Oh No!! That's too much weight to lose

As our society has "grown"--so has their perception of what is "normal" body weight. My husband has always struggled with this..while I struggle to lose weight, he has always had issues keeping weight on..and has weighed 125-130 since high school-which is great weight for his height and build..even the doc's agree he is fine. BUT..EVERY family member has called him "string bean, skinny minny..ect ect" and berated him telling him he is "NOT healthy and should gain weight." He eats very healthy, he has just always preferred lean meats and veggies to everything else. he is slim and compact--and society feels that he should be broad, bulky, and toting around a beer gut to be "normal". For some reason..heavy people in our society feel it is ok to reverse discriminate against slimmer, fitter people. If he walked up to a heavy person and said to them a "Hey fat *kitten* you need to lose weight"..he'd be in all the wrong-EVEN though they do it to him ALL THE TIME.

It's another great example of double standards in our socieyt--don't tell the fat, unhealthy person their choices are bad for them-they might feel bad-but anyone can tell a slim person they are unhealthy and call them "names".

I agree that people have a very skewed opinion of what healthy looks like and what a healthy weight is.

For me it's actually been comments from more fit people saying I don't need to lose any more weight that have made me chuckle a little. If anyone would have a better understanding of how a healthy body should look, you would think they would! These two also happened to be guys so maybe it's just a preference for a woman having more curves?

The best was from my husband with an opposing opinion. When I first started losing weight and we got talking about my goal, he said "you should try to get down to 125 pounds" and I just burst out laughing. Maybe if I was a few inches shorter that would be a good weight but 125 is my LBM weight and I KNOW he wouldn't appreciate me being skin and bones. That started the first of many conversations about healthy vs skinny though so it was a good thing in the end.

Haha most men have no idea how women look compared to what they weigh. When i told my husband about six months ago that my belt was a 38 he flat out did NOT believe me, and i had to threaten to show him the tag when we got home before he would drop it. Then last winter when we went to the doctor about my blood pressure and he saw my weight and the word "obese" next to it, he was speechless. I could tell from the way he looked at the paper he literally had no idea i was close to 200 lbs!
I think its partly because traditionally men are supposed to be Big and women are supposed to be Small, and we arent comfortable with discussing what that really means.

I'm going to take a very unpopular opinion here and say that for MOST people, the BMI charts are pretty spot on for what's a good range of weights. Now that isn't to say that you can't be perfectly healthy at a BMI over 25, but chances of you being malnourished or underweight at the top end of your height's "Healthy BMI" are very slim. Very. So slim that most people on here claiming that they look sickly at a healthy BMI are just completely deluded into what a healthy body looks like.