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Please STOP trying to fix your turkey neck after losing weight. I know that sounds crazy, but every time you moisturise the hell out of it, spend £89 on another firming cream, or buy another trendy device — you might be chasing solutions that have nothing to do with what's actually happening under your skin. I used to be just like you. Bringing my face skincare routine all the way down to my neck every single night, convinced that if it worked on my face it would work there too. Trying retinol because everyone said it was the gold standard. Did nothing for the sagging. Got a prescription for tretinoin next. "That's what actually works," they said. It irritated my neck so badly I almost thought I'd made things worse. Spending months with a red light device pressed against my face and neck every evening, because the reviews promised it would tighten everything. It was great for my face. Did nothing for my neck. Not a single millimetre of difference. Lying in bed at night scrolling through before-and-after photos of neck lifts, saving quotes from surgeons I knew I couldn't afford and didn't want, telling myself it might be the only way out. I tried everything. Every cream, every device, every hack the forums recommended. And my turkey neck got worse. Not better. Worse. After two years of waiting and hoping the skin would bounce back on its own, I stopped trying to fix it. I had lost 87 pounds. Eighty-seven. My blood pressure came down. I could walk up a hill without stopping. I could fit into clothes I hadn't worn in over a decade. I was supposed to be celebrating. I was supposed to be wearing the V-neck tops, the open necklines, the fitted dresses I'd been daydreaming about since the first pounds came off. I had spent two years earning the right to feel confident in my own skin. Instead, the first thing I did when I got dressed every morning was figure out how to cover my neck. It started with a silk scarf. A pretty one, pale blue, from a charity shop. Told myself it made me look elegant. But deep down I felt more insecure than ever. Then one scarf wasn't enough. I bought more. Went back to the charity shop three times. Ended up with a drawer full of them — 23 at one point — because the more I had, the more I could rotate them so no one would notice I was wearing one every single day. Then scarves weren't enough. I moved into collars. Then polo necks. Then turtlenecks (which I had never worn in my life). Then crew necks instead of round necks, because the higher the fabric sat, the less I had to think about what was underneath it. And slowly, without quite realising it was happening, all the clothing I'd been excited to wear, the pieces I'd bought to celebrate the weight loss, the tops that made me feel like the woman I'd worked so hard to become, got shoved to the back of the wardrobe. Replaced by a new kind of outfit. Not chosen because it made me feel pretty. Chosen because it hid the new insecurity that had replaced the old one. Winter became my favourite season. Which is a strange thing to say when you've just lost 87 pounds and spent two years dreaming about the day you'd wear a bikini by the pool without a second thought. But in winter, nobody questions a scarf. Nobody looks twice at a turtleneck. I could cover everything from chin to collarbone and it just looked like I felt the cold. And the longer I hid, the worse it got Before the scarves, I thought about my neck a few times a day. After months of building my entire life around covering it, I thought about it constantly. I'd catch my reflection getting out of the shower and my stomach would drop. I'd angle my phone camera upward in every photo because anything below my chin betrayed the whole thing. I started avoiding mirrors in shops. Avoiding changing rooms with overhead lighting. Avoiding that one window at the café near my house where the afternoon sun turned the glass into a mirror I wasn't ready for. And the worst of it — the thing that really got to me — was the doubt I read something on a forum where a woman said she'd tried scarves for years and could tell people were looking at her weird. That they didn't disguise anything. They just signalled that you had something to disguise. I couldn't unread that. Suddenly every scarf felt like a sign around my neck. I started Googling "do scarves look dowdy" at 1am. Spent forty minutes reading threads from women debating whether silk scarves made you look sophisticated or like you were trying too hard. Some women swore by scarves. Others had abandoned them for statement necklaces to draw the eye away. Someone suggested a choker. Someone else said chokers made it worse. One woman had started wearing her hair down to cover her neckline, even though she hated her hair down. Every single one of those women was doing the same thing I was doing. Engineering our entire appearance around a part of our body we couldn't fix. Spending more mental energy on the camouflage than we'd ever spent on the weight loss itself. And somewhere in the middle of reading all of that, at half midnight, still clutching my phone, I genuinely wondered if a bulldog clip on the back of my neck might technically work. I had worked for two years to lose 87 pounds. Two years of discipline, of