How to Tighten Loose Skin After Weight Loss

If you’ve lost weight recently, you may have noticed that you have loose skin hanging around. Whether it’s flaps under your arms, or a hanging pouch around your stomach, loose skin can be an embarrassing issue. In this article you’ll learn why skin gets loose, how to tighten it after fat loss and which medical procedures, nutrition tactics and exercises will actually help keep your skin tight.

How To Tighten Loose Skin Naturally

Why Skin Gets Loose

Skin is an elastic living tissue that stretches as we move and grow (or shrink). It’s not one big piece of rubber that covers your body, but an actual organ. And just like all the other organs in your body, it is made of cells.

The cells on the outer part of your skin are constantly being lost and replaced with new cells, but the skin cells under that outer layer are more permanent. These lower layers of the skin are made up of connective tissues, fibers, blood vessels and all sorts of components that can stretch or contract — depending on how you treat them.

When you lose weight (and especially when you lose weight quickly) the elastic parts of your skin don’t have time to adapt to your new shape. If you are older, have poor nutrition, aren’t hydrated, have excessive sun exposure or smoke, this problem is aggravated even more, since all of these things contribute to decreased elasticity.

3 Ways To Tighten Loose After Weight

How to Tighten Loose Skin

As you lose weight and loose skin begins to appear, don’t panic! Your skin will slowly return to a shape that fits your new body. But that process can take up to two years, so here are steps you can take to make your skin tighten faster:

#1: Don’t Lose Weight Too Quickly

Crash diets and excessive amounts of time spent exercising can rapidly shed both muscle and fat, and result in a greater amount of loose skin. Aim for no more than 1-2 pounds of fat loss per week, and include weight training so you build muscle to help stretch the skin.

#2: Hydrate

Water is a crucial component of maintaining skin elasticity. From both food and drink, you should be taking in at least two liters of water each day.

#3: Eat

Two ingredients that keep skin plump and elastic are collagen and elastin, and the protein to help form these is found in cottage cheese, milk, legumes, tofu, beans, seeds, nuts and fish. The oils in these foods will also help with skin elasticity.

#4: Care for Your Skin

Avoid harsh detergents like sulfates in soaps, shampoos and dishwashing liquids. Limit sun exposure, stay away from tanning booths, and limit exposure to hot and chlorinated water, since all of these elements decrease elasticity.

Do You Need Surgery?

Skin can only be stretched so far before it loses some of its innate ability to snap back. If you’ve had a 9-month pregnancy, then you can tighten your loose skin. In contrast, if you’ve carried 50-100 extra pounds on your body for a long time, you might need to resort to plastic surgery and stapling to tighten loose skin.

As mentioned earlier, elasticity of your skin will naturally decrease with age. Although you have control over the rate of your weight loss, staying properly hydrated, eating the right foods and caring for your skin, you simply have no control over your age! So rather than letting age stress you out, you should focus on the things over which you do have control — like exercising and eating right — and you’ll find that you always look better than your peers. And feel great!

One of the most common questions that I get asked is “How did you get rid of your loose skin after having two babies?” I am always intrigued by this …

How to Get Rid of Loose Skin After Weight Loss

If you’re dealing with the problem of loose skin, especially after major weight loss, here’s what you can do about it.

Have you busted your butt for months and months to lose weight only to be left with handfuls of ugly loose skin?

Do you want to know once and for all what it takes to tighten this skin and show off that new body you’ve worked so hard for?

If so, then this article is for you!

First, let me say that I understand how frustrating the loose skin problem is. It’s extremely discouraging to feel like you’re doing everything right without getting the results you really desire.

Some people might say to stop worrying about how you look and just be happy with what you’ve got, but I have a hard time with advice like that.

Sure, some people develop unhealthy obsessions with looks and image, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a lean, strong, healthy body that looks and feels great. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that everyone should have that experience.

And so in this article, we’re going to take an in-depth look at the loose skin issue and see what can be done about it.

While there are legit cases of excess skin after weight loss, what many people think is loose or excess skin is actually just excess body fat, which is soft and jiggly and easily mistaken as skin.

