Do obese women who say that they are merely "big-boned" actually believe it?

[The Bith Shuffle]

My title is my question - and I really do want to know. Do they actually believe this? I think it's fair to ask.

If this sort of question is considered offensive on the boards, feel free to censor. I am rather new.

[sandra_nz]

Surely it's possible to be both obese (in terms of fat percentage) and big-boned? In fact, I wonder if being overweight all your life would actually lead to bigger bones and whether any research has been done in that area.

[Darryl Lict]

I think that men will make the same excuse. That said, a buddy from college who has weighed a lot more than me has a skeleton that is probably 30% wider and carries a lot more weight intrinsically. People have declared the big-boned clause, and in this particular case, yeah, his bones are way bigger than mine.

[Waenara]

I don't think any one can make a blanket statement about what most obese women truly believe.

Given that, a few points I would make are:
I've never personally heard any women I know actually use the phrase "big boned" as an actual (non-joke) statement referring to themself - it's more of a cultural joke (e.g. Cartman from South Park.)
I agree with sandra_nz that fat vs. big-boned is a false dichotomy - it's possible to be both.
Being overweight protects against osteoporosis (cite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteoporosis#Potentially_modifiable)), so heavy people are less likely to have thin, fragile skeletons.
I admit that I am fat (BMI 41.6), but I do believe that (objectively speaking) I also have a large "frame" (skeleton). For example, this website (http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/bodyFrame.php) shows how to calculate your frame size by measuring your wrist or elbow. My elbow width is 8cm, which being female and 5'5" tall it says I have a large frame.
By contrast, my mother is almost the same size as me (wears the same size clothing, but is shorter and weighs slightly less), and she freely admits she has a small frame size.

[AllShookDown]

I've never heard large people refer to themselves as big-boned. In my experience, other people say that to them to make them feel better . "Oh, you're just big-boned."

[ZipperJJ]

I think I'm big-boned - my hands and feet are huuuuge. I'll also never be a size 6. I think my skeleton does add a lot to my weight.

I also think (know) that on top of that I am really fat. I think that adds a lot to my weight AND my size (much more than my skeleton ever could).

I don't get the two confused at all.

[Chanteuse]

I think I'm big-boned - my hands and feet are huuuuge. I'll also never be a size 6. I think my skeleton does add a lot to my weight.

I also think (know) that on top of that I am really fat. I think that adds a lot to my weight AND my size (much more than my skeleton ever could).

I don't get the two confused at all.

This is what I came in to say. My SIL and I are both the same height, but her frame is considerably smaller than mine. For example: when she got married, she weighed 109 pounds. She looked very nice. At that weight, I would be skeletal. I looked very slender and healthy at 135 pounds, a weight I left far behind ages ago.

So yes, I am far too heavy, but I am also large-boned.

[Mrs. Cake]

Yup, big-boned here, with a doctor's note to prove it. In the late anorexic '70's, I had a severe attack of gastroenteritis that eventually resulted in me dropping to 116 lbs (I was 5'3" and 15 years old at the time). At that weight, with my build, my doctor was concerned that I was becoming dangerously underweight, although I was still "fat" compared my peers. He recommended (seconded by another doctor some years later) that I should aim for 125-135 to be healthy.

Looking back at pictures of myself at even 140 lbs at 5'5", I looked quite slender. I'm about 25 lbs over that now, so while not quite obese, I'm certainly both overweight and big boned. Like ZipperJJ, my hands and feet are large, my shoulders and hips broad, and my head is pretty damned big, but it's all in proportion. My sister and mother are both slender-boned, but about the same weight as I am, and we really do carry it very differently.

[Muffin]

When a person eats ground beef, the occasional chips of undigested bone will collect in a pellet in the person's stomach. Given big enough volume of consumption (say five or ten burgers a day over a ten year period), the pellet of undigested bone will become very bigl. When you see a pot bellied person waddling along, it is a huge ball of undigested bone that is distending their gut. Thus they are big boned, and it is the multi-national fast food chains' fault. To confirm this, go up to a pot bellied person in a fast food joint and poke his or her tummy.

