pants size

Hi Guys, I have noticed that although I'm loosing weight, I'm not loosing the inches in my stomach area as fast as the rest of my body.  I can remeber being at the weight I'm at right now, but my pants size being smaller.  My shirt sizes seem to be going down faster than my pants.  I know men gain weight in the belly first, so does this mean it will eventrully catch up and all of a sudden I will start loosing more inches in my waist? Has anyone else had this problem? .....dave

I have noticed the same thing. I am down 70# but only down one pant size. I must have really been stuffing myself into the old pants. My wifes theory is that as I am loosing that everything is shifting down and making the pants tight. just my 2 cents

I have two answers, one encouraging, one less so. The encouraging answer is that I and many others saw strange variations in size decline.  It took me forever to drop my first couple pant sizes, partly because the belly staid big, partly because most of my pants were actually too small, and so there was no rush to drop a size in order to squeeze myself in again.  Also, as I've said before, part of this is mathematics.  The volume of a tube is pi*radius^2*height. The circumference is 2*pi*radius. So if a 30 inch tube drops from 60 inches to 56 circumference, it loses about 4500 cubic inches. When it drops from 40 to 36 inches, it loses 2900. So you have to lose 1.5 times as much weight to drop two sizes early on as you do near the end.  As a result many of us lose sizes quicker in the middle than in the beginning. On the not so-front, if you've been "thinner" before at the same weight, it suggests you might have been more muscular. You might consider tracking your body fat percentage and seeing if you are losing muscle.  Some light weight training could go a long way towards preserving muscle and pushing fat loss.

I agree with the body fat % comment.  You can get a good gage of how much fat vs. lean muscle you are losing with body fat % tracking.  The scale alone won't tell you this.  It also gives you another way to measure success if the scale isn't moving.  For example, maybe you're building more muscle and losing fat but your weight stays the same.  I'd say that's a great week!!!  Most trainers say that muscle burns more calories than fat when at rest (and thus can accelerate weight loss). Another 2 cents:  when you keep losing, the pant sizes will go down.   For me, most of my weight initially was in a couple places, legs, butt, chest and arms (no big gut).  I know it's unusual, but that is how I was distributed.  As a result, my pants and shirts have shrunk the entire time I've been losing weight. Take care.