People often get confused while trying to understand the difference between loose skin and fat skin. Loose skin is more likely to be experienced by people who lose weight. They have loose skin around the thighs, arms, belly, and shoulders, but it becomes hard for them to differentiate it from fat. There could be a variety of factors that may lead to loose skin, such as pregnancy, weight loss, smoking, or illness. However, the fat is basically known as the subcutaneous layer of fat. It’s actually essential to understand the difference between loose skin and fat through a simple pinch test.
What is Fat?
Excess body fat, often misinterpreted as loose skin, is a subcutaneous layer that can never be pinched off. You may need to know various types of fat to understand how they actually work within our body. Some fats are likely to protect the organs, while others may provide energy (Allen, et al, 2020).
Types of Fat and How They Work?
- Subcutaneous Fat
Subcutaneous fat is a fat layer and is hard to pinch. It is more likely to be present in the hips, thighs, and buttocks. However, this kind of fat is not damaging to our bodies.
- Visceral Fat
Visceral fat is a bit of a dangerous kind that deposits around organs and makes up around 10% of the body fat. Because it is associated with high levels of triglycerides, free fatty acids, and cholesterol, visceral fat can induce severe inflammation and insulin resistance (Li, et al, 2020). A sedentary lifestyle contributes the most when it comes to visceral fat. Environmental factors such as exercise and diet contribute to excess fat. However, sometimes it’s only genetics that leads to visceral fat and makes it difficult for a person to lose it.
- White Fat
White adipose cells cause white fat that locates around the organs and under the skin. The function of white fat is to store energy whenever you eat food; white adipose cells store the energy in the form of triglycerides. White fat works by creating vital hormones like leptin and provoking appetite (Michalak, et al, 2021). It essentially contributes to weight balance and metabolism.
- Essential Fat
Essential fat is recognized as a fat support for nerves, internal organs, and brain structure. Your organs are protected by essential fat.
What is Loose Skin?
Skin is a living organ that tends to contract and expands in response to a person’s weight loss or weight gain. After rapid weight loss, loose skin is what is left over. Obese people attempt to reduce weight too quickly and end up getting loose or saggy skin. Therefore, the best course of action to avoid loose skin following weight loss is to gradually reduce your weight. Hence, weight loss is one of the most efficient contributors to loose skin. Research has shown that aging also leads to loose skin as it affects skin elasticity (Brower, et al, 2020). Skin elasticity highly depends upon a diet rich in antioxidants, including vitamins E and C, lycopene, and carotenoids. People consuming a diet rich in antioxidants are more likely to maintain the elasticity of the skin. They are less inclined to drooping skin, even after a certain age.
Causes of Loose Skin
- Weight Loss
The collagen fibers and elastin in your skin may be damaged by stubborn fat deposits, making skin tightening more challenging after reducing weight. When you lose 100 pounds or more, significant areas of drooping skin might develop. It’s possible that extra loose skin will hang off the body after weight loss procedures, including tummy tuck, weight loss surgery, or body contouring surgery. Note that the skin takes some time to adjust after the weight loss, so it is normal to have to wait for 6 months to 1 year to understand if the excessive skin, and respective fat tissue, will be adjusted or if more radical interventions are needed.
- Aging
The skin, over time, becomes more fragile and ultimately saggy. Elastin is basically the elastic tissue that starts reducing in the skin with increasing age and hangs the skin loosely. The surface layer of the skin becomes thinner, and eventually, the skin becomes transparent and loose due to aging (Low, et al, 2021).
What is the Difference Between Loose and Fat Skin?
The key difference between fat skin and loose skin is caused by drastic weight loss and can be pinched; however, fat lies under the skin and cannot be pinched easily. The pinch test is performed, and you probably need to drop some weight if there are more than a few millimeters of skin between your fingers (Lawton, et al, 2019). It does not indicate that you lack loose skin. In other words, you cannot achieve your desired level of skin tightening until you minimize the fat beneath the skin.
