It really really did creep up on me.

It crept up so quickly I didn’t even get a chance to know its name.

One minute I had normal arms, the next minute I wondered why my arms were bouncing flabbily when I waved to the person across the street.

I looked in the mirror and there it was… a pretty huge mass of fat.

I panicked. I didn’t even know what it was called, so I wasn’t sure how to gather the information I needed to eliminate it.

So I simply googled ‘how to get rid of fat arms’.  Ah! There we go. The colloquial name was bingo wings.

Right there in my tiny room at Glisson Road, I sank into my even tinier bed. However, was I going to do all of these exercises required to get my slim arms back?

I’d never been one for exercise. Even those kind of exercises you do unknowingly if you grow up in Nigeria. Like some corporal punishments that ensure you have toned arms. In high school, the most common one was ‘Squat and Fly your arms’. This required you to squat while spreading your arms out at 180 degrees. If you dared tried to relax the arms, the senior girl would scream ‘I said 180 degrees. Fly your arms!’. But for some reason, I always escaped those sort of punishments. I may have been one of those people that played the ‘I’m sorry senior, my arm is broken, I can’t fly them’. Hahahaa.

At home as well, I escaped pounding the coco-yam used to thicken Igbo soups. That always fell to my little sister. Of course, she has toned arms. Finally, my mum always asked why I hardly brushed the middle part of my weaves. She didn’t know it was because my arms hurt when I tried. Anyway, you can now see my point about not being a fan of any arm exercises. That’s how I got here.

But you know how enthusiastic you feel on a new project. Yeah, I had that adrenaline. Most of the information online advised that I use dumbbells; or in the absence of dumbells, a can of baked beans could work for starters. (How ironic is it that it’s probably the same baked beans and other processed foods that had caused the wings to appear in the first place).

Of course, I had baked beans in the kitchen shared by 5 housemates.

I ran down the narrow staircase as fast as I could and ran back up, already lifting the cans of beans on the way! I probably did that for 30 minutes ( stopping every 10 minutes to check if the fat was melting).

The next day I ordered pink dumbbells- 2kg each! (please don’t laugh – those things felt heavy!!!).

• Back in 2012: Who sets a camera and takes a picture if they are really working out?

I tried shadow boxing as well. This was also recommended. Basically boxing into thin air in a systematic manner.  My reading chair also became my indoor gym equipment for bench press. At least the chair got put to good use because I hardly sat on it to read. These worked all well and good and I think I noticed a slight decrease. My mind may just have been playing games on me though.

And then, as with all new good habits you’re trying to build, I quit. Not intentionally, but life just took over.

Thankfully, I  discovered a hack to deal with the bingo wings. I realised that when I wore off-shoulder or Bardot tops or dresses, the wings didn’t look so bad. They looked so obvious when I wore sleeveless clothes.

So there: solution simple.  Banish all my sleeveless clothes and wear more off-the-shoulder clothes/ long-sleeved. Bardot tops are so in season now. Trust me to have stacked up.

It also made my online shopping easy because I’ll simply sort by sleeves and tick off-the-shoulder. On the flip side, it also made shopping a nightmare because all the best dresses are sleeveless!

So yeah, there you have it, the easiest hack ever.

This is the hack I’ve been using for two years now 😰… But when someone said to me yesterday ” you wear a lot of off-the-shoulder tops” … I knew my secret was out.

And let’s be honest, this hack is not a great one.

So I guess it’s back to the basics that we all know.

Eat Clean. Exercise.

There are so many genuine fitness people all over social media who eat clean and train dirty. I keep asking myself this question, just the way a Nigerian parent would when you fail at something but your mate succeeds “Do they have two heads”? 

If like me you’ve made a resolution to exercise better this year, but you’ve quit after the first two weeks in January, let’s pick it up again yes?

Do you have your perfect #BodyGoals?  What hacks do you use? And yes: Waist Trainer is a hack!

Love,

Kachee… xX

PS: This off-shoulder hack is a verified hack oh, endorsed by fashion consultants. I mean, we are advised to wear what suits our body yeah?