Kennith Smitherman

Skin Tightening Tips

1. Drink plenty of water. Allowing your skin to become dehydrated once can screw up most of your progress. Keep water handy and drink it when your thirsty. Do not put yourself in situations that keep you from having water handy. Theatre, bring water. Class, Bring water. Gym bring water. Don’t go without drinking water just to manipulate the scale. The more water you drink the less water your body wil try to retain. Water helps move waiste products such as toxins from your body, and helps regulate digestion. Water also helps you stay full. Becoming dehydrated severely damages your skin cells.

2.Know your body fat percent. It has become popular to completely blame that pooch on loose skin. Average body fat for men is around 15-17% (20-25%t for women who need more body fat for maternal, health, and breast purposes). Men shouldn’t appear “ripped” until they are around 8% (12-14% for women). If you do not fall in this range then you shouldn’t expect to be completely flat. Maybe you should lose more weight. Estimates show 90% of men who complain about loose skin have a double digit BF%.

3. Don’t lose weight too quickly. Slow weight loss encourages your skin to tighten. For someone under 250lbs 2lbs per week is considered a healthy rate. Realize as you approach your goal this rate will be more difficult to maintain.

4. Give your skin time. It’s not a rubberband, don’t give up on diet goals, or immediately seek plastic surgery. If you are in the single digit body fat % range, your working on a gody weightlifting program, and you have given it a *Edit* [at least a year not "a couple of months"], then see how you feel about the prospect of surgery.

5. Exercise. Doing a thousand crunches a day is ridiculous, but increasing your lean body mass will significantly reduce excess skin. This will also allow you to appear ripped at a higher body fat percentage. The benefits will be most noticeable around your arms and legs.

6. Maintain a healthy nutrition. You need plenty of protein, vitamin A,E, C, and the mineral zinc (all help collagen production), EFA's (Essential Fatty Acids) fish oil or flax seed oil there is a reason they are called ESSENTIAL Fatty Acids.

7. Know what to avoid.
• Stress – Causes your body to take in excess oxygen and to produce free radicals, which tear down the cells in your skin. This damage is most visibly seen in wrinkles and saggy skin.
• Smoking – Smoking, as with stress, causes your body to produce free radicals, which tear down the cells in your skin.
• Tanning – Developing a tan is your bodys natural defense against over exposure to UV rays. Think of a tan as your body’s homemade sunscreen. Now that you know what a tan is. It hurts your skins ability to repair its self by damageing your direct DNA.
• Try to think of it like this if scabs or scars were sexy would you cut yourself to get them? Then why damage your skin intentionally.

There is only anecdotal evidence behind the following tips
I will try to add more tips to this list, and feel free to comment for or against any of these tips, and include your own.

8. Wear tight fitting material like spandex as workout clothes or under workout clothes. It helps keep skin cells from breaking down as much while you’re exercising.

9. Lightly scrub your skin with a loofah, or another product. Another name for this would be exfoliation. Your body naturally disposes of old skin cells, and produces new one oily skin holds on to the skin, dry skin accumulates dead skin quickly. So by using a loofah or similar product, you encourage cell growth in your skin. I use a towel and scrub back and forth over my abdomen after every shower, I think it helps, but that could just be the weight-loss.

10. Rub coco butter and vitamin E cremes on your skin focusing on your worst areas. Another oil I have been reading a lot about is Bio Oil (From the site you can read reviews, and buy some. You can also purchase it from Walgreens). Bio Oil seems to take a few months, but it is good for blending stretchmarks and scars, or so I have read.

11. Aloe Vera extract and yeast extract hep with the production of collagen.

12.Take a long bath in pure sea salt. I know this used to me done for horses after races, and pro-athletes to help repair damaged muscle tissue. It may be a result of loosing too much sodium. Kinda why Gatorade was invented. Sodium baths also causes your body to absorb magnesium, which is beneficial in the synthesis of Hyaluronic Acid.

13. Hyaluronic Acid, basically helps with cell connectivity. Imagine your moving all your stuff, if you put it in boxes you can stack it neatly into a low mass area. However, if you don't box it up then it will take up more space. Think of Hyaluronic Acid as the tape keeping your boxes closed. You deplete and resynthesize 1/3 of your bodies supply of Hyaluronic Acid every day. You can take a Hyaluronic Acid supplement, or you can take magnesium to help with natural synthesis.