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Stretch Marks and Weight Loss You may have heard that rapid weight loss may cause stretch marks. Strictly speaking that’s not true. Stretch marks appear on your skin when your skin is stretched beyond its ‘holding capacity’. They may become more noticeable when you lose weight, but the actual damage was done long before. How Stretch Marks Form Your skin is made up of three layers, each with a ‘role’ to play in protecting your body. The outer layer, the epidermis, is what most people think of when you say ‘skin’. The epidermis is the outer protective layer of your skin. It’s about .5 to 1 mm thick – that’s just over 1/8 of an inch. The job of the epidermis is to keep germs and other harmful things out of your body. While stretch marks eventually show up as scars that mar the epidermis, that’s not where the damage actually is. The bottom layer of your skin is the subcutaneous tissue. It’s made up mostly of fatty tissue, and its job is to insulate your body and to absorb shocks from outside that might damage your organs. The thickness of the subcutaneous layer is what gives your skin a ‘plump’, healthy look. Generally, as people age, that fatty layer of the skin thins, causing skin to sag and wrinkle. Between the two layers is the dermis, the thickest layer of your skin. The dermis is the ‘working’ layer of your skin. It’s made up of a tight ‘net’ of collagen and elastin, two proteins that form fibers. They’re both vitally important to your skin’s health. Collagen provides structure, and elastin provides elasticity. In a nutshell, the more collagen there is in the skin, the more firm and youthful it appears, and the less prone it is to damage. All three layers together are meant to form a protective ‘envelope’ for your entire body. Ideally, all three layers ‘grow’ at the same speed. Sometimes, though, the subcutaneous tissue and/or the underlying muscles grow at a rate that the dermis can’t match. When that happens, the collagen and elastin fibers in the dermis are stretched tighter and tighter, and eventually, they may separate and tear entirely. This happens most often to teens during puberty, during pregnancy, to bodybuilders who bulk up their muscles, and when you gain weight rapidly. When you lose weight, those stretch marks may become more obvious. In addition, your skin may sag, or lose its tone. Those are all the result of the damage done to the dermis when the skin was originally stretched. Obviously, the best way to avoid stretch marks showing when you lose weight is to prevent them in the first place.
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