I get into bed in the evening and immediately have to adjust because my skin has folded in underneath me, leaving me feeling like I've laid down on a couple of lumpy pillows.
As I lay flat the skin pools to my sides, spilling over onto the bed around me. It pools around my middle, my bottom, my legs, my arms. I roll to my side and the skin flops out in a bulge at my front, leaving my actual body visible to my eye scanning over my shoulder and down the contours of my waist, hip, and thigh. I touch my hip bone, hold my hand in the dip at my waist, feel my protruding rib cage, lift my leg and see the muscles ripple as the skin hangs below. It is quite the task sometimes to find my real body beneath the sagging, empty excess. I want to explain what life is like after extreme weight loss, the part that not enough people talk about.
In plank or push up position my skin hangs below me, cargo beneath the belly of a helicopter, weighing me down, pulling at my neck, shoulders, my waist and legs. It is gathered and tucked in my work out clothes but I can feel the heft of it, every pound of it a burden. I want you to imagine yourself in a plank with a belt around your waist. Hanging below you, from the belt, is a 20 pound sack of stones. Imagine how that would feel, how it would impact your form, how that weight would tug and pull at certain parts of your body, and how difficult it would make a push up or holding that plank.
Once upon a time, morbidly obese, a nurse gave me a term for the immense bulk hanging down over my lap: apron.
That apron has changed, immensely, but it is still there, and it very much feels like an apron now, something I should be able to slip on and off, something that isn’t a part of me. It feels like the weighted aprons you wear while receiving an x-ray, except far bulkier and heavier. Every step forward or up, I carry this apron with me. Every time I lift my legs, I lift the dead weight of my skin, a physical scar of what I did to my body in the past. Every time I climb a wall, I can’t get close enough, the skin is between me and the rock, and I lift it then, too. Every jumping jack, every yoga move, every burpee, it is there, an encumbrance that causes pain and difficulty.
Skin removal is considered a vain, elective surgery. No doubt this skin impacts my confidence. There is a vain component to my desire to have it removed. But I have worked so, so hard and yet still this body is not mine. Before my weight loss I’d look in the mirror and couldn’t find myself in my face. Now I see myself, and it’s such a relief. Looking in the mirror now, I have a different problem. I can’t see my actual body. If I pull the skin around, I can find my real figure there. I tug at the skin and I can see the lines of my true form, the one I worked so hard for. But instead of seeing that body all the time, and showing that body to the world, I am stuck in this sack of skin, dragging it around with me.
My desire to have it removed isn't just vain.
It isn’t just about confidence. It isn’t just that I deserve to look like the person I have worked so hard to be. This skin hurts. It weighs me down. It makes my exercises more challenging than they otherwise would be. My skin physically gets in the way, not just when I lay down, but sometimes even when I sit down. Even in my face and neck I’ve had my fingers get caught on the excess. It hangs below my bottom, it hangs off my back, it hangs at my waist, it hangs from my thighs, my calves, my arms, my forearms, my breasts, everywhere. There isn’t a single part of my body that doesn’t have excess skin. It forms a puddle around me when I am prostrate on the ground. I feel it in everything that I do. It gets in the way, a parasite on a hopeless and helpless host.
I dream about what it would feel like with it gone. How light and free I would be. How fast I could run, how I wouldn’t feel it as I lift my legs, how it would be gone and every step would feel so airy. I sometimes lift it up and feel how amazing it is for it not to hang down, weighing down my front, to not feel, for just a moment, the weight of it in my back, shoulders, and neck. I imagine what a plank or a push up would feel like, or how close I would get to the rock without it. I imagine just how much farther I could push my yoga practice. I stand in front of the mirror and poke and prod it, lift it up, twist it, try to pull it away and see my body beneath. I tuck it away into my clothes, wearing it like a body suit, a cover up of something I’m proud of, something I’d love to actually be able see and to show the world. As I sit I can feel it resting there, empty and foreign, in the way, like someone strapped bags of weights to me that I didn’t want. Sometimes I feel so separate from it that I almost reach a panicked feeling, desperately wishing it would just vanish.
I try to see this skin as a badge of honor.
