Weight loss isn’t all sunshine and roses, regardless of whether you do it with diet, exercise, surgery, or a mix of the two. Losing a lot of weight often results in skin that is too big for the body. It’s normal, too.
An associate professor of surgery at The University of Chicago Medical Center and bariatric surgeon agrees that this is a reasonable worry for people considering weight loss surgery.
When a person drastically decreases their body mass, one of the side effects is skin that becomes lax. Truth time: if you’ve ever had a larger body, your skin has probably been stretched out due to the extra fat. Adding to that, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Denver notes that collagen and elastin (an elastic protein) in the body naturally decline with age, and you have a recipe for excess skin.
“There may not be adequate elasticity for the skin to compress back down to your new, smaller body size,” warns a New York City-based board-certified plastic surgeon.
If you have stretch marks, your skin has been stretched beyond repair; this means that significant weight reduction is likely to result in sagging skin.
Does everyone develop sagging skin after significant weight loss?
Not at all; that’s not how things work. However, it is also challenging to foretell who would be affected. Some patients shed almost 200 pounds in only one year thanks to obesity surgery and have very little extra skin. In contrast, many have lost less than 60 pounds and still have more skin than they did before.
Excess skin is not necessarily proportional to the amount of weight lost. Your skin’s elasticity can also be affected by environmental factors like sun exposure and smoking (which breaks down collagen and elastin) and your genetic background.
It’s also common to worry that rapid weight loss will leave you with droopy skin, but that’s not always the case. Due to concerns about visible scarring, some patients may consider delaying weight-loss surgery. Even though doctors are aware of these worries, the rapid loss has not been linked to any adverse outcomes.
Can loose skin naturally disappear?
It’s possible, but it might take a while. In most cases, expect to wait weeks to months or even years. Skin still saggy after a year or two may never tighten again.
Can sagging skin be tightened without resorting to surgical methods?
Most likely not, unfortunately. Loose skin after massive weight reduction is difficult to treat with nonsurgical techniques.
Abdominal binders, for instance, are great for relieving back discomfort but do absolutely nothing for the skin. Even though you can use compression garments to help with loose skin, they do not contribute to permanent improvement.
Minimally invasive body-contouring technologies like Bodytite and Renuvion may be helpful if you only have slightly saggy skin. Surgery, however, yields the best results.
How is loose skin treated surgically?
In addition to a “tummy tuck,” other procedures commonly performed during body-contouring surgery include lifts of the arms, breasts, face, lower body, and thighs.
Indicators for suggesting loose skin excision surgery include:
- There is a minimum waiting period of two years after weight loss surgery.
- They must have maintained a steady weight for at least 6 months.
- Their body mass index (BMI) needs to be below 30.
- Patients are forbidden to smoke.
- Maintaining steady blood glucose levels is essential for diabetic patients.
Oh, and here’s a surprise for anyone who’s had bariatric surgery to drop weight: recovery from surgery to remove extra skin is more complicated.
While obesity surgery is minimally intrusive, the recovery time for body sculpting is much longer. It would be a mistake to dismiss the procedure as merely “cosmetic,” as its effects go well beyond the superficial.
You may require two to four weeks for recovery, and it may take as long as 6 months after surgery to feel completely back to normal. So, you may not get the aesthetically pleasing outcomes you were hoping for until then.
The soreness associated with surgery is usually mild at most. You will still likely be too tired to show up to work, and taking it easy for the first several weeks is essential.
Know that further procedures may be required later on as a precaution. It’s crucial to refine scars, re-stretch skin that has loosened and possibly corrects any developed asymmetries.
This procedure has the potential to aid in long-term weight maintenance. Patients who underwent both bariatric surgery and body-contouring surgery were shown to have a higher weight maintenance rate than those who only had bariatric surgery.
The enhanced physical and social activity capacity following body reshaping is a powerful motivator to maintain post-operative healthy habits.
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