[elfkin477]

I think that men will make the same excuse. That said, a buddy from college who has weighed a lot more than me has a skeleton that is probably 30% wider and carries a lot more weight intrinsically. People have declared the big-boned clause, and in this particular case, yeah, his bones are way bigger than mine. This is something I've wondered about a coworker, though: is it really the bones that make her broader? Mary has much broader shoulders and hips than I do, and she weighs within 20 pounds of double what I do. Suppose she lost a lot of weight - would she still have very broad shoulders and hips? I don't think she would because people who lose a lot of weight would be very odd looking afterwards and they seldom are.

[outlierrn]

southpark/ he must have a huge bone in his ass /southpark





Seriously:
humans have a almost unlimited ability to maintain a good opinion of themselves through rationalization and self deception

[Freudian Slit]

southpark/ he must have a huge bone in his ass /southpark





Seriously:
humans have a almost unlimited ability to maintain a good opinion of themselves through rationalization and self deception

Hmmm, IME people have an almost unlimited capacity for self loathing.

[Fish]

This thread has turned into "is it possible to be big-boned?" The answer is yes, it is.

If you have doubts about this, then think about it. Tailors have been measuring people for centuries, if not millenia. Measuring what, you ask? Get fitted for a shirt and jacket and find out. The shirt's measurement will probably be collar/sleeve, and the jacket will be chest/sleeve. If the tailor is fitting a custom suit, he'll measure a man across the shoulders, under the arm, around the chest, and from his neck to his hip. Your slacks would be measured in waist, hips, and inseam. Other places, too, especially if you're Joey Tribiani. I'll let the women speak up about the various measurements necessary to be tailored for an equivalent fit on a full-sleeved gown of some kind.

It is clear that not everybody's arms are the same length proportionate to other measurements. Now answer this question: when you get fat, do your arms get longer?

No.

Clearly, it is possible to be weight X and have considerable variation in the length of one's arms. That's why they make suit jackets in sizes like "44 Long." That's why they make shoe sizes in "extra wide."

Skeletons vary. Why is this even a question?

[RoniaBorkason]

Chiming in, another big-boned and fat person. In college, I was in a study at the local hospital on bone density (as it related to osteoporosis and age) and have the scans they did (MRI? The big loud ring thing) to prove it: my bone density is almost two standard deviations above the norm. I'm 5'8" and I was skinny until puberty - but always at the 80 to 90th percentile on height and weight.
Anecdotally, my family is almost exclusively heavy-boned or very lightly boned. Bricks or birds, as it were. My grandmother weighed 155 when she married, and my aunt, her daughter, weighed 115 and barely fit in the same dress. They were approximately the same height and age at the time of using the dress, too.

[dangermom]

I'm big-boned, and I'm fat. My sister is big-boned and slim, but it's really obvious that her bones are just large. She's built like a model, only in a larger size. I think my oldest daughter is going to be the same; she has no extra fat (I have to take in every waistband), but her legs are just not like the legs of her bitty little friends. They look like Amazon legs compared to the others, but it's easy to see that it's all bone and muscle--just like my sister's legs.

My hands, knees, etc. have always been large--in high school my hands were the same size as many of my guy friends' hands. I can barely get a regular women's watch on my wrist, which is not fat. I was never a size 6 even in junior high when I wasn't at all pudgy; I doubt that it would be possible for me to ever be less than a 12 (which I would love to be). My shoulders are slightly broader and my arms slightly longer than the norm for women (as I remember every time I try to buy a blouse). I do think that my bones contribute to my weight quite a bit; even if I lost the weight I need to lose, I would never be 120. My ideal, very healthy weight would be more like 160.

