When weight loss doesn’t tell the whole story

I’ve lost weight before.

I’ve seen the scale go down. I’ve tightened up my diet, walked more, pushed harder. And for a while, it worked.

But this time feels different — not because the number is lower, but because my body is behaving differently while it’s coming down.

Over the past month or so, the scale dropped a little over ten pounds. When I looked closer at body composition, about four and a half of those pounds were fat. Roughly forty percent fat, sixty percent everything else — water, glycogen, inflammation, the usual noise.

On paper, that ratio doesn’t sound impressive. Most people want to see a much higher percentage of fat loss. That’s what we’re conditioned to think “good progress” looks like.

But I wasn’t disappointed.

Because the scale wasn’t telling the whole story.

The part the scale doesn’t capture

What caught my attention wasn’t the number — it was my belt.

I put on the same pair of jeans I’ve been wearing for months and tightened my belt the way I always do. I’m now using the last hole. That’s the first time since I bought this belt. Before, I still had a few holes left. And before that, there were times I struggled just to button my pants.

That’s about three inches off my waist.

What’s strange is that I’ve been lighter than this before. Significantly lighter. I walked more then, too — long walks, almost daily. And yet, my midsection never felt like this. I leaned out around the edges, sure, but there was still that compressed, heavy feeling in my abdomen.

That’s gone now.

What I think is actually happening

This approach isn’t just taking weight off the surface. It’s going after the deeper stuff first.

Early on, a lot of what comes off isn’t fat you can see. It’s stored glycogen, retained water, inflammation — and, more importantly, visceral fat. The kind that doesn’t show up cleanly on the scale but affects how you breathe, how you move, how your cardio feels.

That’s why my cardio is better now than it was when I weighed less.

That’s why my waist is shrinking faster than the scale suggests.

That’s why the changes feel structural, not cosmetic.

The fat loss is steady. It’s just quieter.

Why I’m okay with this pace

I’m not trying to rush this. I’ve rushed it before.

What matters to me now is that this is sustainable — that my body isn’t fighting me, that I’m not white-knuckling through hunger, that I’m not undoing progress every time I eat.

I’m eating enough protein. I’m fasting long enough to let insulin come down properly. I’m not panicking over short-term fluctuations. And I’m watching how quickly my body settles back into fat-burning after I eat — not just how much the scale jumps.

That’s a very different mindset than “How much did I lose this week?”

The takeaway I keep coming back to

Weight loss that targets surface fat first looks good quickly — and falls apart just as fast.

Weight loss that fixes the machinery underneath takes longer to show — but holds.

I’m fine with where I am on the scale right now, because my body is clearly doing something it hasn’t done before. The belt, my breathing, my energy, my cardio — they’re all telling the same story.

The scale will catch up eventually.

And when it does, I want it to stick.