TT & mental image question
 

Ok...so I have quite a bit of excess abdominal skin from my 100+lb weight loss. And although I'm 147 I feel a lot heavier and have a lot of "I'm fat" days. After a tummy tuck...do those "I'm fat" days go away? Or do you still have them?

Mrs. Having-a-serious-fat-day-today :(
Kristy

I would have to qualify my answer a bit. Since my tummy tuck, I have far fewer days where I feel ugly. Sometimes those days were "I'm fat" days too, but the two got mixed up a lot. My stomach apron and batwings made me feel ugly & deformed and that bothered me. I still feel it sometimes about my thighs and little pockets of weird skin, but I get a lot less of them.

The "I'm fat" days still happen, but they are different. I don't feel ugly the same way I did then. And if it makes sense, the fat days are more rational now. I *know* I'm not fat, where the extra skin was a remnant of being fat and felt more intolerable than the "fat days" do now.

Valerie, you said what I was trying to say so much better! :D

Thanks ladies....I do want a tummy tuck...desperately...but I want one more baby first. My main reason for my weight loss (via WLS) was to get pregnant as we'd tried for 8 years when I was morbidly obese and nothing worked. Once I went from 254 to 140 I was able to easily get pregnant. I was apple shapped so all of my skin is in my abdominal area. The arms are good & so are the legs...it's alllll belly. In fact I have so much skin (although not as much as some WLS patients) that when I was full term pregnant I still was able to pull skin away from my belly. And I want one more baby...so I don't want to have the tuck...just to possibly stretch it out again with the next pregnancy & then be unhappy with my body again.

It's just that in order for me to look decent in clothing now I have to either wear pants that are 2 sizes too big or wear my girdle that doesn't exactly breathe well and gets quite hot during the summer. So because I have this...skin...I feel like I need to loose another 30-40lbs...although I "know" that loosing this much would put me grossly underweight (at around 100-110lbs...too skinny for my height). And although I'm a far cry from the 254 I started at...I still have a lot of "I'm fat...don't look at me" days.

It's good to know that although the fat days don't exactly go away...they change...thanks so much for that insight...

Kristy

"Fat head" days are something that have definately been helped with my ps, but that is ultimately literally "in your head" and so has to be ultimately dealt with on that level. I think that it takes so much time to accept your new body and grow comfortable in it and that ps enables one to more graciously accept a new svelte physique because it is minus some lumps and bumps that you can't "diet" or exercise away.
Just know that that excess skin on your tummy is not something you can control now. It is up to a surgeon ultimately to take care of it for you. After that baby of course! :)

Thanks for your response. Just how long does it take the brain to catch up? I mean...I'll be 3 years post op in August...and at 6 months post op had already lost 100 lbs...leaving only 14 lbs to get to goal...so I've been pretty much at this size since January of 2005!

Although...even though I woke up today having a total fat day again...I got flirted with as I drove down the road to go to Target today...that did make me feel good...cause he was younger than me...and pretty dang cute!

Kristy

Kristy, I honestly don't know if the brain ever completely catches up. I'm more than five years out from reaching goal and can still pull on a pair of baggy size 4 pants, look in the mirror, and see fat. Intellectually I realize that I'm not fat, of course, and I'll stand there in front of the mirror and argue with myself ... but, nevertheless, it's what I see. :rolleyes:

I'd love to know if anyone here has completely gotten past this.

I'm at almost 6 years and the fat woman is still in my head. However, if I hadn't had the TT, there's a much greater possibility that the REAL fat woman would be back.

Like Valerie, I loathed what I looked like with a stomach apron. It was all I could think about, and losing weight was NOT a success in my mind. Having surgery changed all that. It also gave me a really good incentive NEVER to regain. Kind of my own peronal WLS after the weightloss ;)

Mel