I am working SOOOOOOOO hard on getting to this point. For example - I love swimming. Guess who hasn't been anywhere near an inviting body of water since gaining a hundred pounds or so? Why would I give up one of my favorite activities and a healthy exercise due to my self-consciousness? I'm not shy. I was raised with a real sense of shame and proper behavior - which is helpful sometimes, but I have not worn short sleeves in public since the accident that scarred me, and that's a long time. And it's hot. Now, I have pudgy arms too - I hope when I get to a point where I want to maintain, I'll have been able to do enough "me" work to get myself into a swimsuit, or a tank top.

I really admire you! I'm also a little jealous.

thunda - have you thought about wearing a 'swim top' like those who surf in warm waters do? They have shortish sleeves but they are still sleeves.

Not only do I have the arm issues but I also have loose skin, stretch marks and whatever else on my legs. When I'm swimming to swim though, I wear a standard swimming suit which doesn't hide anything. Once you get in the water, its not like anyone sees anything anyway. There also more conservative suits that can be used for swimming or 'recreational' water activities as well.

When I'm sewing a blouse or a dress with sleeves, I always have to expand the sleeves even if everything else fits. It's my proportion. I suspect that even at my goal weight, my arms would still be big in proportion to the rest of me. If I were a man, it wouldn't seem so bad. Somehow it's OK for a man to have proportionately bigger arms.

So.... if it's OK for a man, why shouldn't it be OK for me? What's good for the gander is good for the goose!

i'm with a lot of the other people on this thread as well. i live in norht florida right now, and it gets HOT in the summer. i've also lived in nashville and so cal, and those temperatures never failed to get to at least 102/103 in the summer and i constantly wear a sweatshirt. i just feel so self conscious about my arms, also it doesn't help to have a horrible self body image. i'm hoping that when i hit my goal weight, the arm shrinkage will go with it, because i'm not in the financial situation to have plastic surgery, though i would love that option

thats because the clothing jerks think that people just cant have one big body part...if your fat, you automatically have large breasts, and other such nonsense. I too have to expand the sleeves when making a blouse. and its annoying to buy a blouse that fits my arms, but my boobs fit through the neck hole.

nelie - I am inspired by your confidence. I have seen the swim tops, but have always shied away from them. I am not a "sporty" type - ya'know? I tried on a white shirred '50's style swimsuit last season, and was pleasantly surprised. I think I could do that, with a sarong to get my cellulites into the water. I'm rambling, but, even if I get my arms toned and tight, this scarring goes from near my wrist up to my armpit, it's many trails are twisted and winding, in some spots the skin is visibly tighter and strained, in others it's slack and puffy, there are more puncture scars than I care to see as well, and the suture marks are still visible 17 years later. The doctors weren't rushing to keep me beautiful, they were rushing to keep me alive. I need to improve my attitude. I need to find a better balance between trying to put my best foot forward, and caring too much what other people think. People can be cruel, people can be thoughtless, but I need to be better than them. Thanks for reading my ramblings, anyway, I'm working hard at developing a healthy and accurate self-image. I really, really admire your attitude!

RE: Bigger arms and tops fitting -

I give up. My shirts never fit Righty and Lefty either (the tatas). I am ashamed to do yoga in public because, seriously, I have a faceful of my own boobs more often than not. If I get a shirt to fit my ya'yas, it fits my arms, but then I have to have the waist taken in. If it stretches so I buy for the waist and squish Boob A and Boob B in, then the upper arm fits OK but the elbow is tight - so I think I technically have fat elbows instead of fat arms.

I forget which fashion show I saw this on but I really like and repeat it often:
"It is the clothes' job to fit you, not your job to fit the clothes".
I am getting better about trying something on and then possibly rejecting it instead of feeling like it rejected me somehow.

Don't even get me started on pants.

