Loose skin after losing weight

This is a question that I receive a lot: hey Yuri, did you do any surgery to remove loose skin? I didn’t, but I can tell you that it was (matter of fact, it still is) an ongoing process. Let’s take a look from the beginning of the transformation (2011) to the first show (Adela Garcia 2014):

You may say: hey Yuri, that looks pretty good, the skin snapped back! Not completely, take a closer look in 2014 and 2015:

See? Main problem is around the belly button, not to mention that the belly button itself will never (unless I do a surgery) look rounded as it used to. After more than a decade of obesity and accumulation of fat on that area, it is very, very hard to have your skin back to normal. It is improving, and you can see that in 2016:


But beyond my own experience in this struggle, what the doctors say? Well, here it is a very good explanation from a Doctor:

“Your skin's ability to contract and bounce back after losing weight depends on various factors such as the quality of your skin tone at baseline (determined by the strength of your collagen and elastin fibers), age, genetics, the amount of weight gained and lost, sun exposure, and lifestyle factors such as smoking," ~ Christine Choi Kim, MD (source: Men’s Fitness Magazine)

This is absolutely correct, unfortunately there is no precise answer since it depends on a lot of factors. Did I try anything to get better? Yes, including the following:
Did it help? Well, it is really hard to say if it did or not. The only thing I can say is that it was nothing like: OMG, this is awesome! No, nothing like that, not even close. My conclusion after battling with this for the past 3 years (since I lost 100 lbs), is that you MUST be patient if you don’t want to go through a surgery process to remove extra skin. Trying to stay lean all year around also helps to keep the skin tight. That’s why from 2015 to now, my weight varies from 215 (off season) to 184 (on stage), which still is a lot, and I’m educating myself to stay below 200 all year around. That’s my plan for 2017/2018.

However, if you decide to perform a surgery, I don’t think no one can and should criticize you, because I fully understand how hard it feels to be 95% in shape, and have that 5% part of your body that you just feel ashamed, without control…because at the end of the day you don’t have control over that loose skin. You either learn to live with it and keep patiently working until it improves, or remove it and be happy. Do whatever makes you feel happy, because the hard work of losing weight you already did, and nobody is taking this away from you.

@ydiogenes





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