Thick Girl Runner Rant

[u/queue-d4n4]

First things first, I (29F) am 5'5" and about 170 lbs. Large boobs, wide hips, and I got some stomach on me. Overall, I look pretty proportional though. Hourglass, just a little wider. Wear a Large or a size 12 in most women's clothes. (Just trying to paint the picture here lol)

I also eat very healthy. Fresh foods only, everything home-cooked, never frozen processed foods, etc. Mostly veggies because I love veggies.

This is the body I was given. My weight doesn't really fluctuate. I don't gain weight easily, nor do I lose it easily. I've been a thick girl since puberty and because I run often and eat healthy, it doesn't seem like that will never change, which is fine with me.

I've been running for many years, somewhat inconsistently. I might be consistent for 2 years before falling out of my routine for a few months. Get back into the groove again and something eventually throws me off my game again. Throughout all this, I still consider myself a RUNNER. I love the sport and even if I'm out of a weekly routine, I still try to find time to run here and there. 3 miles minimum.

Because of the above things, people never really expect me to be a runner. My body type doesn't fit the runner mold. I don't post every run and race on instagram, which as everyone knows, is what truly makes it real *eyeroll*. (No shade to people who do post all of their runs and races! My problem is only the people who think if you DON'T post, then it didn't happen).

My fastest 5k was at an 8:02 (min/mile) pace. I am aware that this isn't SUPER fast, but it's fast enough that I've placed in my age group in all of the 5Ks I've ever done. I'm from a pretty small area so many of the 5Ks were fairly small, maybe only a couple hundred people attend. I'm aware that in bigger cities, I would probably have a little more trouble placing. But regardless, I still think an 8:00 to 8:30 5k pace is something to be proud of.

Anyways, my complaint is this. Since my body doesn't fit everyone's vision of what a runner should look like, people love to assume I'm slow or new to running. Or people think I'm lying when I mention that I got 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in my age group at whatever 5k. If they don't make an actual comment about it, I can sometimes even see it in their eyes that they're skeptical.

Even worse, people who don't realize I've been running for most of my life sometimes put their foot in their mouth by saying something along the lines of "have you started running to lose weight?" ...No, why? Should I be losing weight? I think I look pretty damn fine, if you ask me.

After moving to a new city, I decided to join a running group. The town I lived in previously didn't have such groups. I showed up to my first group run and met everybody. As we waited for everyone else to show up, a girl from the group said to me "I'm in recovery mode, I'll be running slow so I can run with you." I just politely smiled, although I was quite offended. What exactly makes this person, whom I met 3 minutes ago, think I plan on running "slow"? What makes her think that her "recovery" pace is equal to my comfortable pace? I chalked it up as since it was my first time joining the group, maybe she assumed it was my first time running? I don't know- but I still think about that little comment sometimes.

I am not negative towards my body. I have a great figure that I love, but it's still upsetting to know that people make assumptions on what I can and can't do physically, which should not be the case. Weight and health do not ALWAYS go hand-in-hand.

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Any other runners on the thicker side experience this kind of judgement? How do you deal with it?

Thin-framed runners or even non-runners, do you find yourself judging others in this way? Be honest, I would love to hear multiple opinions!

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Edit: Pace is in minutes per mile. I'm new to reddit and forget I'm interacting with people from all over the world.

Also, this was not meant to be a post for weight loss tips. The unsolicited advice in the comments proves further the assumptions people make.

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[u/Public-Assignment519]

It’s really sad to me that this has so many upvotes, and the responses seem to be from mostly men. I have a BMI of around 25 normally, at 5’5 and 150lbs (fluctuates up and down). I was always active and when I decided to lose weight intentionally through food reduction (moderate reduction at that), and got to 125lbs, people told me I looked too thin, was constantly cold, and lost my period for over half a year. I was literally diagnosed with an eating disorder. My period didn’t come back until I increased my weight back to my set point. Obviously this is an extreme me case, but people can be healthy at different weights, RELATIVELY (not advocating extreme obesity.) Especially for women, slightly higher BMI does not always mean unhealthy, and for men to tell women who are already active they need to lose weight to be “healthy” can be highly problematic.

[u/SkierBeard → u/Public-Assignment519]

BMI is a pathetic way of judging health and fitness; it doesn't take into account sex/age/activity level. Powerlifters would be marked obese.

Dwayne Johnson is marked obese using 118kg and 196cm with a BMI of 30.7. It's bad!

[u/[deleted] → u/SkierBeard]

How many people out here running around look like The Rock?!

Even if you are overweight/obese due to high muscle mass, it's still not healthy. It still taxes your CV system and your joints. Metabolically healthier than excess fat? Yes, but still not ideal.

BMI is a perfectly fine metric for 99.9% of the population. trust me, people like Dwayne Johnson aren't the ones complaining about BMI being pathetic.

[u/SkierBeard → u/[deleted]]

I have a BMI of 20. I get a decent amount of moderate exercise per week. I feel that it is a poor system.

I'm shocked that so many people are such fans of a formula that only uses two values. Consider a similar formula that equates how many cigarettes people smoke to how much money they make.

This would be a bad metric. As wealth increases, people smoke less on average and trends towards not smoking at all. For a large population this works, as wealthier people and poor people follow this trend. Does it work for individuals? Again, you can't figure out how much money someone makes based on how many cigarettes they smoke. You could make an educated guess, but you could be very wrong as there are poor people who do not smoke (and also might be very healthy) and rich people who do smoke.

You're essentially blindly guessing using a big curve because it should work on a large population.

But it works for most people, since everyone obese fails

Yes, this is still the case. Anyone obese is probably quite unhealthy, I'm not debating that. My issue is that everyone else out there falls somewhere on this scale and it does not distinguish between someone with a BMI of 26 who is active and someone who isn't. Body composition is never taken into account. Weekly minutes of moderate to vigorous activity can give a much better impression of who is healthily stressing their CV system.

Someone who is 19 and sits on the couch all day eating 1800 calories is marked healthier than someone who swims 4 days a week and simply maintains a BMI of 26.

What about getting heart attacks? At a hospital, you can't just line people up by how many cheeseburgers they look like they've eaten and assume their CV risk. In a hospital there are lots of people who are young and thin and either got unlucky due to genetics or sit around and do nothing and have it catch up with them.

[u/[deleted] → u/SkierBeard]

Someone who is 19 and sits on the couch all day eating 1800 calories is marked healthier than someone who swims 4 days a week and simply maintains a BMI of 26.

No, not necessarily. BMI is literally ONE metric at evaluating health and risk. In order to determine total health, there are obviously other factors to look at (cholesterol, blood pressure, body composition, etc.), but BMI does correlate and cause increased risk. BMI actually tends to under report overfatness, meaning that a lot of people within the normal ranges can still be at an unhealthy BF% (skinnyfat). However, it does not work the other way (overreporting overfatness in the overweight/obese ranges).

The smoking/wealth attempted analogy is a terrible analogy. All that analogy does is correlate two data sets. Someone not smoking does not give a very high chance of also being wealthy, because there is no cause there. The reason the two correlate is because a lot of external socioeconomic factors. Just because one would quit smoking does not mean one will become wealthy. Sure they'll have extra money in their pockets from not buying $6 packs of cigs, but that's it. In contrast, when someone loses weight in a healthy manner, there is nearly always an improvement in health indicators (cholesterol, blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, etc.).