Healthy Vs. Beauty Weight

Women are under so much pressure now a days when it comes down to the perfect body and ideal weight. I was told that the perfect woman should weight 130 lb and 1.16 oz and be 5´10 for beauty standards in competitions. I do not know about any of you, but 95 % of the time i am the tallest where ever i go and i am just 5´8. According to those standards I should weight 116.8 pounds. Now, the healthy weight for someone like me is 134.7 pounds.

I was 155 pounds and lost quite a lot thanks to a less stressful life style, good healthy diet (including watching portions and calories) and no exercise due to an injury. I am now at 131 pounds and i still look like crap. Someone told me that having "love handles" was like letting a glass of water over flow and that i was eating more than what my body needed and could burn.

I am confused now because i never believed in standards of weight since we are all different, but if i lost the extra fat accumulated in my stomach, ass, legs etc, i would end up being 116 pounds! Then is it to look good is to be unhealthy, sorry for the bitching but I have been on this 1500 calorie diet and exercise and keep loosing weight but still look the same! I will incorporate exercise in November, but feel that it will not do anything...

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"...   In other words, completely arbitrary and highly dependent on culture, fashion and personal preference.   There is a fashion in some circles for very, very thin people to be regarded as the ideal.  Freakishly tall, thin people often end up as models, for example.  In other cultures, larger people are the beautiful ones.  And you've only to look back at the works of Reubens and Botticelli to see that 'mega-thin' is a pretty recent thing. 

The average person is neither very tall nor very thin..... and they must be attractive because otherwise no-one would choose to breed with them and the human race would have died out by now.

If you're a very slim, very healthy weight for your height but look in the mirror and the words 'look like crap' spring to mind then you may have more of a problem with self-confidence than with actual body-shape.   Work on your self-confidence, stop dieting (because even mild malnutrition can cause anxiety) and try to be happier on your skin.

Nothing is as beautiful as healthy.  And healthy is a process, not a static endpoint.  Eating well, moving enough, and having an active, engaged mind should become lifetime habits.  Expand your universe beyond the 2 feet your body fits in.  In my opinion, everybody who strives to do those 3 things is beautiful, inside and out, regardless of what they happen to weigh or whether they have "love handles" at any given point.

Like Ayn Rand said only other men can cause suffering and oppression. Eastern philosophy believes that suffering is caused by living up to other people's standards on how to live. Again only other people can cause you suffering. 

Original Post by inkblue:

Like Ayn Rand said only other men can cause suffering and oppression. Eastern philosophy believes that suffering is caused by living up to other people's standards on how to live. Again only other people can cause you suffering. 

 Love that.  Even at my highest weight I thought I was beautiful and so did everyone else because I put it forward that I was a force to be reckoned with.  Even now I've lost 65 pounds and I have my days where I don't feel so hot but you just have to be happy with you, much easier said then done.  Keeping up with other people expectations or visions is honestly exhausting, do it for you.

I do not want to live to standarts imposed by others but I do want to live up to mine. I am very confident in almost every aspect of my life. I know i do not look good in a bikini but i still go to the beach and wear a bikini knowing that i have a loose stomach and bags under my butt and big hips that do not match my uper body. I was once in my life very happy with the way I looked but in some point of my life, i lost myself and destroyed my body.

I am just frustrated today, I have lost all that extra weight and puffiness and all this 10 size dresses look like garbage bags on me now, but i still have the stomach and others that i mentioned. My boyfriend keeps saying that i am fine, but i know he is just trying to make me happy. When I went home to visit my parents, they all said that i gained too much weight and had a pouch!

I just want to be like before or close to it and no matter how much weight i loose the stomach does not go away!!!!!

So what you're really saying is that when you look at yourself all you can see are the imperfections....  Well, that's the real world unfortunately and it's why people spend a fortune on gym membership and plastic surgery to try to hold back the ravages of time!!.   Exercise and a 'clean' diet can do quite a lot to improve shape without meaning you drop weight.   Carrying on at 1500 cals, if anything, could compromise your muscle tone and make you look a bit flabby round the edges.  Maybe that's something to consider.

If you don't feel comfortable in a bikini, wear a one-piece. 

Bebe, take a deep breath! 

You are blessed to be healthy and blessed to only weigh 131 lbs.  Most of us on this website would kill to have your "problems".

Enjoy your health and your small size overall and do not worry about what rude people say.  Those are not the kind of people to surround yourself with and certainly not the kind to listen to....

You are right! Is one of those days when you just feel down and it seems like everything is wrong... I love my family and it is good to receive a kick in the butt here and there to keep you in line.

I do not want to cover my problem areas, I just have personal standarts of what i would like for myself and there is nothing wrong on wanting to look better in a realistic manner. I am not asking to look like some Paris model, just to be where I was before or close to it. I am just finding it hard right now.

