I have been working a very labor intensive job for about 3 months now and have lost enough inches on my waist to go down two pants sizes yet my total weight when I go on the scale remains around the same. How is it possible that I lost 4 or 5 inches off my waist yet the scale doesn’t change? Is it possible what weight in fat I am loosing is made up for with an increase in muscle mass?
Yes.
Muscle mass is significantly heavier per unit of volume than fat is. Around 15-20% heavier. Muscles also fill in around the bones first instead of on the surface of the skin like subcutaneous fat.
To add on, this exact scenario illustrates why BMI is not always the best measure of health, because it only looks at height and weight. Measuring waist circumference and body fat percentage should give you a better-rounded picture of how you’re doing
While true, 95% of the people saying BMI doesn’t work well are coping fatties.
Let me add- not only are they mostly coping fatties, they co-opted truths for the other end of the spectrum (extreme low BMI) and started claiming the same for themselves. Yes. BMI is a poor indicator of health in weight lifters. 500 lb people do not share that outlier.
I say this as a fat person who will likely die fat, who feels no guilt or shame or any negative internalized anything. It is a fact. I am fat. I will likely be fat for the rest of my life. It’s as clinical to me (I work in healthcare) as the sky being blue or my patient being bradycardic- it is what it is and the sooner we stop pretending it’s anything more than that, the sooner we can all move on to the more important realities of dealing with the consequences.
Yes it is so caleld body recomposition. You can burn fat and gain muscle at the same time, thus maintaining the same weight. You will look thinner though, the good kind of thinner with a better build.
This cycle is what I go through every time I start working out again. For at least a few months, whatever weight I started with is where I’m more or less going to stay but it gets redistributed to places that aren’t my stomach and neck so I ultimately look and feel a lot better even though the scale would argue I haven’t done shit at all.
Its better to focus on body fat percentage than weight. Fancier scales can give you that metric. Cheap measuring tape or the OPs pants test are also good, albeit slower, methods to measure the change.
Depending on the type of work you are doing, you could be losing fat while gaining both muscle and bone density.
If you were mostly untrained/inactive before starting this job, you’ve most certainly grown/densified a lot of bone.
That’s what happened to me with my previous job. Family and friends kept telling me that I look good and thinner but the scale was more or less the same. I do feel better and went down a size so it’s a win for me overall.
Also location it’s stored. Some people carry it differently, but fat often builds up around a persons mid-section and causes that pear/apple body shape. Muscles gain bulk on the ones being used. A person can loose the inches of fat around their waste, then build up muscle mass in their arms/shoulders. The fat loss is noticeable because a person starts using a different belt notch or their pants fall down, but the added muscle bulk around the arms will be less likely to require replacing/adjusting one’s clothing.
https://i0.wp.com/baltimorefishbowl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/muscle-vs-fat-500x385.jpg
5lb muscle vs 5lb of fat.
If you replace an equal mass of fat with an equal mass of muscle, your weight will not change but you will be physically smaller.
If you look at this comment, the comparison should more realistically look like this
That’s people. We don’t eat people. We’re not aliens from the Twilight zone
