[Dog Rescue Mama]

I keep hearing don't listen to the scale, look at your measurements. I did my first re measure since the start of my diet 4 1/2 weeks ago and it says I GAINED 3.25" on my waist!!!! I have lost 21 lbs thus far and I see a difference in my stomach in the mirror but the tape says I gained GGGGRRRRR!!!!!!

My hips measure that I've lost 2.75 inches thus far. My guess is that before I had this big ol' tummy but it was more up and rounded like I was pregnant. With all my loss my skin has sagged and "settled" in a big flop at my belly. I think that my sagging skin is poking out more then it did when I was more fat filled in my tummy.

Does this sound crazy???? I wanted to cry at the numbers! I'm over it, I mean I KNOW I'm loosing but the one thing everyone says revert to when in doubt is lying to me!!!!!!!

[Lovely]

It might not be "lying" to you, but more likely it's that your stomach has "settled" differently as you've said.

You are seeing the difference in the mirror. I bet you're feeling the difference in your clothes, too.

Just like the scale isn't everything, neither is the tape measure.

[JessLess]

Measuring yourself accurately is really hard. The tape could be in a different place than last time, you could have pulled it tighter last time, etc. You could also just be bloated. I wouldn't let it bother you too much. (hug)

[birdtostone]

I always have a hard time measuring myself. To make it easier, I do two things.

Make sure you're wearing the same clothes/underclothes each time you measure until you can't wear them any longer.

And also, look for some kind of natural marker on your body, like a freckle or blemish that indicates where you should wrap the measure around and then use it in future measuring as a place gauge.

[belmagick]

I measure I'm always seeing fluctuations. Because it's on your tummy that you're seeing the difference it's probably bloating which can be caused by types of food, stress, exercise. The important thing is you lost on your hips so you are losing and the tummy will catch up eventually.

[runningfromfat]

I measure because my scale doesn't like to budge my my tape measurer does.

There's a lot of things to consider here:
1. Did you measure at the same time of day? I gain inches by the end of the day (sometimes 1-2" on the waist).
2. Did you eat right before measuring? That can also expand your stomach?
3. Is it close to your TOM? Again something else that will cause bloat...
4. Are you sure you're measuring the same spot? For my waist I measure 4 spots for comparison: under bust (so the band size of your bra), narrowest part of waist (typically 1-2" above your belly button), at my belly buttons, and widest part of my natural muffin top. ALL of those measurements are quite a bit different and lose in different ways.
5. Are you doing a lot of sit-ups/crunches? possible even with weights? Especially if you did this right after a workout it could be that you've built some muscle here and are also retaining water here too (don't worry, you probably didn't build 3" worth! but you could certainly be retaining that much water after workouts I gain up to 3" even when I'm not doing abs specific workouts).

[Dog Rescue Mama]

Oh I did measure right smack in the middle of TOM! I told myself I would simply measure at the largest point on my measurements. So I measure waist at the largest part of my muffin top. I'm calling it my dun lop because my muffin top dun lopped over due to saggy skin weigh loss. It looks like someone forgot to add baking soda to my batter before baking my muffin top haha.

[runningfromfat]

Originally Posted by Dog Rescue Mama

Oh I did measure right smack in the middle of TOM! I told myself I would simply measure at the largest point on my measurements. So I measure waist at the largest part of my muffin top. I'm calling it my dun lop because my muffin top dun lopped over due to saggy skin weigh loss. It looks like someone forgot to add baking soda to my batter before baking my muffin top haha.

Ok, that's definitely your answer right there. I'm pretty sure once TOM is over you'll get a lot nicer results. Measure first thing in the morning and good luck! BTW, I totally have the same muffin top, ugh!