Tummy Tucks; a Solution to Excess Skin

Sometimes, despite working out and strengthening the core muscles and even developing a six pack, athletes can find that there is a lot of extra fat or excess skin in the abdomen that just won’t go away, especially when losing a lot of bodyfat. Those who lose a significant amount of weight, as well as new mothers whose belly has had to expand rapidly to accommodate a baby, can find that they are left with plenty of excess skin that occupies significant volume. A tummy tuck addresses excess skin and fat, removing the latter through liposuction.

Motherhood and Diastasis Recti

New mothers can also wrestle with an issue known as diastasis recti. During pregnancy, the growing uterus stretches the muscles in the abdomen, sometimes causing the two parallel bands of muscles that meet in the middle to separate. This can cause a bulge that is resistant to traditional means of volume reduction such as exercise.

A tummy tuck can involve stitching these separated muscle bands together, as well as the removal of excess skin and fat if required.

Men are Having Tummy Tucks Too

For men, liposuction is the fifth most popular plastic surgery procedure, following eyelid rejuvenation, neck lifts (to eliminate ‘double chins’), rhinoplasty, and chin augmentation. Mostly, the targeted fat is in the belly area, leading to protrusion. Sometimes, a simple liposuction will do the trick; at other times, excess skin may also be removed to achieve the required shape.

Is Plastic Surgery a New Norm?

The boom in plastic surgery on a global scale reflects two main forces. The first is the growing importance of image and appearance, owing in no small part to growth of the ‘selfie’ culture. Both men and women see appearance as influential when it comes to corporate and personal success. These days, looking a decade younger than one’s biological age is increasingly possible thanks to surgical and non-surgical procedures such as fillers, Botox, laser, and more treatments.

A Reputation for Greater Safety

In addition to wishing to look young, the safety of plastic surgery is key. Procedures such as water jet liposuction make for excellent results that require little downtime. Meanwhile, non-surgical alternatives such as Cool Sculpting (or fat freezing) produce similar results to those obtained by procedures such as liposuction, yet require zero downtime. Indeed, results that in the past could only be obtained through surgeries such as face lifts are now being achieved through a combination of techniques such as threading, fillers, and the like.

From liposuctions to mommy makeovers, tummy tucks to rhinoplasties, these procedures are seen as a quick fix to a particular issue someone may have been wrestling with for years. Although diet and exercise are the main factors that determine our body shape, techniques such as tummy tucks or CoolSculpting seem to be making it easy to address issues such as stubborn fat and excess skin, which exercise alone cannot eliminate.

Ultimately the choice is yours, but remember to do your research and to also follow a good, healthy diet and to include some exercise a few days a week to stay healthy.

Photography credits:

• Photo by Natanael Melchor on Unsplash
• Photo by Evieanna Santiago on Unsplash

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Many people have a relatively good idea of which foods are healthy and which are not, or at least what foods are healthier than others.  But what most people are not aware of is the particulars of timing what you eat.  What I am talking about is, eating certain things at certain times.

By manipulating exactly WHAT you eat at certain times, you are able to an extent, enhance certain processes, such as muscle building, or blunt other processes like fat storage.

Now there are many opinions on the actual effectiveness of ‘meal timing,’ but I really believe that it can make a significant difference.  But, the other very important factor that you HAVE to control when wanting to lose or gain weight is the total number of calories that you take in.

Now first and foremost, you need to try and consume some protein at each meal.  By combining protein with other foods, you slow down the digestion of the meal, thus ensuring your blood sugar levels remain more or less constant, and do not jump too high and then crash.  You can also achieve this by adding foods high in fiber to your meals, such as vegetable like broccoli, green beans, spinach etc.

One of the most important points to remember is to not consume carbohydrates alone and after not eating for a long period of time, especially the fast acting carbohydrates which have little nutrients and fiber, such as sugar, sweets, fruit juices, soft drinks etc.  When you do consume these types of carbohydrates your blood sugar levels rise quite rapidly and then can come crashing down leaving you tired and lethargic.  Another effect which can take place when eating these foods alone is fat storage.  If the body’s carbohydrate stores are full it can end up storing those calories as fat, especially since these sugary foods cause the body to digest them very quickly forcing the body to actually do something with the calories quite rapidly.

