When did you start to notice?

Fattyohfat

I am two months in on attempt to lose weight. I have lost 40 pounds. And I haven't noticed any visual changes.
My scale, the doctor's scale, and the scale at the gym all say I've lost weight. But my clothes still fit the same. My aches and pains in my joints are still there.
The only indication (FOR MY SELF) is the seat belt in the car is easier to unbuckle.
Oh I should add. I started at 450 and I am at 410 now.
Is it because I was so fat to begin with it is going to take time?
Where do we lose fat first?
Am I burning muscle and not fat? I don't feel weaker.
I find the whole thing somewhat frustrating. Because right now the only success indicator I have is the scale.

SOIJ20

Those small steps are what matters in my mind!. I still can't see my weight loss when I look in the mirror, even though the scale and clothes size says otherwise.
But for me it was those little wins that kept me going, the tightening your belt buckle a little bit more, or just in general feeling a little bit more energetic! Don't give up, it's tiring but consistency is key !

Unfortunately you can't choose where you loose fat, it just slowly comes off everywhere really, and you can gain muscle but as far as I'm aware you can't burn muscle.

It took me on and off about 10 years (and one pregnancy) to get to a lower weight than my original weight before I gained it all, I'm actually lower than when i was 17 which baffles me. A lot of ups and downs, and a lot of times I stopped and then started again, a lot of depressive moments and trying moments. So it can be a slow process but it is possible! So keep it up

Feel free to add me if you like! I can always send some motivation along the way!

herringboxes

You’re doing GREAT! Keep it up!

If you haven’t already, I’d like to encourage you to do 2 things:

1) take selfies, front and side. For no eyes but your own. You will appreciate them down the road to confirm your progress.

2) take measurements. For example, waist and thigh. Again, you’ll have something to compare against if you do it now.

It does seem that the more you have to lose, the more it takes to see the progress. Progress is still happening, though, and it’s having a major impact on your body and health right now even if you’re not seeing or feeling it yet.

Finally, it’s very common for us to not see progress even if it’s visible. Our self image is complex and we often don’t process the changes right away. People here often report that they took progress photos, saw no changes, but later on said they actually COULD see changes in the photos that they had taken before.

Keep up the great work!

cwolfman13

The more weight you have to lose, the less visible those changes are due to still having a substantial amount of body fat present. Also, you look at yourself in the mirror everyday so you individually are not likely to notice the small, incremental changes occurring which is why many people take progress pictures.

rileysowner

Seeing changes in your own body can be difficult. You have a mental picture of your body and even when it changes for many of us, we keep seeing it according to that mental picture. It is only when the changes become so big that they push past that mental picture that people who struggle that way will suddenly see how much they have changed visually. I have noticed that in my own progress, and I did not have as much to lose as you do. Keep at it. You will see the changes yourself eventually, for now, the changes will be in things like clothing sizes and the like. Keep at it. You are doing great.

PAV8888

I started at under 300lbs and I can assure you that I didn't even realize that the first 40lbs were gone. In fact I didn't find MFP till after they were gone so you're definitely doing something smarter than I was!

BUT THEY WERE gone.

Especially when I started having to go back to pop new holes into my belt till it starting wrapping a little bit too far towards the back of my pants. And in spite of that, I still went into the store to buy a 2XL to 3XL jacket because it was raining a lot and I was getting wet The lady was looking at me with a VERY weird look on her face. I walked out with an L. That was a year later. Took me another year to stop wondering whether my second leg would fit in my pants when I was putting them on.

Knees didn't stop clicking till I got into the lower overweight range.

All in all... it sounds pretty normal to me! Prioritize finding things you believe you will be able to do over the next five years whether in terms of exercise or eating... and keep going like that energizer bunny!

AnnPT77

What they all said, plus an analogy for one part of it.

The one part is the idea that when we're quite overweight, it takes more pounds to make a visual difference (if we can see it despite the standard self-image distortion ).

It's like a big ol' onion: When we peel off the outer-most layer of the onion, the onion still looks pretty big. If we continue, keep peeling layers, the visual change in the onion seems more major with each layer that's peeled off. Those later layers make a big size change when we take them off!

Now (sadly) fat doesn't neatly peel off from the outside and move inward. It can come off in any area of the body, in any order. In fact, for many people the first fat to be lost may be visceral fat, the stuff that's packed inside the body cavity around one's internal organs. That loss will hardly show at all, but that fat is some of the most dangerous to our health, so losing it is a great thing, whether we can see it or not. Even when we start losing external (subcutaneous) fat, it can come off in small amounts from lots of areas, so not be visually obvious.

Another way to visualize it (which is kind of gross, I guess): If I have 10 or 20 pounds of butter, it's a pretty large lump. But if I were to spread it all over lots of my body in a thin layer, it wouldn't look very big at all. The bigger I am, the thinner it will spread, and the less visual size difference it would mak.

You are doing great, doing wonderful things for yourself. But it will take time for the changes to be clearly visible, maybe (probably) take even more time for you to be able to see the change yourself** for psychological reasons, and even the joint pain will gradually reduce (after a time allowance for some healing to occur, y'know?) . I hate that this takes patience, but dagnabbit, it does, and plenty of it.

