Limitations on waist

yirara

kenyonhaff wrote: »

There's a reason a mature woman needs clothing that shapes and compliment.

Why? Because advertizing is telling you this? Glammour magazines? Why not wear what you enjoy wearing and that you think makes you feel great instead of wearing what you think make you look great in the eyes of other people or magazines? Do men wear shapewear? Maybe we as woman should not follow this terrible, terrible trend and just feel great with whatever we like.

SModa61

I do find shapewear as an interesting history. I suspect that some of the girdle usage (not recent but think 1950's or such) was not for asthetics but for back pain/issues. I recall years ago when I was a physical therapist for pinched back nerves causing leg issues and his comment was how it was important that I form my own natural girdle of muscles to protect my back. Interesting choice of words. Anyhow, I have taken that advice to heart (not perfectly) and leg issues are now rare, though I am likely 15+ years older now.

MaltedTea

Trend over time vs. a point in time, my UAC Twin.

Anthem76

Lowered estrogen is the culprit behind a thickening waist after menopause.
https://www.startribune.com/mayo-clinic-study-finds-explanation-for-postmenopausal-belly-fat/205701571/#:~:text=Scientists have long known that,cells to store more fat.

That said, I think there are three solutions here.

1. Exercises that target firming up the area
2. Acceptance of your changing shape, along with love and appreciation for your body and what it has done/does for you.
3. Dressing in a way that makes you feel good about what you have. I make this last point as a person who has always been rectangular through the waist....even as a svelte teenage athlete. I make the most of what I have by wearing clothing that highlights my back/shoulders and long slender legs. I look silly in belted clothes (and so avoid them) and instead favor dresses, empire waistlines, v-necks, and low rise pants. Blazers (with a little pinch at the waist) over a cami work great. Of course style is a very individual thing...but these are things that I think work well for my body type.

AnnPT77

SModa61 wrote: »

I do find shapewear as an interesting history. I suspect that some of the girdle usage (not recent but think 1950's or such) was not for asthetics but for back pain/issues. I recall years ago when I was a physical therapist for pinched back nerves causing leg issues and his comment was how it was important that I form my own natural girdle of muscles to protect my back. Interesting choice of words. Anyhow, I have taken that advice to heart (not perfectly) and leg issues are now rare, though I am likely 15+ years older now.

If that's true, it's certainly not how women talked about it.

IME girdle-wearing for dress-up was pretty universal. I wore one, in my early teens, which is about when they started dropping out of style, with the advent of pantyhose. If you wore hose (virtually every woman did, at least for dress-up), they required a garter belt or girdle to attach to, to keep them up. Garter belts are a fussy, annoying kind of thing, and don't provide any shapewear effects.

I think girdles were more common, though maybe a higher fraction of the garter belt option for everyday wear. We were required to wear dresses/skirts to school, and there's a point - I think usually early teens - where girls started shaving their legs, wearing hose, no longer knee socks or tights. (Yes, oddly, thicker tights were a common thing that I wore as a child, but for some reason pantyhose weren't the commonest thing until later. The first ones came out in 1959 - I looked it up - but they didn't outsell hose until around 1970.)

AnnPT77

SModa61 wrote: »

So jumping back to my original post for just a moment. We are all in 100% agreement that age is a factor in body shape. I know my height and related aspects are not an issue......yet.

Actually, I'm not sure I do agree, at least not that age per se is universally a massive factor in body shape, in the age range I think we're talking about here.

Some things that are more common with age, but aren't aging per se, may be meaningful. (Childbirth is one - I'm childless, so not much informed about that.)

I know women in their 50s-70s who've been fitness oriented for decades (including one Olympic gold medalist whom I won't name), and a couple of women who lost weight and got very serious about fitness a bit later in life after a decade(s) of a more average lifestyle. I don't know what they personally looked like in their 20s, but they have body shapes that I think many 20-somethings wouldn't mind having. (More superficial wrinkles than a 20-something, and a few other differences, especially once 60+, but talking overall body shape here.)

It's not necessarily that they were pursuing a particular body shape, but it was an outcome of their lifestyle choices certainly.

So within that scenario of age, is it likely muscular change contributing or could it be visceral fat that due to its volume then limits muscular response? Those are the two premises that I am playing with.

I'm not sure it's that simple. Those are not completely isolated things.

Yes, there are some research findings that menopause affects body composition, particularly abdominal fat; and suggesting that estrogen levels are part of that picture. But body composition also affects estrogen levels pre- and post-menopausally, as does exercise (different exercise modes possibly in different ways).

