Skinny Skin

Well the time has finally come.  I can’t wait any longer to find out about my loose skin and possibly having surgery.  So yesterday, I made my skin surgery consultation.  On April 14th, some doctor is going to look at me naked and he gets to judge in a 20 minute meeting whether I’ve done enough work to have it removed.  And it sounds…..terrifying.  So today, I’m going to just lay it out all out there for the whole world to see.

My Skin 

Part of the reason I didn’t lose weight sooner is because I didn’t want to know about my skin.  I knew I had done irreparable damage to my skin by carrying so much extra weight.  I also carried most of my weight in my stomach in a way that I knew would never shrink back.  Here we are, three years later, more than 150 pounds lost, and the skin……….it ain’t coming back.

There are lots of places that no one would ever know.  My arms and my legs are rarely noticed in regular clothes.  Every once in a while a student or small child will look at my aged stretch marks and think I’ve been burned at some point in my life.  I’m also thankful my face looks mostly normal.  Although the entire shape of my face changed, the skin seemed to have enough elasticity left to snap back.  Not all areas did this. 98% of the people I know or meet in the average day would never guess that I lost nearly 60% of my body weight.  There are very few people left in my life that have known me for my whole journey.  So most people don’t know.

Just the other day someone was talking to me about my weight loss and how good I look.  I made the usual comment: “Well it’s great to wear small clothes but you’d never want to see me naked.” Her response was the typical, “Who cares!  You look great!”

Answer: I DO.  I care.

Maybe no one else on the planet cares what I look like naked.   The husband has never once complained even though I think it’s gross.   Only a handful of people ever see me without clothes on, like at the gym when I weigh in,  but even there I’m in my bra and underwear which is a different story.  I feel confident down to my underoos around most people.  So that’s why I’m posting this photo.  I know that some weight loss stories post naked pics but this is the best I can do.  It still covers a lot of my biggest problem areas but gives you an idea:

My Reasons

I always planned on having skin surgery when my weight loss was complete.  There was a period of time when I thought I could just live with it.  In the past 6-12 months I’ve realized, 100% I want it off.  I still worry that it’s vain and that it’s selfish to have such an expensive surgery.  So again, I’ve made my reasons into a convenient list!

Weight Class

I recently had my first sanctioned fight in the ring as a boxer. Read about it here. I had to weigh in in my bra and underwear, which I’m pretty used to.  Read about that…. here! My weight class was 141.  I really struggled to get there but then during the stress and training the week before, I dropped too much weight.  I weight in at 136 on weigh in day.   This is not good.  You want to weigh in as close to the top of your class as you can.  When I stepped into the ring, I was down to 134 from the stress of the day.  So I fought against someone weighing at minimum 7 pounds more that me.  Plus I’m not accounting for my extra skin.  If my extra skin weighs, I don’t know, 8 pounds, my muscle mass and body composition is really that of someone who weighs in the 120s.  To box someone that is 141 when you’re more like 125?  That’s a huge difference and I could feel it in her punches.  So I have to go to the doctor and find out what is an appropriate weight for me to compete at and if it’s even really safe for me with all my extra skin.  If he says I have 10+ pounds of extra skin (seems unlikely) it might not be safe for me to box at all.

Too Much Work

I have put in so much work over the last three years.  I’ve trained for half marathons, boxing, obstacle racing and rock climbing.  I can do 100s of situps without thinking about it but…….it still looks like I have a belly.  My extra skin creates the illusion of fat to the public.  I know I have a 6 pack under all that flab and it’s so sad that I can’t see it.  It also makes it really difficult to calculate my body fat so I’ve stopped trying. It’s like taking an action figure and covering it in marshmallow fluff.  I’ve got a rocking body in there somewhere……. While I realize this point is quite vain, I’m ok with that.  I’ve put in too much work to still look……like this.

Old Age 

I have a friend at work who is also looking into some skin surgery so we have been comparing notes.  We have discussed the guilt that comes along with a surgery like this.  They aren’t cheap.  It feels really selfish to spend all that money on the gym and then want to spend even more on a surgery.  So I had a heart to heart/devil’s advocate discussion with my husband.  I had him try to convince me it was the right decision.  One of his biggest selling points that I had never thought of is, What happens when I get old?

ALERT: Mention of lady parts coming.  Men should stop reading here! Lol. 

As of right now, the extra skin from my belly hangs past my hip bones and even to (if not past) my lady region. I’ve been lucky to avoid a lot of the irritation and infections I’ve heard of some people getting.  I have loose skin EVERYWHERE.  Everywhere.  But what happens when I get old?  My entire body points down now and I just turned 31.  There’s no hope going forward really!  Old lady boobs? Check!  Hanging belly skin? Check! Saggy butt? Check!  Saggy thighs? Check! These problems are just going to get worse and worse as I age and could result in actual medical issues going forward.

MEN MAY BEGIN READING AGAIN HERE! 

I feel really awkward about this post.  Some people will never understand what it’s like.  I feel vain and selfish for even discussing it, knowing there’s so many out there that are just struggling to loose the weight.  But the unknown of my skin was something that stalled me in the past.  Hopefully someone reads this and realizes it’s still worth it no matter what.  I hate my skin.  I love my body.  I’ll never forget what it was like to be obese because I still carry the sack of who I used to be around with me everyday.  But I’d never go back.  I’ll take this gross old lady body every single day for the rest of my LONG life than live one more day like I did before.