** As loss continues, IME some of the best noticers will be people who know you pretty well, but who don't see you very often. Our families and friends we see routinely don't notice because the individual increments are small. People we haven't seen in a few months will be more likely to notice, because it's a bigger change to them.

What you're doing will be worth it - waaaayyy worth it - in the long run. Don't let discouragement stop the process. There's something in our brains (often) that really doesn't much like change - change is uncomfortable, even good change. Our brains can play tricks to stop the changes happening. Being 40 pounds down - a big number! - and having it get you down because you can't see it yet . . . that can be one of those kinds of tricks.

Hang in there. You can do this!

Elphaba1313

someone (possibly someone on here!) described fat loss as being like unrolling a roll of toilet paper. When the toilet roll is full (so someone who is bigger) and you take 20 sheets off, it does almost nothing. But when the toilet roll is half used (so when you are lighter) you take 20 sheets off the roll gets much smaller. When I was bigger I lost 15 kilos and my clothes still fit me. When I was much lighter, I lost ten kilos and that was 2 whole pants sizes.

I think what you have achieved is amazing, and if you keep doing what you have been doing, soon you will see changes in your clothes, and then in the way you look.

Edit: And of course Ann has come along and explained it SO much better than me. xx

Lildarlinz

I’ve lost 9lb and I don’t know where it’s come from
Although looking at my big toe…it now looks smaller 🤣🤣🤣 just kidding!

I just know I will have to lose at least another stone before I see any improvement on my belly fat and I know this from experience before when I was dieting…like I could see it in the mirror…I had well I still have a massive podge but before I had a massive podge and then it got littler x

It just takes time and obviously we can’t get it off where we want it to come off x

Lietchi

It's like an onion - taking off the first layer doesn't seem to make much of a difference, but each following layer makes a bigger difference

And clothing can play tricks on us, especially when stretchy or loose: differences in how tight they are/how they drape which may be quite subtle. And in dress sizes it's like onions too: the bigger size, the larger the difference between sizes (more weight loss necessary to go down a size).

And also: yes, our mind can play tricks on us. Progress pictures are a great idea, you may be able to see differences later on that you can see now, once your brain catches up

Retroguy2000

You shouldn't feel frustrated. 40 pounds is great progress. Keep it up!

cmriverside

You've lost 10% of your weight.

That's likely 20% of what you need to lose.

Well done. :flowerforyou: I agree that personal private progress pictures are a great idea. Do them in the same outfit and standing in the same place each time, you'll be amazed.

It is a long process and much will be revealed (no pun intended) about yourself. Keep learning and keep working at it.

springlering62

You’re doing so well. Don’t be discouraged!!!!

I couldn’t see the weight loss, and even now, five years in, I sometimes look in the mirror and don’t look slim.

For me, I can’t see it unless it’s in a photo. I lost umpteen clothing sizes but couldn’t see it. The mirror is unreliable, but photos don’t lie. I sincerely wish I’d taken progress pictures from the very beginning. I was already 60 pounds down when a trainer I began working with sent me photos and videos from every session. That was when I had my “holy cow!” realization that I’d lost a lot of weight.

When I ultimately got too low, she was upset with me, and wanted to prove to me I was too thin. It was the “grandaddy longlegs “ photo she snuck and took from behind and sent that snapped some sense into me and brought my loss to a screeching halt.

Have someone you trust take photos of you from front side and behind. You’ll start to see a difference soon.

When I lose mental “track” of my size now, which I still do, I ask my husband to take and send photos of me for reassurance.

Weight loss is just weird and messes with your head. You may be half the person you were before but your head doesn’t make the connection the heartless, soulless, rooted in utter truth scale does.

AnnPT77

FWIW, I couldn't even see a difference in photos for a while. I just looked at the photo and saw "me, the fat person". Eventually my self image, the internal "me", mostly caught up, usually.

Any of the methods showing that it's happening means that it's happening. It can be scale weight, tape measurements, clothes fit, comparison of progress photos, or probably even some other objective things.

If one of those says weight loss is happening, it's happening. Don't let your mind tell you otherwise.

singer201

You've lost the equivalent of a 40# bag of dog or horse food--not a small thing. If you want to feel the difference, go to the grocery store and heft a large bag of dog food, so you can visualize what you aren't carrying around anymore. In the beginning, it's hard to see changes, but it will eventually show in better fitting clothes and other physical markers.

kshama2001

I use the weight trending app Happy Scale (iphone.) There's also Libra for Android. Looking at my green trend lines cheers me up when it doesn't seem to my lying eyes that I'm making any progress.

springlering62

I also suggest reading the NSV thread over on the Success Stories board.

NSV means non scale victory- things people have noticed or are proud of, even when the scale hasn’t moved or you don’t “see” changes.

Other things happen to you that indicate changes in your body are happening, some of them quite funny.

There are thousands of posts. Start at #1.

I’ve read every single post on that thread, and there were many periods when I would “bank” posts to have something to motivate me when I didn’t feel things were happening, or not as fast as I would’ve wanted.

Number one best thread on MFP.