Loose Skin, how to prevent?

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  • mfpcopine
    mfpcopine Posts: 3,093 Member
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    I think losing weight very rapidly can cause this, as the skin doesn't have time to adjust. But I've known people and seen weight loss shows on TV in which people did lose gradually but still had to have skin removal surgery.

    As a teenager, I knew a woman who owned a health food store who had lost a lot of weight. She had sheets of skin hanging her arms. She said she had to have surgery.

    If people understood all the difficulties associated with obesity I wonder if it would make a difference.
  • Curvy_princess
    Curvy_princess Posts: 135 Member
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  • brismom070897
    brismom070897 Posts: 178 Member
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  • jmapes9
    jmapes9 Posts: 144 Member
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    I too am worried about this, but here is what I've learned so far.

    -Drink LOTS of water.
    -Exercise. Cardio is great, but at least half of your exercising should be strength training (or, at least, that's what my doctor told me last week)
    -DON'T BE IN A HURRY! If you lose more than 2 pounds a week on average, your skin won't have the time to keep up with your quickly changing shape. MFP's diet plan is great. When you set-up your goals (example: lose 2 pounds a week), and you eat all those calories, and eat back your exercise calories, and you're honest with yourself, you'll lose right around 2 pounds. Any week I happen to lose more than 2 pounds, I temporarily change my calorie goals to reflect 1 pound a week. Loose skin is a big concern of mine, so I follow these guidelines.
  • waldo56
    waldo56 Posts: 1,861 Member
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    Some amount of it is inevidable.

    It does go away over time, but you can definitely help speed up the process.

    It helps a little to understand the physiology of why it happens. Often the skin and its elasticity are not the problem. Underneath the upper layers of skin is a later of fat. On most people losing a lot of weight this fat was deposited when you were fat. What ends up happening is that you diet away the fat under this fat, leaving you with what appears to be a lot of excess skin. In reality there is just more fat to get rid of that is part of the skin, until you get rid of it the skin has no way of using its electicity to tighten, despite appearing like it is really loose.

    This will correct itself over time. Almost all cells in the body go through a process of recycling. As this occurs it will slowly shift your fat deposits to be in-line with your new size. This process will take years, and as it occurs slowly but surely it will allow the skin to tighten up.

    Pinch the back of your hand. This is what skin with very little fat under it feels like. If you loose areas feel nothing like this when pinched, fat, not skin, is much of the problem.

    You can greatly aid the skin tightening process by not giving up on your weight loss when you are happy with your figure in clothes. Get down to a low BF%, get as much of the fat off the skin as possible. This should greatly compress the amount of time it takes for the skin to tighten up, since you aren't waiting around for a lot of underskin fat to recycle itself.

    Most people that have loose skin problems still have a fair amount of fat to lose. Get to the edge of figure competitor levels of body fat (7-8% in men, 15-16% in women) before you even consider surgery.

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