I've worked on my arms with free weights for over a year now. I am proud to announce that I now have defined biceps and a groove indicating triceps .... and loose skin. In exercise class, when I have to put my arms straight out in front of me & am looking into those huge unforgiving mirrors, I can see my arm skin flop & jiggle a little before settling into a pronounced sag underneath. I feel vaguely apologetic. Like, "Look, I'm trying, I'm trying ... you have all doubtless seen me working out here ... and I'm in this class, right? ... but there are just some things that exercise won't cure."

I don't foresee an operation in my future. I just bought an apartment this summer & my mind is on furnishings & getting in the habit of mortgage payments.

But it sucks that after all that hard work with weights, I still have to watch how I hold my arms or avoid moving them a little too quickly lest the skin get to a-quivering.

Michelle Obama, you remain the queen. I'm not going to get anywhere near any of your sleeveless dresses quite yet.

that's me too. flappers had a much better meaning some decades back...heh heh

We can all flap together Maybe fly south for the winter.

I'm in.

I am flying around with all of you ladies here! My original username for this site was "BingoWings"... because that is what I have. My arms look like an overweight elderly woman at the bingo parlor. When the wind picks up, I have to be really careful about holding my arms against my body. Otherwise I take flight.. and it's too cold to fly this winter. LOL.. kidding about that last part, but I really, really hate my arms. It is SO nice to know there are others here with the same issues. The biggest, flabbiest part of my arms if I hold them out, is right smack in the middle between my elbows and my shoulders. But when I put them at my sides, it all settles in toward the elbow. If there was a zipper on it, it would be a great place to hide cash and an ID when going out at night. LOL

Ugh. Big arms be gone.

(PS. I thought my old username was too negative and changed it - I'd much rather have hot ones. )

When I said I'd like wings, I meant like bat or gargoyle wings...ON MY BACK! but when we do fly south we can take heart that at least it would be warmer down there

I started out with truly massive arms, but they were fairly firm, considering. I lost way over 100 lbs back in the early 2000s and was horrified at how my arms looked. There was so much skin left it actually folded over if I bent my elbows, UGH! Of course, the only exercise I did then was cardio.

This time, I committed to lifting weights to try to thwart that. I did it specifically for my arms (and the other health benefits were only side effects, LOL). I started out doing arm-specific lifting, like biceps curls, triceps dips, etc. I was using pretty heavy weights, 10-15 lb dumbbells. It helped somewhat.

But then, I read on here about The New Rules of Lifting for Women which pushed heavy, full-body lifting. It mimics your body's natural inclination to use all major muscle groups when lifting heavy weights. And...it works better than targeted lifting.

My arms will never be Michelle Obama's but I always joke, if I had plastic surgery tomorrow I'd look better than Linda Hamilton in T2. And I would. Even with all the fat and some loose skin, my arms look HOT (or relatively so, considering I once weighed nearly 400 lbs). Major muscle definition. Not like the Governator...I'm a woman. But good.

However...there's still enough fat and loose skin, and of course lowish self esteem, to keep me from walking around in short sleeves. Everything I own is at least 3/4th length sleeved. And that's not likely to change. But if someone I love happens to see me in a tank top at some point, I can live with it.

Of course we are all different, but I always say, if you can ditch the 3/5 lb weights and move up to 20/25 lb weights, your arms will thank you. And the whole-body lifting makes far more of a difference than targeted lifting ever could.

I, too, am having trouble with the loose skin under my arms and inside my thighs since my weight loss. My arms and thighs were always fairly tight...and everything I own (for summer) is a tank top....which I can't picture me wearing them this summer....but....I had an idea (altho I have yet to try it..)

For those of you that sew.....I bought a few patterns with sleeves that are split. I think they are considered "flutter sleeves", or "butterfly sleeves"... I plan to try those before my trip to St. John in March. Another idea I had was just cutting a slit in the underarm seam of a short sleeve tshirt. Yeah, the loose skin would show, but hopefully the loose material above it might hide the skin a bit. That way I would still have the comfort of a tank, but not flapping my underarms around.

I guess you would call this "coping", huh?

PS: I haven't posted on this site before but I do love to look at it....