Hi everyone. I have a question about increasing collagen--I think that's what I need to do, anyway. I've been slowly getting to a healthy weight for my body over the past year and everything was going great until I got around the 70 pounds lost mark. At about that point I started to see that my skin wasn't snapping back as it was in all the previous months (my body just magically responded to the raw foods and I lost weight and everything went back to "normal". Now I'm at about 83 pounds lost and I feel like my skin (especially on my face and neck) is sagging a bit. It's not horrible, or anything, but on my face and neck it kind of makes me look older than 41. :-/ I'm definitely consuming enough "healthy" oils and fats, but is there something I can be doing to help my skin elasticity improve? Should I be moisturizing with something special? Currently I only use coconut oil every once in a while. My skin tends to be dry, even though my fat consumption is high enough (it's too high, actually) and I drink plenty of water.

Any advice is appreciated.

Lots of love to all of you,

Gypsy

intensive exercise will produce HGH which will help lay more collagen down, as long as nutrition and calories are sufficient.

If you stay on a low fat raw vegan diet for a few years, the loose skin will just go away. Or if you are in a hurry, go on a supervised water fast, and your body will just eat up that loose skin in a few weeks. Either way, no extra fat consumption is necessary, in fact, the less fat you eat, the faster your body can work on removing the excess skin.

Your old skin, which was build on your pre raw diet, is saggy because it was built on inferior cooked foods. But as those skin cells rebuild themselves with nutritious raw foods, the new skin cells will be much more elastic and healthier.

Jono, I guess that's reason enough to start doing some fun, intensive exercise! ;-)

Thanks, Bryan, for your comment. Maybe I'll start with cutting back on fats right now and see what happens. I'm not into taxing my body (which is already working at, and doing amazing with, recovering its health) so an all-water fast is probably not something I'd try right now. It might be something I try in the future, however. I've done the lemonade cleanse before and loved it (but gained a lot of weight after it--as a cooked vegan). I felt energetic and more spiritually open while on that cleanse--I loved it.

Anyway, I'll be cutting back on my fat intake. My body has already been telling me that it doesn't want so many nuts and seeds (they don't seem to be digesting as well, anymore).

Thanks, again!

Love,

Gypsy

I agree with Jono - I notice that my face skin looks nicest when I run.

You could also try Silicea:
[www.silicea.com]

[www.youtube.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2007 05:59PM by flex4life.

Flex,

Thanks for the link. I looked it over and I'll keep it in case I want to try it in the future. I try to get most of what I need through foods, but maybe I'll try it sometime in the future. Do you, or anyone you know, use it?

Thanks, again.

Love,

Gypsy

I've used it in the past and noticed a huge difference in my strength of my nails, hair thickness and skin in just a month.

[www.youtube.com]

ooh flex4life, thanks for posting that, it sounds neat, I think I'll give it a try!