[bryony]

According to the paragraph headed "The functional breast" in Wikipedia, the non-lactating female breast is almost 50% fat "the milk-glands-to-fat ratio is ... 1:1 in a non-lactating woman". I know that eating fatty food does not mean you immediately get additional fat deposited on your body, but you have to eat enough nutritious food for the body to build breasts. Maybe skinny prepubescent girls are skinny because so much of the body's effort is directed to growing breasts.

What I do think is counterproductive is to expect the body to lose fat from everywhere while at the same time adding fat on the chest, although that is exactly what I am trying to do. Who said we had to be logical?

I would leave the breast fat deposition until weight loss is achieved, simply because it is so unhealthy to be even a little overweight. I'll be 60 this year, and I feel healthier now, losing only 28 lbs (a 15% weight loss) than I did in the previous 10 years.

Once you get your weight down to a good BMI, and keep the E level in your bloodstream up, a little increase in food intake over and above your energy needs will preferentially deposit fat where it is wanted. Dieting won't stop breast tissue growth, and, anyway, there is no perfect diet so your weight will oscillate somewhat; when it does, fat will go where it is wanted, and you will see it happen.

My weight oscillates with the low carb lifestyle that I live now, and I tend to eat a little more at the weekends, and less during the week to compensate. The fat that I put on at the weekends tends to go now more towards breast and hips than waist (though there is still about 10 lbs to lose there also), and during the week as I eat less, it reduces. So I'm pretty sure that what I'm saying is correct - for me, at least.

B.