soos_mite_ah

Just wanted to cross somethings off before I start another list

I'm considering liposuction in my stomach. It is my biggest insecurity and no amount of therapy, self love, diet, and exercise has been working for me. It has helped significantly but I still find myself hitting a wall. I have been adopting a healthy diet and healthy relationship with food and I usually workout 3-4 times a week. I'm not looking at this as a substitute for weight loss (like I see myself probably losing max 10 lbs if I go through with this). I am fairly small in other areas of my body and this is just how my body typically distributes weight. I think it would really help me to clear up space my mind because I find myself being fixated on this emotionally and mentally. I often find myself body checking and being tempted to back slide into unhealthy habits because of how my stomach looks. Having this stomach and always having weight loss for the sake of spot reduction in the back of my mind is really taking a toll on me. I know for certain that if I were to aim for a flat stomach through diet and exercise, I would easily spiral into dangerous habits because my body is not naturally built like that. If I were to get this surgery, I would only focus on my back (to even some things out/ so that it's proportional) and stomach both because of cost and because I feel like doing anything more would just be me nitpicking and doing the most. I feel like every other body insecurity I have is something that is either in passing or that I have made peace with but the stomach thing has been constant for a very long time. Other than my stomach, I more or less love the way that I look most of the time. What are some signs that plastic surgery or liposuction is right for you and that you are doing it consicously? Have any of you guys considered it or have gone through with it and why or why not?

I was planning on making this post before and then it came up in my lipo post. I don't want it to go unnoticed so I'm going to copy and paste this comment and my bolded response down below. I want to credit @Consilience and I want to emphasize the questions that are bolded and underlined.

@Jannes about 5 months

@Salvijus yeah.... I can't eat a 1000 calories in one sitting. Even if I didn't try to diet/restrict, I would tend to unintentionally undereat. If it works for you that's great, but it doesn't work that way for me

@Salvijus It was actually due to severly undereating, not having any bowel movements because I was starving myself, and fucking up my gut bacteria by restricting the types of foods I ate. I stopped feeling bloated ever since I started eating like a normal person.

Eating disorder history I was anorexic for a couple years and dieted a lot when I was younger. I have recently had to deal with a bunch of nutritional deficiencies lately as well as a messed up metabolism as a reprucusion of my previous history.

@Judy2 Yeah.... i tried intermittent fasting. It didn't do much other than get rid of my hunger cues to where I could go 600 calories a day and somehow still be full and bloated. Took me a while to get out of that one and get to a point where I wasn't afraid to eat regularly. And drinking water instead of eating to cope with the hunger was something I did at the peak of my eating disorder. Not to mention constantly being hangry and in a bad mood. No thank you. Same with being low carb.

The guy is overflowing with insecurity and embodies the worst elements of stage orange and red. He has the same vibe as Donald Trump as far as neuroticism and development goes. And the fact that this forum is defending him is kinda depressing because it is indicative of where a lot of people on this forum is at and it's much worse than where a normie is at, that's for sure. He is an obvious clown and scammer.

@Jannes So this is what I'm getting at. Let me know if I have any misconceptions: If you want to maintain muscle while in a calorie deficit, make sure you're getting in enough protein. You might lose muscle regardless of protein intake while in a calorie deficit depending on your body composition. Calorie deficits, regardless of the amount of protein, can impact your energy and training but you can make it up by doing other things. My thing is that I'm about 160lbs and 5'2". I have a decent amount of muscle mass already to where I see arm definition in certain lighting and whenever I run my hands over my thighs I can feel my different quad muscles. My forearms and my calves feel very solid. I'm mainly looking to lose some fat to get smaller and so that I can see my progress. I feel like I was already a little chubby and since gaining muscle I feel like I look even bigger and my clothes fit weird. I'm not looking to get rid of the muscle since that won't be good for my health but I do want to lose fat. As a result, I have been a little hesitant with strength training recently because I don't want to gain more muscle but I do want to maintain it while losing fat.