I worked so damn hard and this is what is left. This is what remains of a body I’ve transformed through hard work and dedication to my best self and the best life I can live. It inhibits me though, and as proud as I am of the work I’ve done, it embarrasses me, this skin, and it causes me pain, and likely contributes to my injuries. I wear long shorts because I want to hide it. I struggle to show my arms. I’m self-conscious about the thick bulge at my waist, knowing it isn’t a part of my actual body, but not everyone knows this. Everyone else sees the skin of a much, much heavier person than I currently am. And sometimes, when I look down in the shower, at all that skin, I feel like I still weigh over 300 pounds, because there it is, all the skin of someone who weighs 240 pounds (what I am down from my absolute highest weight) more than me. It contributes mightily to my body dysmorphia. Every single day, probably every single hour, I think about my skin, mention it to my husband, ask if we can get rid of it, move it around, feel pain related to it or experience a struggle because of it. It impacts me every single moment of my life. But to remove it isn’t covered by insurance. Because it is elective. Unnecessary. This is most offensive of all. Because if everyone knew the burden of this much skin, they would see that removing it is necessary.
I don’t know why I have so much of it. I’m a petite person with a longer torso and very short legs. Everyone is built differently. But I see pictures of people who were heavier than me who have less excess skin than me. I assume it is because of my build and the way I carried my weight. I see some folks who have lost a lot of weight embracing their skin, but then when they show it, they have so little. There was nothing I could have done to stop this from becoming an issue. This is my body. I’m working to get my finances in order to get the surgeries I need. It is not optional for me. This skin has to go. I cannot wait to be free of it. I cannot wait to live my life the way I want to live it without any remaining burdens from the life I lived before. I can’t wait to look at my body and know it is mine, the one that I worked for.
I can't wait to push my body to do all of the things I know it can do without the skin getting in my way or causing me pain.
I can’t wait to cinch a hiking pack and have it fall on my hips instead of slipping down my skin as I cry on the trail. I can’t wait to feel nothing, absolutely nothing below me as I lift my body, just my body, from the floor in a push up. I can’t wait to see that my neck and back pain goes away, to find that my knee pain will be less, to even discover that my elbow pain is less, when this skin is gone. I can’t wait to discover how much easier climbing will be, how much more I can push my grade once I can get closer to the rock, once I’m not lifting this empty baggage. I can’t wait to see how much deeper I can get into my yoga poses, which ones I can newly do when there isn’t a bulging excess in the way, how much farther I can push my flexibility. I can’t wait to not have to take 3 steps for every one of my husband’s, because even though my short legs have to do with this, I think more than anything it is the skin. I can’t wait to discover I’m faster on the trail, that my heart will feel even freer and less burdened than it does now.
My four year old son comforts on my excess arm skin. When he stopped nursing he turned to squishing at my breast skin and then eventually my arms to soothe himself instead of nursing. He still grabs for my skin when we cuddle at night. When I get him out of the car he’ll scream, “Squishy!” and grab my skin. He calls it Mama’s Squishy, and he means it in the most loving, amazing way. Sometimes I’m sad to think of taking it away from him, that it is so comforting to him, and that he sees it as a beautiful part of me. He tells me mama’s squishy is the best, and that I’m the best mama ever as he kisses my arm skin, sometimes randomly, in a public space. He is incredibly loving. I think this is the only thing about my skin that I’ll miss when it is gone. But even with his love and his best intentions, sometimes when he grabs at it, I feel myself pulling away, or sometimes I’ll even ask him not to, because it is a source of pain for me, and sometimes it’s just too much to bear, the feeling of him tugging at my physical burdens.
I wanted to write this post because I wanted to help people understand who don’t have excess skin that it is more than vanity, though I believe my confidence after working so hard is very important. Mostly I wanted everyone to know that it is a very real physical problem. I wanted you all to imagine life with all of this, that I’m putting out there, that I’m showing in these very real and vulnerable photos. And I want to tell the people starting out on a similar lifestyle journey that it is so worth it. I’m not simply here to complain. I’m a strong woman who has worked so hard, and this is what remains.
I would take this empty skin, this extra burden, over the extra weight every single day. I can be me and do the things I’ve always wanted to do. The skin is in the way, sure. It causes pain and frustration, sure. But it doesn’t stop me from living my life to the fullest, and weighing 165 pounds more than I do now absolutely did. Is this a super unfortunate side effect of losing so much weight? Yes. But it is 100% worthwhile. Do not hesitate to step foot on that path because of the reality I just shared. I have no regrets except not starting sooner.