At this same weight on the way up my shape was fine. Now on the way down it's all wrong!! The clothes fit wrong and I don't SEE much difference even though the scales are down and I'm wearing clothes I couln't before.

I thought it would be normal to always look the same at a particular weight. Any insight?

Thanks
C.

It is impossible to predict "where" we lose the weight at. There isn't any scientific study or research saying if we eat a certain way we will only gain or lose in certain areas.

I had seen one advertisement once that claimed that: Lose weight in your legs, hips and thighs!

I always wondered how companies could make that claim by diet alone.

If you want to "change" the way certain areas of your body looks may I suggest some form of workout to tone that part up?

Hi thanks for answering. What you say is right and I know it ... maybe I worded my post wrong.

What I meant was that when I started to put on weight and got to the weight I'm at now I looked different to now that I'm back at that weight but on my way down. I just wondered why at the exact same weight, and not that much time having passed (like a year or so), and not that much weight having been put on and taken off I should change shape so much...

I wish I could word it better ... where's Rustpot?

C.

chocolate, are you doing any kind of resistance exercise? It sounds to me like you're talking about body composition. If you traded fat for muscle it makes perfect sense that you'd be smaller than before at the same weight and that you'd be smaller from when you started with very little scale loss. Fat takes up a lot more room than muscle does.

While spot reducing doesn't work, exercise that targets specific areas of your body will result in more muscle growth and tone in those areas. As you lose fat what you look like will be different.

Does any of this make sense?
Nat

Chocolate my sweet, What ails thee?

Such a cunundrum! The fast becoming svelte chocolate is not bulging where she bulged before. The fat like the winter bird is migrating south no doubt.

It seems to be quite a common phenomenom that the weight goes on from the bottom up so to speak, but comes off from the top down.

So when losing weight the collars seem loser. Then the sweaters seem to fit a bit better. Then the pants seem a little loser.

Then you say "does my bum look big in this?" and dammit it still does!

If this is not at all what you are talking about, then it must be just happening to me.

Well ... yes and no ...

I guess it's also body composition, but lemme give an example so it's clearer (yuck!!). On my way up I put fat on my inner thigh, but it wasn't so ugly ... now I'm going down it's really kinda repulsive: it hangs and wobbles and under that I can feel the new muscle but on top ... bleagh! Going up it seemed more compact and "pretty" so to speak.

And anyway on my way up I was munching a lot of goodies and wasn't scrutinizing myself so much and was probably in a much better mood (also thanks to the goodies) so I probably thought I looked better than I actually did...

Thanks for the insight and light-heartedness. Sometimes I forget that the fat on my legs isn't really that important from a universal point of view !!!

C.

Ok im going to make an attempt at this.... when you were gaining weight your thighs looked more firm than they do now that you are loosing weight... ? now they are more flabby than they were before...? I would take a stab in the dark and say that your skin has strethched out some.. leaving a baggier appearence.. your skin will shrink down some over time... along with some resistance training may help that appearence. cant say for sure if it will ever look as tight as it did before.. Im still in that area right now of loosing... Hope i understand this correctly.. I dont think that when you put on a lot of weight from where you once were that your body will ever look the same when you get it back to the same weight you use to be... For me i have gained more muscles in my thighs from carrying arround the extra weight over the years..

Hope this helps a bit... mabe someone else has a better instite about this than i do...

Rustpot - you are too funny! I love to read your post. You crack me up.

I agree with rtjdk2 about the skin having stretched a bit and it will get tighter over time, especially with exercise.

The other thing is that there will be a period of about 6 months when the fat will seem to redistribute and you may get closer to where you were and how looked on the way up. Again, exercise as Nat suggested will help.

I am envious that you had so little to lose and probably (in MY eyes) your 'baggy thighs' are almost invisible. I tried to get my hip surgeon to do some liposuction while he was replacing the joint and he couldn't tell if I was serious or not. (I'm not sure either.) At least, having lost 40 pounds, there was lots of skin available for the post-op swelling without further stretching.

Yes, I guess we all tend to see ourselves in a rather distorted way. When I talk to my friends about my thighs they all think I'm nuts too... when I considered my body ok I went on about something else. Sometimes I think I've got to find something to worry about or I'm not happy hahaha!!

Anyway, I think it was a combination of a lot of things, cause I'm doing sport, drinking litres of water and hydrating and massaging like mad and in my opinion I'm looking much better ... on up days anyway

Thanks for all your support people!
It's nice to know I'm not the only occasional obsesser ...

This might sound weird -- I had been doing resistance training in the last seveal months of losing - and continue to do so in the last few months of being at goal.

My traditional inches measurements have NOT changed in the last YEAR, but I'm down a whole size, and yesterday, the waistband on the size 10's was a bit lose.

I've heard of losing weight and not inches, inches and not weight, But I don't know how you can not be losing weight or inches but losing sizes.

It's as though what I have left is still shifting around and making itself more comfortable in subtle ways. So even if you are a different shape now coming back to your ideal weight, it may be months and months before your 'body shape' catches up with your weight loss.

Of course I have no scientific facts except my own to back any of this up

You may have stumbled on a new phenomenon.

Its seems that LC weight loss is akin to a microwave.

In a microwave you zap the food for a few minutes and then leave it to stand. It goes on cooking with no external influence.

Perhaps in maintenance you go on "cooking" for a while.

Please let us know when you are done and ready for the table

That is a fantastic analogy.

How about the car engine that keeps running even after you turn of the ignition and go into the house?

LC -- It doesn't sound weird to me at all! I am no where near goal and my weight is at a virtual standstill and my measurements are practically the same each month, but that's OK because my clothes are all a lot looser!

I've always said I didn't care if I weighed 200 lbs. as long as I could wear a size 10. If I keep this up, it may happen.