Nope these days that’s the only thing I got going for me, a nice body.
Formerly medically obese, now overweight working toward normal.
I’ve got no excuses. Back in the day, I was super skinny and could eat anything I wanted thanks to marathon training. Getting older made it hard as hell to lose any weight (during my last marathon I only lost 4 pounds!), then I got pregnant and got lazy. Until I found out my cholesterol was sky high and I was in danger of needing cholesterol meds in my 30s. So I lost 25 pounds, got pregnant again, started to fall off the wagon and now I’m back on after a blood sugar scare.
All my stats are back to normal, but I have to work hard to stay here, though I’m proud to say that I’ve lost 8 pounds in the last three weeks. I don’t like that I can’t eat anything I want to. But that’s the price I pay to have energy, stay healthy and stick around for my family. Funny how my outlook on it has changed, though. Turns out that I have more motivation to lose weight when it’s my health on the line than my looks. I always thought it’d be the opposite - looks first, health second. I guess I surprised even myself.
BMI, SCHEMI
I am 100 lbs overweight but my bodyfat is currently 23.1 %. Tested by Air displacement via bodypod.
BMI is bullshit. I’m 5’9" and 166, and my BMI (24.5) puts me right at the cusp of “overweight” (25). I have a couple of extra pounds around my middle that seem to have taken up permanent residence but less than 13% body fat.
I’m pretty normal. I have about 15 pounds of baby fat left to lose but he’s only 3 weeks old and I’ve already lost 30 (I wound up with PIH and gained about 15 pounds in the last two weeks of being pregnant due to water - I looked like one of the Clumps).
Anyhow, I’m losing between 1-2 pounds a week now because of breast feeding so Im not that worried.
Before I started grad school, I wanted to lose about 10 pounds. Now that I’m (nearly) done with my masters, it’s more like 30 pounds. The jeans I wore to my orientation no longer fit at ALL. It is incredibly depressing.
But I’m still not horribly overweight. And I’ve definitely lost weight since school ended in April. I just need to get back to my pre-grad student eating habits, and my body should self-correct, I think.
Yeah I am. No excuses for it, either. It could have been prevented and this year I finally started getting serious about fixing my fat ass.
I am fine with the BMI but definitely fatter than I used to be, while weighing the same. I know this because of my waistbands. And feeling things jiggle that didn’t use to jiggle.
Yup, I’m fat. Back between 2002 and 2005 I basically lost another person in weight. How did I do it? Self loathing and starving myself. Which lead to me getting really sick for months. Then I got on anti-depressants and started feeling good about myself so I gained back that weight.
Now, I am getting back to working on my health. The diet stuff is fairly easy for me, it’s the working out that is hard. If I could open a gym where lighting is dim, people work out in their own stalls, and there were fans on all the time I’d call it Stretch’s. I’d be rich bitches!
No. I used to be. But stopping drinking, and having to mess around with what I eat because of some mystery illness has meant that I’ve lost 30 kilos in the last year. So I was fat, and now I’m not. Whether the weight loss will last, who knows, but I’m now thinner than I have been at pretty any point since I hit puberty. It’s odd seeing myself in mirrors.
Official medical definition is a BMI greater than 30. If you want to figure out your BMI, you put your height and weight in here.
That being said, BMI is overrated as an indicator of health. Can you do what you want to do, physically speaking? Can you run a block to catch a bus or carry several bags of groceries up three flights of stairs without getting winded (yes, there’s an urban bias to these measures)? Can you keep up with your kids and tie your shoes without grunting? I can do all that with a BMI I 32.5; my best friend can’t do any of that with a BMI of 19.0.
Anyhoo, yes, by any measure, I’m obese, although not morbidly obese as I once was. But I’m healthy and happy. 
> 30 = obese
> 35 = morbidly
5’10", 163lbs, 31" waist. That’s on the high end of normal BMI.