Gonna be honest, it hasn't been a walk in the park and for me at least, I come to realize that I'm never going to 100% like myself and that is perfectly normal and acceptable. It's normal to have parts of yourself that you might not like and just continuing living your life. But sometimes, even if you can accept that you don't like something about yourself, that doesn't mean that you stop wanting to change. And I think that's where I'm at with this particular issue. I mean I think it would depend on a variety of factors including but not limited to how old she is and if her body is still developing where this insecurity is coming from how constant her distress is (whether this is her nitpicking, if this is really bothering her, or if it's bothering her but she isn't desperate for it) cost of the surgery risks involved with the surgery whether she's doing any inner work to address this issue or any underlying issues that might influence this how healthy her mindset is otherwise if it's rooted in things like racism her over all understanding of herself and her situation external factors that might have led her to think about this such as the media, peer groups, the internet etc. I would ultimately want it to be her choice if she is old enough and has the money but I would facilitate a discussion to ensure she's making a wise, well thought out choice without pushing my agenda onto her. These are also factors I'm taking into consideration and contemplating for myself because I'm aware of how invasive and extreme something like this is. I don't think that there is anything wrong with plastic surgery but I do think that there is a right and wrong way of going about it.

I agree. I will admit, I'm not in the healthiest environment right now. My mom has had issues with food an her body for as long as I can remember and I currently go to a school where everyone is thin. Even though I'm not that big, most of the time I'm the biggest person in the room. I don't really follow many people i don't know on instagram other than meme pages, some people I think are pretty, news accounts, and self help pages. I think I will have a clearer idea where I stand once I'm on my own and am away from my school and home environment. There is a whole thing on how if the mom has body image issues and speaks badly about herself that the daughter is likely to follow. I've had a lot of weight related insecuries projected on to me growing up and I've had to deal with that and find a healthier relationship with food. It's still a work in progress. If I'm going to be completely honest, I don't have unconditional self-love. Sure I'm not actively hating myself but I know that for example, if I were to get low grades, gain weight, lose all friends etc. that I am not going to feel good about myself. I've improved a lot in this regard but also fixing various areas of my life externally instead of relying on self love and reflection to fix everything has been incredibly important for me. I think in the past I relied on finding internal solutions too much and currently I'm in a phase where I'm trying to do more tangible things to improve my internal and external circumstances. And I'm trying to find a healthy medium for myself in the process. And as for the inner child healing stuff, I'm on board with that. But I will say that in certain areas in my life that I am hitting a wall of sorts regarding how far I can take that kind of unconditional love. There are parts of myself that I genuinely hate and no amount of knowing better really helps with it. And right now I'm trying to just sit with that without forcing myself to change that kind of self hatred.

I generally agree. I'm not a fan of using external circumstances to deal with internal problems and it isn't my first line of defense. Which is why I think this thread is beneficial in that it's helping me sort out my thoughts to see if it's coming from a reasonable place. I have considered the possibility of the trap of constantly trying to fix things and I am trying to be wary of that when it comes to my decision, whatever it may be. I'm not about to do this right away as there are costs and additional factors for me to consider and work through personally so even if I decide to do this, it would be at least a couple years before I actually do. Personally I feel like I have a good hand over all lol. My arms and legs are toned and I like my chest and by butt lol however I think because I don't have the waist, it kind of makes me look like a box and it looks weird from the side profile (especially since I'm 5'2" with long legs and a short torso proportionally speaking)). Like I feel that if I just got rid of the stomach everything else would stand out more ya know? Funny enough is that a part of me is looking forward to aging because I feel like wrinkles and gray/white hair look cool and add character to people's faces. Maybe it's just me being an only child and being surrounded by a lot of old people growing up to where I just acquired an additional appreciation of aging due to familiarity. I know that's not the point of you saying that but I just wanted to throw that out there since there is a lot of shame around aging especially for women.

Oh absolutely not. But what I think is the difference between now and 10 years ago almost is that I sorted out most of the underlying emotional stuff that was going on at the time, surrounded myself with more supportive people, and had more time to educate myself on how my body works and the limits around it. Like I don't have that delusion of looking like I'm 5'8" and being rail thin anymore like I did when I was 13 and I know that unless I do something drastic that I won't be able to lose a considerable amount of muscle (also back then I categorized everything as me being fat even if it literally didn't make sense). Now don't get me wrong, I'm still dealing with stuff right now particularly in my home and school environment. I'm also kind of sensitive to my body changing especially since I have been trying to change up my diet so that I have a healtheir metabolism and address the deficiencies I accumulated from habits that went unchecked just because I wasn't getting the negative effects of it then. For a long time, I had a lot of unhealthy habits ingrained to me sold as "tips to be healthy" that went unnoticed because I was much more at peace with my body and didn't hate my body the way I did in my early teens (i.e. intermittent fasting, drinking water instead of eating if you want a snack or chew gum, restricting carbs, binging and restricting due to moralizing food by having "cheat days", trying not to eat more than 1400 calories etc.). And since I'm not doing those things anymore and I'm consistently making the point to eat enough throughout the day, I have put on some weight. I will admit, that has been messing with me as of recently and I'm still working through it. But something that I've noticed is that even most of the time when I am at peace with my body, whether it's my arms, my legs, my height, my chest, my face etc., the one thing that never budges is my stomach. I feel like the difference between then and now is that back then if I considered something like this, I would want to get everything done. Now it's just one part of my body and that's it. I guess I can see the relativity of how I like some parts of my body or hate them depending on a variety of factors. But with my stomach, I've always really consistently hated the way it looks.

