About three months ago we got a new boss. Since then I have lost about 9 pounds. (These facts are not unrelated, but that’s a subject for another thread.)
Anyway, I just lost my wedding ring that I’ve worn for 11 years straight. I never take it off unless I’m going to put lotion on my hands, and I almost never do that. Otherwise, I lived my life wearing this ring. Actually there were two…my actual wedding ring, and another plain narrow sterling silver ring that I used to wear with it. They’re both gone now. I had noticed they were getting loose on my finger, but never dreamed they would fall off.
My question is, do fingers get thinner or fatter as a function of weight? I don’t see how. There’s not really any muscle or fat there, right? I thought the muscles that move the fingers are in the forearms.
And can I regain the thickness of my fingers without regaining the couple of inches in my waist?
FWIW at the gym I’ve been doing more cardio lately than lifting. Are the tiny muscles of my fingers atrophying to be replaced by – nothing?
You ever look at really fat people’s hands? Their fingers are usually fat too. Extra weight goes all over your body and generally can’t be spot reduced. Compare that with people with anorexia. They are all skin and bone. Most people fall between those extremes but the concept is the same.
Since I have been married, I have gotten onto some intense fitness kicks and my wedding ring got looser as well. In fact, I have been doing some moderate fitness training for the past 4 months and my wedding ring is noticeably looser now. I probably shouldn’t swim with it on.
Fat fingers aren’t an especially good thing. If you plan on staying fit for the long-hall, any jeweler can re-size it at moderate cost.
There isn’t any muscle in the fingers, so what do think is there? Bone, tendon, fat and skin. Yes, you gain and lose fat in your fingers. One of my wife’s indicators when she needs to lose weight is whether her wedding ring fits.
You have, by losing your rings, answered your own question. I have lost nearly 50 lb over the last five years and have had to have my wedding ring made smaller twice. Once I lost it while digging in the garden and went back and dug some more and, mirabile dictu, it turned up. A second time I lost it in someone vestibule, but as soon as I realized it was gone, I looked and found it. Finally I wore it on my middle finger until I got round to making it smaller the second time. Over the years, I had had it enlarged two sizes, so it is back to where it started, like my weight pretty much.
My mom once told me that she couldn’t take her wedding ring off because she had been wearing it continuously for years and had gained weight in her fingers. She could slide it a centimeter or so, revealing a green-stained groove around her finger, but it would not come off. This was sort of alarming to me, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Are there medical problems associated with this phenomenon? If you gained enough weight, couldn’t the ring cut off blood flow to the finger?
When at my highest weight, I did have some numbness and tingling in my pinkie and ring fingers, but I suspect that was ulnar nerve impairment higher up in my elbow or maybe shoulder, since the pinkie finger was involved as well. But yeah, I still have another 50 pounds or so to lose before I’ll be able to get my wedding band off for resizing. The fat in that finger just deposited itself above and below the ring, not under it, though.
I do know that the emergency room will generally cut rings off if they’re even the slightest bit difficult to remove, though. I’m not sure why all jewelry has to come off, or if that’s only for some conditions, but four times now I’ve gone to pick up friends at the ER and the nurse has handed me a bag with jewelry, including three cut wedding bands so far.
All muscle tissue responsible for finger movement ends at or around the first knuckle. Beyond that it’s only tendons. Feel free to browse around this atlas of upper-extremity muscles. You’ll see that all the finger-related muscles are in the lower arm and palm area of the hand.
This is what I came in to add. I lost about 20 pounds last year, and my shoes became quite loose (as well as my pants, and my shirts, and my jackets… in fact the only thing that still fit well was my hat.)
Fat is distributed all over your body, so when you lose weight you lose it everywhere. It’s just less noticeable in some places, like the feet & hands. I lost 40 lbs & had to get my rings sized down 2.5 sizes from when I started. I also lost half a shoe size, and my glasses started falling off my face.
I hope you find your rings, I’d hate to lose my wedding set
