Does Loose Skin From Losing Weight Go Away

Losing weight is an impressive feat, for which you should be proud. Your weight loss journey has been long, arduous, and full of obstacles, but you continue to move forward and overcome them. Now, you’ve reached your weight goal and are in a healthier state than before. Given your extreme weight loss, this calls for a celebration, right?

Of course, you should pat yourself on the back to successfully manage your weight. You deserve all of the praise and the congratulations, but there’s one more thing you have to take care of—your loose skin. Unfortunately, you can sweat your weight off, but not your skin!

Shedding off your extra pounds is crucial to reducing your risk of contracting diseases and long-term illnesses. However, although you’re much healthier than before, you may still feel a bit self-conscious about your body because of the excess skin resulting from your weight loss.

Can You Tighten Loose Skin After Weight Loss?

The skin is the largest organ of the body, which protects it from harmful environmental elements. Since the innermost layer of your skin consists of collagen and elastin, it can expand during weight gain to make more room for increased growth.

During pregnancy, the skin expands, but it usually retracts months after the delivery of the baby. However, the skin can only expand for a certain amount of time. The thing about skin is that the collagen and elastin fibers it contains will become damaged if it remains significantly stretched for an extensive period.

Since you’ve been a specific weight for a long time, your skin won’t be able to retract as it should, which results in excess skin hanging from your body. The greater the weight loss, the more pronounced loose skin you’ll have.

Loose Skin After Weight Loss. Now What?

Luckily, you don’t have to live with loose skin forever! Just like how you shed your excess weight, you can also deal with your loose skin and live life confidently. If you lost a large amount of weight, natural remedies would not be enough to tighten loose skin—you’ll have to invest in surgical treatments to remove them.

Body-contouring surgery is an effective surgical procedure in reshaping an area of your body or improving the appearance of skin and tissue. Unlike natural remedies, this is an invasive procedure that involves making a large incision to remove excess skin and fat.

To altogether remove all loose skin from your body, a surgeon may have to perform multiple surgeries on different body parts over the span of one to two years.

Weight Loss And Skin Care: How To Avoid Loose Skin During Weight Loss

Dealing with excess skin after spending months and years on losing weight can feel like a defeat, but don’t lose hope! Although you have loose skin now, you won’t have to live with it forever. As long as you work with a top plastic surgeon, you’ll be able to live healthier and happier without excess skin hanging over you!

If you’ve been planning to have your excess skin surgically removed, you’ve come to the right place! At The Lotus Institute, we offer the full range of surgical procedures to improve your appearance and boost confidence. Connect with us today to learn more!We all carry with us reminders of the person we used to be. It’s just a lot more literal for some than others. People who lose a massive amount of weight are often surprised at how unhappy they still are with their bodies. The fat is gone, but all that skin that held it in place? It didn’t go anywhere.

It's a less explored part of extreme weight loss. The body may be lighter, but it’s now weighed down with folds of sagging skin, causing a wild amount of emotional and physical (think: chafing) pain.

Ways To Tighten Loose Skin After Weight Loss

More extreme weight-loss patients are choosing to remove the loose skin through cosmetic surgery, and a recent study showed that the bodies and minds of those who do end up faring much better.

“What I’ve found, it’s very interesting -- they go and get these surgeries, and then they come in and they’re still not happy, ” says Dr. Steve Wallach, a cosmetic surgeon in Manhattan.“I had one patient who specifically said, ‘I’m wearing a fat suit; I feel like I’m a thin person inside wearing a body that’s twice the size of mine.’

Franklin Santana, a 29-year-old who lives in the Bronx, had gastric bypass surgery in October 2011, and before the surgery, he weighed 395 pounds. Two years later, as of late last year, he was down to 170. To the public, he seemed like a trim, even skinny, guy. But underneath the clothes, he said his sagging skin reminded him of “a deflated balloon.”

