You’re getting ready to go to work and you slip into your regular pair of shoes, but they don’t fit. That’s odd, so you try on another pair, and it’s the same story. You’re starting to get concerned. You know you’ve gained a little weight recently, but that shouldn’t affect the size of your feet, right?
Your feet can grow as you gain weight. The additional weight changes the bone structure of your feet, compressing them until they’re flatter. While upgrading to a larger pair of shoes will solve the problem, losing weight can cause your feet to go back to their original size or become even smaller!
In this article, we’ll talk further about how gaining weight can make your feet grow. We’ll also discuss a tool you can use to determine if your feet have gotten bigger and how to get your feet back down to a smaller size. You won’t want to miss it!
Does Gaining Weight Make Your Feet Grow?
When you gain weight, where it appears on your body varies, usually based on gender. One’s hormones and metabolism can also determine where your weight gain occurs. For women, weight gain in their legs and hips is common, and for men, it’s usually their midsection.
Why those areas? According to an article from lifestyle website Byrdie, weight gain occurs in specific parts of the body due to the presence of fat cells, aka adipocytes.
While the body has adipocytes throughout, they’re more plentiful in body parts such as the stomach, thighs, and rear. Hence, you gain weight there.
If you’re self-conscious about your weight gain, the last area you’re going to check is your feet. After all, you didn’t even think you can gain weight in your extremities. As we said before, adipocytes are located throughout the body, and that includes your feet, so your feet can get pudgier.
Westfield Foot & Ankle Specialists, LLC, a New Jersey podiatrist, explains that both weight gain and weight loss will change your foot size. As you put on excess pounds, your feet bones change, compressing nearer the tops of your feet.
This will flatten and widen your feet, which is how you end up in the predicament that we discussed in the intro where your usual pairs of shoes don’t fit. This won’t be the case with one pair of shoes either, but all the shoes you own in that same shoe size.
You’d have to go to the store and buy shoes. More than likely, your new shoe size would be the next size up, but it could be as much as two shoe sizes up depending on the extent of your weight gain and the ensuing foot changes.
Should Your Feet Grow Bigger Throughout the Day?
You have evening plans, and you want to get changed out of your work clothes before you go out. It’s been a long day of standing on your feet, but they don’t hurt. Still, you’re surprised that while the shoes you had been wearing fit you fine, the shoes you wanted to wear for this evening’s activities are too small.
These shoes are fairly new, so they should fit you. Why don’t they?
Your feet will grow throughout the day, although not for the same reason as gaining weight. From the moment you’re out of bed and on your feet, they begin swelling up. This continues throughout the day.
The reason this swelling occurs is twofold. Gravity has transferred the blood in your body towards your leg veins. On top of that, since blood contains water, the water enters your feet and leg tissue, which accelerates swelling.
That’s why whenever you’re buying new shoes, you’re advised to do it first thing in the morning. Your feet won’t have swelled up much by that point, so trying on shoes will produce a more accurate fit than if you go to the store after work.
If you notice that your shoes seem to fit you well earlier in the day but that they don’t by the evening, then don’t automatically assume that weight gain has caused your shoes not to fit. It could very well be that your feet are swollen!
How Do You Know If Your Feet Are Bigger?
Tight shoes are one such way to gauge if your feet have gotten bigger, but that’s not your only option. We recommend investing in the Brannock device. You can get your hands on one for under $70.
The Brannock device was created in 1927. You’ve probably seen one before at your favorite shoe store, as it’s the standard for measuring shoe size. You might have even had a shoe salesperson put your foot in the device and measure the size of your feet.
How do you use the Brannock device? First, lay the device down on a flat surface like the carpet or the floor. The arch length pointer, which is a sliding dial, should be all the way to the right. The device’s width bar, which is at the top, should be open wide.
Put one of your feet into the Brannock device. On the left side is the left heel cup and opposite that is the right heel cup. Whichever foot you put forward, position it so your heel is in the appropriate cup. There’s no need–nor would it be anatomically possible–for you to put both feet in the cups at once.
As you stand, keep the weight between the foot in the Brannock device and the foot outside of the device as even as you can. Put your toes flat on the Brannock device and have a friend or partner measure your heel-to-toe length. This measurement stops at your longest toe, whether that’s your big toe or not.
If you’re wearing socks when taking these measurements, they should be tight-fitting. Since it’s your own Brannock device, you can feel free to forego socks if you want to.
To get the arch length measurement of your foot, your friend or partner should put their thumb on your foot’s ball joint, then move the slider of the arch length pointer towards your ball joint. That’s your arch length.
By looking at the heel-to-toe length and then the arch length, one will be bigger than the other. Whichever measurement is bigger is your shoe size. In some cases, the two measurements are the same or roughly the same, in which case the number represented in both measurements is your shoe size.
You know what your old shoe size was, so now all you have to do is compare it to the new one. If your shoe size went up by a whole size or two rather than half a size, then this is more than likely due to weight gain rather than your feet being swollen.
Can You Shrink the Size of Your Feet?
You don’t really want to replenish all the shoes in your wardrobe, especially when your old ones fit you not that long ago. Those are some of your favorite shoes, and you want nothing more than to wear them again. Is there any way you can fit in your old shoes?
Yes, there is. If gaining weight made your feet bigger, then it makes sense that losing weight will shrink your feet back to their old size.
Your next thought is that there are no exercise machines at the gym that are made for working out your feet, right? How can you possibly shrink them?
That’s the thing about weight loss. You can’t choose the areas in which the pounds will come off first. Even if you buy into fad workouts or diet products that claim to target belly fat or flabby arms, that’s not how weight loss works.
You can tone these areas, but the weight won’t come off until you commit to a regular exercise and diet routine. As the weight sheds from your body overall, you should notice that little by little, your shoes will fit you again.
Conclusion
It’s strange to think that as your dress size goes up from weight gain that your shoe size will do the same, but there’s evidence that that’s exactly what happens. Weighing more causes your bones to reconfigure their positioning, compressing the bones so your feet become bigger.
By losing weight, your feet will shrink, and you should be able to fit into your favorite pairs of shoes once again!