Moment of realness

springlering62 wrote: »

“Batwings”

Batwings were my anathema, until @AnnPT77 posted something that blew my mind, and made me completely rethink them.

Everyone has bingo wings, and most of us see them as a flaw or fault.

They’re not. They’re just a normal part of your body.

See how when my arm is straight out and relaxed, my wings wobble? Same if I casually bend my arm up.




But if I flex, those so-called wings are taut. There’s no give, no wobble.

Your “wings” there for a reason. They’re simply extra skin to cover your muscles.


Do my wings clap when I run or move vigorously? Hell yeah!!!!! Does it bother me any more? Pfffffft. I don’t even think about them now.

👏👏👏

Yes, yes, yes. There are waaayyy too many women hating on their upper arms because of "batwings" (a.k.a. bingo wings, arm flaps, chicken wings, . . . .), when at least a significant part of what's distressing them is nice, useful triceps muscles. I'm not saying there's never any fat or optional loose skin, but every time I've led a woman in my real life through the steps to feel the triceps, they were misidentifying their triceps muscles as fat or loose skin.

Thank you for this gif illustration, @springlering62 - much clearer than my words-y explanations.

Folks, with your opposite hand, grab the loose mass when you're holding your arm in the relaxed position at the start of her example. Get your fingertips as close to the bone as you feel flappy stuff below that bone. Then flex your arm hard, like a bodybuilder: Upper arm above shoulder to around 45 degrees, fist tight and curled toward forearm, forearm pulled down near the upper arm so that hard fist approaches your ear. Almost certainly, you'll feel some of that flappy stuff tighten up in your opposite hand's grip, when you do that. Anything that tightens up is nice triceps muscles. They're useful: Strive to love them.

The instructor in my women's strength training class, years back, showed us this. (He's a guy. An insightful, knowledgeable one.)

Other muscles, in the right position, can do a similar thing. If you see your upper thighs look lots wider when you sit on a chair? A lot of that is relaxed hamstring muscles (back of upper leg) being squished out horizontally by the chair seat. It's not all fat or loose skin. These effects can happen for strong, fit, lean people, too - men and women both.

Muscles. Love 'em . . . please!

The Extra Skin Olympics aka Floam Is My Superpower

Warning: You May Not Be Able to Un-See This

@callsitlikeiseeit wisely said yesterday that leggings hide a multitude of sins. Amen, sister, amen.

Extra skin. Not much you can do about it except pray it goes away with time (much of it will), have it surgically removed (ouchy and yucky) or disguise it.

At the risk of sounding vain, you’d probably see me in the street and think I have no issues with extra skin.

Guess again. In spite of reasonably careful nutrition, and regular exercise, including weightlifting, it persists.

To give you an idea, I am 5’7”, SW was 222+, CW averages 133.

Sorry for the resting *kitten* face, but it’s either that or laugh uncontrollably while videoing this:



If you have extra skin, appreciate it for the battle scars it is. I’d much rather have this tucked in my elastic than still be waddling around with it in its original bulk.

OK, moments of realness for sure here.

Over the past three years of weight loss (90’ish lbs) and maintenance, my body has done the absolute strangest and most unexpected things. I’ve come to refer to these moments as “Rearranging the Furniture” for the simple reason, it’s still all the same parts, they just moved somewhere else.

The first was the horrifying morning when I crawled out of bed and my butt bounced. Literally bounced. It felt like I had a bouncy castle attached to my *kitten*. Not an exaggeration- I felt it wobble as soon as I stood up, and immediately knew something was “wrong”.

I ran to the mirror and cried. Overnight, my butt had turned to jello and was hanging like balloon curtains over my hamstrings. Touching it was like touching a water balloon. I crammed it into leggings and carried on. What else could I do?

A week later, it tightened, lifted, and had a totally different shape. A kinda pleasant one, TBH.

One morning, looking in the mirror, I realized loose skin under my arms (I loath the term “bingo wings”) was gone (except for what was supposed to be there - see above). That was a good morning!

Then there was the time I discovered my thighs were dimpled and dappled with horrible, deeply pitted cellulite. I know wasn’t there when I’d dressed in the morning. I wasn’t happy, but by then I knew enough to tell myself “deep breath and let’s see where this takes us”.

Whatever happened there flushed itself out in a matter of days, leaving behind not only slimmer smoother thighs, but some welcome muscle definition.

It’s been like this over and over throughout weight loss and even in to maintenance. The changes don’t always correlate to weight loss.

