ELI5: why does being obese feel so light
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Posted Jun 1, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC
37
Did you lose a lot of muscle along with the fat? Depending on how you lost the weight, that may have been the case.
1
I dont think I've ever had anything anyone would call 'muscle'
2
You did, you just didn't see it under the fat. Your body had been carrying around an extra 10kg every day after all.
But, if you did a crash diet where you just limited your caloric intake, your body just goes "Well, it's time to get smaller, get rid of the extra fat! Get rid of muscle too! Got to get smaller to handle the lack of food!" So it's possible that yes, you lost 10kg, but some of that was the muscle your body had built to handle your extra weight, and now you're dealing with that loss.
4
So it's possible that yes, you lost 10kg, but some of that was the muscle your body had built to handle your extra weight
Not only is it possible, it's virtually guaranteed. Anyone looking to lose weight without losing muscle needs to up their protein intake significantly while also doing heavy weight lifting.
1
Generally weight gain happens slowly, so the body builds up a somewhat proportional amount of muscle to compensate, up to a limit of the super obese people who can't walk.
On the other hand, our bodies are built to be efficient. That's why obesity happens in the first place: starvation was a much more common problem for our ancestors than over eating! Therefore any extra energy was stored as fat.
However, the opposite also applies: when times are lean our bodies scavenge themselves for energy, like burning furniture to keep warm. Excess fat is burned preferentially, but muscle also goes to some extent. There's a reason that weight lifters eat so much, and especially so much protein. Our bodies won't build up beyond normal unless there's a super abundance of resources. For this reason its actually really hard to lose weight and build muscle at the same time. Usually its one or the other.
As you were losing weight, not only did your body notice the shortage, but the load on your muscles day to day also went down, and so they decreased their size to compensate, not unlike how astronauts lose muscle mass from effortlessly floating in space.
1
You’re just used to being fat is all. But hey, want to experience something really cool? Lose a bunch of weight (I lost 25 lb... which brought me down to 100 lb so proportionally that was a lot) and you. will. Feel. Like. YOU. Can. FLY
After having built a (heavy, tiring) body that can (slowly, somewhat painfully) take you up a flight of stairs, going up stairs in your light new bod will feel like you are mothrrfucking levitating. If you thought running was supposed to make you grumpy and sore, goodbye to all that...instead you’ll feel like you’re riding in an invisible chariot pulled by magick. Try it, it is hard to describe— though I tried.
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Because when the fat is inside you, it's more evenly distributed around your body rather than being in one place. And because you become accustomed to it.