If you wish that your stomach was smoother and the skin on it was tighter, or if you have extra abdominal skin that you would like to have eliminated, a tummy tuck could be the right solution for you. This reliable and effective body contouring procedure can offer permanent results for the right candidates. If you are interested in a tummy tuck in Kansas City, Dr. Joseph C. Camarata at Aesthetic Surgical Arts in Overland Park, KS can help you determine your candidacy and get you the best results.
Is a Tummy Tuck Permanent?
The tummy tuck, also known as abdominoplasty, is considered a permanent procedure, and the results will not usually fade for those who keep their weight stable. That said, keeping a stable weight is crucial. Everyone’s body is unique in where it chooses to store fat. This is genetically determined, and there is nothing you can do to change how your body chooses to store extra weight. For this reason, if your body tends to put on weight in the stomach easily, you may see your tummy tuck results fading if you put on 5 to 10 pounds of fat.
However, if you tend to put your weight on in other areas of the body first, you may be able to gain more like 15 pounds before you start to notice a change. Be aware, too, that pregnancy can usually be expected to undo the results of this procedure. If you become pregnant, you may need a follow-up procedure to restore your results. The same is sometimes necessary after a ventral hernia.
Maintaining Your Weight
Since keeping a stable weight is so important to maintain your new look after this procedure, it’s good to go into the procedure with a plan for how to keep your new contours. If you can successfully maintain your weight for a long period before this treatment, you will be an especially good candidate for this procedure and can have confidence that you will keep your results for the long term.
Many people go through cycles of weight gain and loss, and the reason for this is primarily crash dieting. The problem with crash dieting is that it requires you to follow a lifestyle you are not able to maintain for the long term. Once you are done with the diet, you almost can’t help going back to eating as you did before; and sometimes even more. It’s much better to get into long-term good habits that will help you to maintain a stable weight.
Here are a few things that are especially helpful in weight maintenance:
Diet
What you eat is the most important choice you make. While it is true that some types of exercise, particularly strength training, can help you to build muscle and maintain a healthy weight, exercise makes you hungry out of proportion to the number of calories it actually burns.
Exercise is not actually an effective way to lose weight: it is an effective way to improve your overall health. There’s an old saying, “you can’t outrun your mouth.” This just means that no matter how much you exercise, if you’re not eating well, you will still gain weight.
Be sure to prioritize healthy fats from grass-fed and pastured animal sources, olive oil, and avocado oil; healthy proteins, again from grass-fed and pastured animal sources if it all possible; and fresh vegetables and fruit.
Strength Training
Muscle is much more metabolically active than fat. This is just a fancy way of saying that your body needs more calories to maintain one ounce of muscle than it does to maintain one ounce of fat. That means the more muscle you have, the more fat you will burn no matter what you’re doing, even sleeping or sitting quietly to watch TV.
The main benefit of strength training is that it increases your muscle mass and allows you to burn more calories naturally. Increased muscle mass also causes your cardiovascular and respiratory systems to strengthen, making this the best all-around type of exercise.
There is no need to put in hours at the gym, either. Twice a week for 20 minutes or so is plenty, and you can use weight machines. Just be sure to push yourself to muscle failure on every machine you use and target a variety of muscle groups. “Muscle failure” simply means you exercise to the point where you are no longer physically able to push or pull the bar of the machine one more time.
Aerobic Excercise
It’s important to understand what this type of exercise can and cannot do. Getting 15 minutes of vigorous cardio or about 30-60 minutes of less vigorous cardio (like a brisk walk) each day is exceptionally good for your health. The human body was made to move, and walking, in particular, is especially useful for the body. However, this is not a great way to burn a lot of calories.
Our bodies are very efficient machines, so when we burn extra calories by engaging in a burst of exercise, our bodies tend to respond by either impelling us to eat more afterward to make up for the deficit or by lowering our metabolisms later on to save calorie expenditure and even things out for the day. The body doesn’t want to burn any more calories today than it did yesterday, and it will strive to stay in that balance.
