Having Realistic Expectations

Over the last couple of posts, you’ve hopefully begun to understand the importance of knowing what your BMI is and how this will impact what you can expect from cosmetic surgeries.

Something I do for all our patients who are considering any kind of plastic surgery is show them before and after photos of what can be achieved so they have realistic expectations of what’s possible and what’s not. I try to find a similar-looking patient in our large bank of before and after pictures so that the patient can see what can be achieved. When you are looking at before and after
pictures on the Internet, it is imperative you look for images from a credible source or directly on a reliable surgeon’s website.
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Many people mistakenly believe that they will lose a lot of weight with these surgeries, but with liposuction or a tummy tuck, you’ll rarely see a significant change on your bathroom scale. In fact, most people will actually weigh more immediately after surgery because of the swelling that occurs. (Of course, that extra weight will go away once the swelling goes down.) A typical specimen of the tissue we remove during these procedures only weighs two to five pounds.
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You might look as if you’ve lost twenty pounds because of the way the surgeon has contoured your body, but fat and skin don’t weigh a lot per inch removed. For the most part, you can expect to lose less than five pounds on the scale even though you might look significantly different. That’s why it’s important that you’re in an acceptable BMI range before the surgery, because having surgery alone is not going to do the trick.

Learn more about whether pursuing a cosmetic procedure is the right choice for you by getting your copy of, “Making the Cut” available for purchase on Amazon.

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