For the record, my fingers overlap and I am smaller. I wear a size 3.75 wedding band. But I also have long fingers.

But I'm not sure that "frame size" is meaningful in any way.

I have very broad shoulders for my size and narrow hips (typical inverted triangle shape). Does this mean I have a large frame or small frame? Does height make you larger or is it the broadness of your ribcage? I just don't think it's a very telling thing.

My hubby works in orthopedics. He and his doc have done countless surgeries on people's bones: knees, legs, arms, etc. They have both said that they have never cut into someone and seen evidence that someone was "big boned." Everyone just has normal sized bones, according to them.

My mother in law is also a doctor and she says opposite. Bones are bones - and sure big boned doesnt mean "Big bones" necessarily, but someone with a rib cage with no fat that is 34" around has more bone to them than someone's rib cage is 26" inches around. Someone who wears a size 6 shoe has less bone weight/size than someone who has a size 10 foot. Someone who has hips (and is thin) that is 36" has more bone than someone's hips that are 32". Maybe if you cut into the bones they are very similar, but no one in their right mind can convince me that there are not small framed people and large framed people. It's not just short and tall, but broad and narrow.

And yes, of course, we are more than our wrist size and our elbow breadth. My husband is much bigger built in the bottom half of his body than the top half. Some are small all over, some are big all over, but there are some general guidelines we can follow.

And it BUGS me when people try to dismiss frame size because when you TRULY are built big - wide, you're basically telling me that I should weigh the same as every other person my height. If that were the case, there would be ONE recommended weight for each height, right? Instead of a range.

I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to have a small build. I would love to have the midwife not say I have birthing hips (delivered a 11 lbs 14 ounces baby boy vaginally - naturally). I would love to wear dainty shoes instead of a size 10. I would love to have a small ribcage instead of a huge one. I would love to have the build of a dainty ballerina. Instead I have a build of a shot putter.

It's these comments that make us truly bigger girls feel bad about ourselves since we simply cannot get as light on the scale as our finer boned counterparts. Took me YEARS to realize that and I would hate for some young girl now to feel like they are too fat because of their large build and corresponding higher weight on the scale.

According to that website, I'm definitely large framed. 5'6" with 8inch wrist. When I lose weight it will get a bit smaller, but has never been below 7inch. Which puts my goal weight at 143, and that is probably as low as I'd ever go...I was a 4-6 at 155.

Tiny frame, which is why I look borderline overweight or at the least, very soft at my current height and weight. I'm 5'5 and can wear little girls' shoes.

Well, my wrist size is 5.3 inches and my fingers really overlap, but I have a medium frame. I have small hands, thin fingers, but I don't see how this would be an indicator of how my whole body is built.

My wrist size is 5.9 - so I figure I am small framed. It's probably why at 139 I still feel so fat. My upperbody is turning into the tiny range because there's not much fat left there and my bones are so 'thin'. But the other 19lbs are at my legs/bum. It's really annoying.

I am so not liking the small frame + pear combination.
Though I guess big frame + apple would be just as annoying.

I always went with the "I am big-boned" thing too as an overweight girl (that's what I was told and believed)...but not so much. My fingers definitely overlap on the wrist test (haven't actually measured though as of yet), and I am actually quite small framed. I seriously never knew!! haha

It's hard for me to think that we can just outright deny body frames. I mean if you LOOK at people it's easy to see that some are built bigger than others. It's just another excuse for people to feel superior to others I think

I see it with my brothers! One of them clearly has a large build and the other one might not. The both wear the same t-shirt size, but my large framed brother has wide shoulders and is very V shaped (He looks muscular and yet does nothing! haha) while my other brother wears an XL or XXL shirt because his is overweight. The large framed brother has to get suits and things tailored because otherwise his clothes fit around his shoulders but are very baggy around his waist. The large framed brother is technically "obese" but the doctor told my mother not to worry because he's just built bigger. Honestly you'd never even guess that he weighs as much as he does!

Luckily we have a doctor with a brain or my poor brother might be getting a lot of grief about his weight.

I really think we'd all do a lot better with this weight thing if we took frame size into account or if doctors had the tools and training to measure body fat percentage. Large framed people really get the short end of the stick otherwise.

Sure, our bones are all the same when you cut them open or whatever, but that fails to explain why some of us have wider shoulders, bigger feet, etc. If we were all the same then we wouldn't need all these different clothing sizes.

