I am 24 years old going to be 25 when I get my surgery. I am currently 255lbs coming in at 5"3. I haven't had my surgery yet and I am so beyond scared I'll have saggy skin. I have no self esteem now because I'm too fat to do anything. I can't fit into normal chairs, can't cross my legs, and can't even tie my damn shoe....I just found out I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and am diabetic. I refused medications for all of these and have started working out and eating better. Does anyone have any advice? I know I'm doing it so I can live a long healthy life, but I'm just having second thoughts. I'm 4 months into my appointments and am still going but idk anymore. I need help.

Why did you refuse the medications? Diabetes can really mess things up.

I personally look at it as I'm unhealthy and I don't look good with or without clothes on. So I'll take the saggy skin as long as I'm healthy and can have way more clothing options.

I can control these things by changing my lifestyle. I am barely diabetic, I guess that sounds stupid but just met the qualifications for being diabetic, the doctor said that they'll do blood work next apt to see where I stand and if I am still up there then I'll have to do meds. I don't want to. I have never had a health problem even though I'm overweight. I want to fix myself as much as I can before surgery....

Your story sounds so much like mine, except you are smart and are having surgery now. I waited. When I was 24 years old I weighed 290 pounds at 5'7. I took the nasty glucose test and my sugar after 2 hours was 202 which qualified me as diabetic. So I barely qualified but it scared me enough to start eating better and exercising. I lost 20 pounds then began to have digestive issues. A specialist, who happened to be a bariatric surgeon, told me I needed to have my gallbladder out so I did. Afterwards he told me I needed weight loss surgery if I ever wanted to get healthy. I took offense at his suggestion. I've already lost 20 lbs! How dare you suggest I have weight loss surgery? That's only for 400+ lb people!

Eventually I went to a weight loss clinic and lost 70 lbs practically starving and hyped up on phentermine which almost killed me after six months. My doctor told me I cannot take stimulants or I will have a heart attack so I had to stop taking the medicine.

I got back up to 260 pounds over a few years. I was depressed and realized my 29th birthday was coming up. I made a goal to be under 200 pounds by my 30th birthday and I knew that surgeon was right. I needed weight loss surgery. So I began my research and had surgery one week before my 29th birthday.

In less than 5 months I reached my goal of being under 200 pounds. Guess what? The skin on my thighs is looking kind of saggy. But I'm 98 pounds down from my heaviest weight. What did I expect? That I wouldn't have any lasting reminders of my previous weight? My stomach isn't too bad but I still have 30 pounds to go and I know for a fact my stomach will look pretty funky...but I would do it all over again.

Being able to shop in the non-plus sized section of stores, not be ashamed when someone takes a candid picture, fitting in an airplane seat and not being ashamed, standing on my feet or walking all day is no problem, there are SO many more reasons to lose weight than be scared by saggy skin.

With the amount of weight you need to lose, you will have saggy skin. But it will be worth it. You can always have skin removal surgery if you can't live with it. I'm already considering a tummy tuck and breast lift but I'll wait for at least a year or two.

I am your height and I was about 10 pounds heavier when I started than you are now according to your sidebar stats.

I would MUCH rather have saggy skin than die early of complications from my obesity. I might not look like a bikini model naked, but I sure do look a helluva lot better in my clothes. Plus I have the ability to do anything I want.

Grab a hold of your life while you are young!!

In these pictures I am about 6-7 pounds heavier than I am now. Where would you rather be in a year or two?

As long as you exercise to burn fat and gain muscle and drink lots of water for hydration you will be ok. Losing weight slowly instead of drastically is the key. It gives time for the skin's elasticity to work. I have lost 62lbs and won't need a tummy tuck or anything. My arms are a little flabby but that's my own day fault. I don't do arm exercises. But I will.

You're so young that I doubt you'll have much problem with saggy skin. And if you do have small issues, you can find a way to have plastic surgery. But at your age you can practically grow new body organs. (Oh, to have had this surgery when I was 24/25!)

Maybe you're just venting and expressing some natural fears about really changing your life and what that will mean for you in many ways.

But in terms of your actual decision options, this decision is really a no-brainer: Get the weight off, keep it off, and get healthy.

If you lose weight without WLS, some very good, very long-term research on thousands of people says your odds of keeping the weight off are only 5% or 1 in 20 (or 30 or 40, depending on which research you prefer). If you have WLS, good research says your odds of keeping all or most of the weight off long-term are 50-60%. Obviously, WLS offers better odds for long-term success.

Obviously, WLS by itself may not solve your problem. You have to continue to learn and practice new behaviors and new attitudes and a new lifestyle to be successful long-term. But those will be easier to learn / practice with WLS than without. Trust me. I know. I'm 69 years old.

One other thing: You're already pretty heavy at this young age, and if you don't fix the problem now you'll gain more weight and soon weigh 300. And then maybe 350. And then maybe even 400. This problem never stays the same for those like us -- it just gets worse and worse.

