Extra Skin!!!

xBattleMercy

I am really short, barely 5'2, and went from 240-ish to the 150's (gained a bit back dude to surgery i'm still working on losing), but I have so much extra skin around my stomach area, thighs too, but not too bad there. It looks like FAT and it's driving me crazy. It's been this way for a couple of years now with no improvement. Has anyone had luck with anything besides surgery that works? Even a little bit? I drink a lot of water, I'm extremely active at work (about 14-20k steps a day type of active). I've lost so much and worked so hard despite a lot of health issues and my body looks worse now.

Melh1969

I am anxious to hear to answer to this question as well. I've lost about 70 pounds and have lots of saggy, baggy skin! From what I've read it depends on a lot of factors: your age, how many years you were overweight, muscle tone, how fast you lost your weight, genetics, etc. I've also read that it takes a about two years of weight maintenance and then what you get is what you get. I would love to avoid surgery too. Hope someone has some good advice!

xBattleMercy

Melh1969 wrote: »

I am anxious to hear to answer to this question as well. I've lost about 70 pounds and have lots of saggy, baggy skin! From what I've read it depends on a lot of factors: your age, how many years you were overweight, muscle tone, how fast you lost your weight, genetics, etc. I've also read that it takes a about two years of weight maintenance and then what you get is what you get. I would love to avoid surgery too. Hope someone has some good advice!

Yeah I will NOT do surgery, I don't handle any surgery well thanks to autoimmune diseases. I've been about the same weight for over two years. It just seems I get droopier and droopier. It's discouraging.

dougii

I lost 95 lbs in 10 months a few years back. Loose skin was one of my biggest worries. My Doc told me to slow down on my cardio and take up weight training. Soon enough I was lifting heavy (for me) stuff every other day for an hour. I did not end up with any noticeable extra skin. I don't know how much the weight training had to do with this but I'm sure it helped quite a bit.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

You have worked so hard and improved so much! I hope you have tangible improvements in mobility, agility, overall comfort, fitness, and many other things we'd be interested in hearing about. Are there things you can do now that you could never do before?

WRT appearance. Being on the older side myself, I no longer have much pressure in that regard. It's very freeing! If I were younger, I'd probably be interested in compression garments first and a nip and tuck a very far second. I've helped my wife through major surgery and have seen first hand how difficult it is. Also, there's no guarantee how things will turn out in terms of appearance. The motivations for it would have to go beyond just appearance, I think.

AnnPT77

OP, from your description, you may still have some subcutaneous fat that's still conspiring with gravity to keep skin stretched. True loose skin is thin wrinkles, like wrinkles in a medium-weight fabric. Anything that's 1/2" or more wrinkles/rolls probably still has subcutaneous fat. My experience was that the thin-wrinkles stuff shrank pretty well for me (even at age 60+), but the thicker bits really couldn't. Recomposition (progressive weight training to very slowly reduce fat while increasing muscle) could help.

Melh1969 wrote: »

I am anxious to hear to answer to this question as well. I've lost about 70 pounds and have lots of saggy, baggy skin! From what I've read it depends on a lot of factors: your age, how many years you were overweight, muscle tone, how fast you lost your weight, genetics, etc. I've also read that it takes a about two years of weight maintenance and then what you get is what you get. I would love to avoid surgery too. Hope someone has some good advice!

In your case, if 70 pounds hasn't yet put you at goal weight, hang in there: Some of us look worse partway to goal than at goal. This is because fat can deplete anywhere in our fat mass, it doesn't neatly melt off starting with the outer layer and move inward. The result is that fatty areas that once were full and a bit firm first get a bit squishy/floppy, but as they continue to deplete with further weight loss, can get down to that thin wrinkles stage. That thin-wrinkles part, IME, is the part that will continue to shrink after reaching goal, with more time. My loose skin (the thin wrinkles kind) kept shrinking at least well into year 2 of maintenance, and I was age 60 when I reached goal weight.

I only lost 50ish pounds, but as I said, I was pretty old, and there was definitely loose skin when I hit goal . . . and it did look even more discouraging part way to goal.

Best wishes, both!

magnusthenerd

There is some dermatological studies that suggest DMAE. I haven't experienced any miracles with it in a few weeks use.