As most of you know, I am a mother of two amazing little blessings. Gavin - 3 and Marlee - almost 1! I gained over 45lbs when i was pregnant with my son and close to 40lbs with my daughter. I don't have a super small frame but boy did i stretch!! Gavin was an 8.2lb baby so my tummy was by no means small. Along with the stretching came LOTS of ugly stretchmarks. I don't like to call them "tiger stripes" or "stripes that i've earned" but i try to remind myself that not everyone is blessed with super perfect skin. Genetics played a huge roll in stretch marks for me. All the women in my family have them.
Mother of two and she gained 75lbs with each pregnancy.
What I want to talk about here is the excess skin you are left with after losing weight and particularly after pregnancy. Some things i hear too often about mothers like myself who have WORKED OUR BUTTS OFF TO GET WHERE WE'RE AT are "you just have good skin", "not everyone is a freak of nature like you", "its impossible for skin to go back to the way it was before pregnancy". WRONG WRONG WRONG. I want to slap these people in the face ((no pun intended)).
Mother of FOUR! - Tamarra Hay
Here's a link to her blog. I LOVE HER! And all of the other FITMAMAs on there.
Our skin is extremely elastic and can stretch, grow, expand, and contract to a degree. Think about how much it stretches during pregnancy or massive weight gain. How long you carry the extra weight may influence how much the skin will become taut after weight loss - 9 month pregnancy V.S. 9 years of being overweight. How fast you gained the weight and how fast you lose it will also come into play. Rapid weight loss will not allow the skin to resume to normal this is why it is important to lose weight slowly. ( I know that is NOT what you wanted to hear) 1-2lbs a week is ideal when in comes to weight loss anything after that you are most likely also shredding lean tissue.
Nutrition has A LOT to do with your skin. You can do crunches all day long but if you are not eating a clean diet to shed the fat that is sitting on top of your abdomen, you will not get results. Another reason i recommend getting your body fat measured! Lose skin is one thing but still having a lot of extra body fat is another. Suppose you start at 36% body fat and drop down to 25%. You should feel GREAT about this accomplishment but you shouldn't be worrying about the lose skin just yet. Although 25-30% body fat is considered "average" for a woman you most likely will not see muscle definition until your body fat is in the mid to lower teens (15%). To achieve this you need to become LEAN and continue to focus on strength training to build lean muscle.
I strongly discourage tummy tucks/lipo until you have done ALL you could possibly do. Lowering your body fat will take time. Gaining lean muscle may take even longer! But it IS possible. I know of a woman who got a tummy tuck and lipo before even trying to lean out and lose all the excess body fat. I guarantee if she were in her low to mid teens in body fat before her surgery the surgeon wouldn't have needed to do lipo (removal of fat) because there wouldn't have been enough there to begin with. It is remarkable how much your skin can tighten up once your body fat goes from "average" to "excellent" and even more so when LEAN body mass increases.
So the key to getting tighter skin is to lose more body fat, in a sensible way, improve your muscle to fat ratio and shoot for BETTER than "average". Only after you reach your body fat goal should lipo or a tummy tuck even cross your mind. So please, don't take the easy way out. Work your tush off every day, eat right, and i promise, you WILL see results.
THIS ^^^ IS ME! If i can do it, so can you!
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