Losing those extra kilos can feel like a weight off – literally – bringing with it a sense of both triumph and achievement. Regardless of how much you lose, when you lose it – post-childbirth or across the winter season, that feel-good feeling is hard to shake. However, what can also be hard to shake is that extra sagging skin that’s hanging around in the wrong places.
So, what to do? Enter body contouring. A range of procedures specific to redefining and improving your shape, and supporting your underlying tissues, whilst removing sagging skin and excess fat. Contrary to what some people may believe (or have been told), body contouring is not a weight loss procedure. In fact, its ideal candidates are those that have lost a significant amount of weight and wish to better proportion their appearance – smoothen out those final lumps and bumps, and rid the skin.
Procedures can vary from arm lift, to breast lift – to correct sagging breast, to lower body lift – correct sagging abdomen, thighs and buttocks, to tummy tuck (abdominoplasty) – to remove the apron of excess skin over the abdomen.
What remains most important for any contouring procedure is that you seek the best expertise to carry it out – a plastic surgeon who specialises in your specific body area, with the training and qualifications to match. For example, Da Vinci Clinic’s cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgeon, Adam Bialostocki, completed his Royal Australian College of Surgeons study and then headed overseas for additional specialised training and expertise.
“Some RACS plastic surgeons will go to a centre somewhere in the world where they perform 100’s of cleft palate repairs so they can be 'the cleft palate’ guy or (like me) go off to Paris to sit in with a famous plastic surgeon to pick their brains and learn some tips,” explains Adam. “I could have undertaken cosmetic surgery without having any extra exposure to those guys, but I wanted to hone my techniques so I would be ‘the breast guy’, ‘the tummy tuck guy’.”
The world over, plastic and cosmetic surgery myths fly fast and furious, so it pays to source your information from a trusted pair of hands. In the case of body contouring, procedure length, technique and incision length, will be largely dependent on your own individual needs, preferences and your surgeon’s judgement. There is no one procedure size fits all. For example, take breast contouring, incision patterns for lifting breasts will be determined based on the amount of excess skin to be removed. It could involve a combination of incisions in a circular pattern around the areola, some in a line extending from the areola to the breast crease, and a few horizontally along the breast crease. Your surgeon may also recommend breast implants to enhance size and rejuvenate shape.
When it comes to body contouring the bottom line is there is no bottom line, so when you’ve lost weight, gain the most from your body procedures by honing your individual needs. It begins and ends with a safe and experienced pair of hands.
