The frustration that comes after you hit your goal but still don’t have the body you envisioned can be hard to manage. After months, perhaps even years of healthy eating and exercise, you want nothing short of a toned, smooth body. But no matter how hard you work, sometimes your body doesn’t cooperate.
Your frustration is understandable. We all deserve a reward for our hard work and perseverance. But what if it’s not fat you see? What if it’s loose skin instead? Telling the difference between fat and loose skin can be difficult, so we want to help you understand how they differ and what you can do about it.
The good news is that whether you’re dealing with fat or loose skin, there are solutions. However, it all starts with understanding the difference between the two.
Appearance is the most basic way to tell the difference between fat and loose skin. Loose skin typically looks like a thin sheet of sagging fabric that hangs or bunches up on the body. It’s often wrinkled or creased and it doesn’t feel solid as fat does. Fat, on the other hand, appears as a thick layer of padding that feels solid when you press it.
Weight loss is a common factor for making your skin lose its elasticity and become loose and saggy (14).
When you gain weight, you’re generally ‘expanding’ and your skin must stretch to contain your larger size. The extra fat from weight gain usually lies on top of the muscle and right under the skin. The more fat you have, the more your skin will expand.
Once you start losing weight, your skin also starts to shrink to fit your new smaller size. However, if and when you lose a significant amount of weight in a short period of time, your skin cannot keep up with the change and it becomes weaker, resulting in reduced collagen fibers and structure. (8).
If you’ve determined that the extra layer of skin you see is loose skin, there are several things you can do to remedy the situation.
The first step is to ensure that you’re taking the necessary steps to maintain the muscle mass that you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Performing regular resistance training and eating a balanced diet will help you keep the shape you have.
If these steps don’t seem to be doing enough, you may want to consider surgery. Surgical procedures such as tummy tucks and body lifts are designed to remove excess skin, which results in a smoother and more toned appearance.
If you’re looking for something less invasive, certain laser treatments can be used to treat loose skin too.
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What many of us call stubborn fat is actually just fat that has been stored in the body for a long time and is resistant to dieting and exercise.
There’s no definitive answer to what causes this type of fat, but common causes include:
If you have any concerns, please consult a healthcare professional.
If you’re dealing with stubborn fat, there are several things you can do to reduce it.
The first is to make sure you’re following a healthy, balanced diet and getting plenty of exercise. Diet and exercise can help reduce fat deposits in many areas of the body, although it may take time to get rid of stubborn fat.
The next step is to consider non-invasive treatments that are safe and effective (10). It’s always recommended that you consult your healthcare provider beforehand.
While a holistic approach to your lifestyle and diet can be highly beneficial, are there any specific things that will help you burn fat the most?
Food and diet can help with fat-burning. Protein-rich foods are the best for fat burning. This macronutrient increases levels of the satiety (appetite-reducing) hormones in the body, which can help prevent you from overeating (4, 6). It’s important to remember that the body stores any extra calories it doesn’t use as fat.
The body also uses energy to digest different nutrients, which is known as diet-induced thermogenesis. Protein utilizes approximately 20 to 30 percent energy to digest and metabolize. It only requires 0 to 3 percent energy to metabolize fats and 5 to 10 percent to metabolize carbs (2).
Exercise combined with diet is most effective for fat burning, i.e. calorie burning. To burn fat, you need to do both cardio and strength training.
Strength training, aka resistance or weight training, helps increase muscle mass in the body. More muscle means your body is constantly burning more calories whether you’re working out or not, which can contribute to fat burning. Research on strength training has shown that this form of exercise is good for overall fat loss and also visceral fat loss (aka belly fat loss) (12).
Cardio is also fantastic for fat burning. Strength training might help burn fat long after the workout is done, but cardio burns a large number of calories during the actual workout. Research has shown that cardio or aerobic exercise can help reduce belly fat, waist circumference, and belly fat while also increasing muscle mass (3, 5).
Belly fat is generally harder to get rid of than other kinds of body fat, but it is not impossible to do away with. Some tips that can help you reduce and eventually remove belly fat are:
Yes, it does. Contrary to popular belief, sit-ups, crunches, and other core-specific workouts are not the only exercises for flattening the stomach. Full-body cardio workouts such as walking, jogging, dancing, HIIT, and Tabata work just as well, if not even better. If you start walking just 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week and improve your diet, you’ll start to see positive changes in just a couple of weeks.
While “stubborn fat” gets a lot of attention due to it being the most visible and aesthetically unfavorable type of fat, it’s important to remember that visceral fat is just as dangerous. This type of fat is located deep in the abdominal cavity and surrounds organs such as the stomach, intestines, and liver.
Too much of this kind of fat can drastically increase your risk of serious health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes (1). To reduce visceral fat, make sure you’re following a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep.
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The saying “prevention is better than cure” is especially true when it comes to managing your weight. Keeping your body weight at a healthy level will help you avoid loose skin and stubborn fat in the future.
You probably know the run-of-the-mill advice for losing weight – eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly – but here are some other tips that can help you stay on track:
Read more: Counting Macros for Weight Loss: Pros, Cons, and How-To (A Beginner’s Guide)
In most cases, yes, it does. As seen above, weight loss, particularly drastic weight loss, is the biggest cause of loose skin. Pregnancy is another cause of loose skin in women and it can affect those of a healthy weight, petite, and even overweight women.
Not necessarily. Stretch marks appear when the skin stretches and this can be due to multiple reasons, including:
Stretch marks just mean that your skin has expanded to accommodate a newer body or muscle size. If you lose the fat or muscle at a slower/healthy rate, chances are that your skin will not become loose and saggy.
With small amounts of loose skin, it may be beneficial to follow general strategies to improve the state of your skin, such as consuming collagen-rich foods. However, if your loose skin causes you significant discomfort, it’s best to consult a healthcare professional to determine the best treatment for you.
According to the American Academy of Dermatology, depending on how significant the loose skin is and the tightening procedure of choice, you can see changes in as little as 2 months(9).
There is no scientific answer to this. Some people lose stomach fat faster than others and so the answer may lie in genetics and where you generally store the most fat.
The main difference between bloating and fat is that the former generally occurs after meals and the roundness of the stomach isn’t consistent – it comes and goes – while with the latter, the roundness of the stomach is consistent and it’s typically accumulated over a period of time.
In conclusion, loose skin and stubborn fat can be incredibly frustrating to deal with, but there are treatments available that can help you achieve your desired results. Whether through lifestyle changes or medical treatments, you should take the time to figure out what works best for you so you can start to feel more confident in your own skin.
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