Genuine question about normal bodies

claireychn074 wrote: »

There’s a great tummy thread on here which someone will come along and link to in a min (my search function is not working). There are a load of ripped or toned women showing pictures standing up and planking or sitting down.

Et voilà
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10689837/does-this-uterus-make-my-stomach-look-fat/p1

Yep normal.

Watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i1bSS4MPUQ

xxzenabxx wrote: »

I don’t understand because when I wake up and I’m standing in front of the mirror I feel so lean and strong and I can see my abs. But when I sit down I see ab rolls, a belly pooch and my thighs look huge. If I wave, then my arms flap and it looks so unsightly even though I strength train. My stomach is bigger towards the end of the day but that’s probably due to food volume right? Now I’m all about body positivity, but does this happen to lean people as well? I mean is this normal? I guess it doesn’t help that social media is saturated with lean ripped musclar bodies all the time. I know I have 10-15 lbs to lose but I still look fairly lean because I have quite abit of muscle too. I’m just having one of those off days I guess.
Basically straight of the bat- are lower belly pooches, belly rolls, flabby thighs and underarm flap all just normal even for lean people but no one really speaks about them?

Yes, normal. (Warning: Rant coming. This is one of my hot buttons.)

You're right, too few people present correct information about it. Why? No profit in *that*. The profit (for marketers/influencers) lies in convincing regular people that because we don't look like the carefully posed, carb-depleted, well-lit, extensively photoshopped fitness models, in a few carefully-selected photos of them, we're ugly and undesirable, so we need to buy their products to "fix" ourselves. It's evil.

I've ranted a bunch on here about the arm-flap thing. Every single woman I've ever talked to about this in real life (after they made some self-critical remark) has found that a good percentage of what they thought was fat/loose skin on their upper arm was actually nice, useful triceps muscle, but the muscles were relaxed rather than tensed. (I'm not saying they had zero fat or loose skin, but that a good percentage was muscle in all of them. What percentage it is varies by person, of course.)

I think the previous description about how to tighten those muscles is a little off. In my profile photo, the triceps are still somewhat relaxed (partly but not fully tensed). To get them fully engaged, I'd have to raise my upper arm more (so my elbow is pointing more upward instead of sideways), and tighten/curl my fist and pull it down toward my shoulder, making maximum effort to tighten up the back of the upper arm. Try that. If you're 10-15 pounds above a good weight, and muscular, I'm betting you have mostly muscle, and you'll see that clearly in the "maximum triceps engagement" position. If the muscle weren't slack (so a little floppy) when relaxed, how would it contract to move your arm?

The same idea is true with your thighs. The hamstrings on the back of your upper leg also are slack when relaxed, and they're relaxed when you sit in a normal chair. Pressing against the chair seat, they spread out horizontally, so thighs appear wider. If you sat on the very edge of a hard chair, and held your leg straight out in front of you as relaxed as you can while still holding it up, you can feel the same relaxed hamstring muscles in the upper back of your leg being a little flappy, like the arm ones. It's the relaxed muscle, under the effect of gravity pulling down on it.

I hope the thread linked above (the uterus one) gives you some perspective about abdomens.

It completely outrages me that all these "fitness influencers" and marketers cynically exploit our insecurities and misrepresent what normal bodies look like, and why. I hate that they/we (especially women, it seems like) make up names just so we can hate on normal, good, functional, useful parts of our bodies: Bat wings, bingo wings, arm flaps, belly pooch, wattles, hip dips . . . I could go on and on with pejorative terms. Ugh.

Our bodies are great: I don't know what I'd do without one! It's fine to want to improve our bodies, in a healthy way. Hating it at any point along the route, or feeling inadequate because of it, is completely unnecessary, and very unhelpful.

In a nutshell, BE genuine and BE normal. Love the skin you’re in.

I just want to add here that these are truly some of the best responses (thoughtful and well presented) to this type of question I have ever read. And I've worked in the weight loss industry for over a decade and have just about heard it all. I've seen this go wrong many times, but you all have nailed it!