Yeah, loose skin is already happening to me. I'm interested to see the extent of it as I lose more. I'm nervous but hopeful. I have no grand illusions of looking slammin' in a bathing suit, even a one piece. But I do worry that I'll have that weird roll in the belly if I wear a fitted pair of jeans or something. Once I finish this, it would be nice to be able to at least look good in clothes! Lori, your pictures are amazing and proof that a former very large girl can look dang good in a pair of jeans!!

Not one small part of me is even remotely thinking that this journey is not worth it because of what the end product will look like. But of course some of us will think about it from time to time, especially those of us with very high starting weights. I always just tell myself if it really bothers me, there ARE surgical options. But since that's not generally covered by insurance, it would have to be really, really bad for me to spend 10 or 20 thousand on it! I'd much rather take my saggy skin with me on 5 glorious vacations with that much $.

I never really imagined that being this morbidly obese for this long that I was going to get out of it unscathed. I'll just be happy to make it to the other side having diverted some of the scary health problems. I'll take the loose skin.

Right now you are concerned about loose skin because you don't understand how wonderful being a normal weight is. I worried about it too, but now that I've gotten (nearly) here, I find it's like winning an all-expenses paid vacation to a resort only to get there and find out the margaritas are lousy. If I could chose, I'd prefer better margaritas, but in the big scheme of things, I don't care that much.

I am so, so, so happy with my new body. Yesterday I had lunch in a crowded restaurant, and I negotiated between tables close together and then slid into a seat that was back-to-back to another person. I can hoist myself up onto high counters. I can climb fences. I get hit on by attractive men. And yes, when I am naked in front of a mirror I grab the loose skin at my belly and shove it around and get irritated, but then life goes on. It's 90 seconds of irritation in a day filled with delight.

And let me tell you something: foundation garments are AMAZING these days. Forget $10K worth of surgery--for $300 you can get top of the line stuff that will put everything exactly where it's supposed to be. And post-35, no man expects a woman to look like a 20 year old when she's naked.

Yup! I second foundation garments! I wore them under almost everything at 230+ pounds, but now I only wear them if I am wearing something especially fitted. I have lots of loose skin - upper thighs, upper arms, stomach...etc etc. I've had two kids, two c-sections, and an extra 100+ pounds on my body for almost 15 years. It is what it is, and I wouldn't trade my extra skin for the pounds back, EVER!

I have a little loose skin. I don't look great naked. But I didn't look good naked when I was fat. I don't really understand the perseveration about loose skin. Yes, we want to look good, but health should be a bigger priority. But let's say that it's not and weight loss is purely about vanity. It's not like you're starting off looking like a centerfold and then suddenly getting loose skin. You're going to look better with excess weight gone, even if you do have some sags and bags under your clothes. Period. How many people see you naked? VERY few. How many people see you in clothes? Everyone you encounter. When you're fat, EVERYONE can see that you are fat. Period. When you have loose skin, a very few select people, people who should already love or like you a good amount (or medical professionals) will be the only ones to see you naked and know about your loose skin.

So. In this world where health doesn't matter and vanity is the only value of weight loss, it's still MUCH better to have loose skin than to be fat.

When it comes to the vanity side of loose skin I see it like this:

When I lose weight and have loose skin ( I know I will, darn genetics) most people won't be able to tell. Right now while fat, there's no hiding it. There's no undergarment, Spanx, sausage casing torture device in the world that can make me look NOT FAT.

Naked, of course it'll be obvious that I have loose skin but the only person that will see me naked is my doc (and I don't really give a crap what he thinks) and my husband. And if my husband loved me and was OK with having sex with me at 246 then it won't change when I weight less and have loose skin. He probably won't even notice because I'll have more energy to have better sex more frequently.

HA! The first part made me crack up. I was just reading the posts about undergarments and thinking that eventually one day when I reach my goal I'm going to laugh about things like that. How I tried to suck all my fat into some spandex body thing thinking it somehow made me look better.

The second part is SO true. I feel the same way. If my husband loved me and was sexually attracted to me at 300lbs then I highly doubt some loose skin is going to be an issue. I KNOW I will be a lot more energetic in the bedroom and I think the happiness of being able to just truly live like normal will be far more amazing and important than some saggy skin.

wow, thanks for the encouraging words... i really needed that. the thing is i already went from being fat to a "normal weight" and i did have extra skin. i consulted a plastic surgeon about it and was about to do the surgeries but then i wanted to lose 10 more pounds, well that 10 more pounds ended up being 80 pounds gained back!
but thanks! i will not let it get in my way and make me sad because right now, anything will be an improvement!
lore- great pics, so inspiring!

loose skin doesn't frighten me as much as stretch marks do! i have them on my arms and belly (a lot on my belly). unsightly, i know, but my husband doesn't seem to mind. we do not have any children (except for a cat and a dog). my stretch marks are really old, i think about about 7-8 years old. i got them because i had gained a lot of weight, about 90 lbs. i lost 50 of it when i moved in with my aunt in high school (she was a nurse and emphasized a lot on weight loss and proper food). i lost i think about 20 more, and the weight didn't matter to me after that. i started college, moved out, dated and got married. i gained those 70lbs back and some :-(. my husband gained about 50 lbs when we started dating. when we got married on halloween on '09, i was at my heaviest, about 238lbs, and my husband was at 265, more or less (really bad, he is only an inch taller than me)i have lost 13 lbs since then, and he lost about 20. we have slacked it off, but are working hard to shed the weight. next week, we start the insanity workout.

i heard and read that stretch marks look better after the weight is lost, and if you drink water it should help a lot as well..i am using 70,000 i.u. vitamin e oil (pure. and sticky as heck, had to add a few drops of 4000 i.u. vitamin e oil to help with spreading it) on my stretch marks and have noticed they shrunk a little. i am also taking zinc, because it helps with cell and tissue repair, and vitamin c (after all, stretch marks are scars). this gives me hope that one day they will be close to unnoticeable.

before, i couldn't wait to have kids because i can blame the stretch marks on pregnancy. this was just a poor excuse to have children, just for vanity. i wasn't even healthy enough to conceive. i have made up my mind. i do want to have children but not till after i have lost at least 40lbs, that way i do not go over my highest weight and be more at risk for anything that would harm me or the child. after all, when i am old and wrinkled next to my husband, stretch marks won't mean anything to me at all.

I, for one, can totally understand where you're coming from IslaAzure. Will I let that fear stop me from losing weight? Heck no, but I am still terrified about it.

My fear is not based on obtaining perfection. I know I'll never be perfect, I know my stretch marks, etc will never go away, but I still care about the excess skin. I do not want to have to think about plastic surgery. Nor do I want to wear a bikini, I just want to look almost as good without my clothes as I do with them.

The thing is...Skin continues to firm even AFTER you are done losing weight. THat is a very important key to remember. Like I said earlier I do have loose skin, I should after losing 193ish pounds, but TODAY my skin looks a good 30-40% better than it did the day I hit my goal weight.

The trick to better skin is staying a consistent weight for an extended period of time. Until now, I don't think I was ever in a 10 pound range of the same weight for more than a few months at a time. This time I've gone 18 months at a very normal weight and many more at a near normal BMI when I was still in the losing game. I'm older than many of you, (45) and still at my advanced years it is amazing how my body responded to proper treatment and nutrition. My skin probably has shrunk as much as it can, but it really is much better than the day I cried goal from the roof tops!

Trust me, your skin will look BETTER the longer you are at goal...(until the biological clock starts it's evil tricks that is. lol :) ) All the better to come up with a maintaince strategy long before you reach that magic number on the scale.

WOW!!! very well said.