On Skin

Skin is the largest organ of the human body. Some of it’s functions are waterproofing the rest of our organs, it is the first line of defense against bacteria and other organisms, it acts as a cooling system via sweat, and it delivers information to us via tactile sense. Our skin grows as we do, and yet always wants to remain elastic so that when needed, we can store more fat, and for childbearing purposes in women.

If you’ve stored so much excess fat that your skin is stretched taut, it will grow larger to accommodate. Some women even find that if they do not return to their pre-pregnancy size fast enough after giving birth, that skin around their abdomen has grown in anticipation of needing to expand from the larger set point.

There is no path for reducing skin via natural means. No type of diet, or cream, or fancy red light application that will get skin to grow smaller.

Autophagy has been cited by adherents of Intermittent Fasting as way to get your skin to consume itself. This is total nonsense. Your body will consume fat, then muscle, and finally as it approaches death, during starvation it will begin to consume organs. Your teeth will fall out before you see a reduction in skin size via this method. It is possible for some who’ve been heavy for a short period of time, to go through massive weight loss and not be burdened with excess skin. This is quite rare though, and with massive weight loss, you can generally expect some excess skin.

The means we have today to reduce excess skin, is by having a doctor cut it off. This is the only way.

When I began loosing weight, no one told me any of this, and I waited patiently for my skin to shrink. When it didn’t, I tried mineral wraps, lotions, red lights and other wildly useless schemes.

Loose skin can be quite jarring. For so long, I’d had as my dietary goal, “normalcy.” And when I found out that this wasn’t in the cards, I gave up. I eventually knew that despite having excess skin, I felt better at a lesser weight, so I lost weight again and got some skin cut off. I then gained over 50lbs recovering from that surgery. It was brutal.

I have never been perfectly comfortable in my skin, that incudes this exact moment in time.
But life has been much better for me at the size I’m at now, so I forgive the excess skin I have and try my best to accept it.

For more on this topic, please listen to the American Glutton episodes with Will Sasso and John Glaude.