Obesity Discussion Forums

[Hey Man]

I am very overweight (350 pounds) and in the process of losing weight through diet and exercise, however all of my weight has mostly gathered directly onto my stomach and it's gonna take a lot to even begin making it look remotely flat again. I don't belong to a gym, but I have an eliptical for cardio, some dumbells, tension bands and that's pretty much it.

I was told that any sort of ab exercise like crunches or sit ups is only going to make my stomach bigger or build muscle around the fat. I was told that I need to burn the fat and shrink my stomach through cardio - before trying to do ab exercises. Would this be correct for those here that know?

If anyone has any advice or exercise routines that they could recommend for a beginner to help get my big ass stomach to shrink, I would greatly appreciate it.

One other thing I am worried about is that the stomach won't go back and the skin might hang. I really really hope that I can avoid this and I have heard people say that skin can bounch back, but I have seen obese people lose the weight and they just have hanging skin all over the place. Is it because they lost the weight too quickly or not properly. For example - did the people on The Bigger Loser who lost the most weight probably have skin removed? I am as big as them.

I am 36 years old and generally have good skin in that it's still generally firm despite the weight gain and stretch marks. However one portion of my body is not firm - I have developed a little pouch of skin under my stomach which is gross and hangs loosely. I pray to my personal God that once my stomach shrinks, so with this excess pouch of skin. However if I do have to have an operation to remove this pouch of skin, I can live with that.

I thank you for any advice or stories from people with a similar situation.

[Obesity Discussion]

You were told correctly, except the part about building muscle around the fat......the muscle will be underneath the fat, and you won't see it. Your stomach will only really get "bigger" if you're doing a lot of weighted ab exercises. That being said, losing fat is really what you should be focusing on a lot more than doing ab work. That's what is going to shrink your stomach.

Likely if you weigh 350lbs there could be some stretched skin/stretch marks. Only one way to find out.....and genetics will paly a factor.

[alohanema]

beside exercise, you should change your habit of eating! Hope you will get your ideal net weight!