There’s an easy way to tell if you’re dealing with actual loose skin or too much body fat.

Pinch the area you’re concerned with and if you can grab more than a few millimeters of skin, there’s more fat in there to lose.

Until you lose that fat, your skin has no reason to return to its former size and tautness. Remember that skin isn’t a curtain of passive, inert flesh–it’s a living organ that adapts to its internal and external environments. As long as the fat it’s attached to remains, it will sag.

If you’re a man, I wouldn’t consider surgery to deal with loose skin until you’ve hit 10% body fat. If you’re a woman, 20% is the number.

These are the body fat ranges where your subcutaneous fat levels become low enough to accurately assess the state of your skin. And chances are just getting lean enough will resolve the entire problem.

If, however, someone gets to this low level of body fat and his or her skin is almost paper thin and looks like crinkled papyrus, then it truly is a matter of excess skin, and can be dealt with accordingly.

Now, one thing you should know is that certain fat stores are harder to burn than others. The science is fairly complicated, and I dive into it here, but for the purpose of this article all you need to know is the fat in certain areas of our body is harder to lose than the fat in others.

Not coincidentally, these “stubborn” fat stores cling to the areas most often associated with loose or excess skin problems: the lower abdomen, lower back (love handles), hips, thighs, and butt.

What many people think is loose skin is just excess amounts of stubborn fat.

Now, you can’t directly “target” stubborn fat stores with special diet or training tricks, but you can use several strategies to help eliminate them faster. I explain everything here.
Building Muscle and Reducing Excess Skin

avoid-loose-skin

A big part of tightening loose skin is building muscle. The reason for this is simple.

There are two layers of tissue underneath your skin: fat and muscle, both of which press up against your skin and keep it from sagging loosely.

When you gain a large amount of weight, your skin must expand quite a bit to accommodate the increase in body size. When you lose the fat, however, and especially when you lose it quickly, your skin doesn’t necessarily shrink at the same rate as your fat cells. This imbalance can lead to loose skin.

Furthermore, many people use various forms of starvation dieting as well as large amounts of cardio to lose fat, which also causes significant muscle loss, further expanding the void between the skin and the underlying tissue.

The end result is a reduced body fat percentage but a small, soft physique with sagging skin. The “skinny fat” look, as it’s called.

Building muscle is the solution to all these woes because it literally fills in the looseness in the skin, creating a visibly tighter, healthier look.

This advice applies to both people that have already lost a lot of weight and those that are just beginning. If you’re currently dealing with issues of loose skin, you should start lifting weights. If you’re starting a weight loss regimen, be sure to include weightlifting in it.

10 Ways to Naturally Tighten Skin After Weight Loss

Losing weight is a momentous achievement and ought to be celebrated for sure, but for some having to contend with loose skin as a result of losing a great deal of weight can be disappointing. You may feel like you’ve won in one area and lost in another, but this is not necessarily the case. In fact, there are some natural ways that you can increase your skin’s elasticity and tighten the areas in need over a matter of time. Your results, of course, will depend on how much weight you’ve actually lost, the length of time your skin was stretched out, and your age.

Here are some valuable tips on how you can tighten your skin after weight loss:

1. Monitor your weight loss. It may be time to curb your weight loss just for a bit to allow your skin to get adjusted to the loss. As you maintain your weight, your skin has more of a tendency to shrink to your new size. If you continue to lose weight rapidly, your skin will continue to lose elasticity.

2. Increase your water intake. Drinking a lot of water not only improves your overall health, it also will help your skin to become tighter, smoother, and look more radiant. Be sure to drink at least 6 glasses of water per day. If you can drink more than that, even better. Hydration is wonderful for your skin and certainly helps with the elasticity of such.

3. Participate in weight resistance training. According to Cedric Bryant, chief science officer for the American Council on Exercise, strength training strengthens muscles as it creates a layer of muscle underneath the skin. As a result, your skin will become tighter. It is recommended that you perform strength training three times per week every other day in order to really benefit your muscles and skin. Weight training is especially important if you have dropped your caloric intake significantly, as when you lose fat, you often lose muscle as well. Rebuilding your muscles will help tighten the skin.

