When I graduated high school and went off to college, I gradually became much more aware of my pant size as I started buying my own clothes. There was difficult psychological milestone for me when I had to start buying pants that had a waist dimension greater than the inseam. For a few years, I exclusively bought shrink-to-fit pants so that my 33" waist , 32" inseam pants would still have a tag on the back that read 34W 34L. 
At my heaviest, I was wearing 44-46W in the shortest inseam I could find 
This weekend, I bought my 1st pair of “square” pants in over 30 years. I now wear a 32W 32L without resorting to shrink-to-fit to game the numbers 
Interestingly, although my diet is to credit for the 32W, my return to disciplined exercise about 4 months ago seems to be turning my 30" inseam pants into “high-water” pants. Apparently some added volume in the glutes is causing them to fit higher up on my body and driving me to the 32" inseam 