Do you have loose skin now?

Nope! Down 70ish. I'm actually firmer - no loose skin. Course, I went slow and I strength trained. I didn't peek at your age, that is also a factor. I'm 51 - started losing @ 47. Been in maintenance / body recomp for a while. Eat WELL, move well - no rapid losses. Focus on HEALTH! Slow, sustainable lifestyle changes = WIN.

A friend said the other day, to look into doing what bodybuilders do, put on muscle.

You can do a lot with a simple set of dumbbells at home. Lots of presses, squats, deadlifts, all sorts of resistance exercises.

Start simple and use your intuition to tweak your own program from there. Bench and various presses, curl, squat and deadlift with the dumbbells. Bent over rows are good with dumbbells. Do pull ups and push ups. Do different crunch variations for abs.

Resistance bands, ab rollout wheels and medicine balls are all less expensive tools to assist with your workouts. Use a band to assist with pull ups, for instance. Or curl with bands.

Doing ab exercises will only increase the muscle underneath the skin. Skin tightens on its own in time, Sticking to a healthy balanced diet and a good mixture of weight training will speed up the process.


These are all things i found when i looked it up on the bodybuilding websites.


Although i thought it was probably impossible, but my niece recently had twins and her stomach was abit of a mess, and 2 years on she has a flat stomach, but done by a lot of exercise. It can be done, its dedication.

I guess for the ones who are now trying to lose a big amount of weight, its time to get doing these exercises to make sure you give your excess skin a better chance of tightening up.

Congratulations on the weight loss. xx

Good info.

You have a while before you cross that bridge so focus on what today brings.

Yep, lots. I've done the strength training thing, I've lost weight slowly - I think there just comes a point where you can't avoid loose skin. At my highest ever weight I was about 400 lbs. My 176 lb current self is not going to look the same in that "packaging". I'm not a fan of the loose skin, but I wouldn't trade it for having the weight back that's for sure!

I dropped 105 lbs in 8.5 months (279 to 174). I have a bit of loose skin, most noticeable when I do push-ups. But, there's a bit less this month than there was last month. Hopefully next month will be better. And the month after that, and the month after that, and ...

• Do I care? A little bit.
• Do I look better now being slim with loose skin, versus obese with stretched skin? A LOT!

Lose the weight, get healthier, deal with the loose skin, if any, when you get there.

Lift weights, and drink water. The concensus is that it helps. It's helping me.

I've enjoyed reading all of the thoughts/advice on this thread... definitely very helpful!

Emsie_lou wrote: »

I have about 80lbs to lose and my biggest fear is getting so much loose skin that I will hate my body more.

Well, you can always lose the weight, and if you hate your body more because of loose skin you can just gain it back.

I am 5'1, lost 68 pounds, and have loose skin. No way would I EVER trade what I have now for being fat again.

There is nothing you can do to prevent loose skin. I don't want to be rude to the people that have already commented...but they don't know what they are talking about. Think about this, if a kid asked you what to do, to be a 6'8" NBA player, you would say stuff like eat right and get lots of sleep. If they don't get to be 6'8" it doesn't mean the kid did anything wrong just not everyone is meant to be that tall.

When someone's parents are both short we don't go around pointing fingers at them saying, see you're shot because you didn't get enough sleep. Not only would that be hurtful but its flat out silly. Yes some things you can take actions to prevent, like if you don't want your teeth to fall out you should brush and floss them often. Other things like your wisdom teeth, if they come in wrong, nothing you could have done about it, you will have to go to some one to have them removed and it doesn't matter how much you brush and floss. Yeah weights and water are great but if you end up with loose chances are it was just meant to be and nothing you can do about it.

If you are not happy with the skin you can get a tummy tuck. The thing is you have to lose the weight first, see if its a problem then you can start thinking about the next step. If the though of it bugs you maybe start saving money now, so you will have it later if it does become a problem and if not you will have more money to spend on new clothing that you will need. You lose 80 pounds the skin is a maybe, but the clothing is 100% sure you will have to replace (well unless you are mc hammer then you can dance around in what ever sized pants you want). So the saved money is a must no matter what.

KoalasJourney wrote: »

Let me ask you something, would you rather sleep with someone who is overweight, or someone with loose skin due to them kicking *kitten* and losing weight?

Uh, my husband definitely prefers the fat from an aesthetic point of view.. He is only supportive of my weight loss because he knows it's healthier for me. If my decision to lose weight was based PURELY on aesthetics, he'd be encouraging me to stay fat.

Anyway, I've lost 130ish so far with 70 to go and yes, I have a LOT of wrinkly sagging skin but it still has too much fat in it to know exactly how it will end up, but I KNOW it won't go back- there's just too much of it and I've been fat since childhood. I am saving money already for a lower body lift AND I'll need a vertical incision too. It will leave huge scars but I'd rather my belly look like Frankenstein's monster than a sagging shapeless mess.