Confused about what's healthy for me?

Hi, so I'm feeling very conflicted about what is healthy on paper vs what looks healthy.

I'm male 37, 5'10 and 79kg (174 lbs). I've never been particularly overweight, and have always struggled to put on muscle so "skinnyfat" is pretty much me, despite always being active. I used to run a lot (trained for and did a marathon) and now I run once a week and do resistance training with progressive overload at least 3 times a week (so 4 active days minimum per week). However I also work in an deskjob so am still mostly sedentary.

To look at in clothes, noone has any concerns and I'm seen as normal and wear mostly medium size clothes, but looking at smart scales and pictures of others at various bodyfat percentages, I'm likely around the 25/26% range, which for my age and height, is borderline classed as obese (wtf?!). Ok, let's accept that maybe perceptions are skewed because we're used to seeing overweight as normal.. and if my lean mass is actually very low maybe we can accept that..

But judging by my weight, to get to what is deemed "ideal" for me (around 18% for men), I'd be looking at getting down to 72kg which seems like I need to lose a lot to me. At my skinniest in recent years I was 71kg and my wife and family commented several times they were concerned I was too skinny, despite me seeing the numbers and seeing I was actually not that skinny at all.

So is this simply an issue with perceptions or how do you know what is healthy for you?

submitted by /u/minikarter
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/1c7tcrt/confused_about_whats_healthy_for_me/