Glad you found it a great experience and had at least some gains. They do say that weight around the gut is the most difficult to shift. I think it can takes many months of calorie restriction and exercise to progress with that.
I have a slim build, and there's not much beef on my upper arms or thighs, and even less on my skinny forearms and lower legs. But I have a large and hideous mass around my belly!!
I've recently found out that I have a large tear in my abdominal wall, with not just one, but 2 hernias protruding through!! (And no doubt adding to the mass of my protruding pot belly, as well as the hernias having pushed through the tears, it seems possible that the tears are just weakening the muscular structure of my entire abdominal area, and so it's just not holding things in as well as it should be. I'm obviously no surgeon or anatomy expert, it just seems plausible though.)
I think this could be either good or bad news. If after I get the scan, and the hernias turn out to be consisting of fatty tissue, rather than parts of my intestines having broken through, then maybe I can ask the surgeon if those can be removed, rather than attempting to push them back in, as they often do, before they do the surgery to repair the abdominal wall.
I've seen some before and after photos of people's stomachs following hernia surgery, and they can serve to reduce people's bellies massively. Although the surgery is not meant to be for cosmetic reasons, I hope it will help in that regard.
I'm not saying you might have a hernia, I've just gone off on a tangent, as your post prompted me to relate my own experience.
What do you reckon
@LoginNotSecure if you see this post ? Do you think I could ask the surgeon to remove fatty tissue rather than push it back it in, or would that make the surgery more complicated and risky than it needs to be? Or might they just remove the fatty protrudences as a matter of course? I know you're not a hernia surgeon specialist, but you might have some idea from your medical training?