Get rid of loose skin.

When the actor Ethan Suplee went from 550 to 300 pounds within 6’1, “he imagined that he would finally look at his body and did not feel shame. He thought he would feel confident and look in the mirror of the body, which he was proud of after life of uncertainty over his weight.

Suplee was clinically obese until the age of 10. After struggling with overeating and fading diets throughout his youth, he made his first great effort to lose weight at the age of 26 in 2002 with a liquid diet and then a blood type diet. Until 2005, between Keto diet and consistent training, led by coaches, he lost 250 kilograms.

But he had not considered what could remain after he weakened: the skin. Many of him. “I’m smaller, but nothing is tougher at all,” Supi recalls. Wrinkles fell over his knees. Excess skin covered his hips. He was uncertain about it, and most wore baggy clothes to hide it. “The apron around my belly was the oldest of him,” says Supi. “It looked like a gut under my clothes.”

Suplee was faced with a problem that he could not solve through hard work in fitness and disciplined diet. For those who undergo a large volume of weight loss, this is a common feeling and this is a tacit challenge for weight loss for both unhealthy overweight and the crowd of bodybuilding. A few months ago, the Bodybuilder and Star of YouTube Dr. Mike Altelel also had surgery to cut his loose skin. “Skin is a really complicated thing because you work so hard to try to get to the point where you feel, quote, enchant, normally,” says Supi. Over the next few years, he tried FAD trends such as mineral supplements, treatment of red light and lotions to remove excess skin. “But there is nothing that magically removing the skin,” says Suple. “It’s like saying,” I want to die one of my fingers. ” There is no autophagy to take this.

Patients who lose large amounts of weight like Suplee are sometimes terrified of their excess skin, says Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia and plastic surgeon Chris Campbell. Campbell talks to a doctor at Pittsburgh who said he has patients with bodily dysmorphic disorder due to their free skin. “They are 30 years thick; they are suddenly slender, but it doesn’t seem like a magazine,” Campbell says. “And it is difficult for them to deal with it.”

Increasingly, skin removal surgery is a common step for people who have undergone extreme weight loss, such as Suplee -and it has become much more popular in the last six years, according to Campbell. In 2022, the American Society for Plastic Surgery reported that the roots of the abdomen, the lifting of the upper arm (to get rid of the swing/excess skin), the lower body and the buttocks increase all as they appear by about 23 percent compared to the years before. This increase is mainly due to the increase in bariatric operations covered by insurance, as well as to the increase in GLP-1 medicines for weight loss such as Ozepic and Wegovy.

Campbell says most patients start with the removal of excess abdominal skin. He will put three to four feet of cuts on their body to lift and cut pounds of skin. The abdomen surgery may take 90 minutes; A person who has lost several hundred pounds can be in surgery for three hours. And complications, including infection due to open wounds, can occur.

Suplee underwent her first surgery to remove the skin in 2008, peripheral lifting of the body. The procedure removed excess skin from the abdomen, thighs, lower back and buttocks. However, recovery has become a monthly nightmare. In the background, Suple says, he performed the procedure too early. He had accumulated some weight after his initial consultation and was not physically and mentally fitted at the time of surgery.

He lost a huge amount of blood during the initial procedure and had to receive six blood transfusions. Then he tried to start moving too soon after the surgery, fell and split his country. His surgeon could not sew him again because of the risk of infection, so Suplee was placed on early vacuum and severe antibiotics for almost five months. “It was an incredibly terrible experience,” he says.

Campbell, who performs one to four skin removal surgeries per week, says recovery time can vary from six weeks to several months. Often, patients return to several surgeries to deal with the loose and excess skin, which was also for Suplee.

In 2010, just two years after the first procedure, Suplee’s weight returned to £ 400. He started riding a bike and an extreme diet to lose weight. He fell to 220 pounds and still had giant areas of the skin of his chest and sides. “I still looked bulky and sticky in my upper body,” says Supi. “And I was not pleased with it.”

Thus, he underwent a second skin removal procedure in 2012, which went a lot more hungry; It recovered within six weeks. But again he gained the weight. By 2016, he returned to £ 400.

In 2018, Suplee decided to be even more meaningful and deliberate in his weight loss approach. After 16 years of cyclical loss of weight loss and following the diets of FAD and short -term solutions, Suplee learned diet strategies and training plans that worked for him. He weighed his food, realized that he could eat some carbohydrates and establish the long term. “That’s where I really came up with how to live for the rest of my life,” says Supi.

Today, while the 49-year-old maintained a healthy weight, a consistent workout and a nutritious diet, he still has free skin all over his body. “I don’t like it, but I like it more than if I had to fill it with fat,” says Supi for my free skin. He also admitted that he would always fight the image and weight of the body and that there is no perfect or easy solution. “This idea of ​​having a body that looks the way I want it to look like – I think it doesn’t exist,” he says.

Campbell notes that the greater part of the patients are pleased with the weight loss, which then carries patience and understanding of excess skin and how to manage it. “In general, the psychological aspect is favorable after contouring the body,” Campbell says.

Suplee says that since he has never seen anyone talk about this aspect of body transformation, he does not realize that his skin will not shrink as weakening. This is a major reason for him to prioritize speaking about his own experience. “I am talking about this every chance I get because it will happen,” Suple says. “If you have a huge amount of weight to lose weight, then you will have free skin.”

Still, Suple has hit the main stages that he never expected as a young man who struggles with uncertainty about his body. The first time he saw a definition of the abdomen was in 2019, When you pave your way to nine percent body fatS He was driving a full marathon on a rowing machine, the bench presses 405 pounds and can run around with his grandchildren in a park all day long and still have energy. “I am so impressed with what I was able to do physically,” Suple says. “This does not mean that I am never self -conscious or do not want to eat sometimes. I had to do a deep introspection.”

And he has learned that the scale and the mirror can only provide so much satisfaction. He has directed his thinking to maintenance and is satisfied with his overall health without struggling to make the number decrease. He talks about the image of the body, fitness and others in his American podcast of Glutton and Underdog Each week (and he also shares his experience and perspective on recent recent Mh Strong talk: AB redefined).

He also has an important rule for himself in terms of the idea of ​​himself. He often stands in front of a mirror and does not move away until he finds something to admire. It can take half an hour. But he will stand there until he sees something positive in his appearance.

“I think about how the people I am interested in,” says Supi. “And if I am in my head thinking bad thoughts of myself, I generally throw myself to someone they are interested in. And this is not the person I want to be.”

You may like and

• The best hair growth shampoos that men to buy now

• 25 vegetables that are surprising sources of protein