My pear shape has gone pear-shaped

October 15, 2007 1:26 PM

Like many women, I used to have hips that measured slightly larger than my bust. Now my ass is disappearing as my rack carries on. Is this just aging at work, or is this typical of weight loss?

I'm in my late 40s, regular cycles, no hot flashes, no sign of menopause yet, not on the pill or any hormones. I don't each much soy at all and never have.

I was slim/average up until about 30, with hips about 1.5/2 inches larger than my bust. I gained weight bit by bit over the years, but have lost about 35 pounds over the past year by eating less junk and walking more. I haven't been weight training. At my largest last year, my hips were 1.5 inches larger than my bust, but that has completely reversed over the past year. Total loss from chest: 3 inches. Total loss from hips: 5.5 inches.

I've still about 25-30 pounds away from where I'd like to be so the healthy eating, exercise and (I hope) weight loss will continue. I'd really like to get back to being more of a pear, not just because I like having a little more ass, but because women's clothing is sized that way. Yes, I could try to add a couple of inches to my ass through weight training, but I'm just curious about this unexpected change in my natural proportions. Could the discrepancy just be loss of muscle mass from aging, moderate caloric reduction and increased moderate cardio (walking)?

posted by rosemere to health (9 comments total)

My understanding that that saying where, exactly, fat is going to deposit/come off is something of a crap shoot. The breasts are a fat store (in all women), and the hip/butt area is also. As you get down closer to your ideal weight it'll hopefully even out.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 1:54 PM on October 15, 2007

your glutes tend to atrophy a bit as you age. It's probably not the whole explanation for you (everyone's weight loss looks different) but your butt muscles are probably a little smaller than they were 10 years ago.

Look at it this way-- old men aren't buying special pants with saggy seats. They just can't fill them out. But you might find that your proportions are more to your liking after further weight loss.
posted by Mayor Curley at 1:58 PM on October 15, 2007

I don't think your proportions are really changing...your natural shape is just becoming more obvious with weight loss. You might be apple shaped, rather than pear shaped, but that's a nice shape to have for certain kinds of clothes.

Anyway, I envy you. My hips are always 4-5 inches larger than my bust, whatever my weight. I don't really like being bootylicious or whatever...It makes me self-conscious. I've had the impulse to cover my butt ever since adolescence (and I'm wearing a long coat right now). Guess the grass is always greener!
posted by frosty_hut at 2:18 PM on October 15, 2007

One more thought: I've been a big walker all my life, and I still do a whole lot of walking each week. It's almost always a daily thing. It just occured to me that I might owe my gluteous fabulousness (or whatever) to precisely that habit. Perhaps it might work for you.

In my case I would have a larger butt no matter what--I think it's my pelvic structure that's to blame--but the muscular firmness is definitely a product of the walking.
posted by frosty_hut at 2:26 PM on October 15, 2007

A book I am just finishing, "Good Calories, Bad Calories", talks about fat, health, and diets. It covers about how the body produces and deposits fat. A good book to read if your getting health concious and thinking about diets.

At this point the science is showing that fat deposits are controlled through genetics and hormones. This means that we're essentially out of luck as to where on the body fat goes. However, we can control total fat production by controling insulin levels in our blood. This can be done through avoiding carbohydrates and sugars. Exercise can be used to target building muscle mass in certain areas. I've never been that into exercise to know what advice to give about how to go about that though.
posted by herda05 at 2:32 PM on October 15, 2007

I can't address the aging issue, but I also have large hips, and when I lose weight without any additional glute work (stairmaster, squats/lunges, etc) my butt goes flat. Even when I was marathon training (which many people associate with building a lot of lower-body muscle, but that was quite NOT the case for me) I wound up with flat butt.

As others have said, the places we lose our fat is a crapshoot. I myself get bigger boobs when I gain weight, yet I know large women whose bust size didn't change at all from when they were thinner. For me, I know that when my boobs start creeping out around my 36B bras, I need to get my diet under control. :) And I know that if I don't do glute work when I lose weight, my butt will go flat. So, it's looking like your butt has that tendency as well!
posted by iguanapolitico at 2:39 PM on October 15, 2007

I don't think it has anything to do with aging or gender. I'm a 30-year-old guy, I've been working on losing weight through diet and walking, and much of the first 30 or so pounds came from my hips and ass. There were a couple of very annoying months where my hips were smaller than my waist; my pants were always a minor slip away from falling down completely. (Which, when you work in a customer-facing position, is just swell.)

Things have evened out since then, but my proportions are still kinda weird. It just seems to be the way it goes.
posted by backupjesus at 2:56 PM on October 15, 2007

data point: when I lost 20 lbs or so in the last year it seemed to mostly come from my butt while my rack remained almost unchanged.
posted by jessamyn at 7:44 PM on October 15, 2007

Thanks for all the responses.

Yes, some muscle loss due to age may be shrinking my ass (versus the gland-and-fat breasts which are part of the crapshoot of fat loss), so I'm smaller there than I would be at, say 30, but if I exercise properly with weights, I can hope to put some muscle back on.

This site says that "Muscle is constantly being built and broken down, which works to maintain a balance in young adults. But as people age, the breakdown process is more successful than the muscle-building action. ... Once adults reach 40, they start to lose between 0.5 and 2% of their muscle each year. " Which means I have to work harder to put on muscle than I did ten years ago. Time to roll out the dumbbells and start deadlifting again, I guess.
posted by rosemere at 8:30 PM on October 15, 2007