Body Contouring and a Body Lift can help to restore your figure, improving the shape and tone.

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We’ve all experienced fluctuations in our weight due to diet and exercise, pregnancy or old age, but the impact significant weight loss has on our body can often be a confusing experience. Having achieved such a great goal, patients are often left with excess and sagging skin, the appearance of which has a detrimental effect on their confidence. As a result of being stretched for such a long time, our skin often fails to shrink back to its former shape and size. Many people are left with multiple loose folds of skin around their abdomen, arms, thighs, breasts, buttocks and face. The same is true of pregnancy, where women experience huge changes to their abdominal and breast area. Despite regular exercise and a healthy diet, muscles have stretched and separated and don’t always return to their pre-pregnancy appearance.

Many of my patients have achieved great weight loss results but are disappointed with the look and feel of excess skin that doesn’t seem to budge or want to adapt to their new body shape. Common side effects experienced include:

• Upper arms that sag
• Flattened or deflated breasts (and nipples that droop)
• Abdominal area that extends around the sides and into the lower back area, resulting in an apron-like overhang
• Buttocks, groin and thighs that sag and cause hanging pockets of skin

Naturally, you want to show off your new body, but excess skin can make you feel self-conscious and embarrassed. Fortunately, body contouring procedures are a great way to remove excess skin and smooth the underlying muscles. Common procedures for loose skin removal include: Lower body lift,  Thigh lift, Breast lift , Upper arm lift, Tummy tuck. The results of these procedures are a firmer, more normal appearance to the body with smoother contours.

If you’re experiencing problems with excess skin or changes to your body after significant weight loss, it’s not something you have to live with. Consider whether a body contouring procedure could work for you.

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Weight loss is always going to be beneficial for your health whether the weight is lost quickly or slowly. However, it doesn’t matter if you lose weight quickly or slowly, the degree of deterioration and elasticity in the skin will not be different and people will still see excess or sagging skin after dramatic weight loss.

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After achieving a weight loss goal, many people find they are left with large amounts of excess skin, which can be extremely disheartening after they’ve worked so hard to lose weight. Don’t worry though, you are not alone – many people who have experienced massive weight loss are also troubled by the amount of excess skin they are left with. Once your skin has been stretched due to weight gain, it can lose its elasticity and often struggles to shrink back after weight loss.

Surgery after massive weight loss is often an option many people turn to in order to change the contour of their body, get rid of excess skin and tighten their muscles. There are several surgical options available depending on what part of the body has been most effected by weight loss and many of these can be performed at once to reduce recovery time and cost.

1. Tummy Surgery

An abdominoplasty can remove the large amounts of excess skin left behind after massive weight loss. A tummy tuck can address three main areas of concern; lax muscles, excess fat and lose skin. There are many types of tummy tuck procedures available, however the most effective after massive weight loss would be either a full abdominoplasty, an extended abdominoplasty a belt lipectomy or a FDL Abdominoplasty. A full abdominoplasty removes all the skin below the belly button and tightens the muscles. It can also be combined with liposuction of the abdomen to remove excess fat. This procedure achieves the maximum tightening of the abdominal tissue and the scar usually runs from hip to hip. Most common among people who have experienced significant weight loss, tummy surgery for excess skin removal can improve your self-esteem and quality of life.

An extended abdominoplasty can also be considered if weight loss has led to excess skin extending around the hip. An extension of the abdominoplasty can be used to remove excess skin over the hip to improve body contour. The scar is slightly larger than that of a traditional abdominoplasty. Find out more about different tummy tuck procedures.

2. Thigh Lift

A thighplasty or thigh skin reduction, commonly known as a thigh lift, removes excess skin from the thigh area leaving you with a tighter more toned appearance. There are 2 main forms of thigh lift surgery one that address the inner (medial) thigh and one that addresses the outer (lateral) thigh. An inner thigh lift removes loose skin and excess fat from the inner thigh, whereas an outer thigh lift tightens the front and outside of the thigh. Liposuction can also be combined with and inner thigh lift to achieve the best results. A great way to firm and tone your upper legs so you can confidently slip back into those summer shorts and swimmers. Thigh lifts are good for active people who are unable to achieve improved thigh tone with diet and exercise.

3. Liposuction for extra stubborn pockets of fat

One of the most popular procedures in Australia, liposuction removes fat deposits that have been unresponsive to diet or exercise. Once removed, they’re gone forever.

