A little about me...

Everyone's journey through plastic surgery is a unique one, and much of it stems from factors such as age, body composition, habits, goals, etc. So I figured I would start by introducing myself! 

NOTE: If you want to skip this and go straight to the surgery and beyond, go for it!! I just felt like a little background may be helpful but honestly not necessary to know 😁

I am 36 years old as I type this. Health and fitness have always been habits/priorities for me through most of my life...I've gone from being an avid martial artist, to becoming a gym rat, to working out at home (lightly), then spin classes at the gym....you get the point. In fact, the least healthy point in my life started not that long ago. Towards the end of 2017 I was separated from my husband at the time, moving towards divorce. Life got a little hectic...and the weight started to creep up. Healthy habits were put on hold while I navigated my divorce, moving, dating again, purchasing my first home on my own, on and on. And then I found myself happily remarried! Oh and PREGNANT! 

Although I was super excited for this new chapter in my life, my pregnancy was definitely not what I had always dreamed of. In younger years I had this fantasy of myself being able to stay active up until delivery...only eating what I needed to sustain a supportive pregnant body and not a calorie more than that....being able to jump right back into activities as soon as I could after delivery. HA! I was so tired and nauseated during the first trimester that I barely ate, then when that passed in 2nd trimester I was STARVING (and definitely eating "for 2 or 3"), and then 3rd trimester hits and I go into preterm labor. Thankfully my OB got it under control, but I was put on bedrest for 5 weeks until delivery....which was still at 34 weeks despite our best efforts to carry to term. So I had my beautiful baby girl via emergency cesarean and I started another new chapter in my life.

Starting off my motherhood journey I was the heaviest I had ever been, having gained around 80 pounds during the pregnancy, and hadn't worked out in months. I felt awful, looked terrible (in my own eyes), and just had a hard time overall in that newborn phase. Definitely new mom struggles! Once my baby was roughly 6 months old she started sleeping through the night, and I finally had the presence of mind (and enough sleep to think straight) to get started on a journey back to health and fitness. I actually contacted an old friend on Facebook who had achieved significant weight loss through a nutritional program called Isagenix, and I ended up doing the same program and was eventually able to get back to pre-pregnancy weight!

At this point I'm only running on a treadmill a few mornings per week for exercise. Nothing major. While I was super happy with the weight loss, I really missed having some sort of instruction. I would have gone right back to the gym...but by this time the pandemic had kicked off! So no gyms for me, I stuck with my treadmill and just continued to work on weight maintenance.  

Move forward a few more months, one life change led to another, and we decided we were going to move out of state! So the beginning of 2021 found us moving to our new home here in Texas. As soon as we purchased this home, my first thought was "okay time to turn one of these spare bedrooms into an actual home gym!" And I knew I was going to be getting a Peloton bike as soon as we settled...it had been on my mind for several months and I felt like it was the perfect solution for me to continue to workout at home and really elevate my fitness to higher levels. So I got my bike in March, fell in love with the Peloton platform, and became an avid student of all the disciplines that Peloton has to offer! I was doing daily strength, riding, running, yoga, stretching....you name it, I was on it! 

So as I continued to work on my overall health and improve my fitness throughout the rest of 2021, of course I lost some more weight...and then added some muscle! And I was so so proud of myself for how I looked and felt. I was stronger, healthier, and happier....

EXCEPT for my new "mom pooch"! This was an unwelcome addition to my hard-earned fitter body. And no matter how well I ate, how much core I did, whether I religiously tracked calories/macros, how much cardio I added....I was never quite able to get this pooch to go away. In fact, the more I worked out and ate well, it seemed like the lower abs stuck out even worse! I knew about Diastasis Recti, but I would lay down and do the "finger test" to assess for separation, and I just couldn't feel any. So I wasn't quite sure what I needed to do...but I knew that I needed help because what I was doing just wasn't working. I even switched to DR-specific core workouts to see whether they made a difference. They did not. 

Lo and behold, I ended up consulting with a plastic surgeon...thinking perhaps I needed a touch of lipo. She took one look at my abs and said I definitely had looseness to the abdominal wall, and no amount of core or special exercise would make it as flat as I wanted it to be. She even commented on how LITTLE fat I had in the area, and was impressed by my ab musculature (yay me)! So the answer to my question was abdominoplasty (aka "the tummy tuck"), and she would include a touch of lipo to my sides to help give me more of a curved figure rather than my naturally square torso. 

So without further ado....onward to my surgery!