Is there such a thing as big boned?

Seems like most of my teenage and adult life I've been a little over weight.  Currently I am 28, 5'5" and 153-155 lbs.  My goal weight is 135 lbs.  At 18 I got down to 134 and about 18 months after giving birth to my son I got down to 142 (this was about 4 years ago) since I've been fluctuating between 150 and 165.  I've been counting my calories for a good 3 months now and can't get under 150!  Everyone says I don't need to lose weight but I don't agree.  Doing the whole wrist thing I am "small" framed, but I tend to be smaller on top.  I have thin arms and a small waist, flat stomach, but I carry most my weight in my butt and thighs. 

I have always been told I'm just big boned...not fat.  So, my question...is there such a thing as big boned...can I even be that given the size of my wrist and upper body? 

Any tips to boost my weight loss...I seem to have hit a plateau...I know I can be under 150...the scale is just not wanting to budge.  Oh and can alcohol be the reason for that.  I generally drink socially on the weekends.  Thanks!  ;)

There is such a thing! I have a medium/large frame, and my skeleton by itself would'nt even fit a size 5. The wrist thing isn't always accurate, accord to it I am small boned, which is untrue, I just have very long fingers! There was another post with a better way to measure, I'll try and find it for you.

Thanks cupid! 

http://www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/ images/health%20caculator.jpg

edit by united: for some reason the above link didn't work for me and only went to an image.  Here's a related link to a lot of calculators/tools on that site. 

http://www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/

Yes, indeed. When I was 135LB...years& years ago I wore a size 10 ring...now at 265...an 11...my point is, even skinny I wasn't petite.  Even back then, lots of standard bracelets were to small, couldn't even do an anklet...and my shoe size is 11...I'm not sure if shoe size is a reflection of a large frame or not...but big feet I got...no pretty little shoes for me...EVER lol!  

No, there's no such thing as being "big boned". Celebrity Fit Club Dr. Ian proved it. He took a bone scan/x-ray of a "big boned" person, and the same thing with a skinny person and compared them. The bones were the same size. It's mainly the muscle mass and fat that makes for a "big boned" appearance. Just because you have an endomorphic body type does NOT mean you're big boned. It's an excuse. It's easier to say "i'm big boned" than to say "I'm just plain fat".

Love and Alojahz
Ihilani

mztenderheart02, I don't mean it as like "I'm not fat I'm big boned." I mean it like the actualy size of my bones. I know someone my height and structure who was more fit than I am would have the same sized bones. But someone who is 5'2 and wears a size zero would not have the same bone size as someone who is 5'8 and wears a size 8. If all bones were the same size, anyone could starve themselves down to a size 0, even men.

I can say that teh wrist thing isn't always right since when tightening my fingers arounf my wrist they touch meaning I should be medium framed but in reality my skeleton is really big (6'0 high and only 15).

Big boned/small boned, no. Small frame/medium frame/large frame, yes. Frame meaning muscle mass, fat, and bones included.

when i was at my biggest, i stopped wearing my medic alert bracelet because it was tight. i didn't think you could really fatten up on your wrists, so i thought i had grown out of it (i was 20).

At 30, and thinner, the bracelet now dangles and rides up my arm if i am not careful!

maybe some bones are bigger though. i mean honestly. i have a friend who has has 3 babies and her hips are so tiny, she must be 19 inches all around. there is no way my hips could fit in 19 inches with every organ removed! and i have had no kiddies!

measuring elbow width is more accurate than the wrist measure. As cupidsvictim513 pointed out, some people have very long fingers. And if your fingers are porportional, when you measure your wrist, you shouldn't tighten your fingers at all, just wrap them gently around your wrist.

The combination of wrist/elbow can give you a more accurate picture.  Here's a link to a site that gives the details of how to measure both.

http://www.fitnessandfreebies.com/fitness/bod yframe.html

I'm 5'2" and my wrist is 6.25", on the border of medium and large, but my elbow is 2.75"... VERY LARGE for my height.

Just an editorial aside, I injured my leg in high school and when it was x-rayed, the doctor commented that based upon my bone size, I should have been about 6 inches taller... he said I had the largest femur he'd ever seen in a short person.  Makes me believe there is such a thing as big bones.

I think there is such a thing as big boned.  My bone structure seem to be large even when I was 130 pounds.  Like someone mentioned above, my fingers were large (size 9 ring) and my wrist was large.  After I gained weight my wright size went up to a 10 but is now back to a 9.  I know Dr. Ian has alot of knowledge but I still believe in the "Big Boned" theory.

I don't think so. 

on that celeb fit club he was using it to show the size of the bones of people just visually...



it is true. im small boned with a wrist of 5 inches. 140 looks fat on me. but good on a med framed person and perfect on a large framed person of the same ht.

it seems to give you the ability to carry at least 10 lbs more from what i have noticed in people i see.

There is such a thing.  I, myself have hands the size of my husbands and I am only 5'5".  Even at an unhealthy 105 pounds, I could not even wear a size 5.  I never been below a size 8.

I recently bought one of those fancy scales that shows the muscle mass, bone weight, fat% and water %.  I am 6'1, 213, and probably "Large Framed"  I weighed and although the muscle fluctuates, the overall weight has been dropping and the fat% has been dropping, the bone weight has stayed approximately the same.  Care to guess what it is?  Approximately 10.5 lbs.  That's right, all these years I thought bone was heavy, but my whole skeleton weighs right at 10.5 lbs!

Frame size isn't necessarily the same in every part of the body. Going by wrists alone, I'm sort of on the edge of small and medium. Elbow width puts me squarely at medium. But my legs? No way they're not large. My knees and calves are so big that I sometimes can't fit into my otherwise "correct" size, and have to skip the style entirely because a size big enough from the knees down means it's going to be much too large in the waist. My thighs aren't as toned but since loose skin is part of the problem, they fit into jeans fine unless the size is legitimately too small. But muscle and bone don't squish into denim like that...

05edge - that sounds like it's a miscalculation of some kind. Some scales screw up; I have a digital that I tested by drinking almost two pounds of water, and neither my hydration percentage nor overall weight changed on it. :/

It may be, but I know that everyone it measures makes sense, my wife is about 7 lbs, her brother (same height as me) is at about 10.5, my brother, (Somewhat shorter) is at about 9, and my sister in law was around 7.  If it's off, at least it's consistently off...LoL

according to the wrist thing, I'm a small frame... but then again, being 6' 1" I have quite long fingers (often longer than a mans of comparable height). According to the first calculator link, a wrist size of 8" puts me into the large frame category... I have always had very wide hips and they only seemed to get wider when I was pregnant w/my 3 kids.... guess that's why they had so much room to get to be nearly 11lbs each!! Even now that I've lost most of the unerlying fat around my hips and tops of my thighs, I am still as wide as before because of the bones. Don't really know why I expected anything less lol.

im new here...

when i started my account i became obsessed for about 20 min:) on whether or not I was medium..or large framed.  anyway..i think im medium..but i put large because it made my goal weight 135... im 5'6 and i like to weigh 135-140...

i dont like to be really skinny..not that it ever happened to me..

ive never chatted on a thing like this..but thats my first comment

I say get a bone density scan if your insurance covers it.  My friend had to have one for health reasons and discovered her skeleton weighs 120 lbs. and she's about 5'8".  This means weighing much less than 150-180 is impossible if not unhealthy FOR HER.

So maybe people don't have bigger bones but people with calcium-rich bones can certainly have "heavier" skeletons.