Losing inches not weight!

Losing inches = you win. :flowerforyou:

Uhhhhh....my advice, if you are losing inches, forget the scale numbers and keep doing what you are doing. Thats a win by any measure.

The lost inches and better definition is what's important. You are obviously losing fat and gaining muscle. This is a good thing!

Muscle weighs more than fat.
AS IN if you had a square inch of muscle it would weigh substantially more more then a square inch of fat.
You should just worry about body fat percentage and throw the number on the scale out.

If you're losing inches and not pounds I'd guess you're toning up which is awesome. My understanding is that since muscle takes up less space than fat if you're replacing fat with muscle you'll lose inches, but weight will stay the same. 1 pound is 1 pound whether it's fat or muscle, but I'd rather have the muscle.

Congrats on you lost inches.

Unless you are doing a serious lifting program and eating a surplus, you are probably not gaining muscle. Sorry.

gaining muscle because it weighs more than fat

Muscle does not "weigh" more than fat. Muscle is more dense than fat, meaning given an equal volume of muscle and an equal volume of fat, the muscle will weigh more (be heavier) than the fat. What appears to be happening is that the "weight" (pounds) is simply being contained in a smaller vessel (girth of waist/hip/thigh, etc). Think of it this way: 1 pound of brick = 1 pound of feathers = 1 pound. You need more feathers ( large volume container) to equal a pound of brick (small container). As an earlier poster stated: Losing inches = Winner!

^^ Muscle does not weight more than fat, but it does take up less room.

My inches always change before the scale does.

For love the of water! LET IT DIE...

There are two ways to read your question; either you're finding you're losing inches and the scale isn't budging, or you're happy with the number on the scale, just not with how your body looks. I'm going to go with the assumption of the former.

To lose inches without losing weight would mean that you're:
a) building muscle mass and
b) losing fat in proportion to the muscle mass you are gaining.

This is a very good thing. Unlike fat, muscle is active tissue which only serves to increase your base metabolism. Your body needs more calories to maintain itself when you have more muscle tissue.

The major problem with scales is that they only tell you one thing, how much the whole package (water, bone, fat, muscle) weigh. Because you don't know the proportions, you might come to the erroneous conclusion that nothing is happening because the number isn't changing. The fact that the total volume (i.e. the fit/size of your clothes) is changing means something is happening. Its all about density. Looking at fat vs muscle, the volume of material for the same weight is noticible. Take 1 lb of butter and 1 lb of steak and physically do a side by side comparison. You'll see that the space occupied by the pound of butter is much greater than the pound of steak.

Do yourself a favour and pay more attention to your tape measure and how you're physically looking and feeling than a number that doesn't give you the whole story.