Ever heard of "Heavy Bones"?

We use 'heavy bones' too. Hadn't realised it wasn't widespread as a saying. As you say, it's widely used as an excuse for being overweight. However I will say that whilst I am overweight (25.4 bmi), I carry my weight in such a way that I LOOK like I'm much lighter than I am. Maybe your family is similar?

The older people in my family say this too. Although I think it's more that they carry any extra weight in a way that hides it (the women tend to be extreme hourglass shapes, even when skinny, and then men are rugby player types) and having naturally high amounts of muscle. They tend to be very strong, so I've always assumed this was referring to muscle density rather than the actual bones.

I've never heard heavy boned (though I'm not originally from an English speaking country), but I've heard big boned often - and often meaning different things. Usually it's been said about (by) people who are clearly overweight but who are trying to make out that they're not as overweight as they are or that it's not completely their fault. Other times though it's been used about (by) people who genuinely have broader bone structure - broad shoulders, broad hips, etc, regardless of whether they were overweight or not. But most often it's used in relation to someone who is overweight - broad shoulders/hips/skeleton or not.

So I guess the question is, are they using it as a way to say their skeleton weighs much more than everyone else's (i.e. is it a thing they say to justify not even thinking about trying to see if they can lose some weight) or do they mean the same as big boned (which of course can also be an excuse).

I think I'm one of those people who carry my weight in a way that makes me look lighter too. I've never been massively overweight (hovering around 25-26 in BMI at my heaviest) so I don't know what would happen if I were to become obese, but at the moment all my surplus weight is in my bum and thighs. So while I could do with losing like 20 lbs at my heaviest you could still grab hold of my rib-cage or see my hip bones protruding. I've even had bruises on my hip bones from doing the bow pose in yoga (lying on your stomach and grabbing hold of your feet, making a circle).

It amazes me how heavy/big bones shrink when people lose a lot of weight. Up to a point, I carry weight pretty well; it is pretty evenly distributed until I get about 25 to 30 pounds overweight. At 20 pounds over I started getting questions about why I was still trying to lose more.

There are big boned people. If you can feel the bones right under the skin on each side of your wrist (in other words, not a lot of fat there) and you grab the wrist with the other hand and cannot touch the thumb to the middle finger (really trying) then your bones are "big" - a higher than average diameter compared to the length. If there is a lot of fat around the wrist and/or your fingers are like sausages then you need to lose some weight before it's valid (or even meaningful, for that matter). At my current weight (BMI ~24) I can touch my thumb to my ring finger, so I can't use the big boned excuse.

Skeleton frame sizes do vary a little. I think it just means you are overweight but your weight is distributed in a way that makes it appear you are just a little wider all over, instead of having a large stomach or big thighs, it's all proportional. Never heard "heavy bones" just "big boned", but that is just my take.

Most cases it's used as justification for staying overweight rather than losing down to a healthy weight. Bone mass/density does vary by individual but fat and muscle both contribute more to body mass, I would assume, unless a person is extremely lean.

Heavy boned or big boned is another term for overweight lol