meal prep, of saying no to my own birthday cake, of getting up early and going to the gym when I didn't feel like it. I had done something genuinely hard. And the reward was a body I couldn't show. A transformation I had to cover up. A new part of my body to feel insecure about. But it took what happened in Marbella to make me actually do something about it. Two months ago I spent an entire girls' holiday hiding behind a sarong. We'd been planning that trip for almost a year. Six of us. First proper holiday together since before everything changed — jobs, kids, life. A week in the sun. Cocktails by the pool. The kind of trip you look forward to for months. I'd bought a new swimsuit for it. Navy. Fitted. The swimsuit I was going to wear to finally show off the body I'd spent two years building. I'd earned that swimsuit. Eighty-seven pounds of earned it. When I tried it on in the bathroom mirror, the swimsuit looked good. My body looked good. But from the collarbone up, the crepey, loose, papery skin that had been creeping down from my jawline for the past two years looked like it belonged to a completely different person. In a swimsuit, under a bathroom spotlight, there was nowhere to hide it. I didn't cancel the trip. But I packed four sarongs. The first two days were fine. I kept a sarong loosely around my shoulders, told myself it was for the sun. No one said anything. I half-convinced myself no one noticed. Then on day three, someone suggested photos by the pool. Everyone else stripped down without a thought. Tanned, relaxed, glowing. Bikinis, swimsuits, bare shoulders, bare everything. And there I was, sarong pulled up to my collarbone, slightly turned away from the camera, doing that thing with my jaw where you tilt your chin forward and up just enough to smooth the line. When the photos landed in the WhatsApp group that evening, I went through them one by one. In every shot I was the only person covered up. The only one positioned at an angle. The only one who looked like she was managing something rather than enjoying something. Then my friend Sarah leaned over on the sunbed and said something that quietly broke me… "Claire, you've lost all that weight and you're still hiding yourself. What's going on?" She said it gently. She wasn't being cruel. But the question landed like a brick because she wasn't asking about the sarong. She was asking about me. About the fact that I had transformed my body and still couldn't stand in the sun and just... be there. Without armour. Without coverage. Without a plan. I told her it was nothing. That I just burn easily. She looked at me for a second and nodded, and we both knew I was lying. That night I didn't go to dinner. I told them I had a headache. I lay in the dark listening to the five of them getting ready down the hall, laughing about nothing, and I thought: this is it, isn't it. This is what the rest of it looks like. Scarves in winter. Sarongs in summer. Angles in every photo. And a wardrobe built entirely around a part of my body that everyone can see and nobody will mention. I'd spent a year looking forward to this trip and I was going to come home with no photos of myself below the chin. At 2:34 AM that night I was still awake. I picked up my phone — not because I had hope, not because I was feeling hopeful — but because I couldn't lie there and accept that I had spent two years changing my life and I was still going to spend every holiday, every event, every warm day, hiding the one part of me I couldn't fix. I typed something I hadn't searched before: "Why does nothing work for saggy neck skin after weight loss." That's when I found an article that changed everything. It wasn't about skincare routines or surgery alternatives. It was about what actually happens to the structural layers of your skin when you lose a significant amount of weight. The article explained that your skin has three distinct layers. The outermost layer is what creams and serums touch. But below that are the layers where the actual structure of your skin lives, held together by two proteins working in combination. Collagen and elastin. Collagen is the one everyone knows. It's in every cream, every serum, every treatment I had tried. And collagen matters. But for sagging skin, collagen alone is not enough. Elastin is what gives skin its ability to snap back. To recoil. To return to its shape after being stretched. Think of it like the elastic in a waistband. Pull it and let go, and it snaps back. But stretch it for long enough, and it loses its memory. It stays loose. It doesn't return. That's what had happened to my neck. When I was carrying the extra weight for years, my skin had been stretched. The elastin had been under constant tension. And over time, it had lost its ability to recoil. Losing the weight removed the stretch, but it couldn't restore the proteins that had broken down. The skin no longer had the structural support it needed to tighten back up. Suddenly, everything made sense. That's why retinol didn't work. Retinol stimulates collagen, but it can't do anything about lost elastin. That's why red light didn't work. Same reason. That's why every forum kept telling me to wait. They were waiting for collagen to rebuild. No one was talking about elastin. I wasn't crazy. I