ok. now for the most embarrassing part but I’m sharing in the hope that it could help someone else.
I started in March a little heavy at 195. Around 10 days into my continuous extended fast, I took this picture - it shows a little loose skin, but not too bad: 3/14/2019
If this is too much, I’ll remove the pics and try to describe it… I tried to be as specific to this area and as presentable as possible, like a medical setting.
but here’s what I look for as measures of loose skin change:
- Bellybutton - you can see the depth of the sag
- Rib to Hip - those stripes on the side
- Lower belly - stripes on the bottom
I also tried to take the pictures while in a vacuum since this was reasonably consistent and showed the most loose skin effect.
I went through the rest of the extended fast and then refeed and a week later in the cyclic phase, I took this pic: 4/13/2019
I had lost more weight and I think this actually shows that the loose skin was getting worse. Basically, I was losing fat faster than skin again.
This is when I tried something different (I’ll share at the end) and 5 days later 4/18/2019
and I think I’m seeing some definite improvement. It might just be my eyes but I think it got better.
Around 3 days later 4/21/2019:
I think it’s better still…
Then 4 days later 4/25/2019:
Here it looks like it’s getting a little worse, but that’s when I started the berberine/bitter mellon and I think the higher GKI was having a short term effect of losing more fat than skin - that’s even though I actually saw a weight gain from eating while using the supplements.
And finally the last day before breaking the fast: 4/27/2019:
The side skin is loose but looking like it’s tightening. The bellybutton looks less deep and the lower belly wrinkles looks smaller (to me).
I’ll let you be the judges of whether this is real progress or not, but here’s what I think:
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Without collagen (since I was vegan), I think I had a hard time rebuilding skin. I think autophagy worked and adding more external food protein was useful, but I suspect that having more direct collagen in the diet may have been more effective.
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It’s hard to measure loose skin when fat and water is fluctuating - cyclic fasting made this harder.
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I think the skin is more than just the outer layer. My experience is that the muscle underneath is just as important.
Ok - so what did I do?
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I started vacuum training. You can find plenty of videos on this and the primary intent is to reduce the waist overall. But I found that tightening the muscle underneath actually helped tighten the skin too.
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I started using a waist trainer. It’s basically a belt that I wrap around my waist tightly after performing a vacuum. This basically forces the skin into a smaller volume.
That’s what I did. I don’t think the extended fasting helped me lose loose skin. I think the training and waist volume reduction worked better.
I am uncomfortable sharing these pictures, but I promised I would - so there they are… for now.