Types of Fat and Thin

There is almost no way to talk about the following subject without offending someone, in some way. Everyone has some arbitrary definitions of "fat" or "unhealthy," their cut-off points between curvy and huge, and their concepts of what makes for an attractive body type of not.

An Interjecting Anecdote

Because I love interrupting myself, I'm gonna throw out this experience to illustrate my point.

A little while back, I had been casually dieting and trying to exercise more, though not in a particularly formal way. My family started to notice a difference, and I myself knew that I was developing shapelier muscles and losing fat in significant places. I had to travel to a conference for work, and it occurred to me, as my clothes were all feeling really loose (and looking pretty unprofessional), that I might have dropped down a size.

I was pretty stoked to be a size 12 after years as a 14, and to even have some skirts fit in 10s. I was able to wear a lot of my pre-grad-school "business casual" clothes, as well as a whole bunch of new ones that fit spot-on, if not slightly loosely. I was feeling good, but I still needed to find a dress to wear to a formal event at the conference, so I headed to one more store to try on fancy dresses. Emboldened by the clothes I had just bought and the way they flattered my figure, I looked at styles with more plunging necklines or higher hems, thinking "yeah, this one could show off my legs" or "ooh, this nips in at the waist, that'd be nice..."

With an armful of size 12 dresses, I turned around a crowded rack to move toward the dressing room, where a mother and her college-aged daughter were looking at dresses on the other side. They were both dressed as if they were going to a gym, but in that mall-fashion Juniors way, sporting fake tans, too much makeup, and so forth. They were yammering resentfully about having to shop for some other young woman they knew (I think a cousin?) in the Misses department and wondering what size she might be.

After some debate, the mother squawked, "Listen, she's really, really huge. I think she might even be a twelve!!!"

In that moment, I turned the corner, holding my size 12 dresses and saw that they had one of the ones in my armful (about which I'd been the most hopeful) pulled off the rack as an object of disgust, the way people in weight loss commercials hold out their gigantic pants.

I looked at them, then at the dresses in my arms, with the size labels clearly visible, and we all stood there uncomfortably, a saleswoman less than a foot away saying nothing. I'm not sure why I expected anyone to say anything, like how it's pretty rude to make fun of sizes in the middle of a department store, but because she was silent, I deliberately put all of my dresses back on the rack and made a beeline for the door.

I wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear, and it was a lot of restraint to keep from bursting into hot, mortified tears as I walked to my car. I felt like such a monster, and an oversensitive one at that. "Look at that fatty getting offended when someone points out her fatness," I thought to myself, and I felt especially dumb for the confidence boost I had gained just minutes earlier because I was finally down to this abominably "huge" size 12.

I couldn't help noticing that even though these women were probably of a much smaller clothing size than me, they had flabby arms and disproportionately large butts. They were also really ugly, both in the face, and in their personalities... but that didn't really mean anything as a discount to their behavior.

The thing that stuck out most to me was that it was a reality that many people would hear size 12 and think "huge," just as when I admitted my weight to a friend who said I could stand to lose 30 pounds, he exclaimed "Wow, I knew you'd gained weight, I didn't realize you'd gotten enormous!"

The other point that bothered me was that I might not have been so offended had the woman said a size 16 or a size 20. In my mind, I had an arbitrary measure of where "huge" began, and it was somewhere beyond 14 and up to infinity. If I were talking about myself, I might say "it's not like I'm a triple-XL," without considering that this statement would be incredibly hurtful to someone who had just lost 50 pounds to get down to the XXXL. I would probably even rationalize, "Oh come on, she's got to know that's a huge size," the same way that to these women, I was just obviously "huge."

Types of Fat

So establishing that everyone has a different conception of what's fat and what's not, I've been thinking about body types (probably more than is healthy, but I've been really sick since Christmas) and trying to clarify for myself what that means for my own goals.

The first type of fat is one that's really common among my friends and family, the Formerly Fit. This type applies to women who were formerly athletic and toned, then slowly started getting a little softer and flabbier around the edges. I consider myself to have this body type, and I think it's the only reason I can still trick myself into believing I'm attractive (in the right clothes and light).

I will admit, I'm mildly smug about this type because I know that under the fat are well-developed muscles, I still have tapered ankles and wrists, I've only ever had one chin (with a bit of unwelcome softness, but not a roll yet). I am able to run, hike, swim, kayak, and do some pretty impressively athletic things, just with extra weight.