Maybe it was all that milk I drank in high school.

[Peanuthead]

Okay, since this is IMHO I'm gonna let it fly and I don't care what you fatties think.

I stand 5' 10" and weigh about 150 lbs. I'm pretty sure that any other guy my height would have bones of approximately the same size. I mean how much difference can there be in the size of our bones? And what does that have to do with weight anyway? Aren't my bones bigger than someone who is only 5 feet tall? There are lots of 5 footers who weigh a hell of a lot more than me.

Suppose I gained another 50 pounds. Would my bones be bigger than they are now? No! Could I compensate for it by saying I'm big boned? Yeah. Pretty slick, but BS.

To sum it up, it is my opinion that people who claim their excess weight is due to big bones were told that by someone who didn't want to hurt their feelings and wound up believing it.

This post not only states my opinion but also adresses the OP.

[AHunter3]

I am small boned.

ON THE ONE HAND: Big boned people can carry some additional weight and it scarcely makes a difference. If I gain 8 ounces it shows.

ON THE OTHER HAND: No matter how much a big boned person starves and exercises, those hip bones aren't going to shrink down to look like mine. The front of their ribcage cartilage is still going to be a lot farther away from their vertebrae than the corresponding bones in my bod.

And as others have said, it has nothing to do with sex or gender.

[Freudian Slit]

I am small boned.

ON THE ONE HAND: Big boned people can carry some additional weight and it scarcely makes a difference. If I gain 8 ounces it shows.

This is true. I'm very thin, and just small in pretty much all way. Short, slender, small frame, all of that. I haven't really gained lots of weight, but whenever I've lost weight, it's made me look really awful. It was never very much, but I remember losing maybe a few pounds in college when I was exercising a lot/eating less (not consciously) and my parents being very worried because it just showed so damned much.

I guess it also works the other way around. Like when I get older, if I gain a few pounds, it'll show, and I'll have to work at keeping my weight down.

[Omega Glory]

I admit that I am fat (BMI 41.6), but I do believe that (objectively speaking) I also have a large "frame" (skeleton). For example, this website (http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/bodyFrame.php) shows how to calculate your frame size by measuring your wrist or elbow. My elbow width is 8cm, which being female and 5'5" tall it says I have a large frame.
By contrast, my mother is almost the same size as me (wears the same size clothing, but is shorter and weighs slightly less), and she freely admits she has a small frame size.[/list]
Does anyone else get different results from the tests in that link? Apparently, I'm small, medium and large framed.

I don't see any reason not to believe some people are large boned. As someone said upthread, look at shoe sizes. Healthy height/weight charts have acceptable ranges, so a larger framed person could be on the higher end of a healthy weight without being overweight or obese.

[monstro]

I've never heard anyone use "big-bonedness" to excuse their own obesity. In my experience, 99% of fat people--especially women--know they're fat.

When big-bonedness is used as an excuse, it's usually some kindly grandmother doing it. As in, "My grandson's a little husky, but he's just big-boned."

[Guinastasia]

My aunt is "big-boned". Wide shoulders, large torso, wide hips. She's six feet tall, she's got big feet, long legs. She's not fat-but she's BIG. As in intimidating big.

[Zoe]

Of course there are big-boned people and small-boned people. Either of them can be obese and either of them can be slender.

I am overweight for 5'2", but I'm within a healthy range and weigh almost 150 pounds less than I used to. I'm small-boned and because of osteoporosis, my bones are getting smaller, dammit.

One test that I was shown involved wrapping my fingers around my wrist. Using my bird finger and my thumb, they overlap enough that my thumb covers the fingernail on my bird finger easily.

I aslo had the smallest fingers in my high school graduating class when we ordered class rings. And they've gotten smaller. I inherited a diamond ring three years ago which I had sized at a 4 and a half. It's now too big for me.

The amount of weight that a person puts on can make a difference in things like ring size even though the bone size remains the same. When I married, I wore a size 8 ring.

