Can we talk about loose skin?

[SmoothRuffy]

Hi everybody,
I just joined and have not filled out my profile yet. So,I hope nobody minds me attempting to pick your brains a bit. Anyway, a little over a year and a half ago I, to be perfectly honest, was a fat tub of crap. I drank almost daily and paid no attention at all to my diet. It was a sad scene, but I managed to get sober and started hitting the gym hard. I am 5ft. 9in. tall and when I started I weighed around 200lbs. Over about 9 months I dropped to around 160 and have kept it off. I am in incredible shape and I am really grateful for that. I can rip off 25 pull ups, bench press far more than I weigh and run up mountains with ease and a great deal of pleasure. This is awesome, but I have been hyper-focused on what I think is some loose skin around my lower stomach. My arms and chest look great and I have abdominal definition in my upper stomach, but the bottom is a mess. My belly button is "frowny" and when I sit it turns into a f-ing war zone down there. I have no stretch marks and no pendulous stuff. It's just a little loose..And IT DRIVES ME CRAZY!!! Over the past few months I have been researching this topic a bit excessively and i know that there are many others who are tormented by the same problem. I realize that my fixation on this stupid minor aesthetic issue is nuts but I can't seem to stop thinking about it. I, like many of you, have an obsessive personality. That's why I get up at 5am and go to the gym 4-5 days a week. It's why I get off on counting carbs and calories. It's why I get straight A's in school and it's what makes me a total badass regardless of whether I have a little loose skin around my stomach or not. So anyway, the point of my little tirade here is that i am looking for some clarity regarding this whole loose skin issue. It seems like a lot of people are wondering if they have it and there don't seem to be a lot of clear answers out there. I know that I don't really have a reference point to compare myself to. I don't know how much skin most people can pull off their stomachs and I don't know the answer to the nagging and ever present question: is this fat or loose skin? So, what happens to your stomach when you sit down? Can you pull skin from your lower stomach or your sides? How much f-ing skin are we supposed to have? What is normal? So, anyone want to put our heads together and figure this out? Any info from you fine folks would be greatly appreciated

 

[Albert Smith]

If you have a lot of flab in the stomach area, you may wonder how to tighten and tone the area. This is natural to me. Don’t fret; there are certain ways to make up.

Making changes to your diet and exercise routine can help you naturally tighten the area without the need to undergo plastic surgeries. Sit-ups alone will not tone the area; you'll need to avoid fatty foods as well. Just read couple of advice regarding this issue:

• Eliminate foods high in fat and sugar. Reducing your fat and caloric intake helps you lose weight on all areas of the body, including fat in the stomach area. Avoid red meat, candy, fried foods, fast food, chips, pastries, full-fat dairy products and soft drinks.

• Eat mostly fruits and vegetables. To slim down and tone up, aim for a minimum of five servings daily of fruits and veggies. Prepare the vegetables in a low-fat manner by grilling, baking or steaming. Also, include lean proteins, low-fat dairy foods and whole grains in your diet.

• Drink a lot of water. Coffee drinks, soda and fruit juices add a lot of unnecessary calories to a person's diet and can make losing the excess weight in the stomach area difficult. Aim for 10 glasses of water daily to replace these drinks.

• Spend 45 minutes daily performing cardio exercise. Some examples of exercise you can do are running, walking, cycling, stair climbing and rowing. To burn more calories, interval training can be done during the workout. This involves exercising in three phases: warm-up, short burst of intense aerobic exercise and cool-down.

• Work the abs with targeted exercise. Targeted abdominal moves can build muscle in the area and reduce the appearance of any extra skin you may have. To do crunches, lie flat on your back with your knees bent. Lift your shoulders off the ground using your abs muscles. Perform two sets of 10 to 20 reps.


Keep in mind that it would take certain amount of time if you really want to tighten up your lose muscle in stomach area. Just keep up your all hard works.