Is my weight too high for my size?

pinknfab
pinknfab Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm a 5ft4in female, comfortably size 10 pants. (But with boxing classes, I'm slowly losing waist size, and my middle is where I carry extra fat post-pregnancies. Hoping to hit size 8 by end of March.) I'm currently 178 lbs. From what I've been reading, that seems really off. I am a bit more muscular, but still, I worry, because those BMI calculators put me in the obese category. I'm afraid I'll lose size, but still be in the obese category. Then again, the consensus seems to be that size 10 at my height isn't obese. So which is it? I have boxing twice a week, get 10000+ steps a day, try not to snack and eat fairly healthy. So do I just keep on keeping on and not worry? Do I assume I'm obese and jump into a more restrictive diet? It's disheartening to see no movement on the scale, even if my waist size is slowly decreasing.

Best Answers

  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,244 Member
    Answer ✓
    Other measures you can look to are:

    Waist to Hip Ratio: You measure your waist and your hips. Divide waist by hips. For women, it should be 0.8 or less (for men 1.0 or less; women tend to have wider hips). If your waist to hip ratio is 0.80 or above, you can be considered overweight, and if it's 0.85 or higher, it suggests you are obese.

    Waist to Height Ratio: Not as good as Waist to Hip, but as long as you're measuring.... Compare your waist circumference to your height. Your waist circumference should be less than half of your height.

    The National Institute of Health has a paper about various methods of body assessment available online.

  • Kiwi2mfp
    Kiwi2mfp Posts: 166 Member
    Answer ✓
    As a 5'7" female my max healthy weight as per BMI is 159 pounds. The military accepted me with a scale weight of 164 pounds when I was in the Navy. Twice a year we had to pass a physical and weigh in. If you didn't pass the weigh in then they would tape you. I hardly ever passed the scale part because my body liked to stay around 174. I would pass the tape at 174. Reason being, I was a Navy firefighter. At 159 I was really starting to look skinny. Now I'm 40 years old. My ideal weight is between 149 and 154 pounds. I homeschool my kids and run a farm. This Hopefully shows you that ideal weight isn't just some generic scale made up by some man. Now, you doc will use those numbers and that scale for documentation and treatment but it is not the final call on what's healthy and what isn't. When I was in the military people hardly ever guessed my weight accurately. When I told them my weight they were actually shocked it was as high as I admitted because they never guessed that high. A pound of muscle and a pound of fat weigh the same but a pound of muscle takes up a whole lot less room on your body than a pound of fluffy fat. Don't worry so much about the scale. Your blood work, energy level, and physical ability tells way more.

Answers

  • pinknfab
    pinknfab Posts: 2 Member
    Thank you! Those measurements put me at slightly overweight, which, frankly, is where I'd have put myself if I'd only looked at the mirror and not looked at any measurements. Gonna keep on with the exercise and healthy eating, since I don't have as far to go as I worried I did. Much appreciate the info!

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