In my experience with dieting and reading about fitness I’ve heard many many times that the first place you gain fat is the last place you lose it. Is that a myth? It sounds like myth to me. If it’s not a myth then the last place you gain fat is the first place you lose it, right?
In: 185
I’ve never heard this but it is very demotivating and simply not true. Often weight loss journeys are not a linear path, but rather is more like rolling hills. Like 2 steps forward 1 step back type thing. If you are trying to lose weight I want to wish you good luck. Don’t rush it, as many people who lose weight fast gain it back faster, compared to those who take it slow, keep it off.
It’s sort-of-true: [People tend to accumulate and hold on to body fat in specific areas](https://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/a19901505/where-do-you-lose-weight-first/) based on a lot of biological factors, and those are also the places we typically concentrate on “losing fat from” because it affects our clothes size or is otherwise visibly obvious.
Also semi-related is that we tend to place unrealistic body-image standards on ourselves, and those can make it *seem* like you’re not losing fat from the places you want to (which are often the first places you noticed it).
This is why common advice is to track your weight weekly or to compare “Start of weight loss plan” photos to where you are in 3 months or so: You may not have dropped a clothing size, but you may have lost fat from other areas that are still visible on a longer scale.
If your body decided to add fat preferentially to spot a and then b and then c. I would expect it to “give up” fat in the exact opposite order from the standpoint that it started storing fat in spot b because it stopped preferring spot a.
That said I’m sure this actually happens in layers. As in spot a gets 5 pounds of fat then spot b gets 3 then spot a gets 2 then spot b gets 1. Etc.
That’s been my experience at least. The gut, the one thing i want to be smaller, always went last. And when I gained weight back, it was the first to grow. It’s also repeated in all the weightlifting subs and forums i’ve ever visited in decades.
I think it’s more likely that the first place you gain fat is the first place you lose it. I’m not a biologist but I’d guess that where you store fat first is based on active pathways that carry the fat molecules to that site… which also makes it easier for your body to reach for it when it needs more energy in the future.