Changing body composition & shape + having a normal life

anemoneprose

Are those things incompatible?

Any former chub-legs successfully transform their shapes without making it their freaking job?

How hard do you have to work to make fundamental changes to your natural body shape? Like, in hours (at the gym, planning workouts & nutrition, etc)?

I'm struggling to accept my post-weight-loss body. Some of it's sort of loose skinnyfatness from having been more or less overweight for ten years. The fat parts are looser than when I was big. The sinew's bigger, but it doesn't seem to look or feel as connected to the fat as before.

Like I can see some nice development - from the front, I've got three good lines following the quads; some decent mass starting up in the hams, the glutes are lifting a bit. Don't even have to squint, lol, it shows in movement and when I tense my legs. It's just there's still a fair bit of flab sort of loosely around it. Not sure I'm explaining things that well

Between eyeball estimates (by a trainer and a bodybuilder), tape measure, scale, and calipers, I'm anywhere between 18-24% bf. Prob closer to the top end. It's just almost all concentrated on my legs

Add to that, that they were always heavy, even as a normal-weighted kid/teen/young adult. Pear shape, saddlebags, etc.

So I'm building muscle, doing strength training, but I think to get to some level of satisfaction with this in-between weirdness, it would mean a kind of discipline and commitment that I'm not sure is sustainable for me, over years.

(I think my face & upper body would look disgusting with much lower than 18% bf.)