We’ve all seen images of a person who has successfully lost a large amount of weight. Beaming, quite rightly, into the camera, happy with their newfound improved health and happiness, and reduced body size. We’ve also seen those images of people who have lost a lot of weight, and whilst are likely pleased with their weight loss results, are probably also concerned about what to do with the extra folds of skin, that can sometimes hang around afterwards.
Questions like ‘Will my skin go all saggy?’ or ‘Will I end up having to dress to try and disguise all my loose skin’ can sometimes be a real worry for who have a lot of weight to lose.
But just because you may have a lot of weight to lose, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will develop lose folds of skin, or that if you do initially, they will remain as such.
Skin condition is dependent on many different factors
There are many factors that determine whether or not you are more likely to develop loose skin, and weight loss is just one of them. Just think about it, how many women do you see post childbirth, with saggy, loose skin even when they’ve lost their baby weight? The answer is very few!
Some people never develop loose skin?
Certainly, those individuals who have a very large amount of weight to lose will have an increased chance of this, simply because they will have more excess skin that needs to shrink back than somebody who lost a smaller amount weight. For some people, this process can happen as you lose your weight so there’s never really any loose skin present, whilst for others it can take a bit longer.
Remember, there are many things that impact on whether or not you will have loose skin after weight loss including your age, the elasticity of your skin, lifetime sun exposure, whether or not you are a smoker, how much weight has been lost and for how long the skin was stretched, and of course, just good old genetics.
Fast weight loss will not increase my risk of developing loose skin?
One key thing to remember is that more rapid weight loss, like that seen after using our VLCD plan, will not make any difference to the condition or your skin in the longer run i.e. it will not make the skin looser than if you lose weight more slowly. If you want to attempt to improve the appearance of your skin, you can increase the amount of exercise you do, which should generally help tone your body all over and help you look more contoured. And of course don’t forget that generally healthy living, including not smoking and reducing your skin exposure, may also help.
