My Arms Are Not Cooperating

Wow.. congratulations! I'm in the same boat as you where I have lost but my darn bat arms just don't want to go away. I work my arms 3x a week at gym and I too see my biceps growing and I think there is a tricep in there somewhere! I think we just keep plugging away. I am hoping with a bit more fat loss that I will see the skin tighten around my arms and by then the muscles will be big enough to poke through!! keep at it.... ! I'm not much help but just thought I'd let you know you are not alone.

kimny72 wrote: »

Something else to keep in mind moving forward, as your skin tightens up. What many women think of as "bat wings" are actually their untensed triceps muscle. If you hold your arm out to the side and have a "wing" but then tense up to make a muscle and it totally or partially disappears, you don't have bat wings, you have a normal woman's arm with a normal triceps muscle

i used to not like my upper/under arms. then you or someone else said that. not a whole lot to pinch there. feel better about my arms now

kimny72 wrote: »

Something else to keep in mind moving forward, as your skin tightens up. What many women think of as "bat wings" are actually their untensed triceps muscle. If you hold your arm out to the side and have a "wing" but then tense up to make a muscle and it totally or partially disappears, you don't have bat wings, you have a normal woman's arm with a normal triceps muscle

So much this! ^^^^

OP, in your profile photo, your triceps are not fully engaged.

Try doing something like a dumbell triceps extension. (Look it up for proper form if you don't know, but just for clarity of this message it's loosely that thing where you lift the dumbell straight up, then bend at the elbow so the weight lowers behind you.) It doesn't need to be a super-heavy weight for this purpose, just something that creates a manageable engagement of the muscles in the back of your arm (triceps). At the lowest point of the weight, take your opposite hand and explore the "batwing". Anything that's tight is muscle. You can even use the opposite hand to grab a handfull of "batwing" while it's relaxed (fingertips up pretty close to the bone), then hold on as you lower the weight. That will help you feel the muscle, too

Even in quite fit/strong women (not to mention men!), the relaxed tricep is mobile and "floppy". Every woman I've ever led through this kind of experiment in real life has been mis-identifying muscle as fat or loose skin!

Can there be fat or loose skin there, too? Sure. Continuing weight loss or recomposition will gradually reduce the fat. Once the fat is depleted to the point where any loose skin is thin wrinkles (like wrinkles in fabric), the skin can shrink, too. Skin shrinking is much slower than weight loss, IME. My loose skin kept shrinking well into year 2 of maintenance, maybe longer (and I was age 59-60 at the time).

Continuing exercise and passage of time will generate improvement, I predict. Hang in there! :flowerforyou:

kimny72 wrote: »

@AnnPT77 I'm pretty sure you're where I learned that from!

I'm on a "women should love their nice triceps muscles" crusade.

Congrats on your loss! Although you might not be thrilled with how your arms look, you’ve definitely lost fat in your arms as part of that 130 loss. Or else you had skinny arms to start with. Are you wright training regularly? I lost 140 over 2.5 years and wright trained the whole time. There is no doubt in my mind that it helped me look better upon reaching goal. I’ve continued weight training another 2.5 yr into maintenance. Based on recent pics, I feel I look better than when I reached goal, including those upper arms. Just keep it going!