Before menopause, ovaries are our major estrogen producers. After menopause, our body still produces estrogen, most significantly from fat cells and adrenals. (I learned about this as a consequence of breast cancer treatment for hormone-fed tumors.) Clearly, weight loss affects fat cells, and that can affect estrogen levels. (Obesity is believed to contribute to incidence of hormone-fed cancers in women, speculated to be via estrogen levels, I believe.) Exercise can affect circulating estrogen levels, too, either increasing or decreasing it, it seems, depending on the exercise type.

There's lots of research around this set of interlinked topics, but the study linked below brings together various interesting tidbits:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6619462/

It's focused around osteoporotic changes specifically, but the discussion touches in interesting ways on the other aspects (body composition, exercise type, circulating estrogen levels, etc.) and their interrelationships. I'm not suggesting that the study is beyond critique, more suggesting that the background information that's taken as accepted is perhaps relevant to our current discussion here.

Am I upset about my waist? Nope. Never thought I would see my current weight or measurements again. So I guess I am being greedy and/or curious about my limitations. If it is a visceral fat thing, then maybe I will try and learn more on that subject. If it is a muscle thing, you all have given me lots of pointers above.

Some day I would love to do a body composition scan, again mostly out of curiousity.

Lastly, someone recently posted a link to this: https://www.weareageist.com/profile/joan-macdonald-74-journey-to-strength-and-fitness/

Front page is so inspiring. Need to find more down time to really give it all a read. I want to "grow up" to be her. (I'm approaching 60 now).

I respect and admire what Joan's accomplished, but I have to admit a feel a little eye-roll-y about whether her daughter is using mom as an influencer to promote daughter's career as a trainer. IME, there are women around us of similar age accomplishing things like this. Not common, sure, but she's not a full-on unique sparkly unicorn, either.

Ernestine Shepard started late, Madonna Buder (more an accomplished athlete than a "look nice" person) started late, and there are more . . . and that's just semi-celebs, not regular women who've done similar things without fanfare. Unusual, yes. Not impossible.

33gail33

Hormonal changes after menopause influence fat distribution, so I would say that yes you are dealing with an increase in abdominal visceral fat compared to what you may have had at the same weight at a younger age.
Not sure how much we can influence that, but I would imagine that weight training would be one way to balance it out visually.

SModa61

@anthem76 Thanks for the recs. In general, I am pleased with where I am at. What I probably need are some glute work that would help balance things out. Yes, I am curious if I should expect to be able to improve my waist just like I were wondering if I could improve a deadlift. Trying to understand the older me. But thank you

@annPT77 I do wonder if part of my girdle perspective is due to my mother. She has always had back issues (born with mild spina bifida) and I somewhat remember a girdle on her when I was younger. As she is now 84, back is in constant pain for her and sadly, I do not recall her ever being willing to strengthen those muscles that would support her back. I too remember the days of dresses at school. That changed in 5th grade for me. Up until then, no pants were allowed on a female. And I remember the drama involved with my mother when I wanted to shave my legs. Times have changed!! In the car ride yesterday (yes, passenger seat :P ), I came across this article. Kinda of fun read on the history. https://www.thelist.com/153746/the-complicated-history-of-corsets/

Thanks also for your insights and link. I'll have to give reading it a go, but not today (have to help hubby clean the boat ). Thank you for the additional names for inspiration, this "Joan" is just the first "public" individual I have seen. I'm sure that you could also give her a run for the money. It is just really nice to visually see accomplishments. Maybe you should start a blog.

@33gail33 I appreciate getting to discuss these ideas with you all.

AnnPT77

@SModa61, if you like that sort of thing, you might see whether your library has Rick Rickman & Donna Wares' photo/essay book "The Wonder Years: Portraits of Athletes Who Never Slow Down", or can get it for you via interlibrary loan. Rickman was the official photographer for the US National Senior Games, and the book features photos of many senior athletes, textual profiles of some. Good stuff.

There are some photos on Rick Rickman Photography's site, but they're hard to navigate to, and near-impossible to link. This link *might* work:

https://www.rickrickman.com/gallery.html?gallery=The+Wonder+Years&folio=Portfolio#/0

. . . if it does, then there's a grid at the bottom of the first photo that will show a thumbnail navigation band if you click on it, and if you click on the photo itself it will bring up the next one of this small sample set; or, they may auto-slide-show. Maybe. 😆

Great photos, IMO, but annoying web site. The essays about individual athletes are worth looking for the book, if interested and it's not too difficult for you to find.

