I’ve been on a diet for six months now (26 weeks if you want to get technical) and have lost 24 pounds. Now the thing about losing weight is that you expect all sorts of positive benefits from it. For example, being able to reach your feet easily to trim your toenails without contorting sideways like a circus pretzel.
At the onset of your diet, you dream of wearing shorts again without being embarrassed. At five feet tall it doesn’t take a lot of extra weight to be an embarrassment in summer clothes, and god help you if you wear shorts and want to sit down without anybody seeing your thighs spread out. If you can’t hide under a tablecloth, you nonchalantly lean against the nearest wall or tree to avoid such an embarrassing position.
Then there’s your feet. While you expect your belly to bulge and your thighs to spread out like a water balloon about to pop, you don’t expect your feet to outgrow your shoes. Yes, even the shoes don’t fit anymore when the pounds start piling on. I’ve got a closet full of skinny shoes, boxes full of skinny shorts and skinny pants, and a rack full of skinny dresses.
I pulled a t-shirt out of the drawer yesterday thinking to wear it, and my face scrunched up like old scrooge when I saw how small it was. Surely I had never been able to wear something so tiny? It looked like a kid’s shirt. I took it down to my husband and held it up and asked in wonder, “Did I really used to be this little?”
No husband should ever be in a position to answer questions about his wife’s weight. He can’t win no matter what he says. Bless his heart, he came up with the perfect reply: “Sweetie, it must have shrank in the dryer…” He truly is a gentleman!
My husband has taken a keen interest in my diet especially as I’ve been so successful with it. When you’re short, 24 pounds coming off makes a very big difference in how you look, and it makes a HUGE difference in how your clothes fit. My pants, at the moment, are falling off. I’ve been holding them up with a tied sash or safety pin, lacking any decent belts. Even then they want to inch down and he’s taken a great delight in giving them a tug when I walk by.
I had gotten tired of having no clothes to wear and had just bought two new pairs of pants before starting the diet, so I’ll have two brand new pairs of fat pants when it’s all done with. Then I can take a photo of me in the fat pants like they do on the TV commercials and post it on the internet. I don’t want to buy skinny pants yet because I expect to lose more inches before I settle into my happy weight, which will hopefully be the weight I was when I met my husband. Yes, I know you’re laughing at me but that’s the goal.
Everybody knows the benefits of losing weight such as fitting into your skinny clothes again and lower blood pressure. My systolic blood pressure (the top number) came down about 15 while my diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) came down by 15 as well. This moved me from the prehypertension stage into the normal blood pressure range just from losing 24 pounds.
There’s a downside, however. What nobody tells you is that there is a downside to losing weight. My butt hurts when I sit down and so do my upper thighs. The pain feels like bone pain. It goes far beyond what you’d expect from sitting on a hard chair and it happens even when I’m sitting on a soft, cushy sofa.
My first instinct was to panic, thinking that I’d contracted some sort of bone cancer, brought on by losing weight or spurred into overdrive from the loss of calories or vitamins. I’d never experienced a pain like this before and it did not feel normal, even though pain for me is normal as I have arthritis and other painful maladies that whack you as you get older.
Thank god for the internet, though. I plugged in “my butt hurts” or some similar key phrase into Google and was amazed at the number of similar stories that popped up from people who were dieting. I was not alone and my butt pain was normal. No big scary bone disease, the most likely culprit was the fact that I’d lost 24 pounds. (Warning: If you go looking for the butt hurts stories on Google, you better input “butt hurts after losing weight” because if you just put in “my butt hurts” the results will be rather graphic and not related to weight loss.)
So here we’ve got a downside of losing weight — you lose your padding and suddenly your leg bone and your butt bone pushes right up against the chair with no padding in between, and consequently your butt hurts. The suggested fix is to do exercises that build up your thigh muscles and tighten your butt muscles. Note that there are other more serious issues that can cause bone pain so you might want to go to a doctor and rule them out before assuming it’s the weight loss.
Addendum: I originally wrote this in December 2011. The good news is that the butt pain does pass. Your body adjusts to weighing less. Even cooler is that I kept it off 🙂
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I am 71 years old, 4’9”, red-haired, thin fair skin, and recently developed Angina and High Cholesterol. I weighed 149 LB. My normal weight had always been 97 lbs. to 100 lbs.
During the Pandemic I ate lotsa ice cream … pizza, ham, vodka, beer, Candy, cake, pie, cookies … I went from slim to obese very fast.
Doc said lose weight, or have a heart attack. And he put me on alotta drugs for cholesterol and pills to control angina … including nitro glycerine for Angina attacks.statins, plus lotsa vitamins etc etc. This is a Heart doctor. Really Nice guy!
Sooo, I ditched ALL my bad comfort food/drink and started daily exercise, and began a healthful diet, not starvation diet.
I lost 40lbs in four weeks.
I didn’t know that was phenomenal … Doc never gave me a weight goal… just said lose weight. I ate lotsa veggies … fruit …and ate fish and eggs. I was not ever starving…but missed my previous bad food choices. I have not wavered.
