baby fat?

and i don't mean the post pregnancy kind.  I'm referring to the kind of cubbiness you have when you were going through puberty and supposedly the weight would drop or even out once you enter adulthood.  Have you guys ever heard of this term? do you think it's a myth, because i've never believed it.

I always thought the term referred to the "fat" that children's bodies tend to hold onto that seems to disappear [or redistribute] after a growth/height spurt. Certainly not mythical!

My little 5 year old still has some baby fat, so yeah, I believe in it.  My older son lost all of his baby fat by the time he was probably in oh...2nd grade? 

i know that it's common in young toddlers, but i mean during adolescent? no, right?

I think that baby fat can be found in pre-teens, and even some teens who haven't gone through puberty yet (13-14). The body needs this, or a lot of calories (the reason children/teens will be ravenous at times) to complete the massive growth spurts that happen.

I also think that it is normal and healthy to have some amount of fat on your body, even after puberty. It keeps everything functioning, especially your brain.

Technically, babies have an obese bmi. I think they grow out of it really fast, though.

Some people, like my husband, never lose a very tiny bit of the baby-fat. He gets made fun of all the time by his fellow Marines because he "looks like [he's] twelve." That is his own words. Personally, if I didn't know him, I would have put him at 15...but you get my point.

Me, on the other hand, look the 20 years old that I am. It's quite funny. I wonder how people are going to respond to us when we're older. "Why is she dating him? He's so young!"

"Uh...he's the same age as me, kthx."

Baby fat is the kind of fat that is on all the right places, giving children a soft look that we associate with youth.

I'll use my face as an example.

When I was younger, I use to get comments on my round face and cheeks, though my body fat percentage was very low.

Now, my body has a higher fat percentage but my face is full of definition. Cheekbones, jaw muscles, and my eye-sockets appear more sunken (sadly). My pretty baby fat is long gone.

No one says I have a round face anymore. Instead, everyone compliments me on my bone structure, though my body fat percentage is higher than when I had a round face.

What I have now on my body is grown-up fat. Grown-up fat is the kind of fat that is missing from all the places you want and piles up on all the places you don't.

What the poster above said - kids have rounder faces, chubbier cheeks, etc than they do as adult.  When you get older, even after you stop growing, your face will generally thin out as you age.  Mine thinned out a lot once I got into my 20's.

I think a lot of people do gain weight right before a growth spurt.  I know my brother did, and I did.  And when I think about how all my friends and their siblings were...most of them gained weight before they gained height. 

I had to visit a specialist a couple years ago, and as he was about to give me a needle to take a blood sample, he commented on the amount of baby fat I hadn't yet lost. He said it in an accusing way too, like I somehow decided to hold onto that extra roundness and should have already given it up! I don't know how he could assess my level of baby fat from the inside of my arm, especially since my BMI was about 21. Talk about rude and weird! I haven't forgotten that comment haha, and I laugh at my poor arms that apparently belong to a child...

 

That being said, I know what you guys mean about the redistribution of weight. I used to be teased for having very chubby cheeks, no matter what my weight. Now I'm accused of having an overly thin face. Yet I weight the same as I did, so it's not like I've been intentionally moving the weight from my face to my tummy... believe me, I'd take those cutesy, bouncy cheeks again!

I was a very chubby kid through 6th grade. Then during the summer between 6th and 7th grades I slimmed down really quickly without consciously changing anything about my diet or exercise (to the point that when my teachers saw me they apparently asked my parents if I could have an eating disorder). I didn't gain any height during that time, so my only explanation is my body decided it didn't want the baby fat anymore.