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





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The odd outcome

Image
Last Saturday (09/19) I attended the first IBJJF tournament since COVID outbreak. I trained really hard during the pandemic, and I dropped from 222 lbs to 204 lbs with the help of my nutricionist Greg McCoy. The intention was to also get back to bodybuilding stage by end of 2020. But before, I wanted to compete in BJJ again, since my last competition was in March, at the IBJJF Houston Open, where I won.  Coincidentally , my opponent in Austin was the same that I competed in Houston, but although the opponent was the same, I never underestimated that the outcome could be different, I just didn't realize it would be so drastic.  We bow to each other, wrist bump and started the fight. It felt deja-vu, since we went to exactly same grips and same initial movements. Some attempts to grab my leg, just like in the initial fight, and some attempts from my side to break his balance and go for tai otoshi. After 1 minute and 36 seconds, I was trying to attack in a tai otoshi position, but my
Read more

Always take full responsibility for your actions

Image
I still remember in 2003 when I moved to US and a friend in Brazil told me: man, now you will get really fat, because everything there is big, and you will only eat burgers . I heard, but I didn’t really process the information since deep inside of me I knew that I will only eat what I wanted, nobody could really force me to eat. However, he was right, I jumped from 220 lbs to 280 lbs from 2003 to 2010. If this was muscle gain I would be happy, but it was pure fat….36% body fat in 2011. Although he was right, I was also right, because even on my deepest days of “fat boy” eating fast food and thinking about my past shape as soccer player in Brazil, I was like: why am I’m damaging myself?! In between thoughts I asked for more French fries…it was a black hole! But the fact that I never tried to find someone or something to blame (other than me) also helped me to be more determined to change, because I knew I was the one in control. If I could damage myself so much in 7 years, what c
Read more

Get comfortable being uncomfortable

Image
Today we are starting another Destination Challenge , and again I will hit the same key tip: your mind is going to play the biggest role in this game of change. You usually don’t get really physically tired, because your mind will give up first, and your body will just obey what your mind tells him to do. The book “ How Bad Do You Want ”, brings a lot of scientifically examples that your mind is in control of your physical performance. Even athletes that are in a better physical shape, can be defeated for the ones that are in a much better mental state to support the pressure. Here one important paragraph from this book : “The British neuroscientist Vincent Walsh has even suggested that sports competition is the single most challenging thing the human brain ever does—more challenging even than “purely” mental tasks like solving differential equations and also more challenging to the brain than it is to the body.” If you want to get a bit inspiration this week, watch 4 minute
Read more