My Angina is now under control and I am my regular slim self, albeit saggy saggy skin. I look hideous…black circles under my eyes. No butt nor breasts. The meds have have ruined my skin…dry dry saggy baggy skin.
But still on cholesterol meds.
Now, ‘My Skin is Hanging off my Bones’ … to semi-quote a funny ‘Men in Black’ Sci-Fi movie. My Butt is in agony, no matter how many soft pillows I sit on. I hope I can ditch the meds.
I need plastic surgery …I have batwings. I look like I am a Zombie.
Just found this site and it helps so much to know I am not the only one. Pain in the sit bones & tail bone, as well as upper thigh pain while lying down, have been really getting me upset the last 4-5 months after some fairly rapid weight loss.. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on all sorts of cushions and none really work that well though the one with holes for sit bones seems to be the best. I am encouraged by those who are saying the body eventually adjusts and the pain will diminish.
I recently lost 40kg/90lbs. I was wondering what was wrong with me from having the same pain.
I guess it’s normal, and no one tells you before you go lose a lot of weight. XD
I am on the internet looking for a donut pillow. Here because my butt kills me. I have gone from 330 down to 165. That is freaking extreme, but the reason was that I had two heart attacks five years apart. The second almost did me in. Butt pain is transitory. Weight loss feels better than the butt pain
Thank you for posting this article. It is a concern for me but at least now I know what it is.
Hi there , if you are still active on this page then to let you know , i lost 26ibs in 4 months and my butt start hurting, i ignored for few days and then googled “butt hurting after losing weight ” and your write up was first one and i am relieved to read your detailed answer. Thank You
world is so small and humans problems are so common 🙂
Is this problem due to fat loss or muscle loss on the butt?
Omg over the past 2 yrs I’ve lost just under 100 lbs. I literally thought it was just me.. my hips and butt hurt constantly… ♀️
Congrats on the 100 lbs.! Woo! Congrats to everybody in this thread for losing weight. Hardest danged thing to do.
How long before the pain stops? Or do you eventually just get used to it?
The pain did go away, but I don’t remember how long it took.
I’m so glad I ran across this article my butt hurts me so bad, the bone is sticking out with no cushion since I’ve lost 60 pounds. What can you get for this?
Glad i had a google. My hips are killing me !
Iv also lost weight and now can see its extra pressure from where my muffin tops once protected me.
So glad I found this I have lost 88lbs in 8 months my but hurts too. And my hips since losing all the padding I was getting worried I had bone cancer too
Lost 30 lbs in the past few months and I’m now starting to have this butt pain problem. Google brought me here. I sure hope you’re right and the pain passes.. It’s a real pain in the butt!
Thank goodness I found an explanation for this. I’ve been losing weight and working toward losing more. And I’ve started experiencing pain in my backside. Sometimes numbness occurs under and down the side of the leg. I did have pains when I was overweight (due to pressure pushing down from sitting for long periods of time) but now…even when I lay down in bed I have pains. I had to lose weight as I’m currently suffering from sciatic nerve pain and inflammation of the achilles tendon. Everyday I deal with off and on pain from the my achilles tendon. So yeah, I’ve been dealing with constant aching in my backside. I’m feeling better healthwise but I had been worried concerning this issue. And yes I googled the former suggestion before which brought me here. Now I know what not to search. LOL.
I have lost about 30 lbs and while I was losing weight I had a knee injury which lead to the SI joint in my opposite hip rotating since I was moving awkwardly. But, that has now been “adjusted” by my chiropractor, yet I still have butt pain. It’s been about 7 months, so I hope it does go away!
It’s surreal to think that your bones could hurt while sitting on a cushy couch, just because you lost weight. And it scared the crap out of me, thinking about every worst case scenario possible. It really did pass, though. It took awhile, but it did pass. I kept the weight off, too, until last December. Someone came to our house sick on Thanksgiving and I caught the two-and-a half-month flu from them. I was so sick I couldn’t eat normal food, but I could drink milkshakes…
Well if you Google something you will definitely find it! I lost a bunch of weight real quick and for the last couple of months I haven’t been able to sit anywhere without pain. I put pillows on the seat of my car but it barely works and I end up having to take Advil or something for the pain. I read here where some of you have been going through the same thing for a while and honestly I feel for you. I had no idea that the side effect of losing so much weight would be having so much pain! Guess I’ll keep taking Advil and rubbing on lidocaine and hope for the best.
Thank you for posting this. I thought I was being a huge wimp. Glad to hear it’s normal.
The good news is that it passes. I don’t remember how long, but I think it was several weeks.
I also have been having that problem after losing 50 pounds. I was getting very depressed and upset about it. I know that sounds silly but the pain was killing me and I have been tossing and turning all night. I’m hoping that is the issue.
Hi I have the same. Problem now lost 45lbs
And I have butt pain hope it comes away