For those who make New Year’s resolutions, weight loss or healthier eating is typically ranked highly among them. In our specialty of plastic surgery, attaining a healthy weight increases the success and reduces the risk of complications in both our cosmetic and reconstructive patients.
What is a healthy weight to undergo elective plastic surgery?
Plastic surgeons vary in their personal guidelines on their highest threshold for weight and/or BMI of a potential patient to make them good candidates for surgery. In general, we want people to have less than a BMI of 30 and be within 10 lbs of their goal weight before having a cosmetic procedure such as a tummy tuck. Exceptions are sometimes made for people who are very young, have no chronic health issues, and are otherwise at low risk for complications and who have reached a firm plateau in their ability to lose weight.
What happens if you lose weight following a body contouring procedure such as a breast lift, tummy tuck, or even a facelift? If you were ever pregnant or lost a good deal of weight in the past, what happened? With a decent weight loss, one always loses body fat. With that loss of body fat comes a deflation of the skin. If your skin is young and has fantastic tone, it may recover fairly well from the experience. If your skin tone has been lost (with prior weight fluctuations, repeated pregnancies, increasing age, poorer genetics, or long term environmental abuse in the form of sun/smoke/etc), then the skin may not have the ability to rescue itself from draping in a more loose form. You can lose the tightness of your original result. So, do yourself a grand favor and lose the weight first and ensure that you can control future weight gain.
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