Hi there.
So, thanks to IF I’ve managed to drop about 50kg/110lbs. In hindsight I may have been going at it too hard and lost the weight too fast, because now I’m left with some loose skin. Especially around my lower abdomen.
Now, I’ve been reading about using IF to induce autophagy, which should help for reducing loose skin. However, there seems to be conflicting opinions about how long you need to fast to reach this state and get the desired effect.
Does anyone have any experience with using IF to tighten up loose skin?
Right now I’m following a 18/6 schedule (Some times 20/4, depending on how it fits into my day) 5 to six days per week. Would it be better to do less frequent but longer fasts to see the effects I’m looking for?
Also, my body-fat% is now down so somewhere between 5% and 10%, depending on the measurement technique used. So, I want to start focusing more on building muscle mass, which will of course require an overall caloric surplus. But will that effect my bodies ability to go into autophagy?
I hope that someone has some insights that can help.
The skin stretches when you gain the weight. The stretching becomes visible when you lose the weight. Some bounces back which is why people think that losing slowly helps minimize the loose skin. It doesn’t. It just looks that way.
Building muscle will fill some of the skin out. Time will help, but this depends on age and various other things personal to you. I’ve read a few things about longer fasts helping with loose skin. You can Google this. And of course there’s surgery. This leaves massive scaring and it’s a painful recovery so I’d try long fasts, building muscle and time first.
You can do a long fast in between building muscle. You’ll lose some of your muscle but not all. There’s simply no easy solution here. Gaining weight has such a massive impact on our bodies. I wish more people considered this before they choose to gain vs after.