Reached goal weight but can still pinch fat - now what?

Lift heavy and lift hard! Well, that my solution to everything. Lol best wishes ma'am

Unless your muscle mass has changed dramatically (unlikely even with lifting), your body fat % would be in the 20%-21% range now, based on your dead results.

That’s not athletically lean, but it’s also at the point where it takes increasingly greater effort to continue to lower it.

As you know, you cannot “spot reduce” fat, and the way your body stores fat is genetically determined.

So you can try to continue lowering body fat—you lose fat over all of your body, but it would reduce the “trouble spots” as well.

Personally, I think at this point a recomp journey would be the better choice. Look to build and shape your body with more muscle and take whatever incremental fat loss occurs along the way.

This will also take time and effort, but at least in the end you have some muscles to show for it rather than just a lower body fat level that you will struggle to maintain.

Congrats on hitting your goal.

If you aren't satisfied, consider going by fat % to get down around 20-22%, just doing whatever has been working for you so far. At that point if you don't like the distribution of the remaining fat you can go to a plastic surgeon or dermatologist and look into those fat-freezing technologies to whittle down spots that are out of proportion.

How much weight did you lose in total? Excess skin could also make you look flabbier than you actually are.

As a bit of background.
5’1, 66yo.
Started at age 54 weighing 130 with a goal of getting back to my previous weight of 100-105.

I’ve maintained at 100-105 for the past ~10yr doing a recomp/maintain/decomp (life has interrupted things at times).

OK, with my background out of the way, on to you.

In all honesty I would go with a recomp for at least 6 months, and preferably a year. Then re-examine your weight goal.

Why?

Your skin will continue to adjust for up to ~2yr, so some of the wobble will go.

As you get a little older your skin, the whole organ not just the epidermis changes and can, with little fat beneath it, start to look striated. (Ask me how I know )

So a little fat (in my mind), once skin has recovered and muscle is supporting it, isn’t a bad thing.

As you are post menopausal you hormones have shifted (to a certain extent) your fat storage from subcutaneous to abdominal/visceral.

This means if you lose those few extra lbs then decide you want to add on a few lbs, be it a straight weight gain or a slow bulk (it is harder, though not impossible to bulk post menopause) there will be a higher fat to muscle ratio gain and that tends to be abdominal fat, not all over subcutaneous.

And lastly, a lower weight/body fat recomp could leave you with too little fat to draw on to achieve optimal muscle gain.

In my mind going for a recomp now, and hopefully adding a little muscle as well as strength, will mean you have a better muscle to fat ratio if you decide to drop a couple of lbs down the road, but I think a year of steady recomp will leave you with a body you are happy with.

Just my rambling/observations on my experience as I have aged and recomped at a lower BMI.
(Sometimes wishing I had known then what I know now, even though I love my now)

Cheers, h.