Well, I was procrastinating, but now I'm concerned...

[The Sweet Irony]

Apologies for lengthiness and rambling.
First of all, I'd like to stress that I know just about nothing about health and fitness - which is why I'm here. I am a teenage girl, I'm pulling an all-nighter on a school assignment (pretty typical), but I have never until half an hour ago worried about weight, muscle mass, calories, exercise, or blood sugar management (not so typical). So I have no clue what I'm doing.

When I have a lot of homework, I often take brief naps every so often during the night. I usually find them refreshing. However, when I woke up this time, I felt awful. I felt sort of like I'd had too much caffeine, though not exactly. I felt shaky, my heart was racing, my palms were sort of clammy, and I felt mentally awful. My mother was about to go to sleep herself and when I told her what was wrong, she said it sounded like sugar shock and told me to make some tea. I took the advice and I feel less bad, but this is the second time this has happened to me and both were within this week.

So, I googled sugar-related stuff--blood sugar, blood sugar management, diabetes. I figured it was probably a no-brainer: today was my sister's birthday, I treated her to smoothies for breakfast and in the afternoon we had birthday cake. That's much more sugar in a day than my body is used to. But I grew curious when I saw the Symptoms page for the American Diabetes Association. I didn't relate to any of the symptoms for diabetes type 1, but I seem to have all of the symptoms for type 2 either in my normal life or within the past week.

I was surprised. I mean, I had always thought that only, well, fat people could get diabetes. I know, I know, stupid assumption, but hey, uninformed teenage girl. I'm tiny and slender, so I hadn't looked into any of this before. On a related link, I was brought to a site that explained how to calculate BMI. It said that BMI does not factor in loads of muscle mass, but I doubt I have any of that because I have never worked out in my life. That isn't to say I don't get any exercise, but the only exercising I do is from natural activities like walking, swimming, dancing, playgrounds, etc. So I plugged in the formula, and according to my BMI, I'm obese.

I'm surprised and confused and I would really appreciate it if anyone would like to comment or relate your own experiences. I guess my question is, can skinny people be obese?

I mean, I have a larger bust and hips in proportion to the rest of my body than the average, but I have a slender waist and legs so I never considered that I could be unhealthy. However, there is one other possible indicator I've had for something like this was that I started my periods at the age of eleven and that in general compared to girls at school, that seems to be on the early side. I've heard that obesity can cause girls to begin puberty early.

So, gaia, what do you think?

[Sweet Murderer]

Usually, it is very hard to be "skinny" and considered obese by BMI standards.
Maybe extremely well built and obese by BMI standards, but not the other way around.
Also, getting your period at the age of eleven is not that very early.


The smartest thing to do for you now is to go to a doctor and get a check-up on your actual health.
Because I doubt anyone here can help you out - internet also has the tendency to make everything look much worse than it is c:

[Absolute Virtue]

This has a lot to do of what your perception of skinny is. Some people, skinny is very thin, others, people with a good amount of fat are still considered skinny. So when yo look at it in that way then yes, it's more than possible for someone skinny to still be obese.

Women generally store more fat around their hips and such before the waist. This is really just a luck of the draw type of thing when it comes to genetics. But as you already know, the BMI chart can be pretty flawed. Since you're into looking things up look up other methods to measure yourself. Waist-to-hip ratio might give you a better idea.

But it's a good thing that you caught on early on that fat people aren't the only ones who can get diabetes. It takes a lot of people for spin to find out that being thin doesn't mean that you're healthy in the slightest.

And you're not going to develop diabetes from one day of smoothies and cake. If you really think you're at risk then go to the doctor, but even if you do have diabetes don't blame it on that one day, it takes a lot of bad habits to get to that point.

[The Sweet Irony]

Absolute Virtue

This has a lot to do of what your perception of skinny is. Some people, skinny is very thin, others, people with a good amount of fat are still considered skinny. So when yo look at it in that way then yes, it's more than possible for someone skinny to still be obese.

Women generally store more fat around their hips and such before the waist. This is really just a luck of the draw type of thing when it comes to genetics. But as you already know, the BMI chart can be pretty flawed. Since you're into looking things up look up other methods to measure yourself. Waist-to-hip ratio might give you a better idea.

But it's a good thing that you caught on early on that fat people aren't the only ones who can get diabetes. It takes a lot of people for spin to find out that being thin doesn't mean that you're healthy in the slightest.

And you're not going to develop diabetes from one day of smoothies and cake. If you really think you're at risk then go to the doctor, but even if you do have diabetes don't blame it on that one day, it takes a lot of bad habits to get to that point.

That's true, perception of "skinny" and "fat" is incredibly relative. Thank you both for responding, and yeah, I didn't think it really had to do with the birthday cake. I meant that I was surprised to find that many things I've always had--slow-to-heal cuts, for instance, were symptoms of diabetes type 2.

As far as the BMI calculation...I did it wrong xp serves me right for attempting math at 3:00 AM. When I calculated the score correctly, it came out normal.