Loose skin

I had a fellow blogger ask me about my loose skin and if I had any (she said it didn't look like I had any...BLESS HER) so I thought I would tell you my thoughts on it and about the loose skin that I do in fact have.

My loose skin problem areas are on my mid section near my belly button and then my lower belly pooch that is often hid by underwear or a bikini bottom in this case. Also, under my arms, you know the wings and then my inner thighs have some also. The arms and thighs are not as noticeable unless you are really looking me over. The belly to me is noticeable in a bikini obviously, it just looks like wrinkled skin basically. Now as I told my friends at Phit-N-Phat, thankfully a bikini competition is done STANDING UP. When I sit down or lean over the skin is in rolls or hangs down so it is absolutely there. This is just caused from years of being overweight and then 2 babies after that didn't help it any (not that I would take back the kids of course but I would take back the years of being overweight if I could do it all over again.)

There is no magic when it comes to loose skin. There are minor things you can do though to help it that I have experienced and tried myself.

1) PRAY that you have good skin genes. You can't change this of course you just hope good skin runs in your family.

2) STRENGTH TRAIN. This is probably the biggest key in my book. Build that muscle under neath the skin then it kind of fills out the skin and you don't have as much hanging.

3) Lose your weight slowly (which most of us do if you lose weight by eating healthy and exercising). That way the skin has time to slowly shrink back down.

4) If you are overweight, START today on dropping the fat, the longer you are overweight the more loose skin you will have b/c it just doesn't bounce back like it used to as we age.

As far as over the counter and supplements go here is what I do:

1) I take 1 vitamin E supplement (pill) per day. Vitamin E is good for your skin and elasticity.

2) I use a homemade scrub made up of 5 pound bag of sugar, 1 small container of Vitamin E oil and 1 medium size container of Almond Castille soap. I use an empty protein powder container and I put all of these ingredients in there together and then I get a wooden spoon and mix it up and I just leave it in the shower. Everyday I use it all over my body. It keeps the dead skin exfoliated and the vitamin E oil and soap moisturize your skin wonderfully. So with this I am putting Vit E oil ON my skin as well as IN my body with the supplement. I buy the vit E oil at Target and the almond castille soap comes from a health food store.

3) I also use an over the counter skin firming lotion like Nivea or Jergens.

None of these things are cure alls, unfortunately, I think the supplements, scrub and lotion have helped my skin in a very small way but it is better than it not being helped at all.

To be honest my skin looks SO SO SO MUCH better than I thought it would at this point in my journey. I have always been very concerned about it and how ugly it is and for some reason I don't even notice it that much anymore. Believe it or not I am more focused on the positive things about my body and how much smaller it is and my many muscles that are popping out. Those are the things I see now instead of the loose skin that is there. I do the things that are in my control at the moment to help it, the things I listed above, and then what skin is left hanging is simply left hanging. It is a reminder that it was once filled with nasty un-healthy fat and I will take the loose skin over the fat any day.