Lost 5 stone but still struggling to feel slim at size 12

[Fiddlesticks1]

Anyone else feel like me. I’ve lost 5 stone on mounjaro but I still feel fat even though I’m size 12. I can sort of understand anorexia now as I don’t feel size 12 and it’s only when I look in the mirror that I see myself thinner.

This is where exercise comes in. Bit hard to explain but I feel pretty good even though I'm pretty big.

It takes a while to adjust too to being a different shape & size.

Having anorexia, or body dysmorphia which can come with it, is nothing like just being a size 12 instead of five stone heavier, but obviously still not slim.

I'm a size 8 having lost over ten stone on MJ and I still am fat. A lot of it is stretched skin but a lot of it is flubber too. Only exercise is going to tone it up and give me a non soft body but I'm ok with that. Spanx and other undergarments can work wonders. It does take ages, and by that I mean years to get your head to catch up. Oppositely I found a size 22 pair of linen trousers yesterday I must have missed when selling my stuff and I could get in one leg just about and was mystified I was ever that big

I would maybe try to shift away from the idea of “slim” and try to look at how healthy and fit you are. “Slim” is a subjective notion and carries with it a lot of societal opinion and baggage. If you are in the healthy weight range, it’s not better or more ideal to be “slim”.

When you lose a lot of weight, it can take a long time for your brain to catch up. I’ve lost 11 stone, and still some days I sometimes don’t feel like I’m noticeably different. But of course I am, it’s just my subjective brain getting in the way.

Do you have any of your larger sized clothes still? Sometimes putting them on and looking at how big they are now on you helps to get your perception more in line with reality.

What’s your BMI? I would be overweight at size 12.

I understand. It's a psychological thing. Presumably you have also lost the weight relatively quickly, if you were using WLI?

You just need to keep looking at yourself in the mirror to convince your brain that it's true!

Well done, by the way. That's a major achievement.

Hey weightloss twin. I’ve also lost 5 stone and am now a size 12.

I don’t feel thin and my legs in particular are still chunky. I still tend towards picking up size 14 trousers (I used to be 22 on the bottom!!) and being surprised and thrilled that I actually need a 12.

I do think the type of clothes I wear make a different to whether I look bigger or smaller. I’m so used to wearing baggy clothing but have started to realise that slimmer, more form fitting clothing look far better now I am smaller.

And don’t forget the health benefits of your weight loss. I recently had a full medical for work and compared with my medical from two years ago it was as if I was a different person on every metric.

There’s more to it than just losing stone / kg.

As others have said partly it is difficult to see yourself clearly and it works both ways. I was in denial about how big I was. I saw myself as a “thin person who was temporarily fat” (even though I’d been fat for 10+ years), also if I wore something that showed off my waist, I felt I was “skinny”, despite the blubber on my arms and my triple chins.

I’ve now lost 2 stone and I am now also a size 12. Sometimes I think I look great. Sometimes I feel like there is no difference, because in my head, this is the size I always was.

It really is difficult to see yourself clearly.

Secondly, it really is all about exercise and muscle tone, as much as it pains me to say it because I hate exercise. You can still be carrying a lot of fat and flab and you need to exercise to build muscle to get rid of this.

I have always been a big fan of Marilyn Monroe and think she was beautiful. But I heard somebody recently describe her as “skinny fat” and I see what they are saying.

Marilyn was from a time where women ate very little to preserve their figures. Also there were far fewer UPFs etc so she would have been eating a much cleaner diet, hence slim. But women then didn’t exercise much beyond normal lifestyle activities (they would have been less sedentary than today, but they were not strength training). Marilyn was actually ahead of her time as she was a keen jogger. So this would have burnt calories but it wouldnt have built muscle.

Hence she had a tummy and a softness to her. Which is where the “skinny fat” comment comes from.

At 10.7 stone / size 12 I am much bigger than MM, but my body composition is now probably similar. I need to firm up and tone up. And you probably do too.

🙄

A size 12 (or any size) looks differently on people because of our muscle and fat mass. My friend is 5ft 5" a size 12 at 10st but she looks like I did at 5ft 3" size 14 at 11-12st because I have a lot higher muscle mass and lower fat mass than she does. Her muscle mass was around 20% less than mine starting off, and I started losing weight at 13st size 14-16 and she did at 12st 5lbs size 16-18 and fat mass around 15-20% higher.
The only way we can change this is by strength and body toning exercises amd a higher protein diet.
There can also be body dysmorphia after a big change, it took me a good 3+ months to be able to see the slimmer me in the mirror.

