I've been asking this to a lot of my buddies who've lost a lot of weight and I've been getting no solid answers, so I figure I might as well ask you guys.
I'm a fat fuck (300 pounds, 6'1") but I've been dropping the pounds since quarantine started (30 pounds down since February!). However, I just learned about loose skin staying on the body after people lose a ton of weight very quickly. As I understand it, most of it comes down to genetics, but you can do a lot of things to mitigate it as much as possible (skin regimens to keep it healthy, eat foods that aid in collagen production, lose the weight slowly, get stronk).
Assuming all else fails and my genetics basically make me a walking bedsheet, what can I do when I get super lean to remove the skin that I have left? My goal weight is around 180, but I'm aiming for sub 15% body fat, 90% of my routine is weightlifting and other resistance training stuff. Not sure if that will lend any help to answers.
Woah, hold on there soldier. You can't lose weight and build muscle at the same time. I mean, you kind of can at first, if you've got a lot of fat and not much muscle. But the simple truth is:
-you need a calorie deficit to lose weight
-you need a calorie surplus to build muscle
And there's no way to make these two things true simultaneously.
As for skin, there's no way to lose it after it has grown or stretched out, save surgery. That's why deathfat tv programming shows the ultra obese losing weight, getting gastric bypass surgery, and then skin surgery. It's also why of women who have been pregnant, most of them will carry a small baby belly or extra skin roll for the rest of their lives.
So what it seems like you're proposing to do here- lose the weight through lifting - is ultimately not going to work the way you hope. You will end up either doing one or the other, depending on how many calories you're taking in. Too many and you'll gain muscle and gain weight at the same time. Too few and you'll lose weight but you'll make no strength gains. Most likely you will vacillate between the two and get frustrated that nothing is happening.
What you need to do is get on a cut-bulk cycle. Make your peace with the fact that when you're cutting, you're eating less calories than your body needs and you will, at best, be able to maintain muscle (but lose fat). And when you're bulking, you are eating more calories than your body needs and you will gain weight (but gain muscle too).
The advantage of these cycles is that you change the shape of your body gradually and you shouldn't develop the kind of loose skin that you're fearing. It's not dramatic -it will be at the end, but it lacks the 'ta-da!' factor of losing a lot of weight quickly. There are no short-cuts, tho. Don't starve yourself into a stick figure with sheets of skin and try to then blow it up again with muscle b/c you'll end up looking like a freak <shudder>.
Cut/bulk are the words you need to look up, and I suggest you take them to a gym/ powerlifting / weight loss forum to get guides on how long and hard to do the cycles, b/c I don't think the farms, fun as they are, are going to cover it for you.