Living in the city of thin people

ForecasterJason wrote: »

Iwishyouwell wrote: »

Aviva92 wrote: »

lorib642 wrote: »

Aviva92 wrote: »

annekka wrote: »

It is hard to live in the land of skinny people. I live in China, and I'm a westerner. I'm skinny now, but I wasn't before and yet I'm still huge compared with the Chinese women. I've had to get over the fact that I have to buy a large when I'd buy a small/medium in the West.

The big thing that has helped me get over it? Realizing that I'm not them, and I'd never want to look like them. For me, being healthy means having muscles. My job can require some physical labor at time so I'd never be able to do it if I looked like them.

Many of the Chinese women are all skinny fat. Skinny as twigs but no muscles/muscle tone. Mostly due to the fact that that's the preference, and more western Chinese have told me that the men prefer their women not to have visible muscles. In fact there's a term for woman who have muscles and aren't afraid to do work that requires using muscles "nu hanzi" (kind of translates to woman-boy). A lot of women are afraid of becoming a nu hanzi. I've seen women at the gym struggle to do a weight exercise with a 1 kg weight and stop as soon as they break a sweat. This is not typical of all Chinese women though. There are a small percentage of Chinese woman (most of my gym friends including one woman who's nothing but abs and muscles) who do enjoy weights. But they're like 1 in 20 women. And it's a bit unfortunate to say that in a way we all have come together because we don't want to be skinny fat.

I may get stared at at the gym, had to work to convince pump instructor at the new gym in the area I moved to that doing weights heavier then the men was my normal and I wouldn't hurt myself. But ultimately, I'd prefer to look healthy and muscled than skinny fat. Let them stare. Maybe I'll inspire somebody that you're not going to get huge and muscled from doing weights.

Plus having an *kitten* is so much nicer than all the women who look awful from behind because they have no butt to hold up their pants. Needless to say, living where I do has made me never want to be skinny fat.

Don't measure yourself to them. Measure yourself against you.

can you say the words "skinny fat" again? i didn't hear you the first 5 times. that's like the most offensive phrase on here. people need to stop. not to mention, your post is extremely offensive and racist against asains who look just fine. you can be happy with your body without putting down others.

^^^^^^

This

There is a term "normal weight-obese" for people with normal bmi but high %bf. or you could just describe what you mean. Skinny-fat has no meaning and is offensive.

I also highly doubt that these asian women are "skinny-fat" or "normal weight-obese". They are just skinny. People have extended the term "skinny-fat" to include all women who don't have muscles and that's completely offensive. Wasn't enough to body shame overweight women. Have to go after skinny women too. ridiculous.

I use to be fine with skinny fat back when it was mostly used to describe "normal weight-obese".

The reason I would love for the entire term to be abolished is that it's become some bastardized. I'm now seeing a lot of people using the term to describe bodies that are perfectly within a healthy, normal bf% range but are lacking that ripped, lean fitness look.

Just because you're not ripped or shredded doesn't mean you're skinny fat. And the person who said most Asian women fit the criteria of "skinny fat" proves how absurd this term has become.

I totally agree with you on this. When I first heard the term, I did think it was only for people who were not overweight but are in the "overfat" category. But now people are just using it to describe people like you said--skinny but without strong muscle definition. I mean, I find it crazy that essentially the author of this article thinks people can be skinny fat at a low body fat percentage! http://www.muscleforlife.com/skinny-fat-solution/