Skin

Here is the article I found, and like, that talks about skin.  One of our favorite concerns.

What causes the skin to sag after a significant weight loss?
“There is an inherent elasticity in everyone’s skin, but once you get to a certain size, the elasticity decreases,” explains Jason Spector, M.D., assistant professor of plastic surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

The tissue expands and your body literally makes more skin by producing more skin cells. And those annoying stretch marks? “They are the artifacts of the breakdown of the normal architecture of skin,” Spector says.

What are the biggest factors that determine my skin’s elasticity?
“The two biggest factors that determine skin elasticity are age and genetics,” Spector says. And, unfortunately,both are out of our control. How quickly you’ve gained the weight, as well as how quickly you’ve lost it, may also be a factor.

Losing weight over a longer period of time may give you more of a fighting chance. However, Spector says,there are no credible studies that show what a person can do to head off the excess skin as they’re losing weight.

Plan of Action: Slower weightloss – one to two pounds a week – can help with your skin’s elasticity.

What about my fitness routine?  Are there specific exercises I can do to tone up my skin?

“It isn’t that you’re toning up the skin itself,” says Cedric Bryant, Ph.D., chief science officer for the American Council on Exercise. “But by adding muscle, you can form a tight layer under the skin.” That can improve how the skin looks, and take away some of the sag effect.

Basically, the best course of action is to preserve your muscles while losing fat, Pino says. That’s especially important for people who have followed strict calorie restriction plans because they may have lost muscle right along with the fat.

You have to build the muscle backup again. “Endurance exercise will burn fat, but you also need to add strength training,” he says, noting that the skin of patients who do both tends to react better.