[SupaStar]

For those of us who are overweight w/ big bellies (I look pregnant), is it possible to shrink those bellies and work them out so hard that they can turn really flat without having surgery fro excess skin?

I know some you you have ended up haiving a tummy tuck after your weight loss but I'm looking for another alternative....like free

[wcolleen]

How close are you to your goal? My stomach continues to shrink as I get closer to my goal, but there's really no way of knowing what your situation will be until you get there.

[SupaStar]

Ha! Ha! I am NO where close to goal.

[Mel]

The skin shrinking depends on a zillion individual things, so no one can tell you what's going to happen. I started at about 175 and my lowest was 130, and I sure need a tummy tuck. My skin looks like an old deflated balloon. BUT- I am 49 years old, and my skin has looked that way since I was 27 and had a disastrously HUGE pregnancy with the baby in a very odd position that stretched the skin on 1 side of my body way more than othe other side. If you are young, have not been overweight for a long time, don't smoke, didn't spend your teen years frying yourself in a string bikini, you have a better chance. If you already can see a lot of stretch marks and the skin looks "shredded" underneath the first layer, the outlook is not good. Don't let anyone shame you into thinking you didn't lose weight the "right" way if your skin doesn't tighten up. If the elastin is damaged, all the good oils, water and moisturizer in the world will make little difference.

Good luck!

mel

[stef]

So sorry!

What you are asking is can you spot reduce - do something non-surgical that will work on a specific area of body fat - and the answer is no

The only thing you can do is lose weight slowly - to give the skin a chance to react and keep pace with change. Sometimes a rapid weigt loss can exaggerate the excess skin fold problem. But as Mel said this is a very individual thing, and you don't really have any control over it.

While you are doing the slow sensible thing you can oil, moisturise and exercise to keep the skin and muscles under it toned and supple. But that means all of your body. Just as the diet effects everything your exercise should do this too!

There is no form of exercise that can encourage your body to use fat from a specific part of the body - so doing lots of ab work will tone the ab muscles, lengthening and strengthening them, giving you better posture and making you look good. But it will not get rid of the fat around the ab muscles - well not uless that is where your body was intending to eat from anyway

When you have lost the weight and are a good maintainer then you might have to have surgery to remove the excess skin, or just buy those good old harvester knickers (you know 'all is safely gathered in') perhaps better known these days as 'Bridget Joneses'.