[Telperien]

I am a woman who is both fat and large-boned. It would be ludicrous to say I wasn't large-boned if it weren't true. My mom is fat as well, but she is a small-boned, small-framed person. She has tiny wrists and ankles no matter what her weight, and weighs much less than I do even at the same clothing size. As for me, I wore a size ten ring even at a "normal" weight, and I have big feet, broad shoulders, and thick wrists.

I do know one thing most obese women agree on--people are way too concerned about us and our lives. Butt the fuck out.

[Happy Poster]

There is no such thing as big boned. Load of rubbish.

[outlierrn]

Hmmm, IME people have an almost unlimited capacity for self loathing.

you say that like it represents a contradiction

[Nzinga, Seated]

There is no such thing as big boned. Load of rubbish.

You know, I gotta say that I think that 'big boned', for all intents and purposes, is indeed a load of rubbish.

Do some people have larger bones than others? I guess so, since I don't believe folks in this thread (with Doctor's notes, no less) would make that up.

But it doesn't mean anything. There is no way in the world someone's bones are big enough to make a thin person appear fat, so what is the point of ever even mentioning 'big bones'? I don't get it.

[Captain Carrot]

There is no such thing as big boned. Load of rubbish.
Bullshit.
Okay, since this is IMHO I'm gonna let it fly and I don't care what you fatties think.Being in IMHO isn't an excuse to be a jerk.

I stand 5' 10" and weigh about 150 lbs. I'm pretty sure that any other guy my height would have bones of approximately the same size. I mean how much difference can there be in the size of our bones?Actually, quite a lot.

[Captain Carrot]

But it doesn't mean anything. There is no way in the world someone's bones are big enough to make a thin person appear fat, so what is the point of ever even mentioning 'big bones'? I don't get it.

There is an enormous difference between thin and fat, though. I think having a large frame would be quite enough to make someone who is mildly overweight look distinctly fat.

[Lamar Mundane]

My last two physicals were by two different doctors, and they both told me that my ideal weight is 225 lbs. They did the wrist measurement thing, too. At 6'3", that would put my BMI at 28.1, "overweight" and not far from "obese".

I would look like a skeleton at 200 lbs.

[Lynn Bodoni]

My sister has tiny, delicate bones. This means that not only is she short, but she's slightly built. A pound on her looks like 5 pounds on someone who has normal sized bones.

Big bones can mean different things. It can mean that a person has a larger frame, or it can mean that the bones themselves are thicker. For instance, my daughter has very wide shoulders. This gives her more of an hourglass shape than most women, and she needs to weigh more than someone with narrower shoulders, because she needs muscle and flesh to fill out her frame.

To understand how thick bones can make someone appear fatter, get yourself some toothpicks and clay. Roll the clay out into sheets about a quarter inch thick. Bundle three toothpicks together and wrap them with a sheet of clay. Now bundle seven toothpicks together and wrap it in a sheet of clay. The seven piece wrap is going to look fatter than the three piece wrap, because of the toothpick "skeleton".

[dangermom]

But it doesn't mean anything. There is no way in the world someone's bones are big enough to make a thin person appear fat, so what is the point of ever even mentioning 'big bones'? I don't get it.
It does make you look different, though. And I don't know anyone who actually says "I'm just big-boned!" unless as a joke. The fact that I have large bones does not excuse the fact that I'm overweight. It does, however, mean that I am never, ever going to weigh 120 lbs. or look 'skinny,' unless I'm on the verge of death from starvation.

[lee]

When I was starving, not eating at all most days because I was saving my money for rent so I would not be homeless, I weighed 125 lbs. I was 5 ft tall. I had no body fat to pinch at my waist or on my sides, my face began to look like skin on a skull. I felt like my bones were trying to poke through when i sat or laid down on a hard surface, like in a bath tub or on a wooden chair. I still wore a size 12 jeans because my pelvis was so freaking big I could not get a size 10 to zip, but the waist of the 12 was about 6 inches too big. I really do have big bones.