This is on my mind because, nearly a year into maintenance, my stomach has not only gone soft and squishy, my “apron” (and those of you that have one know exactly what I mean) is back as of today.

Well, hello there, old buddy!!!

My stomach and apron are hanging over my waistband. Several rolls have appeared on my belly. My armpits are billowing over my sports bra.

Panic checklist:
1.) have I put on weight? No.
2.) Am I still exercising? Yes
3.) have I changed my diet? A bit of tinkering with macros but not enough to cause this
4.) retaining water? If anything, a bit dehydrated from being on my feet all weekend helping with a community event
5.)Do clothes still fit? Yes and in fact have gotten looser in the past couple months, even with steady weight in maintenance.

Am I worried? Not for the time being. I’ll give it a few weeks and see what happens.

I just find it fascinating that not only does your body do such wierd, even comical things, but it continues to do them.

I guess in reverse, we don’t realize the long term effects that packing the weight on had on us. I guess the unpacking process is a process in and of itself.

Bump to @KickassAmazon76’s great posts, and a comment regarding extra or loose skin following weight loss.

I decided to treat myself to a dream pair of embroidered blue jeans. Way up-budget from what I spend on clothes. (I’m a TJ Maxx kinda girl, but following weight loss I’m making a conscious effort to get better quality and better fitting clothes, but fewer of them, since I live in leggings anyway.)

Anyway, I was carefully measuring my waist with a tape measure and was getting 34. That equates to about a size 12 in this particular brand, which made no sense. I’ve been wearing 27 in another brand, which has become loose, and consistently wear a 2 or 4 in other pants.

So I held my nose and ordered a 26.

Too big. Have had to send them back to swap for a smaller size.

Now, the tape measure gets 34, but the actual size that fits is far below that.

Loose skin on the belly is very very….flexible, malleable, moldable, for lack of better words.

If you are measuring inches, be aware that once you reach a certain point, it’s no longer a particularly valid way of determining loss, or enjoying those NSVs.

Loose skin has a mind of its own. I mean, it is really really weird and misleading, like a parasitic alien being.

No plans for a tuck. It’s taking a while, but I can see the loose skin diminishing. In the two weeks since my “apron” post, my apron has disappeared again, and there’s a visible improvement in loose skin.

Persistence, sticking to plan, continuing to move move move and log log log. Beats the hell out of painful surgery.

I am not special. If I can do this, you can, too.

Not me, not-randomly bumping threads I think are awesome and helpful and shouldn't be buried...

I'm going to post here, adding to the batwing/bingo wing part of the dialog, because another thread has me PO-ed about this pet-peeve subject. (I hope our fine OP here, @KickassAmazon76, will be OK with this addition.) Also, this thread can always use a bump, because it's excellent.

In photo 1, here we have the classic arm flap thingie, as illustrated by me, 66-year-old mostly non-weight-lifter, who lost 50+ pounds a few years back. Arm horizontal, relaxed. Flappity flap. Ooo, the horrorzzz! 🙄😉



Photo 2, same me, slightly different moment, just holding the same arm the same amount of relaxed, but vertical orientation. (Still a little of my hair in the photo at left, so you can see that this is the orientation.) Where has that hangy/flappy bit gone? Hmmmm.



Photo 3, same me, yet another nearby moment, upper arm still oriented horizontally, but flexing as much as I can. I'm not very good at this flexing thing, and like I said not really a lifter, but it does seem like there's less hang/flap, vs. photo 1, unless I deceive myself.



Finally, photo 4. I'm still not that great at the flex, but even holding the arm out straight, looking almost the same orientation-wise as photo 1, but focusing hard on tightening upper arm muscles in that same position, there's - I think - noticeably less hang/flap. (Yes, there's still some.) Imagine what a person could do, if they practiced. (I didn't.) Imagine what a person could do, with a professional photographer, professional lighting (instead of my badly-light hallway-wall cell phone selfie). You don't suppose the online fitspo influencers use tricks like that to deceive us, do you? 😉😆



On top of that, these flex photos would look more defined, if I'd lifted before taking the flexed photos, after taking the relaxed one. (I hate to lift. It's a character fault. So I didn't.)

And BTW, yes, my underarm looks a little weird: Some surgeon took out a bunch of lymph nodes there, and then a radiation oncologist irradiated that whole area, creating stringy-looking scar tissue (cording). (It's fine, now. Just looks unusual, divots and cording. I don't care.) It's too hard to take photos of the other (right) arm, with my non-dominant (left) hand.