This will still depend on a few other factors like your metabolism and how much carbohydrates you have had within the past few days.

For example, if we take a bodybuilder who has been restricting his carbohydrate intake for the past few days, he could be quite depleted, so when he starts to increase his carbohydrate intake, and only eat carbs, instead of gaining fat his muscles will actually use those carbohydrates to fill up, since your body stores carbohydrates within your muscles as muscle glycogen.  That’s why so many bodybuilders a few days before a show restrict their carbohydrate intake and then start to eat A LOT of carbohydrates on the day before or on the day of the show.  This really helps to give their muscles a full rounded and pumped look.  So we can see here that by manipulating what you eat really can make a difference.

Now the three times of the day when you really want to maximize the effects of the food which you eat are:

• Breakfast.
• Before your weight workout.
• After your weight workout.

Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day and far too many people eat the wrong things here or just skip it altogether.  By eating a good balanced breakfast you provide your body with the nutrients it needs, to provide you with energy for the rest of the day and since you have not eaten anything in eight or so hours by eating breakfast you can put your body into an anabolic state and get the muscle repair process started.

Anabolic state: A state of muscle building.
Catabolic state: A state of muscle breakdown.

An ideal breakfast would consist of a small piece of fruit, a large glass of chilled water, a few eggs and some form of carbohydrates, e.g. oats.  What I have just suggested contains all the different macronutrients, protein, fat and carbohydrates.  Now the portion sizes will depend on each person and on how active each of us is, but be sure to include a bit of everything.  Personally I have found that when I remove the carbohydrates (oats) from my breakfast (particularly when restricting my calories to lose fat) I have very little energy throughout the day and I feel very flat and lethargic.

But again it must work for you.

Nutrition before your workout can be manipulated in many ways.  Its probably not as important as breakfast and your post workout meal, but it can definitely help.  For instance if you workout long and hard you will need some carbohydrates to fuel your training, and as always you will need some protein to go with it.  But there are many people who just cannot eat a meal and then go train due to tension in their stomach even after two hours after eating.  So be sure to have a small meal at least one and a half to two hours before you train consisting of protein and carbohydrates. Some chicken and rice could do just fine.

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If you have read many fitness magazines out there I’m sure you will have read that after training you need simple carbohydrates like sugar or glucose to spike your insulin in order to refill your muscles and get as much nutrients in them as possible in that 30 minute ‘magic’ window after you train.  Now I do not dispute these claims, but you really don’t need to worry too much about the exact type of carbohydrates to use.

These days there are certain supplements out there which are made specifically to use straight after gym for these exact reasons, but one look at the ingredients and you will find you are just paying for sugar in fancy packaging.

So, yes, your muscles will be fatigued and naturally will need some nutrients to repair them.  The sooner you can get to them the better.  What to eat?  What I would suggest is initially a protein shake with some milk and a banana followed by a whole meal after about an hour or two consisting of vegetables, protein and carbohydrates, such as sweet potato, green beans and chicken.  The reason for all of this is that the protein shake in liquid form digests much quicker than actual food so it can get to work immediately to repair your muscles.  Then once the process is started and you have something in your system you can move onto a decent meal.  You could always just skip the shake and consume the meal straight away as well.

Lastly eating at night, or before bed.  There are a lot of different opinions on eating at night and just before your sleep saying it will cause excessive weight gain since you are not doing anything physical so therefore you will end up storing what you eat as body fat, especially if you eat carbohydrates at night.  I do disagree with most of this.  If you are working out almost every day relatively intensely, you are going to be hungry at night.  So then what do you do?  What do you eat?  Well, go for a high protein snack.

It would be a wise idea to stay away from carbohydrates before bed since when you sleep you naturally release growth hormone, which helps repair your muscles and various tissues within your body as well as help you recover from your day to day activities.  Now when you eat carbohydrates (especially simple carbohydrates like sugar, and sweets) your body releases insulin which to an extent blunts the release of growth hormone.

