Non-Surgical Removal of "Loose Skin"
To eliminate the droopy appearance of the remnants of excess body fat following weight loss, without resorting to surgical procedures,
you must change your body composition, not just lose bodyweight. That means paying particular attention to the ratio of your body fat to lean body mass. Gaining muscle to replace some of those lost pounds of body fat and preventing loss of lean body mass while dieting will dramatically improve your appearance.
It is possible to be at the ideal bodyweight according to Body Mass Index charts (BMI), but still have too much body fat and not enough lean body mass. For example, a young woman in her twenties with "loose skin" recently appeared on a popular radio talk show. She had lost over two-hundred pounds in one year, and her bodyweight at 5' 8" was now in the 120's. Yet, her abdomen was covered with flabby skin that hung off of her. I would guess there is at least another 20 pounds of excess body fat stored in those folds of skin. However, if she lost another 20 pounds of bodyweight, she would obviously look like an emaciated stick!
But, that's not because she is too low in body fat...it's because she lacks sufficient lean body mass! After dieting so severely for so long (with the so-called "help" of a gastric bypass), this young woman obviously sacrificed a significant amount of lean body mass. It's true that losing 20 pounds of lean body mass over a year may not seem like much considering she lost so much body fat, but that amount of lost lean body mass is enough to distort her body composition, even though her bodyweight is "normal."
My suggestion to this young woman would be to replenish her lost lean body mass with a healthy balanced diet and weight training (See
Muscle Mass Myths). Ironically, the gastric bypass that made it easier for this young woman to diet so severely may work against her as she attempts to eat a normal amount of food. Nevertheless, lost lean body mass usually replenishes fairly rapidly on a balanced calorie-sufficient diet. After increasing her bodyweight with 20 pounds of replenished lean body mass, she can then lose the rest of her excess body fat, without sacrificing any more lean body mass. Then she would have both a normal bodyweight AND a normal body composition. What is required to assist one in doing all this is an easy method to measure changes in one's body composition (muscle and body fat levels), and a method to monitor and modify one's energy balance, which is the balance between the calories one eats and burns each day. Such a method is available in
The Body Fat Guide.
Loose Skin
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