I was reading Roger Ebert’s review of Shallow Hal, where he mentions that the character of Rosemarie weighs ‘around 300 pounds’. This really stood out and made me think, because I’m pretty good at guessing weights and have known several people who weighed in the neighborhood of 300 lbs., and some bigger. The way the character of Rosemarie (Gwyneth Paltrow with a lot of prosthetics) is portrayed in the movie she would have to be well over 400 lbs., possibly closer to 500 if not bigger - she is unusually tall for a woman, and extremely obese. I knew a girl who weighed 375 who was quite a bit smaller. I’d guess that Camryn Manheim weighs close to 300 lbs., probably more - she IS 5’10", and looks about as thick as a girl I knew who was 5’7" and weighed 290.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people can’t really guess weight well when someone starts weighing close to 200 lbs., probably because people don’t talk about their weight much when they get that high. When asked to guess my weight, people frequently underestimate by 100 lbs. and ALWAYS underestimate by at least 50. They are thrown off because I am unusually tall (6’5"), but it’s not just me - the friend I mentioned earlier who weighed 290 told me once that her then-boyfriend honestly believed she weighed ‘around 200’. When I first met her I guessed she weighed around 240 and I’m usually pretty good about guessing weight. Women usually weigh more than they look - I knew a girl as a teenager that was almost universally considered very physically attractive (including by the ‘no fat chicks’ type), made your jaw drop in a good way in a bikini, and weighed just under 200. If a girl is over 5’10" and does not look anorexic, you can bet she weighs at least 150, and if she has any curves she’s probably closer to 170. When they used to announce a contestant’s weight and height in beauty pageants (do they still do that?) I used to crack up because there were frequently tall women who filled out their swimsuit well, yet I only remember one who they said was over 130.
Anyway, I was curious about how other people felt about our perceptions on body weight and what we considered normal, since it’s apparent that there is a lot of variance in how people see things.
I would assume 300 lbs would be a lot more than me. I am also 6’5" and weigh around 200-210. I used to weigh myself a lot and I just stopped doing it. I know I used to weigh about 225. I felt bigger then. I judged my weight loss by the decrease in the waist size of pants I had to buy, slipping from 38 to 37 to 36.
I cover a lot of high school football games and I see kids who are listed at 300 lbs or over. And nearly all of them look obese. Few of them are the well-conditioned behemoths of college and pro football.
For the record, Gwyneth Paltrow is listed in the IMDB as being 5’9". A 5’9", 300 lb. woman would look enormous, as would a 5’9" man.
A 5’9" 300 lb. woman would probably not look as ‘fat’ as a 5’9" 300 lb. man. Many big women have their weight distributed very differently than big men - they have it in the breasts, hips, and thighs. A man of those proportions is going to look like the Kool-Aid man. The 5’7" 290 lb. girl I mentioned had a distinctive hourglass-type shape (in that she was significantly smaller in the waist than she was in the hips and chest) and only had C cups.
As to my proportions - last time I went to the doctor I weighed around 315. I think I may have lost weight since then, but I’m still over 300 (not sure how much I weigh because my wife’s digital scales give an error message if you weigh more than 300). I wear a 40" or 42" waist. When I weighed 280 I was wearing 38", and when I was at my lowest adult weight (app. 245 lbs.) a 36" waist was loose on me, and I continued being able to wear those 36" jeans until I was up to around 270. I am proportioned a bit unusually, though - I have very broad shoulders and a big chest, and I have short legs for my height (6’5" and a 34" inseam - I CANNOT wear 36").
I have no idea how much I weigh now. (Other than I’m sure I’m not 300 lbs!) I’m a largish size 18, and I’d like to get down to a size 14. So I don’t know how many pounds I should lose. But certainly more than a few.
I know that it is hard to guess the weight of some people. A friend of mine weighed over 200 lbs. (230? I can’t remember) but she never really looked that “overweight”. Just a bit solid, that’s all. She loved fooling the people at amusement parks, who guess weight.
I’m one of those big hips/big breast types, and yeah, a lot of my weight is there. When I was sorta squeezing into a size 12 (“small” for me, and reasonably “normal-looking” to most everyone else) I believe I weighed about 185. And I’m 5’4". I think it is rather unusual for 5’4" who are wearing size 12 jeans to weigh that much, but I did. I doubt anyone would be able to guess!
