Losing weight takes time, dedication, commitment and a lot of effort. Losing a lot of weight and maintaining the weight loss requires a complete lifestyle change. Unfortunately, many people are unhappy with their bodies after they lose a significant amount of weight because they have excess loose skin.
How Loose Skin Develops
Loose skin can occur if you lose weight too quickly, have carried the weight for many years, are getting older and have less elasticity to your skin or if you fail to exercise while you lose the weight. Diet alone isn't enough to reduce hanging skin. Even dieters who feel they have done everything correctly find themselves with excess loose skin.
Building Muscle to Tighten Loose Skin
There are some things you can do to tighten loose skin after losing weight, however. It's not a magic trick or an overnight fix, but it can be done over time with a commitment to exercise and a healthy lifestyle.
Eat the right foods. Eating the right proportion of protein and carbs at every meal helps build muscle that tightens hanging skin. For best results include nuts, lean protein, poultry, oats, eggs, fish, fruits and vegetables in your diet.
The muscle you build under your skin helps to fill out the hanging skin left by fat loss. Your body takes on a tighter, firmer appearance over time with the help of resistance training.
Muscle revs up your metabolism. As a side effect of exercising regularly, building additional muscle mass fires up your body's metabolism. This allows you to burn calories faster, burning off the hidden layers of fat and giving your body a toned look.
Tips for Building Muscle to Reduce Hanging Skin
- Focus on working the major muscles of the body. Though it may be tempting to spot train certain problems areas, it is less effective overall. Sagging skin under the arm will tighten up over time with a combination of resistance training and cardio. It isn't necessary to do endless repetitions of bicep curls or triceps kickbacks to see results.
- Take time between workouts to rest your muscles. Your muscles grow when they are resting. The ideal workout schedule is to either do resistance training every other day or divide your upper and lower body workouts and alternate them.
- Drink extra water and green tea to help kick your metabolism into overdrive.
- Gradually increase the amount of weights you lift and the number of reps per set. Don't let your body adjust to a workout routine. Switch up your resistance training schedule often to throw your body off guard and allow it to keep burning calories and fat at a higher rate.
- Use interval training as part of your resistance training. Alternate heavy and light session to produce better fat loss results and tighten loose skin.
- Change your BMI to tighten loose skin. Changing your body composition can drastically change how your body looks.
Though other options exist, such as body creams and surgery, the best way to remove loose hanging skin is to follow a healthy lifestyle, eat right and commit to weight training in order to build muscle and burn more fat.
 |
