Hi,

When I was about 6 or 7 I began to gain a lot of weight and my parents took me to a dietician to try and help. It didn't really work as the dietician could only give me tips and not actually enforce any of it. Around nine months ago I was 5 foot 9 and weighed 15 stone and 4 pounds (214 pounds with a bmi of 31.6 and i'm male) and had weighed that much for about a year. At that time I was 14 (I'm 15 now) and was really depressed about it.

The school summer holidays began and I was fed up with the way I looked and I decided I was going to lose the weight once and for all. Now around 9 months later i've lost 60 pounds and weight 11 stone (154 pounds with a bmi of 22.1) and i'm 5 foot 10 inches tall. I still plan to lose another stone to get me down to 10 as i've weighed 11 stone for the past two months, but I think a final boost of will power should do the trick.

My problem is although I fit into 32" waist trousers and have a 38/39" chest I still feel that I look overweight...I have stretch marks all over my chest, arms, stomach and other places and ofcourse loose skin. I dread ever having to take my shirt off anywhere and i'm still as self confident as I was nine months ago. I know a lot of people say because you're young it will just "snap back in place", i've found that it just seems to look even worse. Due to a genetic condition within my family our skin is prone to damage so I doubt I will see improvements.

My major goal was to end up with a flat stomach and it seems as if all the work i've done has just been a waste of time. My parents reccommended doing ab work...but no amount of "toning" would fill the overhang I've got. Although this sounds vain I lost the weight so I could look the way I wanted to, not just be a shell of my former self. It feels as if i've almost been cheated.

So to sum it up I was wondering if anyone has been in my situation before at a young age and if they had any tips on improving your body image or even better helping solve a small bit of the problem. I'm really happy that I lost the weight and there's no doubt about it! However it seems as if i've got rid of one problem and come up against a new one.

Hope this is the right forum to post in!

Thanks for reading!

Oh dude... I feel your pain bro. Everything I've read points to skin recovery as being the luck of the draw, Short of surgery there's not much you can do about it. Keep up the continued efforts, and hopefully in time, the signs will reduce on their own. You have time on your side being only 15, I'm 28, and I'm not likely to have the benefits of youth on my side.

So I know what you mean by feeling cheated. But I don't think my efforts were a waste of time. I can do things that I could only dream of doing things as my former fat self. I can do pull ups, rock climb, fit on carnival rides without being nervous. Stuff like that is rewarding in its own.

Stick with it man, you'll be sorry if you don't.

Maybe try adding muscle? that's my plan as soon as I get my BF% below ten, or i completely stall close to that.

Good luck!

Yeah, they're definately rewarding...I could never ever lift my own body weight before...but I tried a few weeks ago and I was surprised when I could...even if it was only a few pull ups

Yeah I can still remember the first time I tried some pullups... I had been doing pulldowns, and i was stoked to pull off 2!

Now I can crank out 10... which is probably still pretty low but I'll progress in time

Not in quite the same boat as you, but I can tell you a whole lot about stretch marks. I am female, had them at your age and got plenty during two pregnancies (I was huge). The ones I had from when I was your age are hard to even see even when I'm looking for them. I'm 27 by the way, but it hasn't taken until now for them to look like that. They've been harldy noticeable for many years now. The ones from my first pregnancy are already looking so much better, and don't bother me much at all. If I wasn't still heavy I wouldn't mind for people to see them if I were to wear a bathing suit or something. That's how insignificant they are now. They are from a little more than 2 years ago. The ones from my last pregnancy (I have a 3 month old) have already improved somewhat. Trust me, they ALL get better with time. I know that probably isn't what you wanted to hear, but that's the truth of it, at least in my experience. I'm not talking a LONG time either. Give it a year and I'm sure it will be greatly improved. The longer you wait the better they will look. As for the skin, I will keep you posted. I have a lot from having c-sections for both pregnancies (Ask a woman who's had one--she'll tell you lol). I lost a lot of weight after my first child and most of it went away when I got small. I coud have lost another 20 pounds though, so it's hard to tell if even more would have went away. Everything I've read has said that your % body fat matters as well though. After you are done losing weight, get your % body fat low and you are more likely to have greater success. Sorry for the novel, but it sounds like it's a sensitive subject for you and I wanted to give you as much info as I could about my past experience. Hope it helps!

I guess I will just have to wait it out for a bit and decide what to do if it doesn't improve a bit...just found some pictures of me a year ago and I can see that it's not all that doom and gloom as I thought it was!