Loose Skin After Weight Loss: Does It Go Away? Here's How You Can Get Rid Of It

I’m wearing a fat suit; I feel like I’m a thin person inside wearing a body that’s twice the size of mine.

“To me, it looks gross, ” said Santana. “You know how a pumpkin looks, at the beginning of October? And then, at the end of October, it’s all sad and saggy and deflated. I guess you could say it looks like that.”

Fantana had done his research before getting the surgery done, and he knew that he’d probably be saddled with “loose skin” after it was over.

Tighten Loose Skin After Weight Loss Naturally

Deborah Olmstead, who first had weight loss surgery done in 2001, knew to expect it, too; she just didn't know how awful it would make her feel.

I was not really comfortable even looking at myself in the mirror, with all the excess flesh, said Olmstead, who lives in New York state and had cosmetic surgery in Manhattan, led by Wallach, to remove the sagging skin in 2004. You've done all this work, you've made this big, massive change that you see on the scale, but you don't necessarily see it in your clothing, or the way you feel about yourself.

The loose skin is caused by losing a huge amount of weight – as in, 100 pounds or more – in a very short amount of time. It can happen when the weight is lost through diet and exercise, but it happens more often to weight-loss surgery patients. With a slower, more gradual weight loss, it's easier for a person’s skin elasticity to sort of snap back into place, shrinking back down as the fat is lost. But when too much is lost too fast, the skin’s elasticity doesn’t have time to catch up.

The 5 Step Solution To Loose Skin After Weight Loss

Jasmin Maldonado shown before her gastric bypass surgery at left, and after her body contouring surgery at right.Left: Courtesy of Jasmin Maldonado / Right: John Makely / NBC News

To get rid of the loose skin, exercise helps, a little. Jasmin Maldonado, a 36-year-old living in Brooklyn who lost 130 pounds after weight-loss surgery nearly a decade ago, says a daily routine of squats, sit-ups and pull-ups has made a difference. But she’s still embarrassed about the way she looks. “Just, with my husband, I’m embarrassed to show myself. I’m always covering myself, ” she said.

You've done all this work, you've made this big, massive change that you see on the scale, but you don't necessarily see it in your clothing, or the way you feel about yourself.

Managing Excess Skin After Weight Loss Surgery

The most effective way to remove the excess skin is through cosmetic surgery, in one or more of an array of procedures known as body contouring. And those who do shed the extra skin generally fare better than those who don’t, both psychologically and physiologically.

People who had weight-loss surgery, and subsequently had the excess skin removed, were less likely to gain weight back than those who had the surgery but did not undergo a body contouring procedure, according to a recent study published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. The report followed about 100 patients who’d lost about 100 pounds after weight-loss surgery. Those who did not have any cosmetic procedures to remove the resulting excess skin ended up gaining back about 50 pounds, but those who did have body contouring done only gained back about 13 pounds.

About 100, 000 bariatric procedures are performed each year in the U.S., and the study authors, led by Dr. Ali Modarressi of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, go so far as to argue that body contouring should be a routine part of bariatric surgery. (Granted, they’ve got some skin in the game, so to speak.) About 21 percent of bariatric surgery patients undergo at least one kind of body contouring procedure.

Handle Your Excess Skin After Weight Loss Surgery

Those who choose to have body contouring done usually pick the circumferential body lift: Doctors make an incision across the back, then around the flanks and abdomen, cutting away some of the excess skin and tightening the rest of it by suturing the incision back together. After the body contouring is done, patients routinely lose another 10 to 15 pounds of loose skin alone. People go with the body lift because it makes the biggest difference in their appearance, doctors say; plus, it’s easier to talk their insurers into covering it, because the surgery has some real physiological benefits, in addition to the psychological improvements.

On most people the loose skin tends to hang down like an apron from their lower abdomen. It chafes. And it hurts like crazy, patients say.

“It feels like it’s like an open

How Do You Tighten Loose Skin After Weight Loss?