Timelines and decisions

[bhopeful 33]

After truly a lifetime of trying to lose weight I am finally so close to my goal weight. I have been fat my whole life, being over 300 pounds at my heaviest. I am now 51 years old and finally I am in a normal weight range. I am trying to decide what to make my actual goal weight and also what to do in terms of all of this massive skin.

This is the first time I am really thinking about skin removal surgery so I'm sorry if these questions have been covered previously but there are just so, so many posts.

I am hoping that some of you can give me your experiences and opinions.

1. How long were you at your goal weight before you had skin removal surgery?

2. Is there a suggested order for removal? I have to have everything done. Is it better to do a full body lift first and then breasts, arms, thighs ..... does it matter which order each section is done in?

3. I guess this is more of a personal preference or personal experience question but I will ask it anyway. I am about 140 pounds lower than my highest weight. I am struggling with the last 20 pounds, to lose them. It is difficult for me to estimate how much the actual skin weighs. For those of you that had the skin removal, did you think it was essential to get down to absolute goal weight or did you have the skin removal done at a weight you were just comfortable with? How much did you actually lose with having skin removal over your whole body? I know this is probably a strange question and maybe I am being impulsive and impatient. I really want all of this skin off but struggling with that last 20 pounds. It just sounds crazy actually now writing this so maybe I need to just persevere and get that last 20 pounds off!

I will do more reading on these boards to find experiences of people with massive skin removal. But thank you for listening.

Edited January 18, 2017 by bhopeful

[TheRealMeIsHere! 863]

Congrats & great job!!

Each Ins. is different, mine wanted 18 months stable at goal weight. If you are comfortable at 140, maybe that can be your goal weight. Was that a goal set by your surgeon or you?

[shedo82773 1,236]

I had my RNY on July 2, 2013. I got to my goal weight in 6 months. I have maintained my 124#'s that I lost for 3 years. I had my Panni in Sept of 2015. My Plastic Surgeon removed 10 plus #'s from my lower apron. Now I love the weigh gone but my PS didn't come thru with all he had promised. My advise to you is I would pay for the extra that your insureance doesn't cover. If at all possible have the Tummy Tuck maybe with muscle repair. After my surgery was done he kept telling me that ZI was still swollen. Right away I wasn't happy with my upper stomach. Finally he told me that I was blessed, and needed Lipo on my upper stomach. Then he said that he would give me a great deal, he would do a breast lift and Lipo for $6,000. If he had just been honest I would have paid at the time. I was really upset for sure, then I had a allergic reactin and was in ICU for 8 hours with a tube down my throat, and having the OR nurse shocking me in my temple. Not good when they were told that I had an allergy but didn't know the name of the drug. Also I had surgery in the hospital and she had told me she would check out my records from when I had my RNY and use the same medications. Sad but true. I'm not trying to scare anyone but just make sure you get what you want. Good luck on your journey!!

[JamieLogical 8,727]

The general rule of thumb is to be at/near goal for a full year before having skin removal surgery. I think I was actually only at goal for about 8 months prior to mine. When you start having consults with surgeons, they will let you know what they think and what their guidelines are.

Same thing goes for the order of the surgeries. Depending on what you need done, they will put together a plan that ensures you aren't under anesthesia for too long in one go and that you have adequate recovery time between surgeries. If it were up to me, I'd advise having the "easier" surgeries with shorter recovery first, like arms and boobs. A LBL or TT will have a really long recovery time and can be pretty brutal. Wouldn't want a difficult recovery from that to deter you from getting the other surgeries.

As for how much weight you can plan to lose with skin removal, the answer is none. Yes, the skin you have removed will have potentially significant weight to it. But the swelling from an LBL or TT last MONTHS. Literally months. At least 2-3 months, In my case, I had soft tissue swelling that lasted NINE months. You will be virtually immobile in he early days and have very limited/restricted activity for probably at least two months. So between the swelling and reduced activity, by the time you achieve your true "results", you probably will have re-gained some weight. It will definitely be impossible to tell how the weight of the skin removed affected your overall weight.

[BayougirlMrsS 3,939]

After truly a lifetime of trying to lose weight I am finally so close to my goal weight. I have been fat my whole life, being over 300 pounds at my heaviest. I am now 51 years old and finally I am in a normal weight range. I am trying to decide what to make my actual goal weight and also what to do in terms of all of this massive skin.

Sometime your "goal" weight and what your body decides are two different things. I was stuck at 143... FOREVER.

This is the first time I am really thinking about skin removal surgery so I'm sorry if these questions have been covered previously but there are just so, so many posts.

I am hoping that some of you can give me your experiences and opinions.

1. How long were you at your goal weight before you had skin removal surgery? One Year and one month.

2. Is there a suggested order for removal? I have to have everything done. Is it better to do a full body lift first and then breasts, arms, thighs ..... does it matter which order each section is done in? I only had a Tummy Tuck

3. I guess this is more of a personal preference or personal experience question but I will ask it anyway. I am about 140 pounds lower than my highest weight. I am struggling with the last 20 pounds, to lose them. It is difficult for me to estimate how much the actual skin weighs. For those of you that had the skin removal, did you think it was essential to get down to absolute goal weight or did you have the skin removal done at a weight you were just comfortable with? How much did you actually lose with having skin removal over your whole body? I know this is probably a strange question and maybe I am being impulsive and impatient. I really want all of this skin off but struggling with that last 20 pounds. It just sounds crazy actually now writing this so maybe I need to just persevere and get that last 20 pounds off! I didn't have a lot of extra skin.. I want to say it was about 2#'s

I will do more reading on these boards to find experiences of people with massive skin removal. But thank you for listening.

I tried to answer some of your questions in the above...

I had a TT with muscle repair on Feb. 2012. I was back at work in 12 days. I do have a desk job so I sit most of the day. I was up and walking in two days. I slept in my recliner for about a week. Wore my compression garment for 6-8 weeks. I was swollen for about 6 months.

[deedadumble 1,033]

1. How long were you at your goal weight before you had skin removal surgery?

2. Is there a suggested order for removal?

3. Did you think it was essential to get down to absolute goal weight or did you have the skin removal done at a weight you were just comfortable with? How much did you actually lose with having skin removal over your whole body?

1. VSG on 1/17/13 (273lb highest weight). Close to goal in about 7 mo but worked on that pesky 20 lb for another 6 mo. Plastics on 7/22/14 at 165lb (in 5'10"), so I was at goal for maybe 6 mo. I think it's more important to wait for a year when you're young and your skin has more elasticity and will continue to tighten. Mine was never going to tighten at 48 yrs old. Part of the reason to have plastics is to keep the weight off long term by being more satisfied with your body image and I wanted it done asap.

2. I had everything done at once. Arms, breast lift/augmentation, lower body lift, and 2 days later a lower face lift (neck lift). I went to Mexico for plastics for a lot of reasons, but one big one was that they do surgery using twilight sedation and epidural. I woke after surgery feeling awesome! Felt like I'd had the best sleep of my life. Hardly any pain. If it weren't for a compression garment that irritated the nerves in my elbow I would not have had to take any painkillers. Very lucky! If I had to do it over again, the only thing I might change would be to do the LBL in two surgeries and only because I think doing it in one puts more stress on the back incision (because you have to walk hunched over because of the tummy tuck) and you end up with a wider scar.

3. I did not lose any weight from plastics. The total weight of skin removed was around 6 pounds, but I had some of it put back in with a butt flap augmentation. Swelling for the first 3-6 months more than makes up for weight lost. Lots of lymph pathways are destroyed, so you are in swell hell until they re-generate.