Loose Skin, Loose Identity: The Psychological Reality of Excess Skin After Weight Loss

You won. So why does the loose skin feel like a defeat?

After major weight loss comes a victory that does not feel like one. The excess skin is a record of where the body has been, and it raises a question that will not leave: surgery, or acceptance? Loose Skin, Loose Identity sits with both, and with the deeper question underneath them.

Clinical Psychologist and Jungian Analyst Konrad van Staden treats the body as an archive, explores the mind that cannot yet see the body, the experience of being seen before you are reconciled, and the false choice between surgery and acceptance. He makes room for the grief of a body that was never going to arrive, and for the work of living, honestly, in the body that is.

This book does not hand you a verdict. It helps you meet the skin, and the self it reveals, with clarity rather than shame.

For anyone weighing reconstructive surgery, or learning to live with what the weight left behind.

Book Nine of The Psychology of Weight Loss Series.