The Flabbies, a Rotten Side Effect of Weight Loss!

This is a slimming arugula salad with provolone.

OK. You've selected the right weight loss and exercise program for yourself and perhaps you are under your doctor's care because you have over 60 pounds to lose. You've bought your foods, have your plan at the ready and have selected the times for your exercise workouts and meetings if you need encouragement from others. Maybe you have already begun or are at the end of your weight loss regimen and are enjoying great success and the compliments of family and friends.

My insane love for bread kills me.

Whether you are at the beginning, middle or end of losing the weight, there is probably something you didn't consider, especially if you are "taking it off fast," and are losing more than 20 pounds. If you are over 30 and are on a weight loss plan and work your gym memberships to a fault, you may not have considered this either. What will your body look like completely nude? If you exercise like a maniac four times a week with a complete weight routine, which you will have to do until you're dead, you should be OK.

However, the older you are, the greater the weight loss, the greater the stretchability of your skin. Eventually, unless you keep up extreme fitness, your body will probably show signs of dimpling in the areas you avoid looking at for long periods of time in the mirror. These are areas you have exercised but are stubborn and resist firming. Regardless, if you lose more than 40 pounds and are over 35, there will be the equivalent of one or more of the following fleshly signs: ripples, creases, the ever-so-gentle tiny waves, uneven undulations or horrors, the curtain folds and/or drapes of flesh.

Do we all have a genetic proclivity for flab after weight loss? As we age and/or lose weight our surface flesh which is very forgiving to accommodate excess adipose (fat tissue) also hangs around when that adipose is long gone.The greater the weight loss, regardless of exercise or slowness of reduction, the greater the likelihood of drooping jiggles marring our new, slender figure. This is especially so for Yo-yo dieters, who lose the same 30, 40, 50 pounds over the decades, like me.

The inevitability of the flabs  after weight loss.

Looking back on my 110-120 pound weight loss, though I exercised, had the right food plans and moved to organic food, little meat and no junk food, and took it off in two years and kept it off, there is something I wish I had considered when I started. I wish I had synchronized my weight loss with targeted exercising. How I wish I had hired a trainer to help me do this. I couldn't do it alone. The trainer might have made a difference, if I had stuck to it.

Some people go for wraps. Wraps might have encouraged areas on my body toward more firmness and less sag. However, I thought that like most weight loss gimmicks, they were a joke. I slowly lost weight. I am a thin, BMI 21 which is uber normal. Yet, I have a flubber effect under my arms that shakes with any severe movement. So when I am bare armed I keep my arms close to my sides, robotic when I remember to hold them in. God forbid, I do not lift them in the summer heat, unless I am playing tennis when everyone on the court is looking at the ball, not my flutters. My shapely legs? The upper part are jellies borne down by gravity. Is it too late to get a trainer to force me to exercise the upper flights of flesh? It's never too late! I just have to get up the will to do it!

I am healthier and much happier having lost all the weight. I have extended the life of my liver and kidneys and heart and the rest of my organs because, unlike before, they are not smothered in fat. Now, they thrum along like efficient tugboats without being  obstacled by the toxicity of any medications except the very occasional, like once in three months use of  one advil in the winter if I play tennis 5 days in a row in back to back sessions. I don't huff and puff going up 6 flights of stairs. And I look great in my clothes. It's a big "Yeah," all around.

This is what I would look like at 100 pounds: anorexic. No way.

But here and there, I catch a sidewise glance in the mirror and see under my neck. To get off this genetic creasing, I need to weigh about 110 pounds and that is an underweight BMI. My arms at that weight will crinkle like a bad case of the crazies. I could get down to 100 pounds of bone, but then family and friends would shake their head (they did this before when I weighed 119) and whisper behind my back how I was anorexic.

There is another way, of course, a way that will bring success, though it is very painful and dangerous with a long recuperation period. Have a cosmetic surgeon take care of the jiggles and jelly butter rolls and flabaroos. Countless women and men are going under the knife with fearless abandon. Many of my friends have spent thousands of dollars and a few of them look better, though I don't know what they would have looked like if they had done nothing. I do have one mentor who are in their 70s. They are normal BMI thin and they are good tennis players. Another friend my age thus far has repudiated cosmetic surgery and look good if she smiles a lot, like I have to do because of those folds around the mouth.

Cosmetic surgery is a viable option, but I am afraid I would lose brain cells to the anesthesia. I am too negative in my thinking perhaps, but I can't get it out of my mind that afterward, like the old Rolling Stones song which my X husband used to quote, I would be "Dazed and Confused."Anesthesia brings complications of memory loss. Many of my friends who have gone under the knife have the attention span of a fly on a wall.

Bottom line, for me, homeopathic methods are better than surgery. So back to the drawing board! I will have to engage in a self-made exercise plan of stretching to do along with my tennis and stair climbing. Maybe I'll hire a trainer. What can I lose? What can I gain? A tighter look. I really want to keep body mutilations and memory loss down to the bare minimum. Cosmetic surgeons, I am not ready for you yet!