I get frustrated when I am told I should weight 125 lbs. or less. I don’t know how I’d lose that much. Unless I cut off my breasts! I think I’d be at a healthy weight at 165-185, but no less. So I don’t take the weight charts seriously. How much can they really tell about a person, going by just their height alone?
I have a friend who weighed around 200 when I met her, and though she was plump I would not have described her as ‘fat’, nor would most men. She had been an exotic dancer but had put on weight since she quit. She’s been on a diet and when she got down to 160 she was able to get a job dancing again. I’m not sure how tall she is, but she’s not unusually tall, probably around 5’6", but she has a really nice figure.
Probably the reason she weighs what she does is because she has a lot of muscle on her. One time I was sitting in a restaurant and heard an overweight waitress commenting on her weight to another server. She weighed the same as I and I was nowhere near her in size. She would be considered somewhat overweight while I’d probably be considered plump by most people.
I think you’re right, Badtz. People always underestimate my weight - for example, Mr. Seawitch thinks I weigh about 50(!) pounds less than I do. I’m about 5’8", and I have a lot of muscle mass - always have.
As a matter of fact, Mr. S. and I were looking at some old photos the other day - one shows me from far younger days, and I was painfully thin (no hips, every rib visible). He said, “Honey, don’t worry about trying to get this thin again - you don’t look healthy. I don’t think you should get any lower than 125.” He was stunned to hear that the photo was taken at 135.
If I got up to 300, I’d still be a lot smaller than Gwyneth was in the fat suit.
6’9", 295# last I checked. And my inseam is about 35 or 36, or maybe I just sag my pants a little. Most people try to guess my height (7’2"? 6’5"?), but the few who guess my weight are usually either 30-40# light, or 20# heavy. Maybe it’s the beer gut I’ve got going.
My theory is that men estimate womens’ weights based on years of Playboy centerfolds, who are always 5’9" to 6’ and claim to weigh 111-125 pounds. Maybe some Playboy expert out there can go into his database and tell me who the heaviest Playboy centerfold ever was. Certainly it won’t be over 128. Those women might even weigh that little; there’s not much on them.
When I was a teenager and weighed around 155 or 160 we had a blood drive at work, and the guys I worked with (who were not trying to hit on me by saying this) assumed I couldn’t donate blood because I must not weigh 110!
Muscle certainly does weigh more than fat. I often think about posting a picture of myself on the web with a “guess how much I weigh” contest.
Just a WAG but I think a woman who is 5’9" and weighs about 300 would wear a size 26-28 in woman’s sizes. I base this on my sister who is 5’9,weighs 175 and wears a size 14. She looks much better now than when she used to weigh 110.
Another sister is 5’5" weighs 250 and wears a size 20-22.When she wore a size 11-12 she weighed about 150.
I’m somewhere in the middle at 5’5" and a size 18-20.
As for large/fat/obese folk… voila! C’est moi! I weigh around 460 lbs, but don’t look quite that bad…I’ve had people guess me in the low- to mid-300’s. It’s fairly well distributed, to the point that except for my abdomen, I’m pretty proportional. I do, however, wear a 62 waist.
I weighed 220 at my highest weight, and I’m 5’5". No one believed me when I told them that, though - they thought maybe I weighed 180. For me, the weight was very evenly distributed, though, and I wore clothes that didn’t bring attention to the extra weight. I wore maybe a 18 up top and a 16 down below.
I am still very curvy, and I lift weights. People often guess me at 30 less than what I am. I’ve got a large frame (my wrist is huge). I’m still a 14 up top (some things just don’t shrink on me, dammit), and wear an 8 or 10 in jeans, depending on brand and cut. I weigh 160ish.
And muscle is definitely more dense than fat. I actually weigh about 5 or 10 lbs more than I did a year ago (before I was started lifting weights regularly), but if I go by the tape measure, I’m a little smaller than a year ago, and my body fat % has gone down.
So I guess I think it’s very tough to gauge weight accurately by looking at someone - too many variables come into play.
I’m 5’5", and don’t own a scale, so I have no idea how much I weighed 2 years ago when I wore a womens size 30, but it must have been way more than 300. Still quite a bit smaller than Gwyneth Paltrow’s character. So far, I’m down to 230 (size 22-24), and the only reason I even know that much is because I have a new Dr. who insisted I get on the scale. I would like to be about a size 16-18, but that will probably take another couple years.