@integral never if I did, it was probably before age 7 but I can’t remember much in general from that age much less on what my stomach looked like. I did come close to a flat stomach in my early teens but I had a full on eating disorder at the time. everyone in my family is somewhat apple shaped even when skinny/fit. Like I have a really fit cousin who does marathons and stuff and works out every day but he doesn’t have a flat stomach. It’s a genetic thing in my family that even when lean, our fat distribution is a little on the stomach. and also I mean, it’s not like you can spot reduce fat. Sure you can do core exercises but that will build up muscle in your core, not necessarily get rid of the fat. You need to be in a calorie deficit and even then from my experience, you can’t really control where you’re losing weight from. That’s up to genetics which is always important to remember when you watch fitness and what I eat in a day videos because even if you follow it exactly, you won’t look exactly like the people showing you their diet or workout routines.

@no_name My typical workout looks something like this: Walk to the gym from my car or dorm for 10 minutes. 4 sets of dumbell chest presses with 25lbs on each hand and 4 sets of bicep curls with 20lbs in each hand alternating. Each set is for 15 reps 4 sets calf raises at 280 lbs with 10 reps per set 4 sets of leg presses at 430 lbs for 15 reps per set 4 sets of low rows at 105 lbs with 10 reps per set alternating with 4 sets of either tricep push downs (70lbs) or lat pulldowns (85lbs) with 10 reps per set. And then I either do more weight lifting or I get on the treadmill for 20 minutes at 3mph with the incline on 6. I'm trying to work my way to 12 so I could do the 12-3-30 challenge Afterwards I walk 10 minutes back to my dorm or car. This usually amounts to about an hour and 20 minutes for me.

Wouldn't that just be over training?? Your muscles need time to rest and recover in order to build and adjust. I found that for me personally, if I do more than 4 times a week, I tend to burn myself out or get obsessive to where my workouts aren't as good anymore. 3-4 weeks works for me because it gives me some flexibility in my schedule and it lets me listen to my body. What do sports bras have to do with flexing your abs lmaooo That doesn't even make sense Lol, been doing this since I was 10 because of ~~**insecurities**~~ I suppose I could try that... Gonna be honest, I'm into cardio (especially running, I could deal with the bike or eliptical though since that's kind of fun for me) so it's hard for me to be consistent. I've basically been doing workouts I genuinely enjoy so that I could get into the habit of it and so I can get rid of the negative connotation I had with the gym for a long time.

I do weight lifting and I walk around a lot. I haven't updated this journal in a whlie because I've been travelling but here are some more details:

Part of me genuinely thinks this. I feel like I've been doing a lot of work regarding dealing with the other traumas that have led me to feeling the way I do about my body. But I still find myself hitting a wall. That said, even though it feels like it, I'm willing to do as much inner work as possible so that this doesn't turn into constantly fixing things. But even then in the end of the day, even if you sort everything out, you might still have parts of yourself that you just don't like. And that's ok and i think it's up to you to decide where to go from there. I say a part of me because I do still think that there is some more work to be done after I move out of my parent's house and graduate from college as I'm not in the best of environment. I'm still thinking of waiting a couple more years before doing this both because I'm looking into my options, healing other issues, taking care of my health, and of course, money is a factor as well. I don't just have a few thousand dollars laying around lol. I'm also looking into that option as well. I guess it will depend on cost and the number of sessions depending on the area that is being treated. I think I would prefer to do the cool sculpting since it isn't invasive but I have some doubts. I feel like the pictures I have seen for that were mainly pictures of people who have a pound or two to go or like a very small area where as lipo has more results. Then again idk, there are variety of factors involved and there isn't a way of knowing unless I talk to a professional about my goals and what would be the best course of action.

