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.

Depression and Obesity - Are they Linked?

According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), 1 in 10 adults in the United States are suffering from depression and more than 3 in 10 are obese.

And according to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, nearly half of all depressed people are obese.

The data from the National Center for Health Statistics doesn't answer the question of why, however.

I think the answer lies is what depression does to people:

• Depression makes you care less about the things you would normally care about, and that includes what you eat and exercise. 
• Depression causes you to lose hope, and without hope you can't have goals, including weight-loss and exercise goals.
• Depression saps your energy, and you need energy to exercise.
• Depression lowers your self-worth, and if you don't think well of yourself, investing in yourself through diet and exercise seems pointless.
• Depression causes you pain, and sweets and other treats can make you feel better if only for a moment.
• Depression can make you feel empty, and you may eat too much in a misguided attempt to fill your emotional space.
• Depression medication can have weight-gain as a side-effect.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does obesity lead to depression or depression to obesity? I would wager that both are true, but if your depression is serious, the depression needs to be addressed before you have the mental or physical fortitude to work on your weight issues.

If you think you're depressed, talk to a mental health counselor or heath professional.

Here's a link to the Depression Health Center on WebMD: Depression Health Center

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Hemlock

It's a lot easier to prevent toxic chemicals from entering your body than it is to remove them, and it's a lot easier to prevent toxic people from entering your heart than it is to remove them.

Whatever we take into us, whether food or people, become a part of us, so if those foods or people are poisonous, them we poison ourselves.

Practice preventive medicine both in the choice of food and the choice of people you bring in to your body and your life.

Weight Loss and Body Acceptance

I am conducting research for an eBook I'm writing called 10 Ways to Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days.

 The book presents the pros and cons of ten extreme ways to lose weight quickly.

As a health-advocate, I don't support extreme diets unless the dieter is very clear about the nature of the diet and has a clear idea about the purpose of consequences (such as quick weight regain) and unsustainability of such a diet. Further, I support permanent lifestyle change for health, and a "diet" is rarely conducive to that end.

The 10 Ways book has a bonus method, which I called Method 0. Method 0 is to love yourself as you are and forget dieting. We live in a thin-obsessed society, and while I am not fully convinced of some of the claims of the fat acceptance movement, such as HAES (Health At Every Size), I do strongly agree that accepting yourself as you are and loving yourself as you are is fundamental to health. A person can't hate their body into a shape that they will love. Our bodies love us, try to keep us alive and protect us, and we need to love our bodies back if we are to enjoy emotional and physical health.

I have two female friends who are very good looking and physically attractive. Both are below-average in weight, are mothers of multiple children, and have told me that they are - to put it mildly - unhappy with their "fat."

If not for the social construct of "you can never be too thin or too beautiful," would either of these women or countless others like them have any issues with their size and appearance? No. The reason they think they are too fat is for one reason only: social and media pressure. Both are healthy, reasonably active, and able to enjoy physical activities and tasks. If not for social pressure, there would be absolutely no reason for these women to ever give "a few extra pounds" a second thought.

So if these popular women have difficulties with body image, how much more so for people who are considered less attractive by current standards and are less socially accepted because of being "too fat?"

What I have learned and am learning has really given me pause and caused me to carefully consider how I want to write and market a book on extreme diets in a society that obsessed thin to the point that thin = happy, thin = good and the converse judgments.

While we cannot simply throw off media programming any more than we can throw off sexism, racism, or ageism, we can begin to see the ideal of physical perfection for what it really is: a way for corporations to profit from our insecurity. The way to combat this attack on our persons is through education. Learn the real issues and learn the difference between a media manipulation and real human values.

So while I'm an advocate of self-improvement and living healthy, active life, we all need to remember that a person's worth cannot be measured with a tape or a scale.

Damned Dementia

The fragility of the human mind really gets to me sometimes. I work with elders, and see these strong, capable, intelligent people, who have committed no crime other than longevity, be betrayed by the very organ that makes all meaningful human experience possible: the brain.

Many individuals are fine in each moment, but with a damaged short-term memory, are disconnected from what happened 30 minutes ago and what is to come. Time and time again they attempt to adjust to their environment and relate to information and experiences presented by their loved ones—people who often have trouble understanding that grandma or granddad has been unplugged from the normal flow of past, present, and future.
The past, present, and future are still real, of course, but without persistent memory, there is no bridge to connect them. I imagine it might be something like those few moments when you are woken up unexpectedly, unsure of where you are or what time it is. Your eyes dart around the room looking for the familiar. You think hard, waiting for your mind to save you, to fill in the void with the warm flow of familiar memories. And, in mere moments, it does. You relax and go about your day.

But for those suffering from memory impairment, the mind does not rescue. You struggle and search and wait. But you are disconnected. What did I have for breakfast? Who is this person in my room? Where is my husband? Why are people moving and stealing my things and messing with me?

My hope is two-fold. The first is that continued medical research will someday find a way to prevent this profound loss. The second is that in the meantime we are kind and gentle and understanding to those who suffer from cognitive loss.

Hierarchy of Sexual Activity?

If sex is about intimacy and pleasure (and not procreation), there is no hierarchy of sexual activity. Does the activity promote intimacy and pleasure? Good, enjoy each other without judgment. The last thing you need to take to bed with you is a bundle of social mores or self-limiting expectations that don’t serve you or your partner.