Exercise gurus help!!! Any ideas on how to lose arm flab?

[Anonymous]

I recently became paralyzed and I used to have a completely toned body. With a long hospital stay and all of the meds and less exercise than usual I have seemed to put on weight, all of which went straight to my upper arms! In the last few months I have wanted to change things, so I have been doing therapy and the rest of my body is pretty toned, all except for the stored fat under my arms! Even though I use my wheelchair now, and my arms get a workout, they still won't tone down. I have been doing exercises with weights that are supposed to help with weight reduction there, but so far nothing has worked. I eat a healthy diet too and I just don't know what to do anymore. Any ideas on how to get my arms to match the rest of me? Thanks in advance.

[UncagedAgent]

Instead of trying to lose weight in your arms, you should try to build up muscle mass.

Your arm is comprised of Biceps (front side), Triceps (back side), and in places the three Deltoid Muscles (Front, Middle, Back of shoulder). I'm not a doctor, but I would suggest you try to work your delts and tris with weight that will build muscle. If you add good mass (muscles mass = good mass) to the area, the percentage of fat there will drop. If you start with 2 muscles to 1 flab, but lift to get to 2.5 muscles to 1 flab, your arms will look more defined because the amount of undefined mass has been made to look smaller.

Triceps are activated mostly by extending your arms. Ideal exercises would be Tricep extensions, push downs, isolation extensions, and face pulls (if you just google the names you'll find tutorials for all of them by enough people to make a country). For biceps you're going to get the best effect by pulling/contracting your arm. To do this look for curls, specifically preacher curls and hammer curls, and isolation curls. The trick to biceps is that many back exercises (rows, lat pull downs... etc) use the biceps as well so if you train your back you'll still be helping your arms grow directly.

Finally, shoulders. You may or may not care to train shoulders, but I believe that if you widen your silhouette, there will be less focus on your upper arms. To do this you'll want to do dumbbells flies and all the variations that come with them (seated, single arm, standing, bent over, cables) to grow your deltoids which, again, are the muscles in your shoulders.

[thorthorley]

Arm flab is usually built around the back of the arm area. The muscles in this area are called the triceps.

Tricep exercises include tricep extensions both one arm dumbbell and two arm barbell tricep extensions. I would just do the one arm tricep extension as it works the whole tricep area and will be easier to do in your condition. Also tricep kickbacks are good for the upper horseshoe area of your triceps.

Other arm muscles are your biceps and your forearm. Exercises like dumbbell bicep curls for biceps and wrist curls for forearms will help these areas.

I would also incorporate shoulder deltoid exercises as that is within that area as well. Some exercises are shoulder presses (both one arm and two arm), shoulder flyes with neutral grip and hammer grip.

Some of the names may be called something different depending on which material you read. But if you look up those muscles and search for exercises and see examples of those then you should be able to find exercises which you would like yo incorporate in your workout. Hope this helps.

[DaniJ]

Not sure what's causing it, but have you tried essential oils? Doterra has a blend called slim and sassy that works well as not only an appetite suppressant, breaking down cellulite, so maybe that would do something? Or a different oil that fits your specific needs more? Oils usually solve most of my health issues.

[msAlovescookies]

use a pair of small dumbels. my mom uses them at home and she's got some muscles. they're sold in different weights. I think they'll really help if you use them everyday. :)
I'm sorry about your condition :(

[laurapalmer]

I'm not an exercise guru, but your question automatically called to mind the shake-weight