Rathji: HA! If I got pissed off every time someone asked me that question, I'd be a very angry person.
I went to Milwaukee last year and there was a bunch of us being recognized as "Century Award" winners. These are awards that the organization I belong to give out to people who have lost 100 pounds and managed to keep it off for a year. The woman next to me asked what I did about all my loose skin. I replied "I don't have very much". And she punched my shoulder. Hard. Said it wasn't fair.
Seriously, *I* can definitely see the loose skin when I stand in front of a mirror. So much so that I was considering a body lift, or at the very least a tummy tuck. But one day I went to the pool and my friend Gary was introducing me to a new guy and Gary told the fellow that I had lost 170 pounds. The guy said "No he didn't. If he lost 170 pounds he'd have loose skin and I don't see any." So I guess I'm just looking too closely. I decided not to spend the $5,000 on the tummy tuck.
When I visit other chapters in my organization (and have I ever been making the rounds!) I tell them that "How did you lose the weight?" is only the SECOND most common question I get. Next to "What did you do with all the loose skin?"
Now that's been a lot of rambling without a lot of answer. My organization produces a monthly magazine and just last month they had an article on loose skin. If you PM me your e-mail address, I'll send you the article. It confirms a lot of what I guessed the answer to be when asked.
The amount of loose skin you get is:
- indirectly proportional to your age
- directly proportional to your maximum weight
- indirectly proportional to the amount of time it took you to lose the weight
- indirectly proportional to the amount of exercise you do
So the younger you are, the less weight you had to loose, THE SLOWER YOU LOSE THE WEIGHT, THE MORE EXERCISE YOU DO, the more elasticity you get from the skin. There is also a lot of luck in terms of genetics, so I've told the rest of my family that they shouldn't use fear of loose skin as an excuse not to lose their weight as well.
BTW - since this is a common topic of discussion when I go to conferences and talk with others that have lost similar amounts of weight that I have, I have found that those that have the least problem with loose skin are those that did (a) swimming and (b) kickboxing/"boot camp"s. I don't understand the swimming since that seems to be mostly legs and arms, but kickboxing is *all* core work. Twisting and turning the midsection.
One fellow I met had a novel solution. He had lots of loose skin on his arms. So he started lifting weights. Now he's filled up the area with muscle instead of fat.
One last note on the topic. I met this fellow in Milwaukee last year:
http://www.shapefit.com/success/succ...s-kevin-c.html
Really great guy. Learned lots from him. He said that he was SERIOUSLY considering the surgery for health reasons. His folds of skin are so deep that he is getting rashes and sometimes gets infections because it's hard to wash between each and every fold of skin. In these cases, provincial health care WILL cover the cost of the body lift or tummy tuck. In my case, it would be considered cosmetic since I don't have nearly as much as Kevin does.
Hope that helps.