I'm fat now, but that is a whole nother story.

[GameHat]

Some people do have larger frames.

I've had both the health club and a doctor do a good body fat measurement and tell me that a good lean weight for me would be about 190. I'm only 6' tall, so by a BMI calculator that would still be overweight.

I also found this out when I tried to borrow a jacket from a friend. He's about my height plus has an ENORMOUS beer gut, so I figure no matter what it won't be too small on me. Completely wrong. Plenty of room to button it but it simply doesn't fit across my shoulders - as in, I hold the cuffs and put my arms down, the arms are ripping off.

My wrist circumference is 19.5 cm. The online frame size calculators tell me that puts me in a large frame, which is consistent with what I know.

...now, how close to that lean 190 I am, well, we don't need to discuss that :p

[even sven]

Its funny, because we are hearing from a lot of fat big-boned people, and not a lot of thin big-boned people.

Now, thin big-boned people exist. I worked fitting guys for suit jackets for high school students- when most people are with normal weight ranges- and it's pretty easy to tell who has a big frame and who has a small one. I know a guy who is nearly seven feet tall. He wears shoes so large he can't buy them in regular stores. His waist is almost unbelievably broad. But he still manages to fit in the BMI charts. And no, he doesn't look "like a skeleton." He looks like a large slim guy.

And I think this is the disconnect. Just because you can carry more weight without it being apparent doesn't make it healthy. And yeah, a healthy weight is indeed quite slim. Sure, a big boned person might be healthy at 20 lbs more than a petit person. But don't tell me you are 50+ pounds overweight but that it's only because you are big boned.

[Pyper]

I am a slim big-boned person. I am not tall (5'4), and quite skinny (110 pounds), but I have a very broad torso and thick bones. I cannot touch my thumb to my middle finger if I wrap them around my wrist. My bra band size is 38. I don't look like a stocky troll or anything- just athletic. People often ask if I am a gymnast.

[Cat Fight]

I'm relatively thin and have big bones. I can sit by a friend of about the same size and weight and you can see it in our knees – mine are much wider and more square, whatever my weight. I've also got a giant head, hands and feet.

The funny thing is that whenever I bring this up people assume I'm calling myself fat, which I'm not.

[badbadrubberpiggy]

I am a slim big-boned person. I am not tall (5'4), and quite skinny (110 pounds), but I have a very broad torso and thick bones. I cannot touch my thumb to my middle finger if I wrap them around my wrist. My bra band size is 38. I don't look like a stocky troll or anything- just athletic. People often ask if I am a gymnast.

And for contrast, I'm 5'4", have a 32 bra band, and have a hard time finding watches to fit me because they're too big. The one I'm currently wearing is on the smallest hole. And I'm about 30 lbs heavier than Pyper. I have small feet & hands, as well.

Frame size varies a lot.

And like other people in this thread, I've never actually heard an overweight person used "big boned" as an excuse as to why they are overweight. Except in sitcoms and the like, but definitely not in real life.

[Harriet the Spry]

Is there some reason you think that the healthy or ideal weight for all people is identical regardless of body composition? That seems unlikely.

I don't know of any obese (as in, BMI over 30) people who would say the issue is only one of skeletal structure. I mean, :dubious:. But keeping frame size in mind is useful when your 5'3, 125 pound teenage daughter thinks she really needs to weigh 110 like her friend with a very different build, or no one will ever love her. From what I can tell playing around with BMI charts and frame size advice, frame size essentially tells you where in the normal-weight range is normal for you.

[Freudian Slit]

I don't know of any obese (as in, BMI over 30) people who would say the issue is only one of skeletal structure. I mean, :dubious:. But keeping frame size in mind is useful when your 5'3, 125 pound teenage daughter thinks she really needs to weigh 110 like her friend with a very different build, or no one will ever love her. From what I can tell playing around with BMI charts and frame size advice, frame size essentially tells you where in the normal-weight range is normal for you.

