The c word is repulsive
If the contestants are capable of losing X amount of weight, I think its close to 50% of their starting weight than the show pays for them to have plastic surgery to remove all of the excess skin.
Wow.
Sadly, it doesn't, although everybody is different in how their skin responds. I believe that the more gradually you lose weight, the less likely you are to have this issue.
What I wonder is that if you lose so much weight in such a relatively short space of time, what happens to the skin that once held that weight? Does it ever shrink back too?
It varies by the person, some get lucky and the skin tightens up but most have to have the surgery to have the excess skin removed. I am in the unlucky crowd as this January it will be 4 years for me (well 5 from when I started in January of 2009) and I still have 25 pounds of excess skin that will likely never go away without surgery. I was 420 at my heaviest and 187 at my lowest (October of 2011) right now I am currently 215 and been at that weight for the last year (I think if I went back to a more running regime then my triathlon training I would drop back down again, a lot of added muscle in my legs from the biking and upper body from the swimming). I was 301 In January of 2010 so that's 4 years there and I was around 245 by August of 2010 so 3 and half years and still dealing with the excess skin.
The surgery is expensive, can be dangerous as it is involving a large portion of your body and can be susceptible to infection and takes you out of commission for months as use heal.
It varies by the person, some get lucky and the skin tightens up but most have to have the surgery to have the excess skin removed. I am in the unlucky crowd as this January it will be 4 years for me (well 5 from when I started in January of 2009) and I still have 25 pounds of excess skin that will likely never go away without surgery. I was 420 at my heaviest and 187 at my lowest (October of 2011) right now I am currently 215 and been at that weight for the last year (I think if I went back to a more running regime then my triathlon training I would drop back down again, a lot of added muscle in my legs from the biking and upper body from the swimming). I was 301 In January of 2010 so that's 4 years there and I was around 245 by August of 2010 so 3 and half years and still dealing with the excess skin. The surgery is expensive, can be dangerous as it is involving a large portion of your body and can be susceptible to infection and takes you out of commission for months as use heal.
Wow, you were 420. That's amazing weight loss. If you don't mind me asking how did you get to 420, yeah I know the simple answer is that you ate a lot, but what's the more complex one?
I gained 10-20 pounds a year for about a decade, nothing major no like ballooning up it was just a slow process of not eating right and never exercising. I was around 190 when I was 20 and worked physical jobs then went to office jobs and I just never worked out plus I like food So just a slow process of putting on the weight. I honestly didn't do much dieting to lose the weight either, I gave up soda was all and just started walking in the beginning a mile and half a day (in 2009 I walked that for 354 days out of 365 and starting running in December of 2009 which was mostly just the last quarter mile at first). I still eat like a fatman but I also do 10-12 hours a week of triathlon training (last week for example I ran 30 miles, biked 100 and swam 2) My goal is to do Boulder or Lake Tahoe full ironman in 2015, I did my first 70.3 half ironman in May of this year. If you find something you love and I really love triathlons in really doesn't feel like exercise any more, it becomes more of a lifestyle then a workout.
That's really cool, congrats on your half IM. I've done IM France and a Double IM, so if you ever want a sounding board re training or the psychology of the whole thing. Just drop me a line.
Barking Mad To Run
I did not to lose a lot of weight when I first started running. But I did, unfortunately. I was at around 200 and I wanted to be around 170 or so. Plus, my room-mate - I was in the Air Force at this time - had challenged me to go for a run with him, betting me a case of beer I could not do the whole run (3 miles). Well, I just happened to be out of beer, so....
I made the whole run, but was really heaving and gasping for breath by the end of it. See, the Air Force, unlike the Army and other services, had no mandatory exercise program at that time, and we didn't go out and run regularly like most of those Army and Marine folks did, in the Air Force, you pretty much were responsible for keeping yourself in good condition. That run showed me how pathetically out of shape I was. So I began a regular running program. And the weight began to come off. And then it REALLY began to come off and I dropped down to about 150 or so...and said "wait a minute, I shouldn't be losing this much...." and then found out I had cancer at that time. That is not a weight loss method I would recommend.
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Theodore Roosevelt
kittenkat the only things that scare me about the ironman are A the swim and B how my body will react to being out there. I am about a 7 hour half ironmaner right now (mostly because of how slow my swim is) so that equates to probably close to 15-16 hours for the full, granted I don't plan on doing it for a year and a half so I will be faster by then. The big thing is my swim I don't have any trouble doing the distance I am just slow for my HiM my swim time was 1:05 and I really don't want to spend 2 hours or more in the water for a full. I have found a coach for next year and am going to work on my swim a lot in the next year. So that means I am going to be out there a long time right now. When I started triathlons my running was my strongest discipline as I was coming from a running background having already done 2 marathons before I did my first triathlon. Now my biking would be my strongest I have spent a lot of time working on my biking this year. I have another HiM in May and I hope to have my bike under 3 hours for that. I'd like to get my swim down to 50 minutes and as long as I don't blow up on the run like I did this year (I cut my foot on something on the walk to the swim and my feet were bleeding pretty bad and I was cramping) I should be able to log maybe a 6 1/2 hour HiM. But I love talking to other triathletes as its were my passion is now.
And Scotty you gotta do what works for you right, I am glad you kicked its butt though.
My feelings are that the swim proportionally is the least of your worries. Just work on your technique so you get to the point of being able to be inside the cut off and conserve energy.
It's good that you're strong on the bike, what I urge people to focus on is being able to run off the bike. So always follow a bike session with a run.
You'll be fab
I do more bricks then I care to admit because I am too lazy to wake up for a run so I do a bike to run brick like 2-3 times a week