Life happens, and gone are the days when your body was fresh, toned, and ready to take on whatever the world threw at it. If you’ve gained weight, had children, or just plain gone soft around the middle, an abdominoplasty, aka tummy tuck, is one of the best ways to dial back the years.
At Cosmetic Surgery Center, many of our patients in Oklahoma City come to us to restore their bodies to pre-pregnancy or pre-weight-gain shape through a tummy tuck. This procedure can work wonders around your midsection, giving you a flatter stomach that belies the journey it’s been through.
If you’re considering a tummy tuck, here are 5 interesting facts about the procedure you should know.
Your skin is very resilient, stretching and bouncing back time and again, until it’s stretched too far. If you push your skin to the limits, the structural support begins to give way, which becomes glaringly evident once your abdomen shrinks back to its normal size. If you’ve had a child or you’ve lost considerable weight, your body may be left with some of the aftermath in terms of loose, sagging skin.
With a tummy tuck, we go in and remove the excess tissue and stubborn deposits of fat, giving you back the taut, flat stomach you began with before “life” happened.
While it’s one thing to simply remove the folds of extra tissue that plague your abdomen, a tummy tuck goes a step further, and we repair the muscles that lie underneath to help you maintain your flatter stomach afterward. When you stretch your skin through pregnancy or weight gain, your abdominal muscles can also separate or become damaged. During your abdominoplasty, we draw your muscles back together and stitch them in place, making sure that the necessary support system for your flatter tummy is in place.
During an abdominoplasty, we make an incision across your abdomen, repair the muscles, remove excess fat, and then we pull your skin back down taut and remove the excess tissue. And this excess skin may contain your belly button. Rest assured, we fashion a new hole for your navel to pop out, allowing your new stomach to look completely natural.
When you suddenly gain weight, as in a pregnancy, this abrupt change to your skin often results in stretch marks. While a tummy tuck procedure can’t remove all of the evidence, we attempt to remove the tissue that contains the lion’s share of stretch marks.
In this final point, we want to stress a few things that tummy tucks can’t do. While this procedure can deliver dramatic results, it shouldn’t be considered a part of your weight-loss program. You need to shed the weight first, and then we can go in and put the finishing touches on your efforts.
A tummy tuck also doesn’t make you immune to weight gain and further stretching in the future. You need to maintain the results we provide you and avoid gaining weight again. This means that you need to be sure you’re done having children before you opt for an abdominoplasty.
If you’d like to find out whether you’re a candidate for a tummy tuck, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. Or you can set up a consultation using our online booking button.