I think this is what I'm coming away with from this thread. That is, obviously no one's bones are so big they need to weigh 400 pounds. But two people of the same height can have different weights and still be healthy because of different frames and body types and so on. Just plain height/weight doesn't tell you enough.

[MeanOldLady]

I admit that I am fat (BMI 41.6), but I do believe that (objectively speaking) I also have a large "frame" (skeleton). For example, this website (http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/bodyFrame.php) shows how to calculate your frame size by measuring your wrist or elbow. My elbow width is 8cm, which being female and 5'5" tall it says I have a large frame.Wouldn't a larger person have a larger wrist than a smaller person just because of the extra padding involved? I mean, you're not cutting yourself open and measuring the bone only, are you? You're measuring around skin and fat?

[gonzomax]

Wouldn't a larger person have a larger wrist than a smaller person just because of the extra padding involved? I mean, you're not cutting yourself open and measuring the bone only, are you? You're measuring around skin and fat?

Fat wrists?

[MeanOldLady]

You've never seen a fat wrist?

[Omega Glory]

I guess if you didn't have bony wrists, like most people, you'd use the elbow measurement.

[Ferret Herder]

Wouldn't a larger person have a larger wrist than a smaller person just because of the extra padding involved? I mean, you're not cutting yourself open and measuring the bone only, are you? You're measuring around skin and fat?
Not sure about the wrist measurement, but I did the elbow measurement - you put your arm out straight, palm up, then bend at the elbow, bringing your forearm up 90 degrees. Feel the two little bones sticking out at either side of your elbow? You measure between those - and you'd have to be seriously obese to have any fat covering those to any extent.

I registered as large in frame, normal BMI. (I could stand to lose 10-15 lbs and I'm working on it, but I am within the normal BMI range at 5'9", 165 - 24.36. I've been down to 22ish in the last few years.) I have my mother's body frame. My father was always slim in frame, and my sister got his. She has no hips, while I'm hourglass-shaped. Push on the side of my hip and there's pretty much no give; they can't get narrower. My sister could stand behind me (we're the same height) and be obscured, easily. Her shoulders are measurably narrower, hips narrower, everything.

[BMalion]

I always tell people who give me that big-boned excuse:

"No, a brontosaurus is big boned, you're a fat pig."

But only to my good friends. :p

[Fish]

Okay, since this is IMHO I'm gonna let it fly and I don't care what you fatties think.
If you paid any attention to my post you would realize how wrong you are. Please reconsider the idea that your body type represents the average person. People differ from each other in a myriad of ways, and if you can't see that ...

Never mind. You're a waste of my time.

[dangermom]

Wouldn't a larger person have a larger wrist than a smaller person just because of the extra padding involved? I mean, you're not cutting yourself open and measuring the bone only, are you? You're measuring around skin and fat?Maybe it varies by person, but my wrists don't have fat on them; there's skin over bone and not much else. Maybe I'm not overweight enough to have fat wrists. I need to lose about 25-30 pounds.

As for a larger frame obscuring weight gain or loss, that's certainly true in my case. 5 pounds either way doesn't seem to change how my clothes fit or how I look; I have to lose 10 before it gets noticeable.

[MeanOldLady]

I lost a little weight last year, and I now wear my watch two notches back. I have never been fat, and by no means could my wrist have been described that way, but it is slimmer now. I have seen wrists that could be described, unequivocally, as fat. These have all been very large people.

[Zeriel]

I am somewhat overweight and big-boned. I currently stand 6'0" and am somewhat overweight at 240. When I'm 220, I fit in size 34 jeans and start to show a six-pack.

I have two buddies who's also 6'0", but when they're 220, they have big old-man pot bellies and both of them only start looking really in shape down around 160lbs.

