12 Things You Should Know About Loose Skin
There is a question that I get all the time: “How do I get rid of the loose skin?”. If you go through a dramatic weight loss journey, then inevitably you might have some loose skin when your weight loss process is done. There’s actually a few factors that you need to know about so you can make an educated decision on what you can do about that loose skin around the belly or in other areas around your body.
12 Things About Loose Skin
So we’re gonna talk about a list with 12 things which hopefully will give you some clarity on the subject of the frustrating loose skin.
1. Skin Is Very Elastic
The very first thing you need to understand about loose skin is that skin is incredibly elastic. It can expand and contract very, very much. If you think about women and pregnancy you may know what I’m talking about. There are women that have twins and then 2-3 months after delivery they look completely normal again.
2. Skin Elasticity Factors
The second thing about loose skin that you need to be aware of is that the elasticity of the skin has to do with genetics, your environment and your lifestyle. There’s nothing you can do about genetics, but you can totally control your lifestyle and your environment. So things that take away your skin’s elasticity are excess stress, overexposure to UV sunlight and your diet. These are things you can focus on and control to improve your skin’s health.
3. Skin’s Elasticity Degrades With Age
The older you get, the more difficult it’s going to be for your skin to return to it’s former elasticity or it’s former state. So as younger you lose your excess weight, as sooner your skin will return to the initial state.
4. How Long You Carry The Extra Weight
How long you actually carry all that extra weight has a great deal to do with how taut your skin is going to be after you lose that weight. Let’s take this example: you carry an extra 30kg for 9 months vs. you carry an extra 30kg for 9 years. The difference between those two circumstances is huge and your loose skin will be bigger and will be way much harder to get rid of it in the second case.
5. How Fast You Gained The weight
How fast you actually gained the weight has a lot to do with your skin’s ability to “snapback”. So the faster you’re gaining the weight, the more difficult it’s gonna be for your skin to get back to the initial state.
6. How Quickly You Lost The Weight
This is the opposite of previous tip: how quickly you lose the weight actually has a lot to do with how quickly your skin returns to former state. That’s why you see people who lost 30-40 kg in 90 days with a lot more loose skin than the person who took a year to lose that same amount of weight. Sometimes your skin’s elasticity just can’t keep up with the rate at which you’re losing weight.
7. There’s Always An Exception
This is kind of frustrating, but there’s gonna be an exception to every single one of these tips that I’ve just covered. There’s gonna be the woman who has twins, she’s pushing 40 years old and in 6 weeks after she gives birth she looks like she is 24. Again, genetics, lifestyle and environment play and important role in getting rid of the loose skin.
8. Creams Don’t Work!
In my searching I have not found any cream scientifically validated that it actually increases the elasticity of skin. You can leave your comments below if there actually is something that is verified and I’d be happy to look into it and respond.
9. Nutrition Matters
Nutrition has a great deal to do with the elasticity and healthiness of your skin. Essential fatty acids that come from fish oils, coconut oils or flax oils are great for your skin. In addition to that, antioxidants are also very good for your skin health.
10. Exercise Helps
This shouldn’t be a surprise! The elasticity of your skin is related to the exercises and workouts you perform on your daily basis. One thing that exercise promotes, along with a healthy diet, is increased lean body mass. If you lose a lot of fat and lean muscle too, the skin is gonna appear looser on the body. So one way to battle that is to increase your lean body mass to fill out that loose skin and it will appear tighter.
11. Give It Time
I know it can be frustrating, but give your skin time to return to normal. The only thing you can do to rush things a little bit is to eat healthy and continue exercising. So be patient and let your body do it’s thing.
12. No Surgery
A lot of people consider their very first line of defence against loose skin surgery. Surgery should be your very, very last resort and you should do your best to get your body fat percentage as low as possible before you make any decisions about surgery.
Take all these 12 things into consideration and take the right steps before you consider something as expensive and as dangerous as surgery. I hope these things helped you understand or gave you a little comfort about your loose skin.
