How Fat is Too Fat?

Whoa, you're so tall, i'm only 170 cm with 120 pounds, i guess i'm thin >_<

Fat is too fat when it becomes a detriment. I live in Canada and although we're not the first country that comes to mind when thinking of obesity problems (that place belongs to the U.S.), we're pretty damn fat imo.

Health problems are one thing but I think that mental health problems are worse. The self-esteem issues related to body image are closely related to being fat, especially in high school if you're not funny or awesome in some other way since you're made fun of, and with a higher self-esteem some people could be doing just so much better. It just seems like there's so much wasted potential. Not that I'm saying all obese people are smart, but given the numbers a good chunk of them will be.

I personally know a girl who's a little chubby but still looks really good and always puts herself down for having some stuff to grab. ALWAYS. She's not too fat in a way that people would look at her like she's gross, but she's fat enough so that she's depressed. Hells, even I feel like I'm fat. I'm ~95 lbs (only 151 cm...you guys are pretty tall) but I don't like how my body shape is, so I can understand where she's coming from. It's just annoying how much pressure there is to be ideally shaped that it's kind of hard to cope with how an average person looks. :/

hehe you 2cm shorter than me.

i think you're too fat when you cannot see your dick or even your feet while standing

It's weird that the US would be the first country to come to mind, since we aren't actually the fattest country in the world. Not even top 5, I believe.

I got made fun of for being fat when I was younger, but then freshmen year I grew to like 6'3" and that decreased a lot. I was still kindof fat, but I guess people started thinking I would hurt them.
But you are right, fat kids get made fun of a lot; doesn't help that whole self image thing.

I wish I was 2 inches taller, only because 1. I could then say I was 2 meters tall, and 2. At that height I would be legitimately considered a giant.

^That.

Well I consider myself fat if I haven't worked out at all in a week. The height and weight also come into play too. I don't remember what the stats are on that. Pretty much everyone here said what I wanted to say.

You can actually consider yourself too fat when your skin begins to stretch and become saggy because your fat grows faster than your skin cells.


...and also if you feel your whole body wobbling when you run.

This is really subjective, so my opinion would be that "too fat" would be when it gets in the way of your goals/life. For example, I like the martial arts, but being in the 210 lbs (yes, I gained weight back), 210 is too heavy for my 5'8" height (or 170cm). I feel too much stress on my left knee, especially when I do round-house kicks repetitvely. Though if I didn't focus on my physical education, then I'd say that I'm still fat, but at an acceptable level where I can work it off over time.

more than 28 on the BMI

this number is fairly arbitrary. i just like 28 because its a perfect number

This is the golden rule.

But for myself, I'm a little weird. I consider 'being fat' a lifestyle rather than appearance. Being lazy and ugly and doing nothing but stuffing your mouth on the couch all day is being fat. Being ridiculously overweight due to a bodily malfunction is not something I'd consider being fat. You get the idea.

so a skinny lazy couch potatoe is fatter than some dude with a gravitational pull exceeding 1cm/s2

it kinda takes the fat out of being fat. why dont you simply call that lifestyle choice couch potatoe since fat doesnt obviously have anything to do with it...
besides, how can you even stuff your mouth all day long and dont exercise without actually becoming fat?

Haha, I've seen that coming.

Well, it does not quite take the fatness out of being fat, since a "skinny couch potatoe" obviously has his own description. I probably made a bad wording there with 'lifestyle', since it would be more like an 'description' when everything which makes him a fat couch potato adds up.

A little more into detail, there is a difference between 'Being overweight' and 'Being fat', even more so for me - from where I'm coming, calling someone "fat" is more like an insult than anything else - it shows great disrespect. So, it basically is my fault, for even though I've seen that coming, still not ignoring that fact and just threatening 'fat' as 'overweight', my apologies - but I just wanted to leave my answer like that, because otherwise I'd have to give a boring one that it most likely depends on what kind of being 'fat' we're actually talking about - fat from a medical point of view, fat on personal preference or fat in a complete pointless way which only serves an attempt to get a confusing conversation going.

Really, no one has found this relevant yet? :?

Just because a person is skinny, it doesn't mean that person isn't fat. Kind of.

If a guy only sits on his couch and eats Cheetos, he may appear thin, due to metabolism or whatever injustice nature has, but he may not be able to walk for more than five minutes without wheezing. But more importantly, the person's fat can be felt.

When you grab the skin on your stomach and pull it, that's fat. There's a cool tool that grabs fat that looks like some demented killer's murder weapon, but I have no idea what it's called. Anyway, even if a person is thin, if you pull the fat, you can see that the person has a lot of fat on his/her body. In that sense, it's possible to be fat but thin.

so to you fat is basically the opposite of fit and a sumo ringer wouldnt qualify as fat since they are sportif.

i also thought it was generally understood that all humans have fat inside their bodies and the question to clarify was only as to how much fat to rest of weight relatio is considered "fat" as an adjective rather than as a chemical compound.

on that note, there are of course different turning points for men and women since in a "healthy" male body the fat-to-weight-ratio is roughly 13% and for women its 25%.
now a male with 25% fat would probably be considered fat, while a woman with the same amount would not.


and i also just thought of how this couch potatoe guy stays thin even though he is stuffing himself.

bulimia

Well i havent read through everything on this thread so i wont respond to those discussions. But in my view, fat just doesnt extend to just weight or how it comes out of a person. Instead i tend to think it also involves health. For example, I am 5 foot 6, and I weigh about 147pounds. Although I am not fat, I am chubby and dense. However, despite being better than the "average" north american (I can still easily fit into plane seats, unlike many of my classmates), I am unhealthy. Just a month ago I fell ill due to a complicated combo of pain, sleepless nights, wisdom teeth extraction, fever, etc... and did not get better until now!

So in terms of being fat, I feel that it plays a small part in comparison to their health.

Remembering from health 101 like five years ago...a person was considered overweight if their BMI exceeded 25, and was considered fat if their percent body fat exceeded somewhere around ten.