Body Contouring After Major Weight Loss: The Techniques, The Advantages, The Disadvantages

After significant weight loss, you may be left with flabby, excess skin and muscle. While you should certainly be proud for losing all of the weight, it may be impossible for you to overlook the skin hanging from your now-slim body. There are a few options available for you to contour your body after you have lost a lot of weight. Each option has advantages and disadvantages. Which body contouring option you use depends on your personal preferences and your overall health. Below is a summary of a couple of your options.

Exercise
Certain exercises, such as weight-lifting and resistance training, are one body contouring technique that is also very beneficial for your health. Exercise is inexpensive and does not present any recovery time or potential complications. However, exercise does require significant time and dedication, and some excess skin simply cannot be tightened with exercise alone. Therefore, patients who choose exercise alone to contour the body must not expect drastic results with little effort. You can maximize your results from exercise by consulting a physical trainer familiar with body contouring after major weight loss.

Body Lift Surgery
No, body lift surgery does not mean that your entire body will be lifted with one pull-and-attach action. Rather, body lift surgery is a term that represents several body contouring plastic surgeries performed either all in one procedure or in several different procedures.

Some of the body contouring plastic surgeries you can have are arm lifts to tighten the skin sagging from your arm, a breast lift to restore shape and firmness to your breasts, or a tummy tuck to get rid of the loose skin on your abdomen and hips. Also, liposuction may be performed in conjunction with body lift surgeries to eliminate the fat in certain places on the body resistant to diet and exercise.

The benefit to body lift surgery is that multiple surgeries can be performed in one procedure which means the results that can be seen and felt almost immediately. However, body lift surgeries are indeed surgeries that can present intense recovery periods, potential complications, and high financial costs.

If you'd like to learn more about tummy tuck (abdominoplasty), breast augmentation surgery, and other plastic surgery options, you should visit a cosmetic surgery practice in Annapolis, Maryland to speak directly with a surgeon.