You may have seen or even experienced what happens with sudden weight loss. The skin can’t cope with the drastic change in size and doesn’t bounce back. Instead you get sagging, wrinkling skin that no one would want to show off! Which, is the opposite of what we want when we lose weight, duh… So Ben Greene of the Huffington Post shared some tips and information about what to do to tighten skin during and after a weight loss.
Why Skin Gets Loose
Our skin is elastic, it grows and shrinks, bounces, and moves with us. Your skin is the body’s largest organ and its composed of cells, tissue, fiber, blood vessels, and all sorts of other pieces that stretch and contract depending on how you treat them. When you lose weight too quickly, you shock the skin and it doesn’t have time to adapt to the new shape. The older you are, the poorer your nutrition, if you don’t stay hydrated, have excessive sun damage, or you smoke the harder it is for your skin to respond to the change in size and shape. As an effect of this, the skin just stays the same size and shape it once was. So you get those unwanted sags and wrinkles.
Tightening Loose Skin
Sagging skin is inevitable while loosing weight, but don’t fret, as long as you take care of your body and lose weight properly and healthily, your skin will follow suit soon after your weight is gone. It takes time, but the elasticity of the skin is a magical thing. As you shrink, it will follow you, just follow these 4 tips. Depending on how much weight you lose, it can take up to two years for your skin to bounce back.
- DON’T LOSE WEIGHT TOO QUICKLY.Extreme crash dieting and spending hours upon hours at the gym doing cardio, you can lose massive amounts of fat AND muscle. The floor is basically ripped out right from under your skin and it can’t react. This will earn you mounds of skin folds on your stomach, arms, legs, and possibly your neck. Try to aim for no more than 1-2 pounds of fat loss a week and add in some weight train to build muscle and stretch the skin.
- STAY HYDRATED.Water is pivotal if you want to maintain skin elasticity. Your total water intake a day is generically recommended to be about 2 liters a day. Stick somewhere around that and make sure you pay attention to signs of dehydration to make sure your skin bounces back from anything you do to it.
- WATCH THE INGREDIENTS OF WHAT YOU EAT.Collagen and elastin are what you need to eat to keep springy skin. The protein that helps the body produces these two wonders is found in cottage cheese, milk, legumes, tofu, beans, seeds, nuts, and fish. The oils in some of these foods can also help your skin as well.
- CARE FOR YOUR SKIN.Avoid harsh ingredients such as the sulfates that can appear in soaps and shampoos, limit your sun exposure and make sure you use sun protection. The chlorine in water, hot water, and tanning booths can also damage the elasticity in the skin, so be careful and limit your time spent around these.
Do You Need Surgery?
The skin can, in the end, only handle so much before it can’t be contracted anymore. A 9 month pregnancy won’t permanently damage the skin, however, 20 years of 100 pounds extra, can possibly damage it beyond return. In this case, there are simple procedures that can tighten the skin surgically.
While permanent damage is possible, you should be able to prevent a large amount of the sagging as long as you take it slow and follow these tips. It isn’t a short road, but it will be better in the long term when you have minimized the sagging of your skin to potentially nothing.