wasn't doing something wrong. My body had lost the proteins that held it together, both of them, and every solution I had ever tried was only targeting one. For the first time in over a year, I felt like I could breathe. Because if the problem was structural, if it was about restoring both collagen and elastin, then there might be a solution I hadn't found yet. Something that actually addressed what was happening underneath, not just what was visible on top. I spent the rest of that night reading. Everything I could find about elastin restoration. About what science had actually demonstrated works at a structural level, not just a surface level. That's when I kept finding the same ingredient coming up, over and over, in clinical literature I had never seen mentioned in any forum or skincare blog. It was called Matribust, a peptide complex developed by SILAB, a French biotech laboratory, specifically engineered to restore both collagen and elastin deep within the skin. Not on the surface. In the layers where the actual damage lives. The reason most skincare ingredients don't reach those layers is simple: neck skin has smaller pores than facial skin. Most ingredients are physically too large to penetrate. They sit on top, do their work on the surface, and evaporate. That's why face creams don't fix neck skin. That's why retinol doesn't reach far enough. The molecules are too large for the pores. Matribust was engineered to be small enough to pass through. In clinical studies, it increased collagen production by 74% and improved skin elasticity, elastin function, by 40%. Participants saw visible reduction in sagging within just a few weeks of consistent use. But the research also showed it worked best in combination with three other things. Hydrolysed hyaluronic acid, broken down into fragments small enough to actually penetrate and plump the skin from the inside, not just sit on top of it. A rich carrier butter, to repair the skin barrier and create the right environment for everything to absorb properly. And caffeine, which tightens on contact by boosting circulation, giving an immediate visible effect while the deeper restoration is happening underneath. But the key thing I kept seeing over and over was this: you cannot fix a sagging neck by targeting collagen alone. Because if elastin is what's gone, feeding your skin collagen is like repainting a wall that's lost its foundations. You have to rebuild what's underneath first. That's when someone in one of the forums mentioned they had been using a cream specifically made for women with sagging neck skin after weight loss. Not a generic moisturiser. Something formulated around the elastin problem. I was sceptical. I had spent so much money already on things that didn't work. But I was also desperate. And for the first time, what I was reading actually matched what was happening in my neck. The cream had Matribust at the exact 2% concentration used in the clinical studies. It had hydrolysed hyaluronic acid, broken down small enough to actually penetrate neck pores. Cupuacu butter to repair the barrier and help everything absorb properly. And caffeine to tighten on contact and boost circulation. All four ingredients. One cream. Designed specifically for people like me. I ordered it. Told myself not to get my hopes up. I had been disappointed too many times. It arrived two days later. A soft, non-greasy cream that absorbed within seconds, nothing like the thick creams I had used before that sat on top of my skin and made my clothing greasy. The instructions said twice a day, morning and evening. The first week wasn't dramatic. My skin felt noticeably softer, more hydrated. But it still sagged. I started thinking it was just another moisturiser. But I had already bought it, so I kept using it. What did I have to lose at this point? Week two is when I noticed the first change. Subtle enough that I almost talked myself out of believing it. But one morning after my shower, I looked in the mirror and the texture was different. Still a turkey neck. But the crepey, papery quality that had been there for over a year was softer. Smoother. Less fragile-looking. I told myself I was imagining it. That I wanted it to work so badly I was seeing things. But the next day, same thing. And the day after that. By week four, I wasn't imagining it. My neck felt genuinely different, firmer underneath, smoother on the surface. I had started looking at myself in the mirror without the immediate drop in my stomach. I started to feel a pull toward the clothes I hadn't touched in years. The ones with open necklines. The ones I had bought to celebrate reaching my goal weight and never worn. Week six is when my husband noticed. And he never notices anything. This is a man who didn't comment when I cut my hair short. Who I genuinely believe could not tell you what colour our bathroom walls are. But he looked at me across the dinner table and said: "Is it just me, or does your neck look different?" I ran to the bathroom mirror. Lifted my chin. Looked at it under the light. He was right. The sagging wasn't gone. But it was noticeably less. The skin had more structure to it. Less hang. Less droop. Like something underneath had started to knit itself back together. That's when I started believing this