I used to be a size 8 in my late teens/early twenties until I started weight training. I'm now a size 12, 5'10", 80Kg with a BMI just under 25 but I still feel just as slim even though when I look in the mirror I do carry a lot of muscle. The difference is I look so much better and feel so much stronger. My advice to you would be to go through a period of body recomposition and start lifting weights at the gym if possible. There isn't really such a thing as 'toning' in the way that's others have been using it, but rather building muscle and losing fat.

Size 12 is overweight for most people

There are so many variables here op. Did you exercise throughout and eat your protein, how is your muscle mass and tone?

how tall are you and what’s your bmi?

a size 12 is clearly not fat or overweight, even if shorter, but it can look more chubby if untoned and unfit.

I am assuming you think you’re being smart and goady, when in reality it jisy comes across as quite ill informed and silly.

a size 12 is a 30 inch waist. So on being to waist measurement it would be a healthy weight for anyone above 5ft.

Shape and height do have an impact though.

I’m over 5ft tall and I can fit into a standard size 12 dress/jeans etc while still being classed as significantly “overweight” by the NHS.

I don’t get to “healthy weight” in the NHS scale until I’m fitting into size tens.

OP having lost 5stone is wonderful - but it does take a while for your head to catch up with your externals. If you are happy with where your weight is now then work on getting fit and strong, that will help how you feel about your body and continue to improve your health at the same time.

There are some really unkind comments on this thread - I don’t think for a minute that OP is boasting how small she is at a size 12, but struggling to accept that she is now 5 stone lighter and gone down several clothes size.

Well done OP, that’s a fantastic weight loss and it’s going to take a long time before you recognise your new body shape. I was a very overweight child, but lost it all in early adulthood and even now in my 50s I still feel like that ‘big girl’ and get a surprise when I look in the mirror 😄

No, I don't 'think' I'm 'being smart'. Size 12 is usually between 59 and 71 kg. If you take the average height range for a woman (and all those below), that's a majority or 'most' women. That weight and size is too high for them.

Understand exactly where you're coming from OP. I've lost 6 stone on a combination of Noom and Mounjaro. Small size 10 bottom/12 top. 9st10 at 5ft 7. In my head I'm still a hefty girl.Tallish with size 8 feet. I'm happy with my shape as I've always exercised and I've luckily avoided too much loose skin. I just can't see myself as slim. DH tried to perch me on his knee last week something I've always dreamed of as I've never been that sort of woman due to my weight. I just couldn't do it as in my head I'd have squashed him. Don't know if my mind will ever catch up.

That may be true, but maybe not exactly helpful on a thread where the OP has gone down from a size 22.

I'm not sure how it's helpful to pretend that size 12 is small.

I've acknowledged it's much smaller than 5 stone heavier, because it obviously is, comparatively.

That doesn't mean there's something wrong in OP's perception that she doesn't seem slim and still thinks she's big. Unless very tall, she she likely won't be slim yet!

@Hellieboar From where she was it is fantastic. And she says when she looks in a mirror she can see she is thinner.
It just seems a strange attitude to have on a supportive weight loss chat board.

A bit like if a child gets 95% on a test, or 99999998 for GCSEs and the parent focuses on the incorrect 5% or the single grade 8 rather than being positive about the 95% or all the 9s.

God this place is insufferable sometimes, it makes me despair at the state of humanity more than the news does.

Can I ask what your fat / muscle masses are, please? And your friends?

I am 5 ft 6, recently lost 2 stone so I am 10 stone 7.

I did one of those body composition things at the gym which said muscle mass is 35% and fat is 32%

But I’m struggling to know what that means really?

Firstly thats amazing well done. I think it takes your brain a little while to catch up with what you actually look like if that makes sense. Have you got a before and after photo so that you can see the actual difference

You can call it fantastic and I don't disagree it's a significant loss and of course she'll be able to see she's thinner than she was.

But the thread wasn't that she'd like to share she'd lost 5 stone. It's a chat thread about still not feeling slim and some nonsense about understanding anorexia of all things, which is also a 'strange attitude to have on a supportive weight loss board'. So at risk of repeating the blindingly obvious, most people wouldn't feel slim at size 12, because it's not slim.