I wear a 46L suit. Both of them wear 38-40.

There is such a thing as frame size and it's definitely distinct from being overweight. Frame size does not "excuse" being overweight, though--the only context in while "I'm big-boned, not fat" makes any legitimate sense is when comparing raw weights or BMI in a context divorced from frame size. That is, my doctor started telling me to eat more the one time I got down to about 170 (wrestling in high school), when the "normal" weight range for my height is listed at 134-180. Why? Because I'm big boned. Same as when I get told to ignore the BMI stuff because I'm relatively high in muscle mass--weight and height are not the only two statistics that describe a person, and weight alone is not an accurate predictor of what someone will look like.

[Mosier]

There is no such thing as big boned. Load of rubbish.

I know a guy whose skeleton weighs 200 pounds. I'm taller than him. You're pretty much 100% wrong here.

[Evil Economist]

I'm pretty much the classic case of big boned. I'm tall and I have huge joints and wide shoulders. When I was growing up I went through a growth spurt that made me so thin you could see all my ribs and all the little bones in my spine, but I was wider than everyone else around me, and I weighed a lot more than anyone would expect.

My frame makes me look skinnier than I am; I'm probably 30 or 40 pounds overweight but no one would guess that from looking at me. So, my experience has been that being big boned makes it easier to look skinny.

[Mirror Image egamI rorriM]

I know a guy whose skeleton weighs 200 pounds.

Is there a medical term for this?

[Nzinga, Seated]

You've never seen a fat wrist?

Peep this adorable-ass fat wrist. (http://www.danzfamily.com/archives/blogphotos/07/645-wills-wrist.jpg)

I know that people are saying that mostly 'big boned' is used as a joke, but in my childhood, I remember it being used a lot, quite seriously. There would be children that could barely haul their butts around, and the adults would sit around saying, "You aint fat, baby. You just big boned...just like your mama." Usually, these kids would be solid, or stocky, or tall or whatever, but they were all fat, and the big boned thing was only said to make them feel better about it. Which is fine, I guess, since not feeling better about themselves is not likely to make them lose weight...but it is still not true that their fatness was due to big bones.

[Dublin11]

If there was no such thing as big bones or small bones, there'd only be one size of shoe for men and one size of shoe for women.
Seeing as this is demonstrably not the case, there must be different sized bones.

[Toxylon]

Bone and subsequently skeleton size varies by the individual, as any physical anthropologist will tell you. Another question is how much mass does the difference in bone size account for? I'd say not that much. Bone volume doesn't vary nearly as much as fat or even muscle volume. Big bones might add a couple pounds at best over a similarly tall, equal lean and fat mass, small-boned subject.

[Zeriel]

Bone and subsequently skeleton size varies by the individual, as any physical anthropologist will tell you. Another question is how much mass does the difference in bone size account for? I'd say not that much. Bone volume doesn't vary nearly as much as fat or even muscle volume. Big bones might add a couple pounds at best over a similarly tall, equal lean and fat mass, small-boned subject.

It's not so much the weight of the bones that's the issue, it's the weight distribution the bones can support.

Like I said, "Big-boned" seems to me to be most sensibly applied to people who are just big, not necessarily fat. Again with myself as the example, I can say here "I'm 6'0" and 240 lbs, but I'm not fat--I'm big boned." because A) you can't see me and B) I am essentially using "big boned" as shorthand for "I have a larger frame (in the 'linebacker' sense) and therefore proportionally carry more weight than average without being unhealthy".

On the other hand, in real life, a clearly overweight person saying "I'm not fat, I'm big boned" is kinda kidding themselves.

On the other other hand, again in real life, the friends of a person obsessing about their weight (as compared to the average) more than their realistic appearance might say "You're not fat, you're big boned" as shorthand for "your frame is larger than average and you need to take that into account when assessing how good you look based solely on scale numbers."