Guide:
- What Happens If I Gain Weight After Breast Surgery?
- What Happens If I Lose Weight After Breast Surgery?
- Does Pregnancy Affect Breast Surgery Results?
- Considering Breast Surgery?
Significant fluctuations in weight, gaining, or losing, can impact the results of your breast surgery and risk the need for a secondary procedure. While everyone naturally gains and loses weight in different areas of the body, it is common for weight fluctuations to impact breast size.
What Happens If I Gain Weight After Breast Surgery?
Weight gain can be healthy and necessary for some but may be damaging, unwanted, and detrimental to the health of others. While fluctuating 10-15 pounds is usual for practically everyone, gaining 40-50 pounds or more can make a massive difference in the appearance and functionality of your body. From stretch marks to stretched, drooping skin, gaining a substantial weight can undoubtedly affect your breast surgery results.
Breast Augmentation
When you gain weight after breast augmentation, your skin may stretch, causing your breast implants to droop and your breast contour to appear saggy. The more weight gained, the more your skin stretches, leaving more excess skin once you lose weight again.
Breast Lift
Gaining weight after a breast lift can lead to sagging as it affects your body’s natural support mechanisms. As a breast lift is typically done with a tummy tuck during a mommy makeover, gaining a substantial amount of weight and then losing it can reverse your results and cause sagging skin again. Protect your investment and avoid the need for revision surgery by staying within 10-15 pounds of your weight at the time of your surgery.
Breast Reduction
When you gain weight after breast reduction surgery, you risk reversing the results of your surgery and increasing your breasts back to their previous size. Try to maintain your weight after breast reduction surgery. If your breasts increase in volume or sag again, you may need to consider a revision surgery to achieve your initial goal.
Fat Transfer Breast Augmentation
During fat transfer breast augmentation, liposuction removes fat from other areas of the body with unwanted fat, such as the inner thighs or lower stomach. The fat is then harvested and injected into your breasts. Once placed, a substantial amount of the transferred fat will survive and settle into your breasts. If you gain weight after fat transfer breast augmentation, these fat cells may increase in volume, increasing the size of your breasts that may stretch your skin and possibly risk a droopy appearance.
What Happens If I Lose Weight After Breast Surgery?
While weight loss can be a great thing for some people as it improves health, lifestyle, and confidence, losing too much weight after breast surgery can cause you to lose the results you fell in love with along with it.
Breast Augmentation
While losing weight after breast augmentation may improve and highlight your enhanced breasts if you lose weight in other places, it can be detrimental to your results if you naturally lose fat in your breasts. According to RealSelf, weight loss after breast augmentation can have an impact on your results. Losing weight does not directly affect your breast implants, but if you naturally store a lot of fatty tissue in your breasts and lose over 20 pounds, this may cause your implants to droop and your breasts to lose their fullness.
Losing weight after breast augmentation may also risk causing a “rippling” appearance in your implants. Losing a substantial amount of weight after your breast augmentation, revealing more of your implant, may cause an unnatural appearance.
Fluctuations of 10-15 pounds should not affect your breast augmentation results too dramatically, aside from some possible mild sagging if your breasts usually change with weight loss. If you lose over 50 pounds, the tissue around your breast implants will start to sag or droop and no longer provide as much support for your implants as when it was tight and firm after your surgery.
The placement of your breast implants, either over or under the muscle, may impact how your breasts look after losing weight post-augmentation.
Breast Lift
If you naturally lose weight in your breasts during weight fluctuations, losing weight after breast lift surgery can reverse your results by causing your skin to sag again. When you lose too much volume in an area, you’re left with excess, sagging skin, which defeats the purpose of your previous mastopexy when lost in your breasts.
Try to be 10-15 pounds within your goal weight before having breast lift surgery. Breast lift results can be permanent if you maintain this weight, but losing too much weight after surgery diminishes this lifetime quality and risks needing a revision procedure.
The purpose of breast lift surgery is to highlight the contour of your breasts and improve your body’s silhouette, so losing weight and developing excess skin around your breasts after your surgery can affect your newly contoured, lifted breasts.
Talk to your surgeon before your breast lift about your goal weight and what is reasonable for you in the long term, as you should try to maintain a stable weight after your surgery. Your doctor may suggest various diet and exercise plans to help you lose weight in the healthiest way possible before having your procedure. Typically, when patients can maintain a stable weight they’re comfortable in for at least three months, we believe they are ready to have a breast lift.
Breast Reduction
Breast reduction surgery is typically done at the end of people’s weight loss journeys, as weight loss can cause the breasts to appear large and droopy compared to the rest of the body. As breast reduction surgery tightens up loose, sagging skin and tissue, losing weight after your breast reduction may not only cause more excess, droopy skin but also “deflate” your tightened breasts even further and give you smaller breasts than you’d like to have.
Fat Transfer Breast Augmentation
As transferred fat from other parts of the body settles and becomes permanent once injected into your breasts during fat transfer breast augmentation, drastically losing weight can reduce these fat cells and cause your enhanced breasts to shrink. Losing weight after fat transfer breast augmentation could cause your breasts to lose their new contour and shape, so we recommend maintaining a steady weight before going into this surgery.
Does Pregnancy Affect Breast Surgery Results?
The usual weight gain that comes with pregnancy, paired with the “deflating” that women tend to experience in their breasts with breastfeeding, can put the breasts through a lot as you bring children into the world and care for them. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says it’s best to wait until after pregnancy and breastfeeding to consider breast rejuvenation surgery.
We recommend waiting until you have finished having children to get a breast lift or breast reduction. These procedures restore and rejuvenate the breasts after pregnancy and breastfeeding. It’s never good, however, to postpone confidence and true happiness with the body you have, so if you believe you need a breast lift or reduction now and plan to have children in the future but not anytime soon, it may be worth it to achieve your goals now, with the understanding that there may be a need for revision surgery.
Most women seek breast augmentation at a very young age, typically in their 20s, so it is not reasonable to advise you to wait until after having children to get breast implants. Breast implants are not usually affected by pregnancy, but the surrounding skin may start drooping. It’s important to understand that if you plan to have children, you may need a breast lift or another revisionary breast procedure to rejuvenate your results after pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Considering Breast Surgery?
Breasts may return to their natural shape on their own after weight loss, weight gain, or pregnancy if you’ve never had a breast procedure before, but if you’ve previously had a breast augmentation, lift, or reduction, weight fluctuations can impact or even reverse your results. If you’re considering enhancing, tightening, and reshaping your breasts and believe you are at a stable weight that you can confidently and comfortably maintain long-term, request a consultation with Dallas plastic surgeon Dr. David Liland, renowned for elevating women’s confidence through breast surgery.