again when we're heading into winter...plus I'm so sleep deprived that all I want to do is sit on the sofa and eat cake!

I'll worry about it in the new year...

This is all really interesting. I've packed weight on in the last 6 months- I know because of my clothes and the way I feel. I've no idea how much, I haven't weighed myself since I was pregnant with rd, who's now 5. I've been a size 14 since having my first child, which I've been ok with, as I'm quite tall and didn't feel too flabby. But recently I'm struggling to wear some of my more fitted clothes and i couldn't wear my favourite black skinny jeans yesterday as they gave me a really attractive flab roll around my middle. I've always had a bit of a belly but it appears to be out of control recently! This is definitely my problem area- I appear to have completely lost whatever waist I once had...

Anyway, was thinking about weighing myself and starting to lose some- but reading this I may not bother weighing in... Will it just depress me? Should I just cut down on food, get my fat ass on the cross trainer and go by how well my clothes are fitting??

Could it be that if you weigh heavier then you look it could be too much visceral fat?

Unlikely. Visceral fat is the fat that makes you look fat because its' stored exclusively in your belly and abdomen. The more you have, the bigger your belly gets. So, yes if you have a lot of visceral fat you will weigh more, but you will also look fat along with it.

I for one don't carry much weight around my middle. I've got an hourglass figure and noticeable curves in the right places. My tummy doesn't look to big (once I get rid of the gap in my abs it will actually be pretty flat). But I do carry weight in my upper arms and thighs, which is technically the healthier brown fat, and not what doctors worry about.

I'm the same as a couple of other posters, a size 10 but according to my bmi I'm overweight. My dc have the same problem, dc4 weighed 11.6lbs when born, the midwife was in shock when she picked him up and the words she used were "oh my your a weighty little fella and you don't look it". She also fetched new scales as she thought the ones she had were broken! As long as you are happy with how you look in the mirror, nothing else matters.

The way I look in clothes. I am short, with very large breasts so BMI is always high. I'm am fit, I cycle and swim loads and can go for miles but will always be 'overweight' occurring to the charts..

Thanks for all your replies! Good to know I'm not the only one. I would recommend not looking at scales myself. They just depress me. I like the way my body looks - I look slim. No one would look at me and say I was obese - there ain't no way. So sod the BMI. I'm being very healthy 5 days a week - and enjoying treats at the weekend and I'm exercising 3 times a week with a 5k weekly run. So I'm happy. I'm not going to starve myself or be miserable just to get to a number. No one knows it anyway!