Achieving Your Goals with Body Contouring After Weight Loss

The Weight Loss Journey

Dieting probably isn’t the best part of your day. And if you look forward to your daily run, you’re a rare gem. There are plenty of people who do enjoy diet and exercise, but to the vast majority of Americans, they’re a chore. That’s what makes stories of extreme or massive weight loss so inspirational. That’s why we tell our friends “congratulations” when they appear to lose weight. It’s an accomplishment—and it wouldn’t quite be that if it were easy.

Whether you’ve lost weight due to a bariatric surgery or due to a change in lifestyle, you’ve put a lot of time, money, and effort into your new look. That’s why it can be exceptionally frustrating when you are left with a large of amount of excess skin once you reach your target weight. In order to understand why this happens (and how to fix it), it’s useful to know something about skin in general.

The most important aspect of this is that your skin has a certain amount of elasticity when you’re young. It’s like a rubber band. You can stretch it out and it will bounce back. And if you think about it, that makes sense. When you’re a kid, your size is constantly changing. However, as you age, this elasticity tends to evaporate. Your skin doesn’t change size quite so easily.

So when you end up with a lot of skin, it’s not going to “bounce back” in the same way it once did. As you gain weight, the surface area of your skin increases. But as you lose weight, the surface area of your skin will, well, stay roughly the same. This leaves patients with a large amount of excess skin and that can be incredibly frustrating.

This frustration stems from the fact that excess skin can appear indistinct from excess fat, especially by outside observers. Too much skin adds bulk to your figure; when you were hoping to be svelte and slender, your skin betrays you. There are plenty of patient stories about people who literally tuck their excess belly skin into their waistband as they exercise so the skin doesn’t flop everywhere.

For most patients, this is not ideal.

Plastic Surgery to Address Excess Skin

There are, however, plastic surgery procedures that can help. We generally refer to these procedures broadly as “body contouring after massive weight loss,” or simply body contouring after weight loss (because the truth is that it doesn’t necessarily take massive weight loss to generate excess skin). These procedures are designed to target a specific area, though many of the procedures can be combined.

Those procedures include:

• Tummy Tuck: Perhaps the most popular body contouring procedure out there today, tummy tuck procedures are designed to address a moderate amount of excess skin around the belly area. This procedure is common not only among patients who have lost significant weight, but also patients who have been through one or more pregnancies (which, it should go without saying, tend to stretch out the skin around the belly area). Tummy tuck procedures can also add some structure to the abdominal muscles, which can help achieve the overall “tight” look that many patients are looking for after a weight loss.
• Lower Body Lift: Sometimes the excess skin is not limited to the belly area. In cases where the excess skin extends throughout the lower body (including the buttocks and legs), a lower body lift is performed. In this procedure, an incision is usually made around the abdomen, then excess tissue is removed. The results typically mean smoother, tighter skin that more accurately reflects the contours of the patient.
• Arm Lift: Known medically as a brachioplasty procedure, arm lift surgery is designed to eliminate excess tissue in, well, the arms. It’s usually not the first place people think of, but weight loss can affect the body in all kinds of ways, and one way has to do with developing excess skin in the arms. Arm lift procedures eliminate this excess skin and restore the arms to a more contoured look. In other words, it gets rid of the “flag pole” look that arms can sometimes develop.

Making a Thoughtful Body Contouring Decision

Due to its nature, body contouring can be a major operation, so patients should be prepared for a relatively long recovery period. That said, most patients—especially those who have worked so hard to lose that weight in the first place—understand just how important this final step can be.

For many patients, body contouring after weight loss represents that final step of the journey. It’s after this procedure that they’ll be able to fit into the clothes they want, wear what they want, show off their body at the beach and so on. We have heard from patients who didn’t feel comfortable wearing shorts or t-shirts because of their excess skin after weight loss.

Body contouring after weight loss, especially someplace like Houston where the weather is always on the warm side, can help patients achieve the desired look—finally—after a long journey. Whatever might cause excess skin to develop, body contouring is a way to mitigate the any skin that might be causing an issue.

If you want to know more about body contouring after weight loss, contact South Shore Plastic Surgery to schedule a no-pressure consultation. Your transformation starts with a conversation, so contact us today!