I flip flop on BMI as a measure. I’d like to lose probably 5 pounds or so, and then I’d be close to ideal. So since I’d like to lose weight, I agree I’m on the higher side. However, when I was in high school and played soccer 6 times a week I was around 155, something like 6% body fat, and that’s still on the upper side of normal. I’d have to go to 127 pounds to be underweight. I’m not sure that’s even possible.
I used to be morbidly obese according to my BMI (36), but most people would have classified me as just overweight.
I had a gastric bypass two months ago and lost over 30 pounds since. I am now, according to BMI, merely overweight. If things go as expected, I’ll lose 30 more pounds in the coming six months and be in the slender BMI category. So far, the surgery is one of my better decisions.
I’m in the same category as Corkboard and others who are lean but muscular, and have a BMI in the high 20s as a result.
About 3 years ago, I was about 10 lbs. (of fat) leaner than I am now, due to some consecutive weeks of incredibly strenuous exercise (hiking on the Appalachian Trail). And despite having an “acceptable” BMI, I was clearly too lean to be healthy. (Too little body fat isn’t good for you, either.)
But I’ve also heard that, for 90%+ of the population, BMI is a good indicator of whether you’re overweight or obese. I’d be curious to see this same poll, but with an extra option for “Somewhat high BMI but definitely not overweight.” Are there lots of us, or is it really just the 3 or 4 of us who said something in the poll?
I would guess that the answer would be that being overweight has become more acceptable to the point where people don’t recognize what normal should be.
Still fall into the morbidly obese category, but I’m working on it. I’m 5’7": right now, I’m at 302, with a BMI of 47.3. But a year ago I was 398, with a BMI of 62.3. I question the BMI thing myself, as it says I need to be 191 before I slip from obese to simply overweight.
I was proud to be able to use the Wii fit: I was over the weight limit for so long.
I’ve got a few extra pounds but am not fat. People think I’m thinner than I am, though, because I only gain weight between my waist and my knees and I can dress to hide that.
I was one of those girls who ate whole pizzas for dinner in college and never gained a pound - I had a raging metabolism and never broke 100 pounds all my life… until my mid 20’s, which everybody told me was going to happen but I didn’t believe them.
So now I need to lose, I dunno, 20 pounds maybe. When I was running, I lost the weight. When I had my leg in a cast, I got it back. It isn’t diet at all - I eat fine. I’m just not active enough. I’m starting to inch up, though, so I need to do something about it soon.
I voted the second option, because even though it’s not accurate, it’s the closest one. I’m in very good shape, but because I’m somewhat tall and very muscular, it skews my BMI into the obese range, even though my actual body fat is well below normal.
I am muscular and fat, as a result my BMI is extremely high (about 39-40).
Back in college I lost about 40 pounds, got my BMI down to about 35 and my bodyfat down to about 26% and stayed there for about 2 years. However I started reading up on the sociology of the obesity epidemic and realized I didn’t really agree with our cultural attitudes towards fat. So I gained back all the weight I had lost because I lost my motivation to try to be thinner.
I could probably do it again (lose 40 pounds) and probably keep it off. But why bother really. I don’t agree with our social attitudes towards fat so trying to avoid ostracization doesn’t really motivate me. Trying to be more attractive isn’t really a motivator either. And as far as my health, I don’t know if I can lose enough weight to affect my health.
A waist size 40" or higher gives you 12x more diabetes risk than a 34" waist, with 35-39" having 2-5x more risk than a 34" or less waist. I am at severely high risk of diabetes due to genetics and my body size. Even at my thinnest in college (around 24% bf) I had a 40-41" waist. My starting waist was about 50" (every 5 pounds of fat lost = about 1" on my waist. So losing 40 pounds = losing 8" on my waist). I could maintain a 42" waist (which is still high but for a mesoendomorph like myself who naturally has about a 50" waist, isn’t too bad), but does having a 42" waist lower your diabetes risk over having a 48-50" waist? If yes, then it might be worth it to try again. But I get the impression the risk is the same for 41-62" waists.
I think I have a good amount of visceral fat (the dangerous fat around your waist that affects health) but I don’t know if I can lose enough to make a difference in my health.