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 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.
100% agree although my fancy pants Garmin scale is absolute shit at measuring body fat. Could be there are better but I’ll stick to the caliper test myself.