Inches

amioc

For those of you ladies that have dropped sizes and only lost a few lbs, when you started did the scale move down lots when you first started and then went up but lost inches? Or did the scale never really move from the beginning but you were loosing inches?

sollyn23l2

I went up a couple pounds from the increased weight training, then lost a couple inches and the weight stayed pretty much the same.

amioc

Thank you for replying 🙂. How much weight do have to lose? I hope you don’t mind me asking that 🙈!! I have 13lbs to lose and have been going constantly with diet and weights for 2 months and I’ve lost 2lb but I’ve lost and inch from every where which I’m so happy with 😁. I’m just a little worried cos I have that much to lose but surely I would lose more weight to get to where I want to be? Will it just come off real slow?

AnnPT77

amioc wrote: »

For those of you ladies that have dropped sizes and only lost a few lbs, when you started did the scale move down lots when you first started and then went up but lost inches? Or did the scale never really move from the beginning but you were loosing inches?

The question kind of doesn't gel for me, honestly. Too many variables.

I've dropped sizes without losing any pounds, maybe even gaining a very small number. (It took a long time, many months to years, happened went I from sedentary and depleted by cancer treatment (among other things), to very active while remaining overweight/obese.)

When I first started losing weight after getting serious about it, I dropped pounds pretty fast initially, but don't recall a fast drop in inches. I lost 5 pounds the first week, which was almost 3% of my body weight at the time: Faster than rational if it were fat loss. (Initial weight loss from reduced food in transit in the digestive system, water weight loss from changes in dietary composition - can be quite quick. It's not fat loss. Plus there can be loss of visceral fat (inside the body between organs), or loss as a thin layer over the whole body like peeling the outer layer of an onion - not much impact in inches.)

I didn't change workouts when I started losing weight (I was already very active), so I didn't see the bigger water retention for muscle repair that some people see when they start both at once, that makes the scale hold more steady even though fat is being lost. I was also already eating a high-fiber diet, so I probably had a drop in average digestive contents, but people who go from a low-residue maybe meaty/fatty diet to lots of veggies/grains . . . I'd expect they could see some gain in digestive contents, and that also could hide fat loss progress.

Scale can move down from less water retention, average digestive contents on their way to becoming waste, fat depletion, muscle loss, bone loss. The first two can create relatively big shifts in short time spans, hours or days. Any healthy level of fat depletion is fairly slow, quite a few days to a small number of weeks or even a month or so, before it shows up on the scale depending on whatever else is going on physically. Bone and muscle changes, absent some medical catastrophe, are more like months to years.

amioc wrote: »

Thank you for replying 🙂. How much weight do have to lose? I hope you don’t mind me asking that 🙈!! I have 13lbs to lose and have been going constantly with diet and weights for 2 months and I’ve lost 2lb but I’ve lost and inch from every where which I’m so happy with 😁. I’m just a little worried cos I have that much to lose but surely I would lose more weight to get to where I want to be? Will it just come off real slow?

Without much weight to lose, the healthy thing would be to lose it slowly, IMO. A while back, I decided to lose a few vanity pounds (somewhere 10-15) within the healthy weight range, and decided to keep it slow/painless/low health risk, maintain energy to be active. Because of that choice, it took over a year, and I was fine with that. In that year, there was a time when I resumed strength training after a long hiatus.

Even my weight trending app thought I was gaining or maintaining, let alone what I might have assumed via intuition based on what showed up on the scale. First of July 2020, 129.8 pounds. First of August, 129.6. 🤣 I've been calorie counting for 6+ years. I was pretty sure I was hitting the calorie level for slow loss. Guess what? August 6, 126.2 pounds, right in line with expectations based on calorie intake. Bodies are weird.

You don't have a lot to lose. If the weight workout is new or aggressive (or resumed after a break), that'll have an effect. If you're premenopausal . . . well, some women only see a new low once a month. If you're seeing inches change, something good is happening.

How many calories are you eating? How many calories do you think you'd need to maintain weight? Are you willing to open up your food diary so experienced calorie-counters here can see if they have tips for you?