Baggy Skin After Weight Loss

On a weight-loss forum I sometimes visit, a young mother of three was really worried about the loose skin that can come with significant weight loss.

Her fear is actually quite founded, so it's important to keep three factors in mind: the speed with which the weight is lost, how much total weight is lost, and your age.

Skin elasticity simply cannot keep up with significant weight loss (100+ pounds) in a short amount of time, such as when people have weight-loss surgery. Many people who do have surgery to lose weight remain unhappy with the "skin suit" they are left with and thus require body contouring surgery to feel better about themselves. And even then, there are often scars. That isn't great news, but the basic problem is that if you lose weight too fast, it may not be possible for your skin to go back to the way it was before the weight gain.

Further, as we age, our skin becomes less elastic, which limits how well our skin adjusts to significant weight loss. By the time we are approaching 50 or so, our skin may have lost most of its elasticity, and thus regardless of what else we do, if we lose a lot of weight fat, there will be a lot of excess skin that cannot adjust to the change.

Assuming your skin is healthy, it should be able to adjust as your body changes when weight loss isn't too dramatically fast. So how can you help keep your skin elastic and give it time to adjust to your new body?

• Lose weight slowly.
• Exercise, which can create a layer of muscle under the skin.
• Use moisturizer that contains collagen and vitamin E to promote elasticity and new skin-cell growth.

And don't forget to drink lots of water, which you should be doing anyway, to keep the skin hydrated and elastic.