confusing belly fat with loose skin?

From some of the people I've seen on TV having skin removal surgery the loose skin that they're removing is literally just skin. It's almost paper thin and hangs like folded fabric. If you grab the skin and it's got something solid behind it, that's still more fat. The stuff they were holding up for removal did look very much like pinching the skin on the back of your hand. I probably watch way too much medical TV!

in all honesty it will take about a yr or two for most of the loose skin around the middle to tighten back up, like anything else in your body it is a living organ and it will change and adapt to outside stimuli.

Keep up with your healthy eating and exercise & be patient, it will go away eventually.

I am 5 ft, down to 124 and I KNOW that what i have working on the muffin top is fat..I can grab a handful..it is not thin, it is pure fat..so I use Jergens skin firming on my belly EVERY SINGLE DAY and do heavy weights three days a week and it is slooooooowly coming off..it take patience, that is for sure!

This is one of those big things that my personal journey through weight loss has taught me. After I lost about 80-100 on my own I'm in the final stretch of my weight loss journey and am looking to get to around 18% body fat, which is about 7.5-11 pounds away for me. Listen, I have done research out the wazoo on this one. I even went to see a doctor, fearing the worst: That I needed a tummy tuck I couldn't afford. I was delighted when he said I have some excess skin, but would highly recommend lipo first. Do you know what that means? LIPOSUCTION MEANS FAT.

I've confirmed this online and with a friend who is a body builder, I have some excess skin, but I have a little fat left to lose.

People who tell you that they have excess skin which is more than 5-6mm thick when pinched still have residual fat. In that link earlier to Blue Eyed Betty, Yes, she has a good deal of excess skin, but she also has a HUGE amount of fat to still lose. As long as you don't have a super massive amount of skin left, It should tighten up reasonably so as your body fat gets down to a lower percentage. Yeah, this means that I have to work a little harder to get the jiggle off my middle. But I'm okay with that, because I'll get to have those rock hard abs.

Check out Sharee Hansen on Funeral for My Fat, this is a PERFECT example of actual loose skin instead of fat with loose skin, she shows her stomach in the video and you can clearly see it's just empty skin, and no more than a couple of millimeters thick. If you have 1 centimeter or more of pinch there, there is fat to lose. And I tested this theory on a place where I know that I have loose skin on my body, as well as on my dog who has yards of skin. (Sounds silly, but aside from fur their skin is still skin) It measured in at 4-6mm. Which is exactly where doctors on Real Self tell us skin should be.

So here is how you tell if it's legitimately fat or loose skin:

1: Does it jiggle? If so there is a 95% chance it's got fat inside
2: Does it have a thickness of more than 6mm? It's got fat inside.
3: Does it bounce if you push on it...probably fat.
4: Does it form a roll when you bend over? probably fat.

Subcutaneous fat is a son of a monkey's uncle to get rid of. It sits just beneath the skin. It forms to the skin and wobbles and sags just like loose skin would. Skin is a living organism, why in the world would it contract if it's still got some fat there keeping it ... fluffy.

To combat loose skin you might have or to prevent it:

Take Vitamin C
Take Fish Oil
Exfoliate EVERY OTHER DAY
Massage the area for thirty minutes
Use Kokum mixed with cocoa butter to protect that skin.

Do cardio, pick up heavy things and put them back down. Don't even worry about loose skin until you reach 18 percent body fat. Seriously.

Good Luck Lady.

So going on the premise that women don't build a lot of muscle and this "bag of skin" we live in has a lot of extra play from a large weight loss then just how much muscle would we assume needs to be gained in order to take up the slack from a 100 lb plus weight loss? I still think the whole lift heavy to shrink loose skin is BS. It's just something to do to occupy your time while nature takes it coarse and redistributes skin cells. If it happens then it's attributed to the lifting, if it doesn't happen then what?

If it doesn't happen, then you've only managed to increase lean body mass, decrease body fat, increase metabolic efficiency, increase tissue tensile strength, increase bone density, decrease physiological stress, among other things. Darn. All that for nothing.

Favourite post of the day :flowerforyou:

I'm not trying to be a smart *kitten* but what is resistance training going to do for loose skin?

Nothing. It's one of the standard MFP myths.

Resistance training doesn't get rid of loose skin, but it makes the particular area look much better. Many weight lifting exercises, if not most, will work the core (abs) as secondary muscles. If you tone your abs any loose skin area on top of them will look significantly better, but how much better depends on how much loose skin you have. For someone who has not been weight training the difference can be like night and day. Don't waste your time with crunches. They are not very efficient. Just do weight training without worrying much about your abs. Throw in some core targeting exercises like planking if you like. If you do this consistently, over time you will be happy with the change in how your belly works. Take a before picture of your belly and check against it say once a month. You will see results.

My advice is similar to the earlier posters - don't rely on scale weight to estimate body fat - get the body fat properly measured to figure out whether this actually is "loose skin". Then decisions can be made from a position of knowledge.

This.

It just makes no sense to sit around guessing. Go get a comprehensive body composition test, and know for sure.

Nice idea, but there is nowhere around where I live that does such a test.

This is one of those big things that my personal journey through weight loss has taught me. After I lost about 80-100 on my own I'm in the final stretch of my weight loss journey and am looking to get to around 18% body fat, which is about 7.5-11 pounds away for me. Listen, I have done research out the wazoo on this one. I even went to see a doctor, fearing the worst: That I needed a tummy tuck I couldn't afford. I was delighted when he said I have some excess skin, but would highly recommend lipo first. Do you know what that means? LIPOSUCTION MEANS FAT.

I've confirmed this online and with a friend who is a body builder, I have some excess skin, but I have a little fat left to lose.

People who tell you that they have excess skin which is more than 5-6mm thick when pinched still have residual fat. In that link earlier to Blue Eyed Betty, Yes, she has a good deal of excess skin, but she also has a HUGE amount of fat to still lose. As long as you don't have a super massive amount of skin left, It should tighten up reasonably so as your body fat gets down to a lower percentage. Yeah, this means that I have to work a little harder to get the jiggle off my middle. But I'm okay with that, because I'll get to have those rock hard abs.

Check out Sharee Hansen on Funeral for My Fat, this is a PERFECT example of actual loose skin instead of fat with loose skin, she shows her stomach in the video and you can clearly see it's just empty skin, and no more than a couple of millimeters thick. If you have 1 centimeter or more of pinch there, there is fat to lose. And I tested this theory on a place where I know that I have loose skin on my body, as well as on my dog who has yards of skin. (Sounds silly, but aside from fur their skin is still skin) It measured in at 4-6mm. Which is exactly where doctors on Real Self tell us skin should be.

So here is how you tell if it's legitimately fat or loose skin:

1: Does it jiggle? If so there is a 95% chance it's got fat inside
2: Does it have a thickness of more than 6mm? It's got fat inside.
3: Does it bounce if you push on it...probably fat.
4: Does it form a roll when you bend over? probably fat.

Subcutaneous fat is a son of a monkey's uncle to get rid of. It sits just beneath the skin. It forms to the skin and wobbles and sags just like loose skin would. Skin is a living organism, why in the world would it contract if it's still got some fat there keeping it ... fluffy.

To combat loose skin you might have or to prevent it:

Take Vitamin C
Take Fish Oil
Exfoliate EVERY OTHER DAY
Massage the area for thirty minutes
Use Kokum mixed with cocoa butter to protect that skin.

Do cardio, pick up heavy things and put them back down. Don't even worry about loose skin until you reach 18 percent body fat. Seriously.

Good Luck Lady.

I always wonder if massage doesn't actually stretch the skin - especially on the face.