Moreover, cardio may burn fat but cannot reduce loose skin. Loose skin seems to be more saggy and wrinkled; whereas fat seems to be hard.
Treatment
Liposuction techniques and aesthetic medicines make it quite easier to treat excess fat these days. Patients today have a variety of options when it comes to treatments to remove difficult-to-remove fat deposits. Fat can be removed by laser technology and liposuction. Liposuction is one of the simplest plastic surgery treatments to recover from since it just requires tiny tubes called cannulas and local anesthesia to be performed (Wu, et al, 2020).
On the other hand, treating extra skin needs an invasive technique. In this situation, a tummy tuck is usually necessary since the loose skin must be taken away before it can be pulled taut once again. Patients who only have a little quantity of loose skin may require a mini tummy tuck, in which the lower abdomen is the only area from which the excess skin is removed (Heller, et al, 2022). It is quite evident that the patient requires to be prepared beforehand for tummy tuck surgery, despite the fact that it’s low risk. People with a significant amount of loose skin need to take care to recover soon from tummy tuck surgery. The recovery requires around 2 months, and one should take complete bed rest for at least 1 week. If you undergo tummy tuck surgery, do not lift heavy objects.
Non-surgical body contouring treatments are also available for fat reduction. The principle of non-surgical fat reduction treatments works by using freezing temperatures to specifically target fat cells and destroy them. The body mass index for body contouring procedures should be no more than 30 (Wu, et al, 2020).
Another way to minimize the loose skin is to workout to increase the muscle tissue under and in the surrounding areas where loose skin is located. It will not reduce the excessive skin but it will fill up a bit more what is under minimizing the loose skin aspect.
Surgical liposuction is more likely to add a few risk factors, such as anesthesia risks, deep vein thrombosis, infection, cardiac and pulmonary complications, fluid accumulation, and damage to structures and organs. However, non-surgical body contouring has lower risk factors as they do not involve anesthesia or surgery and is less costly than liposuction.
Conclusion
It is simple to distinguish between fat and loose skin. It is loose skin if you are able to squeeze a little patch of it and pull it away from the body. Significant weight loss or aging might leave you with loose skin. However, if it is fat, you won’t be able to pinch it. Although loose skin might have the same appearance as fat, it is saggy and does not seem firm, which makes you look a bit aged than your real age. Surgical and non-surgical treatments are available for both fat skin and loose skin.
References
- Allen, M., Schwartz, M., & Herbst, K. L. (2020). Interstitial fluid in lipedema and control skin. Women’s Health Reports, 1(1), 480-487.
- Li, C., Spallanzani, R. G., & Mathis, D. (2020). Visceral adipose tissue Tregs and the cells that nurture them. Immunological Reviews, 295(1), 114-125.
- Michalak, M., Pierzak, M., Kręcisz, B., & Suliga, E. (2021). Bioactive compounds for skin health: A review. Nutrients, 13(1), 203.
- Brower, J. P., & Rubin, J. P. (2020). Abdominoplasty after massive weight loss. Clinics in Plastic Surgery, 47(3), 389-396.
- Low, E., Alimohammadiha, G., Smith, L. A., Costello, L. F., Przyborski, S. A., von Zglinicki, T., & Miwa, S. (2021). How good is the evidence that cellular senescence causes skin ageing?. Ageing Research Reviews, 71, 101456.
- Lawton, S. (2019). Skin 1: the structure and functions of the skin. Nurs. Times, 115, 30-33.
- Wu, S., Coombs, D. M., & Gurunian, R. (2020). Liposuction: Concepts, safety, and techniques in body-contouring surgery. Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine, 87(6), 367-375.
- Heller, L., Menashe, S., Plonski, L., Ofek, A., & Pozner, J. N. (2022). 1470‐nm Radial fiber‐assisted liposuction for body contouring and facial fat grafting. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 21(4), 1514-1522.
- https://www.livestrong.com/article/521947-how-to-determine-if-i-have-fat-or-loose-skin-on-my-abs/