This has been bugging me for a while now, so would be interesting to get a runners take on things... my family tell me I'm 'skinny' and shouldn't lose any more weight; however I can't help but thinking that I'm carrying some useless fat around, which if lost in a healthy manner, would help my race times.
According to the bathroom scales, which I know can be inaccurate; I'm 9st 11lbs (137lbs), and 13.3% body fat. I'm 5'8 (30yo, male), so I believe that puts me in the middle of the healthy BMI bracket.
Now to me it seems obvious; 13.3% is too high a body fat level for someone who wants to run well from 5k to the half marathon; and if I can get that down in to single digits (in a healthy way of course, no crash diets etc.), the chances are I'll run faster.
The problem is that I seem to be the only one who thinks this, so quite frankly I'm starting to doubt whether my family have a point... So who's correct here?
The thing is I don't feel especially thin or lean; I look in the mirror and while I'm obviously fairly slim, I still see weight which can be lost, generally in the form of flab around my middle - yet this seems to be at odds with other people’s opinions.
One factor which may be key is that said family members are not runners themselves - do they just have a skewed view on what is a 'normal' weight? Are they just so used to being surrounded by fat people (they are not fat themselves, just average), that they have become blind to what fit and lean should look like?
So the question is, should I diet and try and lose a few pounds? I just can't see how dieting down to single digit body fat would do me anything but good? Is there anything I'm missing here?
I wouldn't be thinking this way if I felt that I 'looked' lean (I know everyone's body is different, so there is no 'optimum' BF% for instance), but the problem is that I still feel I look relatively flabby, even though everyone else seems to be blind to it.