BMI and Waist Measurements

Being overweight affects your body in different ways. Most attention (IMHO) focuses on what's called visceral fat, which is fat deep within your abdomen and chest that surrounds your organs. (Subcutaneous fat is what we see--jiggly thighs, bingo wings, tummy pooch, etc). Visceral fat is the, well, more harmful fat associated with higher risks of heart attack, stroke, etc. Having a smaller waist relative to your hips and a lower waist size means you have less visceral fat than someone who is also your weight but has a chunkier waist. That means you are at lower risk of those specific complications of being overweight/obese than Person B. Probably still at at a higher risk than someone with your same waist:hip ratio but a lower overall BMI and smaller waist measurement.

In your case, I bet your chest is also throwing off the BMI. Boob fat is not as metabolically dangerous as visceral fat.

Other types of complications from being overweight/obese apply across the board--think knee and joint problems simply due to moving more mass through space.

There isn't a good way to "spot reduce" your chest and shoulders. Overall weight loss will help, but in general, the weight comes off first where the weight comes off first, not where we want it to. You might have to lose a significant amount of weight before you see the changes you want--or maybe you'll get lucky! Only way to find out is to try!

Aw, I think what you describe sounds great and lucky. I am a complete block. With calves, hehe. Honestly, it's hard to imagine that very many women out there are just "naturally" happy with our body types without putting in serious effort at recomposition and/or plastic surgery--we get such conflicting messages from celebrities and magazines, and it all boils down to we don't look like them.

Also, boobs aren't *just* fat--the amount of breast tissue in there differs from woman to woman, though.

It won't help when you're naked, but r/femalefashionadvice has a pretty good and sensitive guide to dressing to camouflage body parts we want to camouflage: On Dressing Your Body Type

You can't spot reduce. You lose the fat and it will come from where it wants to.

If you decide to lose weight to get within a statistically healthy range for your height (chart says 107-135) you will reduce size over-all. The BMI charts are based on population averages and are not so helpful for individuals who may have more "boob-age" in comparison to the national average.

I think BMI is more unhelpful in the case of muscular individuals. Honestly, I don't see how "extra boobage" would account for 30+ pounds over the top of the weight range. It's already a pretty wide range for a reason. I agree that OP may not be obese, but I do think that unless she is incredibly muscular, 168 is definitely still pretty overweight for her height.

I gain weight evenly so my waist is always 10 inches smaller than my hips. You can't always go by the data.