Loose skin after bariatric surgery

Collateral damage

Along with hair loss, loose skin is one of bariatric surgery’s most dreaded collateral damages. Well, not the surgery per se, but the extreme weight loss it causes, brings together extra skin. Can you do something to prevent it?

This is a million-dollar question. The play has so many variables that the actual outcome is unpredictable. I know this is not what people want to hear. But it is the ugly truth.

Variables in the play

The thing is that it all starts with your genetics. If your parents don’t have many wrinkles, there is hope that you will come out of this adventure reasonably, basically unharmed. Yes, you will have some extra skin, but it will look very acceptable and you will likely embrace it and leave it alone.

It also depends – quite a lot – on your age. If you have the surgery at 25, it is a very different story than having it at 60. The elasticity of the skin is incomparable. This is pretty obvious.

How many kilos you will lose also plays a crucial role. Losing 20 kilos – and very few people will stop at this number – is incomparable to losing 90. Some people will lose half of their body weight. It is nothing surprising. It happens quite often to bariatric patients. If this is the case, the amount of extra skin will be quite important and it would be almost impossible to live with it. Plastic surgery will have to help here.

It depends also on volume. If you have the majority of your weight stored around your waist, you will most likely end up with an apron and they will have to cut it off at some point. This usually causes a lot of problems with infections and rushes. There is no other way.

Some people look way younger after losing weight, whereas some get quite a lot of wrinkles and look older. What will be your case? No idea. But you might predict it quite accurately. You have experience.

A lot of women will tell you they were left with saggy skin on their necks and cheeks. They would love to sort it out with some cream or oil or something like that. I was really curious and as one of my friends of mine is a plastic surgeon 😀 I asked him.

No miracles work

The answer was disheartening. The more fat you used to carry in this area, the more likely it is you would have extra skin there. Creams or stuff, you name it, it is money torn out of the window. Save for plastic surgery. I have to say this man is quite honest, he doesn’t do surgeries that are not necessary. So, I would believe him.

I asked him why people buy all those miraculous creams and spend a lot of money on them when they will eventually end up on his table. They buy promises. They want to believe that something they put on the skin will do the job. But the truth is that in this case the skin is damaged in the deep layer and no cream can reach there. It is something like a scar.

And it is the same with pills. If you take one bottle of collagen and you expect miracles, it simply won’t happen. I am talking from my own experience. I have been taking collagen for the past EIGHT YEARS. And yes, my face looks much better compared to my sister who doesn’t take anything apart from aspirin for a cold. There the comparison is quite remarkable. But I am talking here about 8 years of non-stop usage.

Well, I started taking it when I had a breast reduction (many years before the bariatric surgery), a quite important one, and I was advised to start taking the collagen months before the surgery to have better scarring. I never stopped. And I am grateful. I could look much older now. And I also think that it helped me with the skin after bariatric surgery.

My results

No, it is not perfect, far from that. I have some extra skin on my arms, and my tummy looks quite reasonable, but my thighs are funny. I will see if I can do something about them in the future. I have lost some more weight this summer, so it got a little worse. It is not molesting me, but it can be uncomfortable. I still wear shorts and dresses and skirts. I don’t mind.

I am trying to fill it with muscle. I started to work out more on this part of the body, but so far nothing much, I have to say 🙂 so let’s see what winter will bring. People say that it helped them. So I will try, hoping for a miracle, and most likely I will end up on the plastic surgeon’s table sooner or later 😀

The body has its limits

Understandably, people do not want to have that flabby jelly-like mass all over their bodies. But the thing is that we lose an incredible amount of weight and the same amount of volume. The body can adapt to some changes, but this is usually too much.

Yes, they tell us to eat a lot of protein, but it is more to keep our muscle mass. It will not do much to our skin. The damage was done long before our surgery to lose weight. The skin is stretched to accommodate all the sizes we used to be. Many of us have stretch marks. This is another thing that is impossible to get rid of by any cream.

Wishful thinking

I wish this was not the case, that there would be some kind of something/anything that you put on your body and it would make the skin shrink and tone again. This is a dream come true. But after losing so many tens of kilos, there is no hope. This is something we have to count on. It will happen, better or worse, but it is inevitable.

To tell the truth, if it doesn’t cause any health problems, I would let it be. Of course, if you have infections, fungi, yeast, you name it, it causes your body to hurt all over, you have to act and you have to get rid of that. And the surgeons know it. At some point, they will send you to be evaluated by a plastic surgeon. If you qualify, great. Unfortunately, many times this is not the case. So we have to pay out of pocket to solve this.

Start saving

Maybe it would not be a completely silly idea to start saving for this. After we renew our closet 😀, which is another pricey part of the story, start putting away every month something to cover the cost of future plastic surgery or skin removal. Most likely they will ask for two years to maintain the weight before they do it. So there is plenty of time to have some money prepared. Obviously, it is no little money, so some financing would be necessary.

Be proud of yourself

But still. We have got this far. We have lost all the weight. We are off the meds. We are way more healthy, more mobile. We have changed beyond recognition. We became people of action. Some silly skin won’t stop us! It is one more motive to keep going and to maintain the weight, to keep pushing, do the exercise, eat right. This is why we did it. And we did it.

Yes, let’s say it, this extra skin sucks. Feel free to scream it out loud. Well, it is the price to pay. We can do that. Now we know better and we can organize ourselves to deal with it. I, personally, wear my extra skin as a badge of honor. Who else can show this off and say: I have lost 40 kilos? What an achievement! I am proud of myself 😉