do former fatties weigh more?
I know this is probably a weird question, but I've been wondering about something. I sometimes hear stories about people who lose a lot of weight and then have ten to fifteen pounds of loose skin...
I also see pix of people who look very thin to me, but are saying that their weights are higher than I might have expected. I'm just wondering if former fatties actually weigh more because of extra skin, muscle etc, or if that's just rubbish. |
I have a theory that every woman in America thinks she "carries her weight well" because every woman in America lies about her weight. So you know you look about like all these women who say they weigh X, and you know dang well you weigh X+10%, so you think "Man, I must carry my weight better than they do", except they actually weigh X+10% as well.
Perhaps women who have lost a lot of weight are more likely to post their true weight, so they too look like they "carry their weight well". |
I knew a woman who started out at 5'4 weighing around 300 lbs. After getting gastric bypass, and then coming down with cancer, she got all the way down to 109 lbs. She was actually much thinner, at least 10 lbs of that being excess skin. Yes, that skin can add several pounds to your weight.
Also, when I weighed 208 I was a size 12. Many people who are at that weight to begin with are size 16+. It was extra muscle, in that case, but the point is still the same. You can weigh a lot more than you look if you have been heavy before. |
lolol @ Shmead!!
as for the original question, I can say that I am heavier now at the same weight than I have been in the past. Meaning I am not as toned plus being older and having been through a pregnancy, so and I wear a larger size at the same number on the scale. And in the past, I would have claimed to be one of those women who carried her weight well but I would not say the same now. |
Back when I was in high school I was a size 12 weighing 150 lbs and I was a size 10 when I weighed 140 lbs. After having 2 kids I got down to 180 and was a size 12/14. I think when you get over weight or obese and then lose the weight you tend to weigh more even though you can fit into smaller sizes. I wonder why that is but for me I noticed that I can be heavier and fit into smaller sizes. Its weird how I lost 3 lbs but my dress size went down since I was exercising.
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Maybe because those of us that started out overweight had to exercise to lose the weight so as a result have more lean body mass? I would be interested in seeing some sort of body fat data.
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clothing sizes have changed a lot too, though. Maybe I'm enough older, but what gets called a 12 now isn't even close to what it would have been when I was in high school. Today's 8 is probably closer to what a 12 was back then.
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I'm not sure I understand the question....lol ;)
I don't know if I weigh more than a person of the same height and pant size who has never had a weight problem or not. I've never had the guts to ask a person their weight. The only person I know in real life that is a normal weigh and my height is my SIL. She has always been a normal weight and in my mind I thought I was smaller than her now, but when I asked my 17 year old (autistic)son who was bigger, he said MOM without hesitation. I asked my 11 year old son the same question and he said he never noticed and had no clue. I then asked my husband and he said I was smaller, (I think he might have been trying to get lucky that night...lol) I always thought I carried my weight well until I look back at pictures that at one time I thought looked pretty good. I was just fooling myself. Fat doesn't lie. |
I've never seen any science to back it up, but I totally believe that former fat chicks have heavier infrastructures that normal weight persons. Our bones are dense and we have higher muscle masses due to all the weight bearing exercise we did while we were heavy. Every step we took when we were heavy was strength training -- like a normal weight person doing our daily activities with a 100 pound backpack on (for instance).
When we lose fat, most of the muscle and bone are still there (hopefully, if we've been strength training!) so we tend to have higher Lean Body Masses (LBM) than never-overweight women of the same size. In a way, we're like the pro football players who always test out as obese on BMI charts because of their high LBMs. That's one of the reasons that body composition is a much better indicator of fitness in former fat chicks than is BMI. We may test high on a BMI chart, when in fact, our body composition is perfectly healthy. Most people guess I weigh about 20 pounds less than I actually do. Even maintaining between 135 and 140/145 pounds, I can comfortably wear size 4 pants. It's due to my muscle mass and what my doctor tells me are unusually dense bones. So I'm absolutely convinced that you're right! :) |
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Because I'm a health care provider, I get to see people naked and find out what they weigh, so I guess I have a little advantage, LOL, but I've seen this in post WLS patients-- at a BMI or 26 or 27 they look skinny. |
Well...this makes staying at 198.4 a little more tolerable. :rofl:
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I guess I'm getting off topic myself, but I have a fancy body fat scale at home.
Since December, I've really upped my exercise level-- added running and lifting, and working with a PT. I'm strong and I lift quite heavy weights, and my weight loss has slowed considerably. However, according to my body fat scale, my body fat % (a charming 44%) hasn't budged. My weight has gone down about ten pounds over two months, but my body fat has not. So, I always wonder when people say they are so worried about "gaining muscle..." are we really gaining as much as we think we are? |
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