might actually work. By week eight, the change was undeniable. I took a photo in the same light, from the same angle, as the ones I had been taking every week for the past year of waiting. I put them side by side. The difference was clear. Not a neck lift. But the kind of difference that made me stop dreading my own reflection. Month three, I finally booked a facial. The first one in years, I had been avoiding anything that required someone's hands on my neck and their eyes on my skin up close. The therapist was working on my neck and just stopped. Put down what she was doing. And said: "Whatever you've been using on your neck, keep using it. The texture is completely different to what I'd expect for someone your age who's lost this much weight." I told her about the cream. About learning it was elastin, not collagen. About finally finding something that addressed what was actually broken. She was the one who told me to take a proper before and after photo. She said I'd want to remember where I started. It's been five months now. I still use the cream every morning and every evening. My neck doesn't look like I've had surgery. But the crepey texture is almost entirely gone. The sagging is there, I'm 52, not 32, but it's gotten so much better. It doesn't look like a deflated balloon anymore. My face and my neck look like they belong to the same person again. But more than that, I stopped hiding. Sarah's hen do was last month. Same group, minus one who couldn't make it. A weekend in Brighton. Cocktails, karaoke, too much wine, all of it. I wore a strappy top on the first night. No scarf. No sarong. No high neckline. Just a top I'd pulled from the back of my wardrobe, one of the ones I'd bought to celebrate reaching my goal weight and hadn't touched since. When someone pulled out a phone for a group photo, I didn't angle. I didn't tilt. I didn't reach for something to drape over my shoulders. I just stood there and smiled. The photo landed in the group chat the next morning and I looked at it and felt something I hadn't felt in years. Not pride exactly. Just... peace. I looked like myself. My whole self. Not a woman managing something. Just a woman standing with her friends, in her own skin, with nothing to hide. I posted it on Facebook without thinking about it. The 23 scarves are still in my drawer. I just don't reach for them anymore. I can be proud of my weight loss and proud of how I look. Not one in spite of the other. For the first time since I started this journey, it actually feels complete. If you're reading this and you see yourself in my story — if you still don't wear the clothes you bought to celebrate because your entire wardrobe is now built around hiding your neck. If you wear a scarf in 30-degree heat because the alternative feels worse. If someone pulls out a phone for a group photo and your first instinct is to angle your chin rather than smile — I need you to understand something. It's not just a collagen problem. It's an elastin problem. And if elastin is what's gone, all the retinol and red light and collagen creams in the world will only ever get you halfway there. Because they're addressing one protein while completely ignoring the other. I wasted over a year trying to fix the wrong thing. Months of retinol, tretinoin, red light devices, collagen creams, all of it targeting collagen, none of it touching elastin. And my neck stayed exactly the same while everyone told me I just needed to be patient. But the moment I addressed both, the actual root cause, everything changed. I'm not a doctor. I can't tell you what's happening in your specific skin. But I can tell you what happened in mine. And I can tell you that if you've tried everything and nothing has touched the sagging, maybe it's time to ask a different question. Not "how do I rebuild my collagen?" but "what am I doing about my elastin?" The cream I found is made by Zyren. They built it specifically for women who have lost weight and are dealing with sagging skin, formulated around the elastin and collagen problem that happens when you lose significant weight, with Matribust at the exact concentration shown to work in the clinical studies. Not a generic firming cream making vague promises. Something built around the actual cause. They have a guarantee, so if it doesn't work for you, you're not stuck with it like I was with everything else that did nothing. I'm sharing this because I spent so many nights lying awake, desperately searching for answers, feeling like I was the only person whose neck wasn't responding to anything anyone recommended. And I don't want anyone else to waste a year like I did, hiding behind scarves and sarongs and high necklines, trying to fix half of the problem. Your collagen routine might be doing something. But if you're not addressing the elastin, you will never fix the sagging. And you'll spend the rest of your life covering it up instead of living in the body you worked so hard for. There's something that finally does both. Click below to learn more about what worked for me, and why addressing the full picture made all the difference. You don't have to choose between your health and how you feel in your skin. You just have to address what's actually causing the problem. And for me, that changed everything.