Sunday, January 02, 2011

Changes


More than half of my adult life, my weight has been fairly constant. It might vary a pound or three in a given week, but thirty-odd years ago, my driver's license listed my weight at 205#, and until I decided to quit eating so much sugar a couple months back, that's where it stayed. (I drop six or seven pounds on days when I fast, but pick it all back up over the next few days, so I don't count that.)


At the moment, I am down nine pounds, and have been pretty much that since the end of October. Had to tighten my belt up a notch. Which is great -- I feel good, I'm carrying less bodyfat, and I'm assuming my triglycerides have dropped -- I'll check that again the end of February.


However, when you lose subcutaneous fat, as I appear to have done, there is a small thing you might gain: 


Wrinkles.


I'm talking about a little under 5% weight loss, but some that has been from my face, and when that nice, smooth avoirdupois under the skin melted away, it left some slack ...


I've noticed this with other people -- they dieted some of the excess and even though they appeared better overall, they sometimes had a kind of ... drawn look, the lines etched a bit deeper than before.


Of course, I am getting up there and some signs of aging are bound to happen; still, those tend to come on more gradually, and dropping subcue fat does have something to do with it.


I figure the way to get around this is to build more muscle, and stretch the old hide out again. Back to the bigger weights, maybe ...


Never a dull moment. 

8 comments:

heina said...

What's your water intake? You probably get enough, given everything else, but that definitely could help to kick it up a notch or three.

Steve Perry said...

Probably getting between 70-80 ounces of water a day, sometimes more. Water helps plump the skin, but it doesn't replace fat.

Justin said...

How tall are you, Steve?

Steve Perry said...

Six-one.

Some guy said...

Being somewhat old and fat, with vague dieting intentions I've been concerned with that same effect. For what it's worth, in The Kundalini Equation (s?), Steven Barnes said that meditation tightens the skin. He might have made it up for fiction purposes, but with his background and interest in that kind of thing it might very well be true. I intend to try it if and when...

Steve Perry said...

I suspect that Barnes made that up -- meditation can do wonders for blood pressure and mental and spiritual states, but I've never heard it does anything for one's skin.

Anonymous said...

You may well be right, but I'm experimenting with meditation for other reasons - (like avoiding homicide during customer service) -so I figure what the heck, it can't hurt to give it a try. Another possibility is losing weight very slowly. I haven't been forcibly dieting but over the last few years I've been keeping more of an eye on it and eating a little less here and there, and my fat-to-lean-mass ration has gone down, without noticeable wrinkling. Maybe the skin has less of a tendency to separate from the flesh if the reduction of that flesh (or fat) is a very slow process. Just a guess there...

Some guy said...

Ooops. That last "anonymous" was "Some guy", (about three years after the initial post, as usual).