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Surgery can help you get your arms back in shape

So, you've met your weight loss goal, you're working out regularly and your arms look like bat wings when you wave.

No amount of discipline can take away the inevitable loose, sagging skin.

But surgery can.

The unfairness is disarming.

A man can lift away his excess baggage in a weight room.

Triceps aren't the easiest of muscles to build, but women can do the same work and get far less results.

Why? Men burn fat. Women store it - sometimes in the wrong places.

"Every woman is concerned about her arms, every woman," said plastic surgeon Dr. David Liland.

Judy Martinez is his patient.

"I had a huge flap of skin on my arms... you'd feel it moving."

Judy lost 170 pounds after gastric bypass surgery.

"Proportionately, my body could take a size 10, but my arms were a size 14," she said.

Martinez had a brachioplasty done to remove a pound and a half of flab from each arm.

"You'll have a little swelling in the arms and local wound care but outside of that it's one of the easier procedures you'll go through," Dr. Liland said.

Martinez had the procedure because there was so much tissue to remove.

For Tricia Hiser, extra skin was the problem.

"I think I like the winter season better because I can wear long sleeves and cover it up," she said.

She opted for an invisible arm lift.

"Sometimes you're taking 2-3 inches of skin off and you're hiding it in the armpit crease, an inner arm tuck," said surgeon Dr. Ron Roark.

Surgeons like Dr. Roark enter though an incision in the arm pit, liposuction the upper arm, then pull the excess skin toward the underarm.

This winter Hiser and Miser will wear long sleeves to warm up, not cover up.