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.