You will lose inches no weight

I'm not 100% sure, but it happens. I think (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) it has to do with retaining and/or building lean body mass and losing fat. Losing weight doesn't equal losing fat. Weight lost is generally made up of fat, muscle, water and waste. I believe that when you work to lose as little lean body mass as possible (very small deficit along with strength training) and cut fat, the scale will move very slowly and sometimes not at all.

That's just my theory.

That's pretty much it.

Its called body recomposition. You are eating at/near your daily allowance of calories with quality exercise. You'll lose some of the fat and gain some muscle. This method can be effective, just not the MOST effective way to slim down.

This is why I preach using the tape measure instead of scale. Who cares what you weigh if you can fit into a size X?

Muscle is denser than fat. It takes up less volume (space) per pound. For example, I weigh 175 but have a lot of muscle so I look like I weigh 155 if you were to compare me to one of my friends who does weight 155. We look the about the same and wear the same size, but I weigh substantially more.

So if you are doing a workout program, and you will "lose inches" but not weight, what it means is that you are engaging in body recomposition. You are gaining muscle while losing body fat percentage, generally speaking. It's awesome because muscle will burn more calories while you are not exercising.

bump

Check out http://www.mybodygallery.com/ sometime.

Different people at the same height and weight can have a huge difference in waistline, bust, butt... We're not all cast from the same mold, we're not cut out like cookies.

I mean, take 5'3", 130lbs, within "Normal" BMI range. Some girls have visible abs, some have cellulite. Some have A cups, some have DD. If you do your squats, lunges, and deadlifts, you'll have a much different body than if you began training for long-distance running.
(possibly nsfw link http://www.mybodygallery.com/search.html?gender=female&height=160&age=30&weight=59&pantSize=any&shirtSize=any&bodytype=)
This is why BMI is such a crock of creamy crap. The scale lies, pounds matter less than body fat percentage. Determine your body image goals and then you can meet them. If you don't know what you want to look like, you won't know what you'll need to do to get there.

This is happening to me right now. I lost a quick 11 pounds... and then all of a sudden the weight loss stopped but I was still getting smaller everyday. I didn't realize of course that I was still losing weight until I realized I could pull my once tight jeans all the way off now without unzipping or unbuttoning. Before I was completely discouraged because the scale wasn't moving even though I was dieting and exercising, only to find I was definitely still shrinking..... (I'd still like to see the scale go down though) :-(

Body recomps (where you lose a little bit of fat, gain a little bit of muscle, stay at the same weight but get smaller) are long, slow processes that only happen when you're eating around maintenence and doing some kind of resistance training. Seriously, they can take months to years to produce results.

When people usually say "you'll lose inches but not weight," they're talking about a short-term phenomenon you see while eating at a deficit. I honestly have no clue why, but while you're eating at a deficit, from week to week, you can lose inches, lose weight, both or neither. Over time, while you're eating at a deficit, you'll lose pounds and inches at a fairly consistent rate, but not if you're looking at very small periods of time (a few days to a few weeks). Over a short period of time, you can lose inches but not pounds because your body is a complex biological machine and doesn't respond to changes instantaneously.