It is true that exercise will temporarily increase your metabolism, but it will decrease your metabolism later in the day to make up for it. The only way to get around the cycle is to engage in a lot of cardio daily, which is only feasible for certain people at certain times of life. For most of us with family responsibilities and jobs, it is not all that useful. You should definitely be getting daily aerobic exercise, particularly walking, but you should be pairing it with good strength training and especially with a good diet. Otherwise, it will not be all that helpful to your weight maintenance.
Losing Weight After Your Procedure
After your tummy tuck, you may be inspired to try and lose more weight. While this is a good idea generally, you should be careful to lose weight slowly after a procedure like this. Losing weight slowly will allow your skin to tighten after you lose weight. Losing weight too quickly can leave sagging skin.
Since part of the reason for getting this procedure is to tighten the skin, the best way to preserve your results is to lose weight at a measured rate after your tummy tuck. Aim to lose no more than about one to two pounds of fat in a week. As you do, be sure to eat foods that will promote skin health. These include collagen-rich foods, foods rich in vitamins and micronutrients, and hydrating foods and drinks.
Good Candidates for This Procedure
If you are about 20 pounds or less from your goal weight, and if you have tried to sculpt your stomach through diet and exercise but have seen no good results, you may be a perfect candidate for this procedure. You must also be able to follow all of our guidelines after your procedure to be a good candidate.
This is also a great procedure for those with weak abdominal muscles. If your abdominal muscles have been weakened, which often happens through pregnancy, injury, or surgery, you may be experiencing side effects like lower back pain and stress urinary incontinence. This procedure can help.
Women who are still breastfeeding or who are pregnant are not good candidates. It’s a good idea to allow your body to fully heal and recover from pregnancy before getting a tummy tuck. Finally, if you are planning to become pregnant in the near future, you should wait to have an abdominoplasty until you are done having children.
The Mini-Tuck
The mini-tuck is a type of abdominoplasty that’s perfect for people who are pleased with their upper abs and don’t need any work there. This variation of the procedure does not tighten the abdominal muscles. It just removes extra fat and skin from below the navel and repositions the navel at the same time. Talk to us about the right procedure for your needs.
What Medical Conditions Can Abdominoplasty Help With?
In addition to improving the way your stomach looks, this procedure can do a lot to help with certain medical conditions. It often improves stress urinary incontinence, particularly when this is caused after a vaginal childbirth.
Ventral hernias are also a problem for those with issues in their abdominal wall, and this procedure can help reverse this condition by strengthening the abdominal walls. This procedure can also improve chronic lower back pain for some people.
Complementary Procedures
This procedure can be had in conjunction with others, and there are certain procedures it is especially helpful to seek at the same time. It’s often easier on the body to have just one procedure rather than to go in multiple times for surgery, so talk to us at your initial consultation about your aesthetic goals and whether there are other procedures you would like to seek at the same time.
About Liposuction
Liposuction has been used for over 40 years to safely remove fat cells from a given area of the body. This is an FDA-approved treatment that is administered all over the world and is very effective. A tummy tuck will only remove a bit of the excess fat in the area. Liposuction can remove about 25% of the fat cells in the region and often pairs well with a tuck.
How Much Weight Can I Lose With Liposuction?
Understand that liposuction is not a weight-loss procedure. It is a fat-removal procedure, and in order to be a good candidate, you still need to be within a reasonable distance of your goal weight. It removes excess fat cells, and once those cells are gone, your body does not make new ones. However, your body can still store fat in the remaining fat cells, so it is still important to maintain your weight. Most people lose around 10 pounds after liposuction.
Schedule Your Consultation to Learn More About a Tummy Tuck in Kansas City
If you’re interested in learning more, contact us at Aesthetic Surgical Arts in Overland Park, KS today. We’ll set up an initial consultation and help you decide if this is the right procedure for your needs.
