Am I Fat? the Burning Question

"Am I Fat?"

Wander through many heath-and-fitness discussion forums and you'll come across this question with unsettling regularity. It seems many of us secretly wonder about their appearance. I say 'secretly' because the ones that are asking choose to trust the anonymity of the internet, rather than ask their own friends' opinions. It does make sense, though: would you tell your best friend she was fat? No--you would either flatly say no, or you'd probably blurt out some hackneyed, time-worn expression, something about true beauty being found from within.

To answer this question with some degree of satisfaction, I'll try to address two aspects of this: Psychological and Technical.

Psychological:

A very common trend in this question is that most of the people asking this question is that they are young, usually in their teens, and female. How do I know? They include all sorts of details in their question; a common form of this would go,

"Am I fat? I weigh 144 pounds, 17 years old, active on our high school pep squad, but don't exercise that much, and just get five hours of sleep every night because my brother leaves the PlayStation on all the time. And I guess I eat okay, mostly ethnic foods I'm into right now, but more than I think I should, especially when I'm out with my friends..."

What she really wants you to answer is not if she's fat, but, "Am I unattractive? Is this healthy? How would I know? I need someone to say I'm OK". While it is sad that many young people like her have this insecurity, sadder yet that many answering her would gush, "Oh-no-no, you sound fine dear, don't worry, you're still young..." and so forth. But this is not quite the answer she is looking for; in fact it is the same coddling, reassurance-intended drivel she would get from her friends-not very satisfying or even helpful at all. We tend to give that answer to anyone, friends or strangers, usually for two reasons: (1) we don't want to hurt their feelings and (2) we don't know exactly what hard information to supply.