Hi everyone.

I'm a newbie here . I'm Lizzy, 27 (28 in a few weeks) from the UK.

It'd be great to chat to other dieters and make some friends on here too.

I've got a few questions and concerns about dieting. One of them is the scary prospect of having loose skin. I started dieting in mid August my start weight was 18stone 3lb. I am now 16stone 12lb and I am going to keep on going until I get down to my target weight of around 10stone. I am drinking plenty of water and using Cocoa butter 3 times a day (Just the tesco stuff) because I have heard that they can prevent loose skin. Any ideas on what else I could do?

I carry a lot of fat on my stomach an upper arms and I really really want it gone. Any tips on how to speed up the process on burning it away from those areas quicker?

My average daily calories now are around 1500 (Sometimes upto 2000) my exercise is dog walking (combined about 90 minutes per day) and using my exercise bike for about 45 minutes before bed which burns about 500 calories. Should I be doing sit ups to target the stomach fat?

Is it safe to increase exercise and decrease calories so that I am losing 3lbs per week every week? Or is that too quick? I've heard lots of people say that losing any more than 2lb per week can be bad? But I'm not sure that's entirely true?

This is a lot of questions for an introduction message, sorry everyone I'm just rambling a bit now.

Thank you for reading and any tips at all would be lovely.

Lizzy x

Lizzy

I'm not an expert on loose skin but have read a lot about it. It seems like the faster you lose the weight the more loose skin that you will have cuz you are not giving your body time to adjust. There have been some people that have lost weight fast and it took a year or more for the loose skin to shrink up. On some people, it will never shrink. So it is hard to predict what will happen to you.

You will need to make the decision to either lose weight slowly or lose it fast which will most likely result in loose skin.

You cannot target fat reduction from any area. So doing lots of sit ups will not help with stomach fat. Some one explained weight lost like a wet sponge. You cannot decide what part of the sponge dries first. It all comes down to genetics.

Sorry if I'm not giving you the answers you like. I wasted a lot of time on bad diets or misinformation that I hate for someone else to go through it.

Good luck in your journey. Most important advise is you need to make a lifestyle change. Make changes that you can live with for rest of your life. If you don't, the weight will come back.

I'm by far not an expert in things, but I've been around the block here a time or two and you hear things over and over again. I''m about where you've started and I have gone lower. (obviously gained it back)

For lose skin. Being young helps. But if you've been very overweight for very long then it's harder to not have that skin.
I've been a big girl all my life. so I know my skin is pretty much stretched, and I'm 30, not as young as I once was. Massage with the butter (make sure it has vitamin E) can help it slowly tighten back up. But if the elasticity of your skin has been broken, nothing but surgery can help you.

About spot reduction. I'm in the same boat. I have large thighs and huge arms. I hate sleeves because the shirt has to be a size larger just so my arms can fit. Spot reduction however, is impossible. You have to just lose the weight From what I hear, arms is the last place your body pulls fat from. What you can do is work those areas to tone up the muscle, tones muscle is tight and small, not bulky like men. which might shrink the area a bit. But you can't lose fat in just one spot.

Losing more than 2 pounds a week is max. (unless you are being watched by a Dr.) anymore than that and you risk messing up your metabolism. Think of it this way....the faster you lose the weight, the easier it will be to gain it back.
Also, the faster you lose the weight the better chance your skin will not snap back, because it's just too fast for it to adapt.

I'm sure others will chime in with all the science. But I hope this helps for now . ^.^

Thank you for your honesty hiddenstar. I know what you say about losing weight slowly makes sense. It's just so tempting to hurry along the process. I am going to try and stick to 2lbs per week. At that rate it should take me about 48 weeks to reach my goal. So this time next year I am still very worried about loose skin but it won't put me off dieting.

I don't miss eating junk food at all, that lifestyle is gone to me now. Onwards to the future





Thank you Sakai. Thank you for the advice, it looks like I'll have to be patient. I'm going to get an exercise rope to burn calories as well as using my exercise bike.

Both of your advice has been very helpful so thank you both. It's nice to chat with others who are on the same journey x