Saggy skin - Help!!!

[Tiff]

I’m feeling very proud of myself because I’ve lost a lot of the weight that I’m aiming to lose. I’m doing really well, I’m managing to keep up my motivation most of the time, and nearly every week I lose weight. It’s not super fast but as long as it’s consistent, then I don’t mind.

My problem is that I have noticed that I am getting a lot of saggy skin and even stretch marks. I really hadn’t expected this. I wasn’t obese or anything, although I was definitely quite overweight. I’m getting saggy skin right in the center of my belly and I’m getting stretch marks on my arms near the “back” of my arm pit, as well as on the backs of my thighs, just below my butt, and on my sides above my hips.

Is losing weight going to make me into a monster?

[1000kw]

I know what you mean. That is really the worst part of the whole thing. Just when you feel like you’re making great progress and you’re feeling proud of yourself, suddenly you start discovering a whole lot of ugly!

The way that I have been working to combat this is by exercising those areas (my problems are the backs of my arms and my abs) so I do a lot of crunches and I do a lot of arm kickbacks to work out the triceps on the back of my arms. That way I build up the muscle underneath the skin so that it looks as good as can be to reduce the overall flab look. Then I make sure that I moisturize those areas like crazy with a good lotion and I really massage it in to encourage circulation to the area and promote better elasticity…other than that, I think you can just pray

[Penny]

Massaging the area is a really good idea. 1000kw is right.

Just make sure that your'e doing it right. Don't yank at the skin like you would if you were massaging the muscle underneath. remember that you're trying to build elasticity and heal the skin. You're not trying to stretch it out more. That's the main problem is that your skin is stretched out because it used to need to be bigger to fit around you.

Use a good quality lotion, cream, or oil product and use circular motions with your fingertips. Be very gentle with your skin. The point is to try to get blood to flow to the area so that it will have more oxygen and the skin cells will be healthier. The healthier skin cells are, the better they look and act.

Be sure to stay very hydrated, too. Water is vital in this process.

Congrats on your weight loss, by the way!!

[treehuggertodd]

Talk to your doctor, Tiff. He probably has seen this kind of thing a lot because people are constantly trying to lose weight nowadays. So there has got to be something that you can use or that you can do to fix it. Good luck.

[tara]

Massage the area and use the best skin creams that you can find. Some of them out there are for firming or specifically for getting rid of saggy skin. You might talk to a beauty consultant in a cosmetics store about that. They may be able to tell you about a product that they know has worked on other people.