Hi Rigel, welcome to the forum! I’m on the start of my weight loss journey, and worried about loose skin too. I have a hundred pounds to lose, and just turned 50, so there is a definite possibility.
The problem with staying overweight until you die in your 40s and 50s is twofold:
1. You will never know what good health and physical fitness feels like. You will always be inactive and feel and look like crap. Your health will decline and you will not enjoy your 20s 30s and 40s like you could have. Your weight, poor eating habits, and lack of physical activity would have had a profound effect on your quality of life.
2. It’s hard to value your health in your 20s. You haven’t started to lose it yet! We don’t value things until they start to go, it’s human nature. It’s also easy to discount the value of “old age” and see it as not fulfilling or worthwhile. As you get older, you see health is everything. Trust me, when you are 30 or 40 or even 50, you won’t be ready to die yet, but rather want to set your self up to have a fulfilling long and healthy life as possible.
Here’s what I think. You are in the best position NOW, today, to set yourself up for success and have your skin look the way you would like it to in the future. Right now. If you wait 6 months or 6 years more, your skin will have less of a chance of emerging unscathed. Do it now! You will never have a better chance at the result you want than you do RIGHT NOW.
I think you have a very good chance at having no skin problems right out of the gate, but I’ve heard and seen people who are young and start out with lose skin find that after a year or a few years, the extra skin goes away. Not one has said to themselves, I should have stayed fat. Instead, they say they wish they had started sooner.
Change your focus a bit. You are in this for the long haul. Be one of the rare ones who can learn from others! Are you really going to let poor eating and exercise habits rob you of your life? Because of a fear of lose skin? And there are lots of things you can do to manage how that skin looks at the end — proper hydration, nutritious diet, lots of moisturizer—be kind to yourself! You are a whole worthwhile person no matter what the skin you are in. And make your changes be permanent. The weight comes back if you “diet”.
What’s the worst that can happen? Do the work, lose the weight, and have a look see. It will be easy enough to gain back all the weight of you change your mind.
Sorry for the rant. But I felt like you did when I was in my 20s and know a lot of people who thought that way as well. I followed your path, and was overweight in my 20s 30s and 40s. But here I am at 50, not ready to die, and eager to live the best I can for however long I have left. And here I am, making the changes I should have made 30 years ago.
Do it now. It will be better for so many reasons.
