heh. i'm expecting good girl-talky type things from this thread.

i guess i noticed a more general thing, which might be similar. there's a much harder line between my muscle and my fat now. i used to be just generally sort of squishy, same texture all the way through until you got to the bone. but now it's like there's this muscle-based layer of me inside the remaining wrapping, and i can really feel the boundaries between the two layers when i poke. i feel like a biscotti wrapped up in, idk saltwater taffy or something like that.

also, muscle is more slithery. this is terminally fascinating to me. i sit around poking [at] myself a whole lot for that reason as well.

I noticed something like this about a month ago. My stomach had been taut (but fluffy) and then looked looser & jiggly. I believe it was a loss of water weight & it was followed by fat loss. I think it's a good thing!

If it's water weight loss before the fat loss like I mentioned above just keep doing what you are doing. The fat loss follows but takes time. I have some loose skin after being pregnant. I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done about loose skin. Maybe if you are younger and your skin has good elasticity it just needs time to tighten up. Staying hydrated is probably good for that. It's great that your muscles are firming up after 6 weeks and you sound very active. I've been doing SL since October (5 months) and saw the most results in just the last month. Mostly because I started eating a bit more than MFP told me to do but still at a deficit. I think my food logging got more accurate, too.

Thanks @scrittrice!!

As folks get very lean, down to the last pounds of fat, the skin and fat cells that are left will often change appearance and texture. It will look dimply (as the fat cells which are supporting the skin shrink and the skin isn’t supported) and feel squishy to the touch. This is bad in that it looks really weird, but it’s good because it means that the fat is going away. I have nothing truly profound to say about this topic, just realizes that it happens and usually indicates good things are happening.

^^^that is what I went looking for online when I had that sudden squishiness. I read a few articles and figured I must be doing something right.

I have a little bit so far but am expecting more issues like that in the future. Starting at obese and having been so for a good portion of my life, I pretty much expect some sagging and excess skin issues to surface. Have lost almost 50 so far. I notice minor things for now but a bulk of my excess weight is still in the stomach.

With my arms, the top portion from shoulder down is starting to have nice shape showing but trying to pose to show any smidge of muscle definition doesn't work yet cause gravity means have some of that hanging on the lower fortune of the upper arm.

My outer thigh is doing decent and can feel a hint of muscle but inner thigh is a little flabby and sag prone still.

Stomach is always a little weird cause it has always had a dip in a red at the belly button level and that is still there. Stomach still sticks out but is slowly getting smaller. This is also where I fully expect extra skin at some point since I had been obese for so long and had always held excess fluff there. Haven't had kids yet and am 30, so we will see how it all goes.

Girl talky enough?

threnjen wrote: »

bingo wings

but more seriously: i never even freaking heard about these particular things until i got into lifting a year ago. i know i'm sort of outside the mainstream and a lot of what's going on in the world kind of goes right by me, but there is stuff that does trickle through.

and like i said. not once in 20+ years of hearing all the various lists of body flaws i was supposedly supposed to get all obsessed and morbid about, have i even heard that i was supposed to care what my triceps look like. or even think about the fact that they're there. so idk who or what started this upper-arm thing, but i'll bet money on this. it's a fashion. someone somewhere thought it up out of nowhere and turned it into the New Biggest Thing we're supposed to find unacceptable in ourselves. i'm saying that because i've been around for a while, and i've seen this. there's never supposed to be a point in time, ever, where we women are completely content with ourselves and there hasn't been something for someone to criticique about us. and if there is such a time it doesn't last. someone somewhere always has to hurry and think up something to get us worried again.

it's like it's gotten so axiomatic to the entire world for us never to feel at ease or properly satisfied with ourselves, that if it ever happens, it's an alarming, unnatural state. something has to be invented to unsettle us again and get us back into the 'right' frame of mind. because personal insecurity is the normal, natural state for a 'healthy' woman to be in, or something.

/rant.

I never got stretch marks from pregnancy, either. But I had my daughter at 42 and I guess my skin just doesn't have the elasticity it once had. I should take better care of my skin but I'm so low maintenance I just forget to slap some skin cream on daily.

I just meant to keep my skin hydrated. I take pretty hot showers and baths and need to keep up the moisturizing. I hope that building my ab muscles helps fill out the loose skin a bit.

I really hate the "empty areas" where used to have fat. Don't expect they'll ever go away, though. I do hope to fill my inner thighs with some muscle, though.