Loose Skin - Is Cosmetic Surgery A Must?

Often, the people who have loose skin have recently lost a large amount of weight, had a baby, or are just getting older. There are many people out there who believe they will be stuck with loose skin forever or until they cough up enough funds for plastic surgery.

The methods of plastic surgery most often used to fix loose skin are:

Tummy Tuck - A very invasive procedure, that requires a long time to recover.

Laser Skin Tightening such as Thermage - A non-invasive procedure with little downtime, that uses heat to stimulate the deeper layers of skin to produce collagen, which gives the skin a tighter, and more youthful appearance.

But if you don't want to use cosmetic surgery to tighten your skin, there are definitely some ways around it. These are safe methods that are proven to work. In short, they are the good old fashioned, diet and exercise.

Weight Lifting - Adding muscle weight to your frame can fill out a lot of the loose skin you may have. You will need to do the major compound movements to achieve a significant muscle gain. So don't waste your time in the gym doing bicep curls and endless crunches. You can use free weights or your own body weight, but do squats, pushups, pulldowns, lunges, and the bench press. That way you will be working several large muscles at the same time. You will gain the most muscle that way, and get a large metabolism boost as well!

Diet - Eat all the right kinds of foods. If you are overweight, eat your maintenance calories, or below. If you are at a normal weight or underweight, then eat 200 to 400 calories above maintenance. Maintenance calories are the calories required to maintain your weight. You can find many calculators online to get this number.

The right kinds of foods are:

Carbohydrates: whole grain breads and pasta, oatmeal. You need plenty of carbs when you are weightlifting.

Fats: You need a small amount(but not too small) of healthy fats such as almonds, peanut butter, and olive oil.

Fruits and vegetable: Eat as much of these as you can!

Protein: Salmon, lean beef, chicken and other fish.

Cardio: Cardio helps to burn off those fat calories. Try using the treadmill or elliptical or swimming or jogging. Interval training or high intensity interval training burns the most fat in the least amount of time. Don't overdo it on the cardio. 30-60 minutes 3 times a week is plenty. Or, 20 minutes of HIIT (high intensity interval training) will do the trick.

You may try the natural way to tighten your skin before jumping into plastic surgery. Many people find that after trying the above methods, they don't even need plastic surgery. Good luck!