Avoiding Saggy Skin After Weight Loss
All too often, saggy skin is the reward once someone has successful reached their goal of losing a significant amount of weight. Our skin is noted for being quite elastic, but there appears to be limits to which it can be stretched, beyond which it will not return to its original firm and tight state. It's almost like the skin is getting even for all those years of being uncomfortably stretched, like "putting a 5 pound sausage in a 4 pound bag", as the saying goes. Now it gets even, by simply relaxing, and sagging.
Slow And Steady - Weight loss experts, not weight loss promoters, strongly recommend that excess weight be taken off slowly by a combination of proper diet and plenty of exercise. Few will suggest trying to lose more than a pound or two a week. Following this advice will make saggy skin less of a likelihood at the end of the road, plus slow weight loss is less stressful on the body and a far healthier practice than rapid weight loss. Admittedly if your idea weight is 150 and you weigh 250, the 1 to 2 years it may take to get back to 150 may seem like a long time, but by the time one-third of the excess weight has been shed you'll already begin to feel much better, and be motivated to stay with the program. Another motivating factor will be that your skin will appear to be adjusting nicely as the pounds come off.
If a person has been massively overweight, there's no guarantee that there will be a total absence of saggy skin if a program of slow and sensible weight loss has been followed, but it certainly won't be anything like the situation one may face if 100 pounds or so has gone away quickly following a crash diet.
It's Not Just Losing Fat - Besides a healthy diet and regular exercise, with the goal of losing weight slowly but steadily, there's a third thing that can be done to avoid saggy skin, and that is to start replacing fast with muscle. Being active, whether that activity is taking long walks, jogging, running, bicycling, or whatever, is important. Calories are burned, these cardio exercises are good for the heart and lungs, plus once into the habit of doing them, they become rewarding in themselves.
But just being active may not be enough to replace fat with muscle. That requires weight or strength training. This means changing your body mass index (BMI). What will happen with strength training is, as you begin to slim down and fat is disappearing, it is being replaced by muscle. Muscle takes up less space than does fat. A hundred pounds of muscle fits into a smaller sausage bag than does a hundred pounds of fat. As you reach your goal, you'll be find you can put 5 pounds of muscle in a 4 pound bag and it fits fine.
What About Weight Loss? - Something doesn't make sense though. You're changing your body mass index by building muscle. If you replace 5 pounds of fat with 5 pounds of muscle, you're not going to lose any weight. If that were the case, after all is said and done, you wouldn't lose weight at all, what you would lose would be size. If you started out as an obese and flabby 250 pounder, you'll end up as a 250 pound, well sculpted powerhouse. Not bad really.
Not To Worry - That won't happen however. When you lose 5 pounds of fat, you may replace it with 1 or 2 pounds of muscle, if that much. You'll lose much more weight in fat than you'll gain back in muscle. But getting to that 150 pounds may be harder. You may find yourself having to settle for 160 or 165, but it will be a slim, trim, and fit 165, with a waist size probably smaller than you had at 150. And there shouldn't be any saggy skin to have to worry about.
If you really are bound and determined to hit 150 though, at some point back off a bit on the strength training, and let the cardio training and diet take you the rest of the way. Slow and steady wins the race.