Do I look 3-5 stone overweight?

[Obsesetits]

I know I’m overweight, absolutely.

I also know we shouldn’t take much notice of BMI because it’s a load of rubbish. But I checked anyway to see what a normal healthy range would be for my height/age and it’s coming up with between 6st 11lbs, and 9st 2lbs. I’m 12st 2lbs currently, I have a 5 and 3 year old and until recently had a 9-5 WFH job so I got too comfortable too close to the fridge 🤣

Even as a teen I’ve always had wider hips, bigger thighs and I was an E cup at 14. So I’ve always seen myself as on the curvier side. I’m much more jiggly now after two kids but I cannot ever imagine myself to be 7stone?! I was really shocked to see that I should lose 3-5 stone! I was expecting maybe 2-3.. but over 3 seems impossible without having a breast reduction 🤣

ps… ignore my extremely discoloured bra and non-matching undies.. it was a comfort day 🤣

@Obsesetits am same height and previously due to health issues was 6st12, was weighed in hospital before surgery to work out re the GA and made flippant comment about still being an 'ok' weight, so ended up getting quizzed re an ED. Looking back, I was skeletal.

Best thing is to just get them out of the house - it's not great for your kids to be eating them either!

Sugar's a relatively easy one to just cold turkey if you can hang on for a few weeks. Your body and taste buds adjust pretty quickly, about week 3 for me from memory and I know others have experienced the same.

You may find that once you've beaten the sugar you don't need to snack at all anymore but it would be good to have some healthier options on hand just in case. Boiled eggs, mini cheese e.g. babybels, veggie sticks and hummous, plain yoghurt, mini tin of tuna or mixed beans.

I agree and think the same applies to people who have very little muscle at all. Especially those who lose weight rapidly and start to look 'gaunt, ill' etc (in their words) as they approach healthy BMI because they are just skin and bones under whatever fat is left, no muscles to give them shape.

I can say from experience though, when you are in the OP's headspace (high BMI but you actually look OK, especially in clothes) the kind of numbers the BMI tells you that you need to lose just feel impossible. More so for people who've been overweight all their adult lives and have no reference for what healthy BMI looks like on them.

A lot of dieting advice and culture doesn't help. Traditionally the objective was to get the number down on the scales and look as lean as possible, usually at a cost of muscle as well as surplus fat.

Added to that, crash diets or low-fat plans like slimming world underestimated how much protein your body needs, making it easier to lose the essential, healthy muscle mass that is metabolically expensive to maintain, especially if not exercising and losing it.

It's only relstively recently that exercice culture has got over its irrational fear of females "bulking" (or their reproductive organs falling out) and diversified away from "feminine" activities like aerobics and yoga into a more equal approach including understanding the massive benefits to the female body from strength work, particularly with heavy weights.

People still cling on to these old, counter-productive, unhealthy beliefs. I still see comments like "don't exercise, it won't help you lose weight" being posted. While exercise can only burn a limited proportion of calories, it boosts your metabolic rate, and especially for women with low TDEEs, a couple of hundred calories a day makes a vital difference between living on a diet that's pretty normal but sensibly managed and what looks like an extremely low, restrictive diet to average+ people.

So many mobility and health problems in old age are caused by sarcopenia (muscle loss). It's a natural process of the body anyway, and worsened in females due to hormonal changes, but that makes it more vital that we have as much muscle mass as possible in younger life, and work at maintaining as much as we can to delay frailty in old age as long as possible.

I have lots of "daft" little goals. One is to keep sitting on and getting up off the floor. When I work with my youth group, I sit on the floor with them, partly because I find it easier communicating on their level, but also it's a habit and motion that I don't want to lose. It's a major functional strength issue, and it's common for older people to fall (contributed to by weakness) then be stuck for a prolonged period causing health issues, rather than specifically the fall injury being the major issue.

And besides all this decades-away active living, muscular shapes look healthy and good in youth.

