I've always just assumed I had a large body frame (I guess because my mom used to call me "big boned"). Just now, though, I was at freedieting.com using their ideal body weight calculator. It asks for your body frame and I decided to look it up. I found another website ladiet.com that has a table for checking your wrist measurement to determine frame size. I was stunned to discover that I am right on the border of small and medium frame!
There is also another measure that involves the elbow, but I couldn't quite figure out how to do that one.
Have you ever actually checked your body frame? I think I have to adjust my goal weight. I was aiming for 160 lbs but the freedieting.com calculator says my ideal size is between 145 - 149. Gosh, that seems so small. I think I will aim for 150 and see how I feel.
Mine said for large frame 18.5cm wrist, 5foot3 I should be between 123 -127. But another site http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/bodyFrame.php
said between 104.43 and 141.13 pounds.
Now the gym said 185-190 would be good for me. So just who do you listen too? Or do you just use your instinct and how you look & feel?
I've used the elbow one before, but with a different set of directions. They said to hold your arm parallel to the floor, then raise your hand up so your forearm was in an 'l'. Find the points of the bone on either side of the elbow and measure that distance.
Well, I came up as large (I'm 5'7" and have a 7.0" wrist), but that's not too surprising, since my dad and brother both played college football, and my mom's dad was a semi-pro baseball player, and they are or were all over 6'3".
My brother and I have very similar frames, though - he used to complain about his small wrists (yeah, compared to a 350 lb defensive tackle), and ankles.
It's hard when you grow up in a family of behemoths.
I was actually very surprised to find out I had a small body frame when I lost weight. I had always told myself I was a "big girl" with "big bones." Turns out, I'm built like a little bird. Small ribcage, tiny wrists, petite ankles. I'm actually built just like my mother, who I always thought was a slender, petite woman. So am I! (well, a 5'7" petite woman, heh).
It was a huge huge surprise and required a radical mental shift of how I saw myself. I am not big, I am small. It sounds so kindergarten, but it was a real mind explosion to change my mental picture of myself.
For years I used the excuse, "I am big-boned so that's why I am so big." What I have discovered after hours of reading and proper measuring at wrists and the bones in my elbows, is that I am actually on the large side of medium.
From previous measurements, I always come out as large, or the large end of medium. But in the end it doesn't really matter all that much, since frame size looks to only make a difference of 10 pounds or so--and I have MUCH more to lose still than 10 pounds!
By that chart and for my height, a small frame would be less than 6.25, medium would be 6.25-6.5, and large would be greater than 6.5.
Now, when I started, at 197 pounds, my wrist was 6.625, and now it's 6.25 and sometimes seems like it might end up at 6.125.
So frame size may be (quite probably is) overestimated in obese persons. With 57 pounds I've lost close to 1/2 an inch from my wrist. My wrist didn't look fat to me, although I knew old watched didn't fit anymore.
Mine comes out large using both measuring ways and even after losing as much as I did last year (I was down to 186) the measurements came out the same even though my wrist did get a bit smalller.
Some of us just are big boned.
On one hand this is good because the higest end of the healthy range means I dont have to lose as much, on the other hand... tiny I will never be. Thats okay I'll settle for healthy or even "just" overweight.
I am big boned as well, and pear shaped; even when I was thin, my legs were still not skinny, but I get the nicest small waist and upper body so that's something to look forward to again!
No matter what the charts say you "should" weigh, I think those should just be guidelines, you have to see how you look and feel when you get near goal. I plan to adjust my goal when I get closer, who knows what it will actually end up to be?
Do you know your body frame?