The second type is the Formerly Thin, which is the descendant of girls who are Skinny Fat. You know the types of people who are not fat, but not toned either, who have never worked to be thin but just are that way, and who as a consequence of being naturally thin, never developed healthy eating habits or discipline about exercise. At some point those girls start drinking more or getting hit with life's stresses, or their metabolism just plain slows, and they get that doughy, shapeless sort of fat where it seems as if they're lacking underlying structure.

I will also admit, I'm not particularly kind to this body type, and it doesn't help that one of my exes is currently dating a girl like this.

Another type of fat I observe very commonly is the Never Been Thin, for whom I have deep and unending sympathy. I have friends and family in this category, who were chubby children, grew into obese adults, and seem to just keep getting fatter every time you see them. Unlike people who were formerly athletes, people with this body type have no idea what they might look and feel like fit, and I imagine that must really effect their self-concept and attitude toward the plausibility of weight loss.

There are, naturally, many nuances and gray areas, but for practical purposes, these three types are generally how I classify overweight women, and I apply my own biases accordingly. Now obviously, someone could be 500 pounds overweight and I wouldn't be able to discern if they were ever fit or not, but for the generally overweight (like 10-100 pounds over), I can almost always tell.

How Body Type Influences Weight Loss

This leads me to another observation: just as there are types of fat, there are types of people who have lost weight. This section is possibly the likeliest of everything I've said to offend, but bear with me.

1. The Return to Fit
This body type is achieved gradually, through a balance of diet and exercise. It usually follows the Formerly Fit fat type, as it is a matter of losing the weight and reconditioning an already athletic physique. Return-to-Fitters seem to show up one day looking amazing and healthy, but because they lost weight healthfully over a matter of time, you don't see them as formerly fat people, just "wow, so-and-so really got in shape."

2. The Still Kinda Big
This type makes me sad because it seems to follow from the Never Been Thin category. People who have naturally larger, bulkier body types can lose every spare molecule of fat in their bodies, but they will still look a little chunky. I don't fully understand this type because, for example, Star Jones was able to completely change body types when she lost weight, yet I know people who do everything healthfully but still have broad hips and thick limbs.

3. The Deflated Fat Person
I notice that this type seems to follow weight loss exclusively through dieting or low-impact exercise and is most common for the Formerly Thin fat type. I also notice it is most common with people who lose weight at a dramatic speed, through gastric bypass surgery, medication, or drastic diets. It's something to do with losing fat before the skin can regain elasticity, or dieting and exercising to become "thin" but never developing muscles. This type tends to retain indicators that they used to be much bigger, especially neck rolls, and while they may be a sliver of their former body, they still don't look healthy, so much as thin.

Why I Want to Lose Weight Slowly

The temptation when facing a large amount of weight to lose (I'd currently like to lose about 60 pounds) is to do something dramatic and sweeping. A friend of mine who has been overweight all of her life started Atkins over the summer and has dropped over 50 pounds now. I think to myself that I could do Atkins for a few months, lose all the weight I'd like to lose, and then I'd be thin and beautiful.

The thing is, though, I don't want to become a Deflated Fat Person. I don't want to lose weight quickly at the price of loose skin or a baggy neck to broadcast to the world that I used to be much heavier.I don't ever want to be just "thin," if it didn't include being fit, toned, and healthy too.

The only body type I'd be happy with is the Return to Fit, which is to say, fit. I am actually happier being a size 14 than I would be as a flabby, saggy size 4 because if you squint, I still look athletic and have an hourglass figure, with a little extra sand in the glass. I would like to get down to a smaller, healthier size, but I don't want to get there by any shortcuts.

I am taking a Tortoise approach here, trying to lose the weight by changing my lifestyle. I am trying, hard, to resist the idea that I could just rip all the weight off quickly and stay thin (because I know that I would just gain it all back, plus some, if I didn't work hard to earn and sustain the loss). I am trying to incorporate my other goals, for improving my nutrition, digestive health, skin, hair, sleep, and emotional well-being. Thin is not the end goal... healthy is.

Patience and integrity will be the biggest challenge on this path, but I know it's the only one that will lead to a lifetime of health and fitness. (And the only one that will keep my boobs up where they belong). I don't want a big "ta-daa!" moment where I reveal how much weight I've lost. I want to just show up looking and feeling really amazing one day.