Autophagy?

(Geoffrey) #1

Does Autophagy help tighten up excess skin after you’ve lost weight? It seems I heard something about that somewhere but I can’t remember for sure.
I’ve seen many before and after pictures of people who have lost a lot of weight and they don’t have a bunch of wrinkly floppy skin and most of them are young and claim that they’ve done nothing special to tighten up their skin.
For us mature folks, has anyone experienced a tightening of their skin or do you have stretched out skin that just sorta hangs there all wrinkly?
Mine is really starting to get wrinkly and sagging as I lose weight.
Any tips or tricks?

(Michael) #2

My skin was visibly looser last year. It is slowly tightening up. Autophagy is it, and while fasting gets you into it for longer periods, vigorous exercise also does. I did a lot of fasting at first, and the loose skin is leaving at about the same rate without fasting as I am exercising regularly ( swim or weight lifting). Protein restriction can get rid of loose skin as well, but like fasting, both can cause lean muscle deterioration, which may not be ideal.

(Doug) #3

It varies a lot from person to person. I think it’s mostly genetically determined; that there’s really not much you can do to hack it. Among people who are big fasters and who lost 100 - 200 lbs, some almost never had loose skin - it seemed to be consumed as fast or nearly as fast as they ‘shrunk.’ Others ended up needing surgery to remove excess skin. Some were in the middle - it took a good while but eventually the body consumed all or almost all of it.

Dr. Fung once said that among his patients, none had ever needed surgery after substantial weight loss. I don’t know…

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

It depends on how fast you are losing fat. I lost 80 lbs./36 kg slowly enough that my skin never really got loose. However, Dr. Fung used to have a picture of a guy on his Web site, who had lost his fat so swiftly that he had a great deal of loose skin hanging over his trousers. Dr. Fung said that by appropriate fasting, he was able to tighten up all that loose skin without cosmetic surgery. The before and after pictures were stunning. I don’t know if they are still up.

So anyway, it appears that autophagy can indeed tighten up loose skin. Whether keto itself would take care of it (I bet it would, albeit slowly) or whether one would have to fast (probably necessary, to get reasonably quick results) is an open question (but you can tell what I think from the parenthetical comments, lol!).

(Geoffrey) #5

Well, 43 pounds in 160 days is pretty fast for me.
I intermittent fast just by virtue of the fact that I eat omad quite often these days. I wonder if that will be enough.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

So is your skin getting really loose and starting to hang? Or are you just wondering?

(Robin) #7

Mine “apron” came on in the first year when I lost the most weight. Now, after 3 years…. It is much smaller. I didn’t even notice it happening. But it’s much better and I expect it will continue improving… at a snail’s pace.

(Joey) #8

Yup, us mature folk slow down in most respects - autophagy included.

My experience tracks with most of the comments above. Reducing excess skin tissue takes longer when we’re older.

FWIW, I definitely look older in the face on keto, since I don’t have the same amount of water/inflammation to lessen the wrinkles and “fullness” from facial fat. I don’t expect this to change.

But as many have said: I’d rather be healthy and look like crap than the other way around. :vulcan_salute:

(KM) #9

Got me some fancy crepey batwings. I’d still rather wear 3/4 sleeves and weigh 40 pounds less! (But still hoping this will improve.)

(Bob M) #10

100 % true I think. A “fat” face is what I use to determine if someone has issues with things like wheat. Take that trigger or those triggers away, and the face gets thinner.

If only that worked on belly fat…

(Geoffrey) #11

Yes sir, it’s getting loose and wrinkly in places. And it’s embarrassing to say but the moobs don’t appear to be shrinking either.

(Geoffrey) #12

Yeah I was afraid of that but it is what it is. As the others have said, I’d rather be healthy.

I’ve noticed that in my face as well. People were always surprised at my age and I attributed that to my fuller face.
Now if I look my age I want them to be surprised by how fit I look and how active I am.

(Joey) #13

Ditto. No one marvels at my age anymore. But I do offer that I’m feeling far better in my 60s than I ever did in my 30s. Health is good.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #14

They won’t, for some time yet. But it will happen.

Patience is a virtue, or so they say. My motto is “I want what I want when I want it,” but instead, I get what I get when I get it. :frowning_face:

(Robin) #15

Oh yeah!!! bat wings! Great description.
Occasionally I will look to see what that is flapping beside me…
and it’s me!

I’m old enough, I truly don’t care. I go sleeveless…
in public, gasp! Horrors! LOLOL
The thing is, no one is looking and no one cares.
There’s something to be said for women becoming invisible after a certain age.
It’s like “permission granted!”

(KM) #16

:rofl: I know, I know. But The Grandma Arms! Good God, When Did I Grow Grandma Arms?

#17

Jason Fung started that by saying “none of his patients have loose skin”. I say BS, some people have that problem, some don’t. Getting in optimal protein for the aminos helps, Collagen on top of that can help, and of course then there’s way to cheat the process, which I’m all about, but most aren’t.

(Doug) #18

That was my feeling too - he’d already had literally thousands of patients by that time, many with substantial weight loss, like 30 - 100 lbs. Had to be some loose skin in there somewhere.

#19

I agree too. It can’t be magical enough to solve the problems for everyone, no matter the fat-loss, age and other individual things. At least I would think so, I don’t know much about autophagy I admit.