Tall Cool One

I may be totally off base here, but I think my body has different layers of body fat. When I'm being a slob and not trying to cut weight my body fat feels quasi-"solid." When I am in weight loss mode, I notice that a layer of body fat becomes "soft" for lack of a better word. It seems like that layer disappears and I firm up for a time, then a new layer of soft appears. The cycle goes on until I am at a good weight for me if I can continue to stay dedicated to healthy eating and exercise.

Anyone else have this experience, or am I full of crap (and body fat)?

TCO

digger531

I know what your saying. I always assume its in my head also. I also have a theory about old fat being harder to lose then new fat. For instance. My birthday is Aug 23, on that day I weighed 185 and that was the end of my "diet". I swelled up to about 215-220 and then back on the "diet". The weight comes off like nothing down to 185 and then....freeze. Now, at 185 I don't have a lot to lose but I could give up 5 more lbs, but nope. I do this cycle almost yearly for almost ten years and my bottom number has dropped by about a pound a year so...here's to 184.

I don't believe the "everyone's body is different" crap but I do believe everyone's perception is different. So for what its worth, I don't think you're "full of crap"

HIPCHIP

You are born with a specific number of fat cells. Think of them like water balloons. First they are small, but as you put on weight they get bigger and firmer. As you lose weight the cell shrink but have been stretched, so are somewhat looser than before. Over time they will normally shrink more and firm up. If you become obese though, then your body will actually produce new fat cells, so as you lose weight you will now have more fat cells. Fat normally is on the outside of your organs, so between your skin and organs, but if you are too fat, then fat develops behind the organs, which is also harder to lose.

As you get older your metabolism slows. As you put on weight your metabolism slows, so if you're old and fat, your metabolism is really screwed up. It takes some time for your body to get into a new metabolism, so if you stop exercising you'll gain weight back pretty quickly. Throw into that the "Caveman" mode of when your body is starving it will slow down your metabolism (diet now days), so when you start eating bad again, the body doesn't know that you won't be starving soon, so it stores all the extra food as fat, so now you have kind of a triple whammy of slowed metabolism.

I've also noticed that when you lose weight, that empty space needs to be filled at least temporarily, so you'll retain fluid, so that can also add to the soft flabby feeling. The best thing to do is stay on a good diet (try a food diary. You can find the calorie count easily on-line for any food) and you'll see how many calories you are consuming. Keep up some physical activity to keep your metabolism up and to train your body to have the higher metabolism. It's kind of a life long battle to do it, but that's what we have to do.

goldfinch

Also, you can end up with excess skin which takes a while to shrink down to size. That adds to the flabby feeling.

Null66

THIS!

Far easier to add number of cells then to lose count.
Also, people do differ in how they put on fat (location and type). People also differ over time, seems like propensity to gain visceral fat increases with age.
Visceral fat is the easiest to gain, hardest to lose and has the most impact on health...