Tone your Body, Get Rid of Lose and Saggy Skin with Body Contouring Cosmetic Procedures

Body contouring procedures serve people whose skin and underlying tissues become loose for some reason or the other, by tightening them.

A typical example of the loose skin is the abdominal skin that multiple pregnancies bring to women. The abdominal muscles and skin get stretched during child bearing and are unable to spring back to the original shape after the delivery(s) due to loss of elasticity.

Loose skin in addition to being aesthetically unpleasant, could cause difficulty in moving about and fitting into clothes.

In severe form, the skin is left hanging or in folds falling in the pubic area which is uncomfortable and unhygienic. The condition may be treated with Abdominoplasty, a body contouring cosmetic procedure for the abdominal area.

The body contouring procedures however play much more significant roles in the lives of another set of patients –the group of obese people who undergo massive weight loss.

Stories of some of the obese people tackling their weight problem are often awe inspiring because these are the stories of people’s patience, tenacity and courage in facing up to and getting rid of the enormous fat they are burdened with.

Obesity is caused by many factors like genetic makeup passed on through heredity, living without diet control and exercise, loneliness & depression leading to overeating and other factors.
It is usually a continuous struggle against fat. People start the fight and often give it up with some of them coming back to fight again.

For obese people, the fight usually means strict diet control getting over the temptations of fast foods and other unhealthy foods and taking up regular exercise under guidance and other measures.

Many a times the above steps may not be sufficient to lose fat and weight and the people then take up the challenge of going through bariatric surgery, a set of surgeries, any one of which can restrict people’s food intake by reducing appetite and absorption of the food by the stomach and the intestines.

Bariatric surgeries are known to be largely successful in effecting massive weight losses post surgery, if the patients maintain a healthy life style subsequently with the prescribed diet and exercise.

But the results which take about eighteen months to emerge bring in additional problems in the form of loose and hanging or folded skins in the upper arms, breasts and chests, abdomens, buttocks, thighs and other locations.

These loose skins keep moving whenever the persons are in motion or fall over on adjacent body parts causing severe physical discomfort, difficulty in getting into clothes or rubbing against each other and causing hygienic problems.

Depending on the severity of skin loosening in different body parts, the persons take up body contouring in one part after the other, but only after achieving stable body weights after the bariatric surgery.

These body contouring procedures and visibility of their results may take about another eighteen months, thus requiring a firm commitment from the obese people of about 3 years of treatment against obesity.

Even after that, in order to protect the gains in weight loss, the treated people will have to commit to lifelong disciplined life of healthy diet and exercise.

Such long and intense treatment taken up by the obese people to fight obesity is unique not only in terms of its duration and number of procedures involved but also due to the persistent fighting spirit that the patients display.

It is said that the obese people while losing weights, trade fat removal with multiple scar lines in different parts of their bodies.

The body contouring or shaping surgeries come in different forms some of which are –

Arm lift or Brachioplasty removes the hanging skin (bat wings) of the upper arms by making incisions from the arm pit to elbow on the underside of the arms and excising the extra skin and tightening the remaining skin;

Breast lift or Mastopexy puts the areola nipple complex in the original high position by three types of incisions (Donut, Lollypop and Anchor types) depending on how much the areola and nipples are hanging down;

Abdomen lift or Abdominoplasty tightens the skin and underlying tissues in the abdomen, by making incisions from one hip to the pubic area in a slant line and going across the pubic area and then taking it up to the other hip along a similar slant line.

The belly button is made free of the skin and tissues. The skin is lifted, underlying tissues are tightened with sutures and the skin is pulled and the excess length is cut before the skin is draped back in position.

The incisions are then closed; Inner thigh lift tightens the inner thigh skins and underlying layers with an incision from the groin to the knee level;

Buttock and outer thigh lift tightens the skin and the underlying layers with an incision that runs at the top of the buttocks from one side to the other and comes down along the outer thighs.