With kindness yes that picture looks very similar to mine last year and I’ve lost nearly 3 stone I’m now a size 12 bmi 24 at 9st5. I’m curvy short with big boobs. I exercise a lot walk 12-14k steps daily (dog) , run 3x a week, weight train at home to build strength just dumbbells and body weight. Your joints will thank you if you can lose a bit I promise. Good luck

You have an gorgeously enviable shape!
Yes objectively you’re heavier than you should be.
When I was 3-4 stone overweight I had the shape of cuboid.
I actually have a fairly athletic figure now I’ve lost the weight, I’m tall and now my limbs are looking quite lean, I do miss my bum and curves!!
I aimed for healthy though rather than thin, and I think I’m there. Have done it with the help of WLI - not for everyone but no regrets here.
You’ve made a positive step making a plan for starting in September, everything feels better (for me at least!) when we are all back in a routine. Good luck!!

Yes I’m afraid so. You look very like me in shape and size (though I’m a little taller), and I’m a good four stone overweight.

I’m a bit hyper mobile as well and have pelvic organ prolapse (massive back-to-back forceps-delivered baby and I think probably HM stuff was an added risk factor). I’ve always been advised to keep weight lower to help with this and am lucky to have quite a lean build, but the thing that helps most is core strength.

My symptoms are the best they’ve ever been now at a BMI of 21-ish but with a regular Pilates habit and some strength training with weights plus running (which is allegedly bad for prolapse/HM but I love it and can’t give it up.) than at a BMI of 18.5 (basically a stone lighter) but without the Pilates.

So I reckon yes, worth dropping a bit of weight for all round health and well-being, but for hyper mobility stuff I really recommend Pilates as it teaches you to move well within a functional range of motion (yoga is crap for me as I can fold myself into knots and I don’t think my joints actually love that!) and gives you a really solid core which then supports everything. I do an hour a week consistently, then sometimes a bit more if I feel like it, so not insane amounts, and although I don’t think it makes masses of visible difference to my shape I feel tons better than before starting.

You’re beautifully proportioned too - aesthetically I think you look fine as you are.

To add to this, you mention mental health - regular exercise has saved me in this respect. We’re all different but getting outside somewhere green and moving my bones daily, even if only a 10 minute walk squeezed into mum stuff and work stuff, is magic.

Agree, I think for the vast majority of people it is an excellent indicator, and much of the issue people take is as they don’t like what it says, most people are not very muscular, let’s face it.

I don't ignore BMI - I am aiming for a weight in the healthy range, but it shouldn't be anyone's sole criteria of health and the bottom end of the healthy range isn't healthier than the top for everyone. The BMI scale is based on white men. The evidence for women now suggests that having a BMI just above 25 is associated with living longer in older age - there is a protective aspect to a bit of extra padding for postmenopausal women. It's also really important for women to build muscle, particularly going into middle and older age. So while many of us are not very muscular, that's true, encouraging women to gain muscle rather than just telling them to lose weight, can be better for their health.

That’s very kind of them. But also very unhelpful and basically untrue. I know your teens exist in a body positive world but the reality is that a woman who is overweight in her 50s is setting herself up for health complications (and I saw this as an overweight woman). You can’t be carrying around extra weight when your bones start ageing.

Ah OP sending ♥️ If I saw you walking down the street (not in your bra and knickers!) I wouldn’t look twice, in the best way possible! You look absolutely fine in my opinion. Yes I’m sure there are “ideal” weight ranges, but there is variation within that and there is no accounting for lots of factors that influence our weight. According to BMI I’m about 2 stone overweight. Before having DC’s I dieted like crazy and finally got within the “healthy” BMI range but at a huge cost. I was literally eating half a meal and forcing myself to throw the other half away, never indulging on holiday, say no to birthday cake etc. And yes, everyone said I looked great, but it was not an easy or natural weight for me to maintain and it was wearing me down and making me incredibly anxious. After DC’s I couldn’t hyper fixate on it anymore and ended up back at my natural weight.

Also very important not to have dieted yourself into osteoporosis and lost most of your muscle mass along with fat as you head into your 50s!

I recall seeing similar nonsense on the NHS BMI calculator a long time ago. You look like many women do after DC, a bit plump but not hugely overweight. Maybe focus on exercise/fitness rather than weight loss? Walking/swimming or do at home Youtube exercise?