4. Moisturize your skin. Use a moisturizer that has vitamin E in it, so that your skin will stay moist, as this allows for new skin cells to grow. Moisturizing also helps with minimizing wrinkles. You can even use coconut oil on your skin. Coconut oil is a natural moisturizer and has antibacterial properties to soothe the skin. It is often used in commercial and DIY body lotions, but it can be used on its own as well. You can find here more fantastic everyday uses for coconut oil, or read about these fruit oils for skin care.

5. Belly Toning Exercises. Chances are your belly has some stretched skin if you’ve lost a lot of weight. Tightening the tummy area is much more possible if you take time a few times per week to exercise that area. Commit to belly toning exercises such as crunches, air bike, leg raises, sit ups, side bridges, and pelvic thrusts. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on these exercises either. Simply spending 15 to 20 minutes three to five days per week will help tighten your tummy area. You can find here 8 simple exercises to get a flat tummy, and if you have loose skin on your arms, check these 6 simple exercises to get rid of jiggly arms.

6. Get massages. Who doesn’t love a massage? Head to your favorite masseuse to get weekly or biweekly massages, as they are known to help increase blood circulation that is helpful to your skin. As nice as they are, you don’t necessarily need a massage therapist to massage your skin, as you can do it yourself or have your partner do this for you. You can add to the massage your favorite essential oils diluted in a carrier oil and inhale them to reach new levels of calmness. If you are interested to learn more about essential oils you can find useful information in my e-book Magical Aromatherapy. This book will help you to discover the power of essential oils and the most effective ways to use them.

7. Limit your sun exposure. Too much time in the sun will have a negative effect on your skin’s elasticity, so limit your time sun bathing. This goes for tanning beds as well, as the rays can dry out your skin and damage the skin cells at the same time (you can also watch this video to see what the sun really does to your skin). Also, limit your time swimming in chlorinated water, as the chlorine can dry out and damage skin cells. Spending a short amount of time sun bathing and swimming is alright; just be sure to shower afterwards and apply a natural moisturizer that has vitamins and aloe vera included.

8. Sea salt scrubs. There are some researchers asserting that sea salt scrubs will help with blood flow to the skin and help tighten the skin over time. There are a number of sea salt and mineral scrubs available on the market to choose from. Simply use them in the shower each day as you wash and see how your skin looks and feels after a couple of weeks. Read my article how to use sea salt for your skin, including sea salt body scrub.

9. Visualize tight skin. Visualization is a super interesting tool to use to get your desires to come true. No, it’s not like magic, but there is power in envisioning your desires manifesting. Even some professional athletes use visualization to help improve their games and performances. The way it works is that when you mentally see something, you tend to take more actions toward making your desires come true. When you see your skin tight, you’re more apt to do things like exercise, eat healthy, and follow through with other helpful tips. You have full permission to daydream and take some time each day and visualize yourself with tight skin.

10. Be patient. When dealing with stretched, loose skin, it is important to be patient as your body adapts to your new size. Additionally, keep in mind that depending on how much weight you’ve lost, your skin may not be able to return to its original elasticity. Make a decision to accept this now just in case and affirm that you are pretty awesome even with some loose skin.

It is understandable to become frustrated when you’ve lost a lot of weight and now have to be concerned about loose skin. Fortunately, others that have gone before you have tried all sorts of methods to tighten their skin and happily pass that information on. Keep in mind that what works for one person may not work for you. You can try various ways to tighten your skin and see what is helpful for you.

Additionally, understand that elasticity reacts differently at different ages and stages in life. For the young mom who just gave birth and is contending with loose skin, it may only take a little bit of effort to tighten up the skin and keep it moving. For the 50 year old who has just dropped 75 pounds in a short amount of time, it may take a bit longer for the skin to tighten and it may not get back to its original state due to age. It is important to realize this and accept it wholeheartedly. Reward yourself for losing the weight and accept your skin’s condition in the process of tightening it.

If you have loose skin on your arms and want to tighten and tone it, try these simple exercises for jiggly arms: