Wellness

[chrystaltree]

Well, I thought about for years. After consulting with two plastic surgeons, I decided not to have the surgery. It would expensive, surgeon's fees and hosptial fees would have come to $16,000. I lost 170lbs about 20 years ago and my upper arms are jiggly wiggly. No say exersize! Exersize doesn't do anything to combat loose skin. Actually, my muscle tone is excellent, they tell me. It's just the skin. I decided not to have the surgery because the doc would have to make an incision from an inch or two below my under arm all the way down to my an inch or two above my elbow. They cut away the excess skin and stitch you up. I would have had taut arms but I would have had a long scar. They would make the scar on the underside of my arm but it would be visible. So, instead of hiding my jiggle wiggle, I'd have to hide a scar. One of the surgeons I saw, said that he rarely does the procedure now and when he does, he only will do it on people who developed the problem after losing a great deal of weight. He said men are generally pleased with the result but women are never pleased because they just exchange one problem for another one. But if your arm problem really is just fat, lipo works for some. The problem with that is you have to maintain your weight for life. If you gain weight, the new fat won't go to your arms because fat cells have been suctioned out. Instead it will go to the closest part of your body. So, you could end up with fat accumulation on your back or your around your waist.

[violann]

My arms have layers of jigglies and wigglies, but the description of the scars definitely convinced me not to consider surgery. I'm very fair, so any scarring would be really prominent on me.

[Kalli]

I have skinny arms and even when I did Body for Life, which totally sculpted my arms and made them look great, I still had a little jiggle when holding my arms out straight.

I agree you should look into this surgery and get all the knowledge possible to make an informed decision. Once you do all that and if you can afford it, it's your body so do what makes you happy.

-Kalli

[goodstuff]

These pictures illustrate typical scarring after surgery to remove lose skin from upper arms after massive weight loss. Certainly there's less hanging skin causing problems........but many women don't consider the look conducive to going sleeveless.

[Kalli]

On 6/12/2014 violann said: My arms have layers of jigglies and wigglies, but the description of the scars definitely convinced me not to consider surgery. I'm very fair, so any scarring would be really prominent on me.

violann, I'm very fair and I hardly scar. I noticed my friend, who is of Greek origin and sports a wonderful deep golden tan in the summertime gets more scarring than I do. I didn't even get 1 stretch mark during my 2 pregnancies and she was only pregnant once and has lots.

So I figured fair people might not scar as much. But it's harder to hide because we don't get very tan? Hm...

-Kalli

[hckynut]

My wife looked into this with a Plastic Surgeon, which is also a hockey player and a friend of mine, after losing half of her weight. Even though I had her doing lots of arm exercises, even some with more resistance to help grow the muscle, she still has a lot of loose skin on that triceps area.

There is only so much that can be done once the elasticity is gone from the skin. Some are more fortunate genetically than others when it comes to even skin retraction after being stretched.

He told her he could do the surgery but could not make any guarantees about the final outcome for her. He showed her pictures of before and afters of patients with arms that look similar to hers. He also said that in each case, even though they looked the same "before", the "after" did not have the same outcome for all of them. Told us it was more specific to the person/their genetics and also how much their muscle tissue had deteriorated over the years from lack working to maintain the tone and/or muscle tissue.

She is younger than your age and he said that many times age is much less a factor that ones previous lifestyle/amount the skin stretched from overweight and then the person individual ability for muscle tissue to expand and grow through resistance exercises post surgery.

Even with a huge discount from him it was still pretty darned expensive. She decided at that time that there are many more things in her life she would rather use that money for than for this cosmetic procedure. My doctor friend being completely honest in saying "he could not guarantee" exactly what the outcome of the surgery would be. He said many are realistic about what this surgery can and cannot do and are happy with the results that get from it. Others? Not so much, they expected more and were disappointed.

'Bout all I got for you on this one.

[willdob3]

I'd definitely consider it especially since you've lost a lot of weight. Those suggesting weight training simply have no clue when it comes to this.

I've lost a lot, too, and could use head to toe skin removal surgery. Seriously.

I would probably only seriously consider surgery on my arms if there would be no visable scars. I've read so many stories about women having this type of surgery & being left with horrible scarring so they were still not comfortable showing bare arms.

[foundinlv]

Dermatologists have amazing tools these days and it might be advantageous to make an appointment and see what they have in the way of noninvasive procedures.

[NickNack]

I know someone who had it done, and she was in horrible pain for quite a while after the surgery. She had lost a lot of weight and also had a tummy tuck and a boob job. I believe the pain for this surgery is more significant than for some other surgeries.

[willdob3]

On 6/12/2014 ILikeShade said:

Dermatologists have amazing tools these days and it might be advantageous to make an appointment and see what they have in the way of noninvasive procedures.

I don't know of any non-invasive way to remove skin. You pretty much need to cut it away. Sure wuld bee nice though.