@Michael569 Definitely taking note of this. I'm not planning on going through with this any time soon. I still don't know how things will come up as far as cost goes or if I'm an ideal candidate for this at all. If I do decide to do this, it might be a couple years from now once I graduate, move out, and save up some money. Who knows, maybe I'll reconsider and not go through this at all. If that is the case and I find that kind of self love in myself, then I'll be more than happy to let this go. I'm venting at this point and putting my thoughts out there: I just think that it's a good idea to talk through this. I hope this isn't how I'm coming off as but I don't want people to come on this thread thinking that I already made up my mind and that I'm looking for a fight in the thread. I just want to talk things out to make sure if this decision is coming from a reasonable place. I am aware of the obvious pitfalls such as using surgery to escape unhealthy eating habits, getting addicted to fixing things, and making an impulse decisions for these things. But I guess what I'm look for is a sanity check to make sure this is coming from a consicous place. I'm not going to sit here and act like this is a super empowering decision for women in general. I am aware that a lot of the thoughts that I have about my body don't exist in a vacuum and have things like misogyny, capitalism, and whatever current trend there is affecting my perception. I also don't think that plastic surgery, lipo, or any surgery for aesthetic purposes should be stigmatized because that adds to the problem of people not disclosing things and perpetuating unrealistic standards. At the same time, I do see these kinds of surgery as a form of last resort if nothing else is working given that you're otherwise psychologically stable (i.e. as in not having an eating disorder, not having a 1000 things you want to fix, not doing this for approval etc.). This is definitely not for everyone and it isn't something to trivialize or normalize. And I know that I do hold myself to an unrealistic standard. I know that if I eat right and exercise, I'm still not going to be as lean as other people who do the same thing because we're all different and healthy doesn't have one look. But at the same time, my stomach is still something that really bothers me. I have worked on self acceptance and I will continue to do so until I have the means to do this but it's only doing so much. Again, maybe in a couple years I'll be able to move on with my life idk. I'm just wondering if I'm at that stage of *this is my last resort*

@Something Funny I've experimented for 10 years and got myself several nutritional deficiencies in the process. I would consider something granted that it isn't overly restrictive or unrealistic but honestly, surgery seems like the thing that would put this to end once and for all with less complications. Recovery takes 4-5 days and then it takes a few weeks for your body to settle in to it.

@something_else It's something like this. Like it isn't so much to where I would need to prioritize weight loss before the procedure and I can hide it with most clothes. But it is enough to really bother me and get under my skin. I would estimate that I have about 5lbs of fat here.

@something_else Well... it certainly isn't flat that's for sure

I have a healthy diet and exercise routine. I decided to work with a nutritionist so that I could get a professional opinion because following waaay too much diet advice from not the best reputable sources gave me a very fucked up relationship with food to where I lost my hunger cues entirely. My current diet has a lot of fruits and vegetables, carbs, protien (plant based and other wise), and healthy fats. I have variety in my diet as well as flexibility to where I'm not paranoid about the kinds of foods I encounter. I can also eat foods that might not be considered "healthy" in moderation without guilt. I haven't binged for a very long time now. I have more energy, more stable moods, and better blood work. I don't snack constantly nor do I have intense cravings. I had to put on a little bit of weight because of that which I am now ok with for the most part because I was basically starving myself before. I also built a good amount of muscle which I am proud of. I have an excercise routine that I genuinely enjoy and often look forward to which consists of weight training and low impact cardio depending on what I'm in the mood for. It's just that even with all of this, I naturally carry some weight in my stomach which I won't be able to get rid of unless I were to be extremely strict and go back to dysfunctional habits that will mess with my health over all. Because I still have body image issues which I'm afraid will cause me go back to restricting again, I think it's best to just get the surgery so I don't have to think about it ever again and continue with my healthy habits without being fixated on my appearance. I feel like it would help me greatly for my mental healthy both from a confidence stand point but also from the standpoint of addressing my body image. That said, since I'm otherwise happy with my body, I don't see this as something that would be spiraling out of control and result in me getting multiple procedures. I have thought about this for a few years now. I have made peace with the limitations of my body to where I'm not going to get on a crash diet to be something that is unrealistic for me but I also recognize that maybe a change is necessary for me to be at peace with myself.