I wish the very, very best for you. Chin up! Have courage! You can fix this. Many people have.

scared I'll have saggy skin

@@Big Opie

almost 3 years ago i reached goal

down 105 lbs

i was 58 years YOUNG

i noticed that my rear end+ had a lot of sagging skin

definitely firmed up a "bit" within a few months

age does matter in this case

being a youngun - your skin "should" tighten up for the better

you'll probably still have some hanging skin

"DEAL WITH IT"

a little hanging skin won't kill you

being overweight can

good luck with your decision about having surgery

decision, decisions, decisions

kathy

As long as you exercise to burn fat and gain muscle and drink lots of Water for hydration you will be ok. Losing weight slowly instead of drastically is the key. It gives time for the skin's elasticity to work. I have lost 62lbs and won't need a tummy tuck or anything. My arms are a little flabby but that's my own day fault. I don't do arm exercises. But I will.

That's kind of a bold statement. There are a lot of factors that can contribute to loose skin. Everyone is different, so to say the OP won't have loose/saggy skin just because you don't, is potentially inaccurate. While it is true that there are some things you can do to minimize loose skin as you lose weight (hydration, moisturization, sumplementation, and strength training), there are also factors like age, rate of loss, and genetics to contend with.

To the OP, the thing to keep in mind here is that potential loose skin is the least of your problems! The excess weight is ruining your health. You are young and already experiencing many medical issues related to your weight. Plus, I doubt the fat looks all that great either, so are you really going to look "worse" with some loose skin?

Your choices are continued deterioration of your health or the possibility of saggy skin. You pick your poisons. Chances are given your age, if you work out and tone as you lose, you may not have saggy skin. As for meds, there is the possibility that you may have to get on them at least temporarily. Please do not refuse them. Unchecked cholesterol and diabetes can be very bad. As you lose weight you may no longer need them, but if in the interim you do, then so be it.

As for your self esteem, that's a separate issue. Being thinner is not a guarantee that those issues will disappear with the weight. Find a way to learn and love yourself, flaws and all. Seek counseling if necessary.

I fear loose skin, too, and that sagging belly. And I'm much older, so it's likely to be much more dramatic for me. But that didn't stop me! It should really scare you to be so young and on the verge of serious, lifelong health problems. Get healthy NOW, and deal with the cosmetic issues at your leisure later...if you even care to then! Likely you'll be so pleased with the results and so happy to be rid of the bulk that it will be less of a concern later.

I was 29 when I had my sleeve surgery and I didn't really think about saggy skin all that much initially. Your comment that you're too fat to do anything reminds of things I used to say to myself. I yo-yo dieted so I would go down to about 138, then up to 200, down to 140, up to 210, until the last time I was down at 137 and then went up to 237, which is when I decided on the sleeve. I was too fat to be seen in public and if in hindsight if I had known how my saggy skin would look, I still would have lost the weight. You can hide saggy skin, but you can't hide fat. Also, a few hours in the OR with a good plastic surgeon, and most of the flab can be fixed. Then you can be healthy and hot, but if you aren't willing to lose weight because you might be saggy, that's like saying you aren't going to swim to shore off of a sinking ship because you might get wet. Yes, you're going to have some sag...but if in the end you are exponentially better off than now which seems like a fair trade to me.

On another note, from a medical perspective I would encourage you to reconsider the medications, at least the hypertension one. If you are borderline diabetic, it seems quite a few people have had this problem resolved with the sleeve procedure and weight loss. Cholesterol can be resolved ideally by changing the way you eat, although it can also be genetic in that no matter how you eat you will still have high cholesterol which will hurt you in the long run. I had hypertension when I was fat and figured losing weight would fix it so I didn't take the drugs. I am now 128 and this month I finally went on beta blockers because being thin and in shape did not change the fact that my bp continues to be through the roof. Of all of those issues, I would take the hypertension medications and carefully monitor your diet for at least 6 weeks before having a fasting glucose and cholesterol test done again. I ate a big meal the night before a cholesterol test once and I went from my usual very low number to ridiculously high, so there are things that can skew that result. As someone who has hypertension, I was mad that I had to take drugs, but I feel SO much better now that my bp is managed. If you end up losing weight, you can always stop the drugs, but the damage you are doing now, especially with a high bp isn't something that is worth dealing with purely because you don't want to be on fat people medications.

I'm so glad you decided to have the surgery when you are young. You have your whole life ahead of you as a healthy person.

I was diagonosed diabetic and I hated that disease so much that I was in denial and would refuse to take medcations coz I thought I could do it myself, but the truth is that if you're diabetic and not taking medicine, you are only making your health worse day by day. So ultimately I decided to take metamorphin and the preasure medicine comes automatically with it, coz the presure medicine is required to protect your kidney. I do not have my dates yet and still have to have my psychic evaluation done and hoping to meet the surgeon sometime this June.

But my hope and prayer is that I can put my diabetics in remission after the surgery God willing and never have to look back again.

But my advise is that you please take ur diabetic meds coz it would only help than making ur numbers worst, which was my situation for alomost more than a year. If you dont keep your sugar nos. under control, it can damage ur eye sight, kidney and much more, so please do not ignore diabetics as I have seen the damge its done to both my parents and my lost my dad to that killer disease...

I repeated and am doing what my professional dietician said. Are you a certified dietician? Or are you a Google researcher? Just wondering...