I don't even know if frame size tells the entire story either. It's hard for me to say what I am because some areas of my body are "small" while others are "large." My ribcage is either 29" or 30" depending on the day, for example and my shoulders are wide (like my brother). While my wrists and hands are small. My feet are on the average side though. So I don't know where I fit because when you take the two ways to measure body frame I get large and small! Agh!

Like you said, it would suck for some young girl to hate her body when she's probably fine just because she's large framed. If people recognize that there are different frame sizes then it'll be a lot easier on all of us.

I like being of small build - but I wish I were larger framed sometimes so I would look proportionally "thinner" at a higher weight and my hands and feet didn't look absurdly small next to my arms and legs!

I think these are VERY rough guides. I'm pretty much big all over in the frame size - big hands, big feet, wide shoulders, wide (round) rib cage, big hips, knobby knees/elbows, etc. My husband, on the other hand has a TEENY rib cage, very broad shoulders. fairly thin arms/wrists and then big leg bones and even hips and he's NOT overweight at all - 6'1" and 170-175. Overall, he probably averages out to be a medium frame where parts are small and parts are large and some medium - he's just not consistently big or small over the entire body.

I see it in my two boys too - my older son (15) is built just like his father - just going to be slightly taller and an even smaller rib cage, but HUGE feet and hands. My younger son (almost 7) is built like a tank. He is built soooooo big and not fat at all. The doctor said that he's fine even though according to BMI he's overweight. My older son's bmi? 18 and it was 17 until recently, but she wasn't too concerned with that either as he appears to be naturally thin and his frame is still filling out (got tall, but not widened out yet with puberty).

Anyone have freakishly small ankles? I'm short, 5"2 and am honestly not sure if I'm a pear or apple. Visually, I'm more an eggplant but, I digress. Even the two times in my adult life that I was in the neighborhood of a healthy weight, my ankles looked completely disproportionate to my body. Think waffle cone gams. Unfortunately, the texture isn't that off either.
I remember once when I was a teen 200 years ago, my mom short of blankly stared towards my feet for a few min and just blurted out, "Wow, doesn't look like those little ankles could hold your body up". She was right. They don't.
I wear a 5 and 5 1/2 ring size depending on the hand and my fingers touch when I grasp my wrist but do not overlap. My shoulders are short though. Shirts always fall off my shoulders even with the boobies o' bigness.
I have itty bitty ears too, but have dog hearing. Go figure.

~Defluffin!

I'm on the taller side at 5' 8" and wear size 10 shoes. And even at my highest weight of 360, I don't think I carried an ounce of fat on either my feet or ankles! I've always been a little thankful that I've never had cankles.

And I wouldn't exactly call my legs slim, but they're a lot smaller than the rest of me. The majority of my weight is in my stomach; in fact it's about 8" wider than my hips! I also carry excess in my upper legs and arms, and my butt is kinda small.

My ring finger was a size 10 in high school! I can even remember friends telling me I had such chubby fingers. It's a loose 8 now, and I'm not that much smaller than back then so I'm not sure what happened there. I can definitely overlap my finger and my thumb around my wrist, but it certainly wasn't possible at my highest weight.

Very interesting thread! Interesting mostly to see the differences in everyone! Apparently, I have a large frame, as I'm only 5'1", but wrist measures 6 3/4" around and can't get my fingers to touch (yet!). I can see bone differences in my sons--both are 6' tall, but older son has really small wrists (smaller than mine, even!). Younger son has thicker wrists than older, but both have really long fingers and toes Does frame size affect the ease with which males can build muscle? They both seem so long and lanky and have a hard time building upper body muscle-just wondering.

Amen! I have a rather large frame despite my small wrist size. My entire family has a large frame. I am the smallest framed woman in my family. Still, there is no way in heck I could be healthy at 120-even 130. My final goal will be around the 140's and I will be looking thin. Frame size is very important and I spent years hating myself for having a larger frame. I have since learned to embrace it and take what I see on the scale as less important than what I see on the outside. That would be my advice to anyone who has a larger frame/build.

It has been accurate for me. I have a broad, muscled frame, even though I am short and have petite measurements through my torso (short torso, long legs). By the wrist test, at this weight of my highest weights, I always had a large frame. Even through losing that hasn't changed much, I have a lot of skeletal and lean mass, just through genetics and all fat aside.