Sensible Fitness: Tightening Up Loose Ends
Kids wreak havoc on a woman's figure. Our fitness guru explains how moms can tighten their tummies to pre-tyke status.
Question:
I have plenty of loose skin in my mid-section after having twins. I have been doing crunches but they don't seem to help. What can I do to tighten up the tummy? -Heni
Answer:
Congratulations on your twins Heni, what an incredible gift! While your children will bring a lot of joy to your life, they don't always bring joy to the abdominal area, as you are experiencing first hand. Your skin had to stretch a substantial amount to accommodate carrying your children during pregnancy and this is also a similar problem many obese people have, who have lost considerable weight. When the babies are gone, or the fat is gone after weight-loss, you can be left with loose and saggy skin.
There are many factors that contribute to your skin’s ability to snap back to original tightness and unfortunately, many are outside of your control. First of all, you must make sure that you are only referring about loose skin and not fat or muscles with little or no tone. I often see women confusing these and the approach to solving the problem for each is different. But our focus today is on loose skin, and everything I talk about today will apply to loose skin from pregnancy or from weight loss.
Let's look at the various factors that contribute to your skin’s elasticity. A big one is age! When you are young, your skin is much more elastic and more able to regain it’s original tightness. But as we age, we lose the elasticity and can be left looking like a Shar Pei. Another factor is genetics. We all inherit the good and bad from mom and dad, and skin elasticity is a genetic trait that can definitely be passed along. Lastly, we must consider how much the skin is stretched. Obviously with twins, your skin was stretched much more than usual and this can make it rough for a full recovery.
About the only thing I can suggest is bathing in Preparation H. That was a joke, but I have heard of people using it around their eyes to tighten up the wrinkles! In all honesty, there is very little that can be done about loose skin. Your appearance can be improved by making sure the muscles under the skin are very tone, or by making sure there isn't considerable fat being stored in your mid-section, but for the skin itself, you're out of luck.
This is one of the very few times that I would recommend cosmetic surgery. I recently had Dr. Kurtis Martin, a prominent cosmetic surgeon, on my TV show talking about the removal of loose skin (you can watch the interview at the end of this column.) He recently removed the skin from one of our clients who lost 138 pounds with diet and exercise alone. There was nothing she could do to tighten the skin and its weight was actually causing her back pain.
On thing Dr. Martin feels very strongly about is that you should exhaust all other possibilities before going under the knife and this includes exercising to tone the muscles. After pregnancy, your muscles also get stretched and lose tone or firmness, so it's imperative to regain strength and tone in your abdominals, not only for your appearance but also for the health of your lower back. Your skin lies right on top of your muscles, so you want a firm foundation of muscle or you will get the double-whammy of mushy muscles and loose skin. Not pretty.
I have included a great abdominal exercise from our TV program, Sensible Fitness, featuring Chris Vigran of Indian Hill, who also had twins. She has done an incredible job of regaining her flat stomach and appeared on our program to share her story with other mothers.
Click here, or on the play button below, to see Dr. Martin's advice about loose skin.
Click here, or on the play button below, to learn some abdominal exercises with Vigran, who aslso had twins.
