EXCESS SKIN after losing 200 pounds

Well the health is the big deal.

I try to remind myself that time and gravity do their deal on even the best looking bodies. I'm just a bit more of an extreme example.

You are so brave to post these pictures.  Thank you.   I also found your metaphors to be hysterical.  You are beautiful inside and out.

Catherine

Thank you Catherine.

Thank you for showing the real side of after dramatic weight loss. I am down 200 pounds since my RNY in August 09. I still have a hard time looking in the mirror even clothed when I see my arms, and I am constanly putting my boobs in my bra!! They always come out cause their just hanging skin.

My boyfriend tells me everyday how beautiful I am, but to me I just am so self-conscious about my hanging skin on my back, and lower abdomen.

I think that some people need to SEE this because for soem it WILL be a deciding moment for whether or not to have weight loss surgery. If you don't have the bucks to get plastic surgery, and you couldn't handle that hanging skin, then maybe WLS isn't for you. that's what I wanted to show. It's not all glamour. But I dress up real fine, and that's the consolation.

I think my hanging skin isn't all that alluring to my hubs, but he didn't marry me for my looks anyway.

Your absolutely right!! I think before surgery I thought seeing all the before and after pics woohoo sexy body and life will be grand I can do whatever I want. Well two years out, divorced and starting my life over I realize I am blessed just  to be alive and healthy!! The skin is just something I will learn to deal with in time.

Thank you so very much for sharing this. I am trying to learn as much as I can about what to expect after surgery before I make the final decision as to whether or not to go through with it.  I definitely want to be healthy but that includes mental health and I have to be sure I can handle it before I jump.

Your initial post and all the comments on this thread have been very helpful. Thank you agin.

 I would like to say how much I admire you for this post.  I have lost almost 90 pounds (and probably won't lose much more-started out at 218 and am now 132 at 5 feet 2 inches-no surgery), but much of my body areas look like a modified (some not so modifed) version of this.  I am single and older-60 soon.  I have hanging, deflated skin everywhere, but the worst in my eyes, besides lower abdomen, is the buttocks, or lack of them.  Absolutely flat and wrinkled like a shar pei, it truely is ugly and I am terrified of surgery, besides at the moment, I smoke.  

For me, being single, it is very hard to imagine anyone seeing this and my body without being so turned off.  I can also relate to the hanging breast skin, underarm, and horrible innner thigh skin.  I will be meeting someone I like a lot soon, and there is a possibility of intimacy, and though he knows, he doesn't really KNOW.  I am terrified.

I can look fine-ish in the right kind of clothes, that's hard enough, but without them?  I just want to feel free, and this is eating me up, no pun intended.  I know I didn't lose through surgery, but the issues for me are the same.  I admire the confidence of many here, and I still can't find a pic of a deflated, wrinkled, buttock in folds, sagging, to make me feel that others have this.  And still have good sex;-).  But with someone who is new? How frightening is all this?  VERY.

Recently my hubby was in the hospital with heart pains. Having COPD, High Cholesterol, High Blood Pressure, Pre-Diabetic, and now with heart troubles... I know that his time on earth might be limited. The thought of dating someday, if I lose my hubby, is absolutely awful. I can't imagine that situation at all. It's one thing to have hubby while I'm losing the weight, he's been there for the transition, but for someone to only see the finished product, well that is a sad thought.

One of the few guys who frequents this forum said, though, that in general, most men care less about the look of a woman, and more about the feel, and when it comes to how we feel, it's not all that different from how a person without the skin issues might feel.

 

I just want anyone to know that any replies that were sent to my comment, including from the Lady herself (it went to junk and when I found it-could only read the first couple lines about your husband but nothing else (hope he is better), are not accessible to me. Neither is the original post now about excess skin. Most things show up as blank, with only topic showing but nothing within topic. Sorry.