Edxl:
While BMI is a very imperfect measure, it somewhat lets you compare body sizes across different heights. Yours would be around 36 or 37, and that was right about where my wife began to 'feel too fat' (i.e. it was starting to noticeably affect her life). As not-a-feedist she lost some weight ... but gained most of it back with pregnancy, and handled it better the second time around (stronger, more used to it), lost some again and then gained it back again in her forties (age will do that) and hasn't found it holding her back at all since.
Meanwhile I've just recently hit bmi 36 and for the first time I'm beginning to find my fat getting intrusive in my life.
Which is all mostly to say that while I'm sure it varies by person, in my experience, yah, this is the size where being fat begins to actually bite, and where you have to decide if you are going to put up with it, or lose enough to avoid most of those issues. But also that it gets easier over time as your body adjusts. Muscles that regularly deal with your weight get stronger, you unconsciously develop new pattern of movement to work around your fat, you get used to the look of the bigger you, you automatically pace yourself to what you can deal with, and so on.
Or to put it another way, it can be rough when you first grow to this size, but living at this sort of size isn't as hard in the longer run.
Thank you for such a thoughtful and informative response, I appreciate it. All of it makes sense. That and I gained ridiculously fast - now at 207lb (up 42lb in less than 3 months). Things have stayed at about the same level of hard since my first post, so I think there is an element of getting used to it already. I probably can't keep all of this gain, but it's been fun!
