December 10, 2021
If you’re an avid reader of our blogs then you may have just read this title and thought to yourself, wait a second, isn’t The Plastic Surgery Clinic all about being as close to your goal weight before surgery as possible, and sometimes getting there requires a balanced diet and exercise plan? YES! Absolutely.
We want to preface this by saying, we are all for diet and exercise, and if those things have helped you to love your body and feel totally confident, then more power to you! And if that’s something you want to explore before deciding to meet with us, we highly recommend it, too.
But in many cases that we see at our clinic, unfortunately diet and exercise alone can’t always get you where you want to be. For a lot of people, this can be super frustrating. Why? Keep reading, and we’ll let you know why sometimes a little help from your expert plastic surgeons goes a long way.
No surgery should be considered the primary way that you lose weight. There’s a misconception that surgeries like liposuction are weight loss tools. Most surgeries are actually there to help you to sculpt and contour the body after having experienced weight loss, whether significant or not.
We always emphasize that you want to be within a particular BMI range (typically under 30) and at a maximum of about 10-20lbs away from your target weight before undergoing any surgery, primarily to avoid any surgical risk, but also to maintain your result following surgery. Major weight fluctuations after surgery can really have an effect on that final result.
Ok, so why are we saying that diet and exercise can’t get you the same result as surgery? Because in some cases, especially if you’ve experienced significant weight loss, you may be surprised to find that you’re left with excess skin that you can’t get rid of with changes to diet and exercise alone.
This can be a really frustrating moment, as a significant weight loss journey is arduous, and we totally understand that. You’ve worked really hard to get to your target weight and it can be devastating not to see the body that you had been envisioning all that time. You may also be left with some pockets of super resistant and stubborn fat.
This is where body contouring surgeries like liposuction, the tummy tuck, arm lift, and thigh lift, are great examples of procedures that work to remove excess fat and skin around the abdomen, arms, or thighs, tightening these areas for a smooth and sculpted final look. Just because you can’t achieve that on your own doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be yours. We’re here to help, and to do it as safely as possible while creating the most natural looking surgical result.
You’ve done all the work. We’re here at the finish line to put the final touches on your goals.
Another example of a situation in which diet and exercise alone may not always yield the same results as surgery is with weight loss after pregnancy. If you’ve given birth to a child, or several, then you know better than anyone else that it was probably the most difficult thing you’ve ever done, and your body probably feels the same way. You did, after all, bring a brand new human being into this world.
You may have even lost any pregnancy weight you gained by changing things up with what you’ve been eating and maybe trying a new exercise routine, but for some reason, you still have some abdominal fullness and your breasts may be sagging or looking a little deflated from all that nursing.
In many cases, women will experience something called diastasis recti after pregnancy. In layman’s terms, when you gave birth to your baby you tore the muscles of the abdominal wall (ouch!). And diastasis recti is another one of those conditions which absolutely cannot be resolved with diet and exercise alone. Surgery is really the only way to repair those muscles and eliminate that fullness.
Similarly, no matter how much you diet and exercise, it won’t lift those tired breasts, or sometimes get rid of those seriously stubborn pockets of fat that seem to be resistant to absolutely everything!
This is where surgery comes in and particularly what the Mommy Makeover is for. The Mommy Makeover combines a breast lift (or other breast procedure, depending on whether or not you’d like a little more volume with your lift), liposuction, and abdominoplasty into one single operation and addresses all the transformations that happen to a woman’s body after pregnancy and nursing.
Again, it’s one of those procedures that’s there to help you get the look you want after your body has undergone some really significant changes.
If you’re someone who’s worked super hard with a healthy diet and regular exercise routine, and you’re still not seeing the results that you want, it may just mean you need a little extra surgical help to get there. So come and chat with us, because there’s no shame in asking for what you want and deserve.
Did we answer all your questions? Our goal is to ensure you have the best information possible to make your decision. If you still have questions, we’re here to help.
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