My journey continues to having this loose skin removed through surgery.

On Friday, my new family doctor referred me to a local plastic surgeon and that appointment is scheduled to be a little after work on June 16th.  I would’ve posted an update sooner, but I’ve been out of town all weekend. I left soon after my doctor’s appointment ended on Friday and only arrived back in town late Sunday night.

After my appointment on Friday I’m confident that surgery is a good decision isn’t a bad decision, it only comes down to whether or not insurance will pay for it. I’m not prepared to pay for the costs myself (even though I do pay outrageous monthly premiums), so we’ll have to wait and see what the insurance co. decides to do.

The doctor made it clear that it’s hard to get insurance to pay for loose skin removal, even with obvious medical reasons for having loose skin removed (back pain, psychological reasons, etc).  It was made clear in the referral to the plastic surgeon that this surgery isn’t to look good at the beach, but to improve my quality of life.

Let’s hope they see it that way, as well.

My battle with loose skin is a losing one, but the road to removing it starts Friday.

I actually had to go without one of my compression shirts a couple of days last week and it made me realize how bad my loose skin had become over the last few months.

While my compression shirts are and have been the biggest help in hiding loose skin on a daily basis, even with wearing them under my regular shirts it’s a losing battle.  I still have some fat that I’m trying to remove, but a lot of my “muffin top” and saggy midsection comes from loose skin and I think surgery is the solution for it.

How do you tell the difference between loose skin and fat?

It’s easy to tell the difference between loose skin and fat because loose skin is nearly paper thin, and when pinching it with one hand your thumb and index finger should touch.  Also, fat is heavier than skin, so if you bend over and try to lift/support it, fat will have a little bit of weight to it while loose skin won’t weigh a thing.

The doctor’s appointment Friday morning (before heading out of town for my sister-in-law’s wedding) is the first step in my attempt to losing this loose skin.  I’ll present my case and reasons as to why I want to get rid of my loose skin and get her advice.   She might tell me that surgery is not a good idea, she might tell me it’s a great idea.

As of right now, it’s just an idea.  It’ll be put into motion on Friday either way.

While I’ve been against the idea in the past, over vacation the last week I suddenly decided that I’d be open to having cosmetic surgery (body contouring, tummy tuck, whatever) to fix my loose skin issues.  I’m tired of having loose skin.

I get it, I “deserve” loose skin, it’s a reminder and the cost of being obese and having poor choice for so many years.  But I don’t have to live with it.  I eventually want to see the results of my hard work, not hidden under a layer of loose skin.  While I thought the scar, postop pain, rehab, etc, would be enough to deter me from having surgery, that’s not the case anymore.  I’m in my 20s and hopefully have decades to live.

I’d rather not live for 40+ years with several pounds of skin around my midsection.

I’m still in the early stages of researching loose skin surgery, trying to find the right plastic surgeon in the area, risks, effectiveness of surgery, looking up payment options, etc.  If I’m lucky, my health insurance should provide some sort of coverage for it.  At the end, I may decide not to have surgery, or I might decide to wait a couple of years.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Of course, as I go down the road of having surgery, y0u’ll come along with me.

Loose skin is a very popular topic amongst those who are starting to lose weight.  Before most even lose 20 pounds, I get asked by folks about whether or not the loose skin I gained was “worth it.”  The answer is an emphatic yes.

Loose skin doesn’t kill you and loose skin doesn’t put you in size 48-inch jeans.  It also doesn’t give you high blood pressure or cause you to think you’re having a heart attack when you’re 21 or make your wife scared for your life because you stop breathing at night (apnea!).  You know what does?  Being overweight and being obese.

Not loose skin.

I know many people lose weight with a goal of trying to look better and add sex appeal in addition to the myriad of health benefits, and that’s fine.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  And I’ll also concede that personally, I don’t find loose skin to be attractive, and as I continue to lose fat around my midsection it’s being replaced with hanging, drooping loose skin. The loose skin around my upper arms and thighs are being filled in by muscles, which should be your strategy as well, but realistically, I’ll never be able to have ab muscles that fill the void of a stomach the size of what I used to have.

Without surgery, I’m stuck with loose skin.

I don’t let the loose skin depress me or discourage me, I just keep working.  And you should do the same.  Don’t worry about the loose skin.  Regardless of how much weight you’ve lost or need to lose (unless you were like 500+ pounds) there will always be ways to hide loose skin.  You’ll look fine with a shirt on, nobody will be able to notice.

Loose skin is just a battle scar I have to live with.  Nothing more and nothing less.

I once thought that you could buy your way out of loose skin.

I thought you could buy a cream, lotion, or one of the other many products marketed to help remove loose skin to take care of the job. So did I. Unfortunately, the laws of physics prevented any of these products from actually making any difference.

Think of loose skin this way:

You squeeze into a shirt 2x too small. You wear it all day. At the end of the day, you take the shirt off and of course, the shirt is now bigger than it was when you put it on.

Granted, our skin isn’t a t-shirt. Our skin is smart and can adapt to conditions. Loose skin resulting from weight loss will shrink a little to mold with our body. However, the rate at which our skin does shrink and the amount it inevitably shrinks cannot be affected by anything we do, but instead depends on your age and the speed at which you lost the weight (the quicker you lose it, the more tightening it has to do).

No cream, lotion, or any other magical solution will fix our loose skin.

The best thing we can hope to do is hide loose skin. You can’t do much about hiding it with your shirt off of course, but as I said yesterday I look like a normal guy with a shirt on. I wear compression shirts (this one and this one specifically, both medium, same size as my normal shirts) under my regular every day clothing. Compression clothing is aptly named as it compresses, keeping loose skin/flab around your chest and midsection from moving and keeps everything supported.

Yes, like a bra.

Some people will take this advice with a grain of salt, I’m afraid. They’ll continue looking for a way to remove loose skin that is complicated, costs money and promises a lot through gimmicks and fine print but delivers very little instead of facing reality.

That’s what some people do when they hear about counting calories, too. Thankfully, they usually come back around eventually.