Feet often do get smaller when you lose a lot of weight. Partly because feet have layers of fat too, and partly because there's less weight squishing them out sideways.
The difference is that shoes that are fully enclosed need to fit you pretty well to be comfortable, while for something open like a sandal that's not nearly as important
I've personally been barefoot pretty much since covid hit. I got moved to work-from-home so it's been bare feet or flip-flops ever since.
I also broke my fifth metatarsal in 2022 and that made me hate shoes even more. They're just extremely uncomfortable to me. Can't stand socks anymore either. It's like nails on a chalkboard to have them on.
Yes... You likely had fairly flat and atrophied feet. I'm guessing they were pretty long and narrow, with your big toe extending much further than your little toe. With a more developed arch, foot muscles in general, and not being bound, your foot is probably quite a bit wider with a more square toe box. That square toe box results from your big toe being pulled in.
Also, if you had an issue with water retention before, your feet may just be less swollen now.
Others have mentioned losing fat... Definitely possible but I don't think you'd see a shoe size drop from that (since it's more volume loss than length) and I don't think 40 lbs would have included that much on your feet anyway 🤷♂️
I don't think you'd see a shoe size drop from that (since it's more volume loss than length)
For people with wide feet, it can sometimes be hard to find shoes that fit properly and you may have to go up a size or 2 to get shoes that work for you
I normally wear a US men's size 11 wide and my shoes tend to be a bit long for me, but my feet aren't fitting in anything much smaller comfortably. Wide shoes are usually an E or EE width, if I could more reliably find EEE width shoes I could probably go down to a size 10 or 10½, so I could definitely imagine someone in a similar situation going down a size by losing some weight
It's especially frustrating when I go looking for safety toe shoes because usually that toe cap isn't actually doing much to protect my feet and just kind of makes the shoe more uncomfortable
It's also only about half the battle for me, because my toes are pretty wide but the rest of my foot and especially my heels are actually kind of narrow, so trying to find shoes that actually fit me well is basically impossible unless I start shelling out big bucks for custom made shoes.
Out of curiosity, wat were the biggest changes you implemented?
My changes were basically three stages:
Cut out sugary drinks (both soft drinks and juice)
Keto
Intermittent fasting (this is much easier when you're already doing keto)
But even just cutting out sugary drinks made a big difference.
Would you do anything differently given hindsight?
I'd do it sooner. I'd also not get so caught up in trying to make keto food that mimics carby food (though maybe it actually is worthwhile doing it in the early days if you have cravings for certain things).
When I got heavily involved in karate and kickboxing, training barefoot 5x per week, I lost almost two shoe-sizes.
After I stopped, I gained them back year by year.
Now I wear mostly barefoot shoes and again have lost at least one size.
I attribute it to the ability of your feet muscles to maintain the arc and keep your middle foot together,
People are right on here, losing weight can make your feet skinnier.
However the fact that you walk barefoot is what caught my attention. Im a barefoot runner, and your feet's arch becomes more pronounced as you train like that. I assume walking would lead to the same results. So yeah, being barefoot all the time does make your feet smaller, and starting to wear shoes again all the time would make that arch go away over time