I was once  happy with the way I looked in the past. It is hard when you had something and the lost it. I would probably not care if all my life had a bit too much on me but when you have a closet with 2/3 of clothes that you can´t wear, then it is hard :)

I will just keep motivated and hopefully with exercise I will make those stubburn rolles go away...

Original Post by inkblue:

Like Ayn Rand said only other men can cause suffering and oppression. Eastern philosophy believes that suffering is caused by living up to other people's standards on how to live. Again only other people can cause you suffering. 

Seems to me the OP is causing her own suffering by spending too much time obsessing about her shape in the mirror.

I'm always going to have "muffin top" (if my pants are too tight or ill-fitted) and cellulite, but who cares. I'm healthy, sexy and not perfect and neither are those air-brushed models.

I'd rather have imprefections an be natural and confident about myself than a woman consumed with my appearence so much that I never live life. I can run and jump and play = have fun.

Thank you for the motivation for some and the critizism for others. I just want to clarify that I am not suffering, just having a bad day like every other human does once in a while. Thanks for the reminder of taking a deep breath, it helped :) I do  do not look in the mirror all the time and think, OMG, but some days I just wish i could snip some rolls off LOL

There is nothing wrong with having your own standarts and wanting to look good.

I am a 19 year old college student and I constantly feel like I am too fat. I understand what you are dealing with. I am 5'11 and 134 lbs and am thin but I feel like I want to be skinny.. I neeeed to be skinny. I dont know where the pressure comes from because I am not overweight, but I always feel frumpy. I started my diet at 154 pounds and when I hit the 40s I wanted the 30s and now that I am in the 30s I want to be in the 20s... when does this stop? I obsess and my eating consumes my thoughts. Hang in there...

Thank u kalico, i am just trying to feel good and look good at the same time. By changing my eating habits I have been feeling a lot better, more energy and extremely motivated for most of the time. I might be 5´8 but i have a small body frame and at my 131 pounds u see more flab LOL some people said that i should show bones by now, but I amnot medium or larged boned so that would be impossible lol My ring finger is a size 5, so it is hard to explain to people here that i just want to get rid of the rolls lol I eat about everything but make healthy modifications. I do not like most junk food so it helps...

BTW.....  Don't listen to kalico321 because she has ambitions to be clinically underweight.. and could easily be eating disordered.  Quite honestly you don't  need bad role-models... and I think she's got some other deep-seated issues that are currently unresolved.  That 'obsessing' and the way eating ruins her thoughts....  It's a shame, really.  Nice girl like that.

Note: gi-jane doesn't "believe" in small body frames.

I was recently attacked by her in another fourm.

Anyways... more importantly about you... I feel like you and me are probably a lot alike! (Im going to friend you ) because I too have a small frame and work out and eat a pretty healthy amount and I am still flabby with a little muffin-top on my jeans. I work hard at it and its discouraging when it doesn't show and you have to keep setting new goals because you initial goal doesnt cut it when obtained!! Staying away from junk food is always good but my problem is I LOOVE junk food haha so its a constant battle! Best wishes!

Yes we all have our bad days.  I felt like a cow on Sunday due to a very indulgent weekend.  So, I had a healthy Monday, healthy food, healthy thoughts, yoga, and rest.  Today I feel tons better.  I think I know what you're getting at.  You sound like you're at a good weight but you will need to workout to get a tighter physique.  I can diet like crazy but unless I'm working out some, I still feel jiggly.  I like feeling strong and still a little feminine and soft.  I know my hips will never go away, but at 31, I accept that and I dig having a shape to my body.  Building on what you have with some exercise will definitely give you more confidence.  It does for me.  I know I'll never be perfect, nobody is, I've learned to cut myself a little slack.  I hope that helps. 

Having a small frame doesn't mean you can be healthy while clinically underweight.  It means you can be healthy at the bottom of the healthy range (BMI in the 19-21 range) which is less achievable for those with larger frames.

Sorry Kalico,

I don't think gi jane was attacking you, I think she was just protecting the OP. 5'11 @ 135 or so...even a small frame that's little, but that's not the problem: wanting to be smaller is scary. No one is attacking you, but I suggest doing a BMI math to see where you fall in regards to healthy weight. If you feel unhealthy, that's another thing. Just bc people are skinny, doesn't mean they're healthy, but that's not a weight issue either. Lift weights: it really does great for your heart, mind and body...even if you're skinny.

There is way too much crap out there to listen to, and I wouldn't bother taking it all seriously. None of it is founded in health concerns or common sense.

Instead of listening to what people think you "should" be, i'd listen to what you really want and need for yourself personally. I'd listen to yourself. People are all different, you know.

Kalico,

I put your stats in the BMI tool and this is the results. This isn't an attack; it's a wake up call:

Based upon your current Body Mass Index (BMI) of 18.7, you are currently classed as underweight.

A healthy BMI for your gender and age is between 18.7 and 26.4 and a reasonable weight loss rate is 0.5-2 pounds a week.