Full Article: http://www.bodyfatguide.com/LooseSkin.htm
Continue losing body fat until skin tightened up.
The human integumentary system (skin) is not a passive layer of tissue that remains stretched out like an empty plastic bag after losing large amounts of bodyweight. Rather, skin is a living organ, actively adapting to the body's internal and external environments. People on extended fasts consuming nothing more than water have demonstrated that the skin can lose 20% or more of its size.
The skin is usually thickest on the soles of the feet, and thinnest on the eyelids. As a typical example of your skin's thickness, pinch the skin on the back of your hand. If it were true, as this woman claims, that the folds of skin hanging off her body had absolutely no fat left underneath to diet away, every inch of this skin would hang in sheets as thin as folds of paper.
However, common observation of the folds of skin in such examples reveals this is not usually the case. Measuring the thickness of these hanging folds of skin provides evidence that there is still a substantial amount of body fat underneath the skin. The skin is not so much "loose" as it is flabby due to excess body fat. Even if some areas have completely thinned out, excess body fat is likely to be stored in adjacent areas that contribute to the overall flabby condition.
Age is claimed to be a factor that reduces skin elasticity and thus reduces the ability of the skin to read just it's size after weight loss. However, many cases of loose skin are found in relatively young people who have lost weight, so the effect of age on skin elasticity is not really a factor in all cases, if at all.
A change in a woman's body shape before and after normal pregnancy is another example of the skin's flexibility to snap back to normal size. By normal pregnancy, however, I mean without large accumulations of excess body fat, unlike the case of the woman above.
Continue losing body fat until skin tightened up.
The human integumentary system (skin) is not a passive layer of tissue that remains stretched out like an empty plastic bag after losing large amounts of bodyweight. Rather, skin is a living organ, actively adapting to the body's internal and external environments. People on extended fasts consuming nothing more than water have demonstrated that the skin can lose 20% or more of its size.
The skin is usually thickest on the soles of the feet, and thinnest on the eyelids. As a typical example of your skin's thickness, pinch the skin on the back of your hand. If it were true, as this woman claims, that the folds of skin hanging off her body had absolutely no fat left underneath to diet away, every inch of this skin would hang in sheets as thin as folds of paper.
However, common observation of the folds of skin in such examples reveals this is not usually the case. Measuring the thickness of these hanging folds of skin provides evidence that there is still a substantial amount of body fat underneath the skin. The skin is not so much "loose" as it is flabby due to excess body fat. Even if some areas have completely thinned out, excess body fat is likely to be stored in adjacent areas that contribute to the overall flabby condition.
Age is claimed to be a factor that reduces skin elasticity and thus reduces the ability of the skin to read just it's size after weight loss. However, many cases of loose skin are found in relatively young people who have lost weight, so the effect of age on skin elasticity is not really a factor in all cases, if at all.
A change in a woman's body shape before and after normal pregnancy is another example of the skin's flexibility to snap back to normal size. By normal pregnancy, however, I mean without large accumulations of excess body fat, unlike the case of the woman above.
