How to Minimize Loose and Sagging Skin

Tips and Exercises to Get Rid of Loose Skin

Our skin is important to us in ways that go beyond mere appearance. Skin helps us stabilize our body temperature, protect our internal organs, and keep us safe from harmful UV rays and toxins in the environment. Unfortunately, loose and sagging skin is a huge side effect of weight loss as well as other factors and is responsible for low self esteem in thousands of men and women who have struggled (and succeeded!) in losing large amounts of weight. Thankfully, with a bit of time and patience there are effective ways to tighten loose skin.

Loose or excess skin occurs when the body slows production of the skin-firming proteins collagen and elastin, and when rapid weight loss occurs. Other causes of loose skin include free radicals, smoking, malnutrition and natural aging.

In recent times people tend to quickly lose large amounts of weight due to the advent of weight loss surgeries and other technologies. If a person loses fifty to 100 pounds in a short time span, it's unreasonable to expect that their skin will bounce back to its pre-weight condition just as quickly. By pacing loss at around three to six pounds per month, skin has an improved chance of keeping up with the weight loss and shrinking gradually back to a semblance of its former condition.

Maintaining an exercise program as you lose weight slowly and keeping your skin and body well hydrated to maximize its elasticity will help prevent loose skin before it has a chance to occur. A good diet that is full of nutrients can also minimize loose skin problems.

Strength training and pushups are effective at building muscle under the skin, which naturally plumps up the underlying tissue and causes a gradual and natural tightening. The best forms of exercise to firm loose skin involve weight training regimens that rely on fast and frequent repetitions while using a low amount of weight. Exercising with weights and repetitions causes the skin to respond favorably and experience a steady, almost nonstop firming for as long as the training is continued.