Question about frame size (wrist/finger method)

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  • suziecue20
    suziecue20 Posts: 567 Member
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    Ta love :)
  • tcaley4
    tcaley4 Posts: 416 Member
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    I have always heard that the body is proportional. Twice around your wrist is your neck. Twice around your neck is your waist. From finger tips across your shoulders to the other fingers tips is your height. There is also something about the size of your head to your entire body, but I can't remember it. But as said above, everybody is just a little bit different.
  • kdz526
    kdz526 Posts: 210 Member
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    I am just shy of 5'2" and my wrist is 6.5 inches. At my heaviest 50+ lbs ago, it was 6.75 inches. One does not lose much around the wrist. I doubt I will lose much more in the next 15 to 20 lbs from around my wrist. I really do think I have "large bones". My neck is 13.5 inches btw, but don't think that has much to do with any frame measuring. When I do put in my numbers to find body fat on this one site I use, it totally makes a difference to have these calculations rather then a smaller wrist and neck sizes.
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    tcaley4 wrote: »
    I have always heard that the body is proportional. Twice around your wrist is your neck. Twice around your neck is your waist. From finger tips across your shoulders to the other fingers tips is your height. There is also something about the size of your head to your entire body, but I can't remember it. But as said above, everybody is just a little bit different.

    Most of those measurements change with weight gain/loss. So no, I don't think that's true.

    Arm span is proportional to height, but that's about it.
  • cafeaulait7
    cafeaulait7 Posts: 2,459 Member
    edited October 2015
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    My arm span doesn't even fit. I have long legs and downright monkey arms; a short, wide-framed torso; and my extremities get tiny by the end, so ankle and wrists measure as small-boned. Instead of apple, pear, etc, we decided I'm a spider :grin:

    Actually, elbow breadth did work to show that my frame is big.

    I know it's big because my shoulders are very wide (and bones visible), my ribs are visible because they are so wide, and my hipbones are also visible and wide. That matters, imho, because #1, I can't fit in certain sizes dues to that. #2, the underlying musculature hanging off those wide parts is thicker, wider than in many folks, which really makes sense if you think about the attachments, etc.

    There's no way my waist gets down to 23". I was very sick and got down to 85 lbs at 5'6", and my waist was not as small as many girls have at a nice weight at the same height. I still wore a larger size than many healthy, thin girls my height. Yet obviously losing weight wasn't the answer to that if I'd thought it was a problem (oh, I didn't).

    I don't quite know how you figure it out if you don't have body parts that are thin and obviously larger than the norm. My extra weight gets carried on all the usual places, except you still see my ribs and shoulder bones, you know? The idea of a 28 or 30" band size for bras freaks me out, lol. They'd need a bone saw for me.

    I still am lighter now than the big-boned stats give, but I'd believe that those stats are certainly healthy. The small-boned stats are a bad idea for me, unless I were looking to be at a very low BF for a woman. I just shoot for low but still with some softness, if that helps anyone. For me, that's in the middle of the healthy BMI range. That will go higher if I put on more muscle, clearly.
  • Russandol
    Russandol Posts: 71 Member
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    evileen99 wrote: »
    Russandol wrote: »
    I find that for me, it's wildly inaccurate. I have tiny wrists (I can get each pair of fingers to touch, even thumb and pinkie), but broad shoulders and hips (definitely not a small frame, and yes, I'm talking wide bones here). It might work for others if they want to gauge frame size, though.

    They're talking about the general diameter or thickness of the bones, not their width, so frame size doesn't have anything to do with breadth of shoulders or hips.

    My bad, I phrased it poorly. What I meant is that I can feel that the other bones and joints are thick/sturdy (if I measure my elbow in the manner someone upthread suggested, I come out as large-framed). My wrists are disproportionately wimpy. I've even been told that when I had to have my hand x-rayed to rule out a metacarpal fracture. :smiley: So for me, measuring the wrist alone doesn't really give me an accurate reading of frame size.
  • cafeaulait7
    cafeaulait7 Posts: 2,459 Member
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    With all due respect, I think evileen99 might have that reversed anyway. From what I've heard, our bone diameters are mostly the same. It's the shape of the frame they make that does make the difference, yeah.
  • evileen99
    evileen99 Posts: 1,564 Member
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    cafeaulait7 wrote: »
    With all due respect, I think evileen99 might have that reversed anyway. From what I've heard, our bone diameters are mostly the same. It's the shape of the frame they make that does make the difference, yeah.

    Nope, it's the relationship between wrist circumference and height. The width of your hips and shoulders makes no difference.
  • evileen99
    evileen99 Posts: 1,564 Member
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    from NIH

    Women:

    Height under 5'2"
    Small = wrist size less than 5.5"
    Medium = wrist size 5.5" to 5.75"
    Large = wrist size over 5.75"
    Height 5'2" to 5' 5"
    Small = wrist size less than 6"
    Medium = wrist size 6" to 6.25"
    Large = wrist size over 6.25"
    Height over 5' 5"
    Small = wrist size less than 6.25"
    Medium = wrist size 6.25" to 6.5"
    Large = wrist size over 6.5"
    Men:

    Height over 5' 5"
    Small = wrist size 5.5" to 6.5"
    Medium = wrist size 6.5" to 7.5"
    Large = wrist size over 7.5"
  • MarcyKirkton
    MarcyKirkton Posts: 507 Member
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    The way I found online was to extend arm straight out. Bend at 90 degree angle. Turn hand towards body. Now, measure the distance between the 2 protruding bones in the elbow.

    For me, it was 2 1/2 inches, which is medium boned for 5' 2".

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