Excess Skin

stelafaro
stelafaro Posts: 27 Member
edited November 22 in Health and Weight Loss
If you lose weight quickly, your skin doesn’t shrink down to your body’s new size, but becomes loose instead. How are you dealing with excess skin? If you lose weight slowly does it make a difference? What other strategies can help with excess skin?

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  • Unknown
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  • tcunbeliever
    tcunbeliever Posts: 8,219 Member
    Moisturizing and strength training will help...and skin will shrink to a certain extent, just not as fast as you can metabolize fat, so give it about 2 years of maintenance before losing hope on your skin.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    stelafaro wrote: »
    If you lose weight slowly does it make a difference?

    It only makes a difference in the short term. You can lose weight slowly and your skin will lag behind, shrinking up to its final state eventually. Or you can lose weight quickly and your skin will lag behind a bit longer, shrinking up to its final state eventually. Once you hit the point of losing weight, the damage is done and if you are going to have actual loose/excess skin in the end, you are going to have it. Short of inventing a time machine and going back to the time before you gained weight, there is nothing outside of surgery that will change that.

  • garber6th
    garber6th Posts: 1,890 Member
    The elasticity of your skin depends on age and genetics mainly. The older you get the less elasticity your skin has, and if you have lost a large amount of weight, it's possible that the skin won't shrink completely. Taking care of your skin, staying hydrated, and exercising will certainly help the condition of your skin, but don't spend a lot of money on moisturizers that claim to tighten skin, they don't work. You would be fine with any regular moisturizer. I have lost 200 lbs and I have a lot of loose skin, and in my case, the only way I will be able to get rid of it completely is surgery.
  • gabriellejayde
    gabriellejayde Posts: 607 Member
    tcunbeliever wrote: »
    Moisturizing and strength training will help...and skin will shrink to a certain extent, just not as fast as you can metabolize fat, so give it about 2 years of maintenance before losing hope on your skin.

    neither one of those will help.
    moisturized skin isn't any more elastic than dry skin, and strength training adds muscle... It doesn't effect the skin. The only thing that strength training will do is fill you out with muscle, but unless you're putting on a decent amount of muscle, it's not likely to make much of a difference, and certainly not on the spots that most people are concerned about, like their stomach.
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,463 Member
    edited October 2017
    Strength training is awesome for many reasons, but it doesn't fill out excess skin. It will make the loose skin you have LOOK BETTER because you'll have more shape. Muscle is more dense than fat so it takes up less room. If you lost 10 lbs of fat you would need 20-30 pounds NEW MUSCLE MASS to take its place to the point it would fill out your skin and that's very difficult to achieve!

    A lot of loose skin is usually in areas hidden by clothes.
  • Coconut_Tim
    Coconut_Tim Posts: 63 Member
    After losing 235lbs over 5 years, I'd say I probably did it as smoothly and slowly as I could without being totally impatient about it. I have loose skin and have been maintaining for a year. I had a surgery consultation last month and the price to remove the skin, and the procedure itself, is very scary. I do not think I will get the surgery. I will deal with my loose skin as it is now a part of my body.

    You should come to terms with it and learn to accept it. Unless you want to endure a surgery and recovery period you don't have many other options.

    Good luck.
  • tracylynne29
    tracylynne29 Posts: 49 Member
    Drinking lots of water helps moisturizer the skin collagen supplements helps too biocell collagen is suppose to be better but the cost more than regular collagen strength training helps fill the empty space with muscle vitamin E moisturizer helps too. It's not a quick fix or an over night thing and you won't loose it as fast as you would having surgery also some people mistake body fat with loose skin might wanna make sure you are down to 20% body fat as said already it won't go all the way back to normal but will relieve some
  • newheavensearth
    newheavensearth Posts: 870 Member
    Lost slowly, strength trained, increased protein, I lost less than 100 lbs and still got loose skin. I'm scheduling consults at this moment, because I'm having physical discomfort.
  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
    edited October 2017
    tcunbeliever wrote: »
    Moisturizing and strength training will help...and skin will shrink to a certain extent, just not as fast as you can metabolize fat, so give it about 2 years of maintenance before losing hope on your skin.
    tracylynne29 wrote: »
    Drinking lots of water helps moisturizer the skin collagen supplements helps too biocell collagen is suppose to be better but the cost more than regular collagen strength training helps fill the empty space with muscle vitamin E moisturizer helps too. It's not a quick fix or an over night thing and you won't loose it as fast as you would having surgery also some people mistake body fat with loose skin might wanna make sure you are down to 20% body fat as said already it won't go all the way back to normal but will relieve some

    The only thing that moisturizer does is to help your skin retain water, or add water back to dry skin. If that skin is loose, it will still be loose, just not dry and loose. Unfortunately, people with really nice skin - like the ones in moisturizer commercials - owe most of that to genetics and avoiding excessive sun exposure. For that matter, most people who avoid loose skin during weight loss owe that to genetics as well. It's worth being patient though - I've heard many people here report that their skin did recover somewhat over time.
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