Gastric Bypass Ontario.. Excess Skin post op

Hello, I am looking into getting the gastric bypass however I am worried about the excess skin after post op. I am worried that the excess skin will be so severe that I will need plastic surgery and would like to avoid that. So I am basically just looking to hear your stories to see if this is a thing I need to be worried about or because of my age (28) is it something that I shouldn't worry about. Thank you all so much.

pre- and early post-surgery, I worried incessantly about excess skin. That, and losing my hair. Yes - I had excess skin - a fair amount of it. But it was very easy to hide. I'm the only one who knew it was there (I did eventually have it taken off, but only because it was driving me nuts after awhile - but it was not noticeable when I had clothes on). Hair? I had very little hair loss. A few extra strands in my comb from about month 6 to month 9. I would not have noticed it had it not been for that, so I am 100% sure no one else noticed. After I lost all of that weight, I wondered why I had wasted even one brain cell worrying about those two things. I would have taken my excess skin any day over weighing 373 lbs. ANY DAY!!!

yep i can deal with excess skin any day, beats excess fat. oh sure i lost hair but is growing back. yes the fun of this is ordering on-line clothes smaller ones at 5am. my only regret is why didn't i have the surgery sooner.

There's really no good way to predict how much excess skin you may have, as there are a lot of factors that affect it. The younger you are, and the less time you've been MO, you're less likely to have too much skin, but there's no guarantee.

I had surgery at age 31, lost half my body weight, and didn't have enough skin to merit plastics; my tummy skin was a bit squishy, but I was fine wearing Spanx when I wanted to look smooth. There are other people who are the same age or loss less weight, and decided they needed plastics.

The best thing to do is to look at all of the positive benefits to your health from having WLS. Losing 150lb helped me get off my blood pressure meds and CPAP, helped me have a healthy pregnancy, and let me be much more active. I'm absolutely willing to wear shapewear for that trade-off.

Thank you both.. my main worry is that my self esteem will be worse with the excess skin than it does as an overweight woman. But the health benefits to doing the surgery seem so worth it. I am so unsure as to what to do at the moment.

Hi Jessica - I don't want to speak on behalf of others, but I'm betting most of us had much more self esteem issues being obese than we do with excess skin. Again, for many of us, it's easy to hide. On the other hand, it's impossible to hide obesity.

Hey Jessica! As previous posters have said, many factors go into how much excess skin you will have after massive weight loss. A couple of big ones are amount of time MO and age. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee though, I had WLS at 24 years old and had been MO for "only" about 4 years and I still had 12 pounds of excess skin removed from my stomach via plastic surgery.

Regardless, I still would have made the same decision a million times over. Just for vanity sake, I looked MUCH better at 140 pounds with saggy skin than 260 pounds. Most people don't even realize you have extra skin, and it's fairly easy to hide with clothing and spandex.

Best of luck! I would 100% recommend bypass if you qualify and are ready to make the life long sacrifices and changes necessary to become a long term success.

From my 10 years here and personal observation at bariatric conferences, I would guess about 80% of us have enough loose skin to warrant plastics (look at pictures OH posts from their conferences). You may fare better because you are young.

Not everyone gets their skin removed. Many accept themselves as-is, others get plastic surgery. I was in the middle- I fixed the parts that bothered me most and did learn to accept the rest. I love my body now.

At the seminar I attended for my WLS Program. Many people asked the question about excess skin. And The surgeon was Blunt and said Many people won't even be lucky enough to have that worry Post-Op. And gave us the statistics of the amount of people who never reach their goals, and the statistics of the amount of people who end up gaining the weight back. It always stuck with me. I am just 4 months into this Post-Op life and I hope I am lucky enough to have excess skin. Bring it on!

I love that response. It is sort of like telling a little kid that there is no Santa, but it is real. People think that they will magically lose weight because of surgery and dont realize that they still have to do the diet and work their tool properly.