Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | HELP! Looking For NON-Surgical Solution For Excessive Arm Flab Due To Weight Loss

Alright so I did a touch of research on this for you, though I'm sure you've already done tons yourself.

It seems that generally after a lot of weight loss the skin will be a little stretched but that some elasticity will come back to tighten it up a little or a lot (i.e. on pregnant women).

It also seems that having a lot of extra skin is generally the result of losing *weight* but not changing your body composition - i.e you're losing muscle too, not just fat. What this is saying is that people who rush to lose weight really quickly by slashing their calories and not doing any resistance (weight) training are, most likely, losing muscle and not (a lot of) fat, thus the inter-cell fat remains and they get that droopy skin look.

But quite honestly, I don't think that quite applies to someone like you who has lost *so* much weight. Generally the more weight you have to lose the faster it comes off, especially at first. Plus, you ARE weight training, paying attention to your body composition (body fat %) and quite obviously you lost a lot of fat, not just muscle. I think the sheer amount of weight that you lost (and are continuing to lose) is going to kind of make this kind of thing slightly inevitable, and probably that much more difficult to get rid of - as your trainer implied. (Sigh, probably not what you wanted to hear.)

So, keep up the weight training *definitely*. From what I've read, most surgeons will have you wait a year after you're done losing the weight anyway to see how much your skin naturally tighens up; I think that you should expect this to happen to some degree - maybe quite a bit (especially with yoru weight training). And like you said, if you're not done losing the weight you shouldn't consider the sugery yet.

As for the insurance thing, I found this on a Yahoo! Health site: "Insurance may cover the surgery if there are associated health risks, such as repeated bacterial or fungal infections in overhanging skin folds." I don't know if that's an issue/option or whatever... ???

I remember watching an episode of Oprah a while back (a WHILE back, after she had just lost all that weight) swinging her arms folds around proudly for all to see on TV

(But then, she's filthy rich and probably got the surgery eventually, right? lol)

Anyway, hope that helps, but sorry I couldn't be more helpful

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