You’re about the same measurements as me and I look the same as you. I should definitely be at least 3 stone lighter which would take to my “heavier” weight when I was mid 20’s. Ideally, I’d be 4 stone lighter and comfortable/ look good for my age. 5 stone lighter would probably make me look a bit too skrawny in the face at my age (50).
It creeps on so easily and clothe sizes have increased over the years so I’ve only gone up 1-2 sizes according to labels. Yet I still have some old jeans and a skirt I loved to wear, and can only just get them over my knees - no danger of getting them even mid thigh 😔

Hi OP. This before and after was a 2 stone loss. I'm tall (over 6ft). So yes, you could lose 3 stone HOWEVER, the BMI calculator is not the guide to use as even at the weight in my after picture, apparently, I could lose another 2 stone and still be in the 'healthy' BMI category . Frankly, if I lost another 2 stone, I feel I'd look like I'd been dug up.

I have the same amount to lose OP.
5ft8 and 14.4 stone
My BMI is 30.4
The best weight for my height is between 8 stone 10 pounds and 11 stone 10 pounds.
The last time I weighed 11st was a year after I had DS1 - so 15 years ago.
Since then I have had another child and gained 3.5st.
I’m going to be 50 next year and am determined to lose it.
I’m not a small built person so won’t be aiming for the bottom end of the “ideal weight” scale.
Does anyone else with 3ish st to lose fancy doing this together?

I'm 5'1 and apparently my ideal weight according to BMI should be between 7 stone and 8 st 9lbs.
I'm currently 10st. I've lost 7lbs recently but have a long way to go. The lightest I've been in recent years (the last 10 years or so) has been 8 St 12 lbs and I couldn't maintain it.
OP, I think you look good as you are but this doesn't mean I don't think you also have some weight to lose, like me. I've definitely been in denial but I want to do this properly now.

Part of the reason for my interest in this is that DM has spent over 20 years being limited by arthritis. She first broke an arm in her 50s, nearly 30 years ago. Later broke her leg.

She's the generation that aspired to look like Twiggy and lost manual natural movement as more women learned to drive and more labour saving devices became avaliable through adulthood, but there wasn't much culture of exercise to fill that gap. Lots of restrictive, punitive yo-yo diets as she resisted the hormonal changes of middle age, and lots of self-flagellation about the loss of her 22" waist.

Last year I got told off for going running on my own. I'm mid-40s FFS

I'm glad younger generations now have access to heathier information and health cultures to have better chances of enjoying life for longer.

Yes neither extreme is good, a healthy weight, whichever age you are is best, and for most of us that’s 24.9 bmi and below, as most of us are not elite athletes carrying a lot of muscle.

Agree with you and I’d also assume a kindness possibly related to their mothers body or other female family members whose feelings they didn’t want to hurt.

i also note this into relation of perfectly healthy weight models where people an get upset and say they are underweight. When they very obviously are not, but often people don’t want to accept they themselves are overweight and their perception is skewed.

I’m a really similar shape and I don’t think I’ll ever have a BMI under 28. It’s 33 or something now. I managed to get to 25 once as an adult and I was eating 6-800 calories and was freezing cold in summer, and had no energy. I’ve got big boobs as well, which didn’t shrink with that extreme diet. I need to lose weight at some point, I’m breastfeeding and it just isn’t happening. I’ll give it some time.

I've lost 4 stone over the past year while also starting some gentle weight training. A lot of people can't believe it and say that while I looked like I could "stand to lose a few pounds", they are astounded when I tell them how much I actually had to lose. I think I carried it well and dressed to "look slim" so even my own mental idea of what 4 stone overweight looked like and my own reality were quite different.

I've still only really gone down from a 12/14 to a 10/12, but my belly fat (waist/hip ratio), BMI and fat % vs muscle have hugely improved which is what I'm really after for a healthy and active mid-life.

I would describe you as curvy, you have a nice waist and shapely figure.
If you’re not happy lose a stone, then see how you feel.
Easy to do, stop the snacking and eat healthy home cooked meals.