4. Upper Arm Lift – Brachioplasty

An upper arm lift addresses the excess skin that can hang under your arms as a result of ageing or weight loss. An upper arm lift reduces the amount of skin and excess fat that lies between the underarm and elbow, giving the arm a more toned appearance. This will reshape the underneath of your upper arms for a smoother, more toned appearance, but is generally not recommended for people who struggle with unstable and fluctuating weight.

5. Chest or Breast Surgery

As women age their breasts can lose their shape and firmness and this can also occur after a large amount of weight has been lost. Many women who have achieved their weight loss goal find that their breasts have started to sag. A mastopexy, more commonly referred to as a breast lift, reshapes and firms the breast by lifting them up. Breast lifts are also commonly combined with breast augmentation to increase breast size and fullness.

6. Lower Body Lift

After achieving massive weight loss people find they have large amounts of excess skin around their abdomen, thighs, hips and bottom. A lower body lift addresses all these areas by removing and tightening any excess skin, in one surgery. LBL is an effective way to remove loose, hanging skin from around the abdomen and flanks as well as lifting your buttocks for a new fresh look.

If you have achieved your weight loss goal and are now considering surgery to remove excess skin, book a one-on-one consultation with Dr Hunt to see how he can help you.

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After massive weight loss or following weight loss surgery, many people will have lost up to 100 kg of weight, sometimes even more.

The ideal time for surgery is once a person has reached their goal weight and this weight remains stable. If someone has undergone bariatric surgery, such as a gastric bypass or gastric sleeve, this can be up to 12 months post-surgery. If someone has achieved weight loss through diet and exercise, this can be when they have reached their goal weight and their weight is no longer dramatically increasing or decreasing.

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Patients who have lost a substantial amount of weight will often be troubled by extra skin on the abdomen, hips and thighs. They may also have loose skin on their upper arms and female patients may find they have lost volume in their breasts.

It is possible to target several of these areas during one surgery, however, there will be a limit to the number of procedures that can be combined in one sitting. If more than one surgery is required a staged approach will be undertaken, with potentially two procedures combined in one operation, followed by a second procedure 3 to 6 months after the initial surgery.

To ensure patient safety all surgical procedures should take place in a fully accredited hospital with a surgeon who has extensive experience in performing the procedure.

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This is not necessarily the case as skin removal will often create a flat and poorly defined result. Surgery after weight loss, or body contouring treatment, can involve the tightening of loose muscles, liposuction of disproportionate fat and also the tightening or removal of excess skin to create a 360° re-contouring of the area being treated.

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Patients who experienced weight loss will notice that they have lost weight over the entire body, which can lead to excess or sagging skin around the abdomen, arms, legs, breast for female patients and chest for male patients. For this reason, surgery after weight loss will often involve procedures to address loose skin and fat deposits on the abdomen in the form of a tummy tuck, or abdominoplasty. However, it can also encompass area such as the hips, flanks and lower back with 360° procedures such as the lower body-lift. Treatment plans for other areas includes the arms, thighs, breast for female patients and the chest area in males. Patients may also lose volume in the face and neck and require facial rejuvenation such as a face-lift or neck-lift.

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Following body contouring surgery, such as a tummy tuck or thigh lift, patients will be able to comfortably increase or decrease their weight by approximately 10 to 15 kg without impacting the results of their surgery.

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Liposuction will remove fat cells permanently from the body and the fat cells in that location will not come back. If a patient continues to have a high-calorie diet after their liposuction then the body will still need to store the extra fat. As a result the fat will now be stored in different fat cells in the body and these may become enlarged if calorie intake is not reduced. This often creates the belief that the fat has moved to a different area of the body, which is not necessarily the case.

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After extreme weight gain and consequent weight loss, the skin can lose its elasticity and is unable to return to its original state, usually resulting in large amounts of excess, sagging skin. Many people assume that regular exercise will be able to tighten this excess skin, however this is not the case. Regular exercise will help in building muscle tone and it will also burn calories and decrease fat volume. However exercise will very rarely tighten the skin – perhaps in younger patients with great quality skin. Tightening of skin will usually require a surgical intervention to achieve a significant result, however there are some non-surgical devices that may be able to tighten small areas of skin such as the neck or fat freezing.

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Body contouring is usually regarded by Medicare and health funds as a medical and reconstructive procedure in most cases of significant weight loss.  There are potential health benefits from removing excess chafing skin that is prone to rashes and potential infections. Medicare and health funds recognise this and depending on the level of your health fund, it is likely that the procedure will be deemed medical not cosmetic.Each patient is different and needs to be assessed on an individual basis to determine if this is the case.