Every masters rowing event I go to has (literal!) boatloads of fit folks our age, and beyond. I assume other masters competitions in non-revenue sports would be similar (marathon, triathlon, track & field, lifting, etc., though I don't know). In rowing, and some other sports, "masters" just means older (post-collegiate and beyond) people who compete, not excellent professional athletes who've past their peak (as we may think of in masters golf, for example).

I wouldn't consider doing a blog, because (1) when it comes to masters athletes generally in the spectrum of sports I know about, I'm a duffer in fitness and performance; and (2) fit old people may be unusual (or more likely, unnoticed) in our everyday life, but they're not Unusual unusual, overall. US Masters Nationals in rowing, for example, typically has over a couple of thousand competitors, some rowing in multiple events that are tightly scheduled, only a few minutes apart, over 3-4 days, morning to evening. (Each athlete may row in multiple events.) The participant numbers skew younger, but there are races for folks into their 80s and sometimes beyond, and the competitors in their 40s-70s are pretty numerous. (Yes, I have rowed in masters nationals, earlier in my rowing history. My boats washed out in their first heats. It's competitive!)

SModa61

@annpt77 I just ordered the last copy off of amazon. I'll have it this Thursday. Thank you for the recommendation. That's amazing to here that there are so many atheletes in the upper age catagories.

AnnPT77

SModa61 wrote: »

@annpt77 I just ordered the last copy off of amazon. I'll have it this Thursday. Thank you for the recommendation. That's amazing to here that there are so many atheletes in the upper age catagories.

I hope I haven't oversold it, for you. I really like this book. When you get it, if the edition is the same, I think my very favorite photo is not of someone doing their sport. It's on page 109, a woman - probably in her 80s? - with her grandson . . . because, even though I have no grandkids, I think that's a photo about why to stay strong.

SModa61

@annpt77 that would be fantastic inspiration!

SummerSkier

Late to the party but I do honestly think that we tend to "thicken" above the belly button where our waist is if we gain after menopause. I noticed that in my last upward swing in 2016 that was something new where the fat accumulated. That and lower in my groin area? seriously? I do think over time in maintenance that it will recomp a little. I don't know what my waist was before because I really did not measure it as a kid... LOL and in the chart below you can see the little health metrics from work that they have been doing for 10 years. They only started the waist one in 2013. You can see that the first 2 years in maintenance I was 25" I am now somewhere between 23 and 24 depending on how tight I measure, but I am fine with that. waist measurement was not really a huge thing for me as long as I did not have a flabby tum. The <35 recommended # seems high but then again my height varies from 5' to 5'3" depending on the measurer.

sandramarshall200

So what is a stomach vacuum?

SModa61

sandramarshall200 wrote: »

So what is a stomach vacuum?

Tried to find you a link for ease of explaining. There are lots of youtube and internet articles. Here is just one: https://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/a19981979/stomach-vacuuming/

AnnPT77

sandramarshall200 wrote: »

So what is a stomach vacuum?

Described and discussed in this thread:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10824708/what-you-may-not-be-doing-to-get-a-flatter-stomach

SModa61

SummerSkier wrote: »

Late to the party but I do honestly think that we tend to "thicken" above the belly button where our waist is if we gain after menopause. I noticed that in my last upward swing in 2016 that was something new where the fat accumulated. That and lower in my groin area? seriously? I do think over time in maintenance that it will recomp a little. I don't know what my waist was before because I really did not measure it as a kid... LOL and in the chart below you can see the little health metrics from work that they have been doing for 10 years. They only started the waist one in 2013. You can see that the first 2 years in maintenance I was 25" I am now somewhere between 23 and 24 depending on how tight I measure, but I am fine with that. waist measurement was not really a huge thing for me as long as I did not have a flabby tum. The <35 recommended # seems high but then again my height varies from 5' to 5'3" depending on the measurer.

Nice numbers. Crazy that you height varies by three inches though. When I get measure, I fight for every 1/4" inch I can get. :P

Beverly2Hansen

Have you had children? Our bodies widen also fat vs muscle. My best weight was 140lbs but I was far more muscular then 140now is a very different look. With that being said I'd say either your wider because you had children or your weight was more muscle less fat. If your wider post childbirth then this is where you're at if it's that you're higher body fat and lower muscle you'll improve over time.

142jmh

Something to consider: if you did have had children, is it possible that you had diastasis recti (ab separation)? It's possible that it never fully healed, especially if it was undetected. Bodyfit By Amy has a great playlist about it on youtube that offers great explanations as well as great exercises to improve it. These (generally speaking) go along with strengthening the transervse abdominis which cinches the waist.