This is a process which you really do not want to intentionally stop as you should try to maximize it while you can since as you age you naturally produce less and less growth hormone.  So at night try to stick to meals containing protein and maybe some good fats.  The good fats can be found in nuts, olives, avocados etc.

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The word calorie is so widely used in today’s media, especially when it comes to losing weight and cutting down on food.  “You should eat low calorie foods,” “Reduce your calories,”  “I burnt X amount of calories just riding the bike.”  These are some of the statements you can hear all over the place, from commercials to everyday people.  Now I am not criticizing any of these claims, on the contrary, the point I want to make is that many people do not actually know what a calorie is.  Or what makes up a calorie.

Here we will breakdown what exactly a calorie is, what makes up a calorie in terms of protein, fat and carbohydrates and how you can use it in your diet.

What is a calorie?

A calorie is basically a unit of energy or more specifically food energy.   All foods contain calories, that’s what gives them substance to fill us up.

Our bodies need a certain amount of calories to provide us with energy and maintain our everyday duties and weight.  Whatever we do uses a certain amount of calories, even a restful thing like sleeping.

Each person would have a different baseline of calories to maintain their weight.  This baseline depends on many aspects, such as the person’s weight, body fat (and muscle mass), the person’s daily activity levels etc.  One of the best ways to find out YOUR baseline is to maintain a constant intake of calories daily and monitor your body and weight.  If you are gradually gaining weight weekly, then you are eating more than your baseline and vice versa.

So simplistically, if we want to gain weight we would need to eat a bit more calories than this baseline and if we want to lose weight, we would need to eat slightly less calories than this baseline.  This is a bit oversimplified but does portray the point here.

What makes up a calorie?

Since all foods are essentially calories, there must be something inside the foods that make up these calories right?  Right.  Protein, carbohydrates and fat make up calories.  But how much?  Here is a breakdown of how many calories are in 1 gram of each component.

• 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
• 1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 calories
• 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
• 1 gram of alcohol = 7 calories

Now we can see that fats are quite calorie dense, containing 5 calories more than both protein and carbs.  This is why a lot of people say; to lose weight you should cut out a lot of your fat intake as this drops calories significantly, but we want balance in our diets, so yes cut down SLIGHTLY on it but do not just eliminate it completely. The body needs each types of food, so avoid eliminating a whole food group.  This is also why different foods can contain the same amount of calories as each other even though nutritionally (in terms of protein, fat and carbohydrates) they are completely different as we can see in the following picture.

A suggestion would be to not worry too much with the numbers and calculations of calories in your diet as it can complicate things quite a bit.  Rather focus on portion sizes at each of your meals, and reducing or increasing the portion sizes depending on what you plan to achieve.

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In part one of this we looked at weight training, and why it’s so beneficial for women to do it, so if you missed it, check out  Women and Weight Training-  Part 1 for some great information and tips.

Yes weight training can do so much for you in such a positive light, but without the proper nutrition and eating habits you may never progress and see that big difference that you have been longing to see. Here we deal with a few simple nutrition strategies to help get you started, and guide you in achieving your goal of losing fat and building and toning your muscles.  Remember, to change and improve your body you must be consistent with your exercising and your eating.  You must make sure to do some sort of exercise and be active.

Aspects such as, how many meals to eat, what exactly to eat, how many calories to eat and the reasons behind it all, will be dealt with.  You should try to keep things as simple as possible, especially with regards to nutrition, as if it’s too complicated it can really put you off.

“Fact: Nutrition is always the limiting factor in body transformation. If a client doesn’t change their nutrition, all the effort in the gym is largely wasted.” ~ Dr. John Berardi

So where to start?

Firstly you need to have the right mind set and attitude.  You need to decide what it is you want to achieve and visualise your goal, and your ideal body and stick with it.  You need to realise that you’re going to need to be disciplined and prepared, and at times it will require sacrifices.

How many meals should you be eating?

The general ideal way to lose fat, or gain muscle is to eat small but frequent meals. This is not the only way though.  So anywhere between four and six meals/snacks a day.  A meal every three to four hours.  This has been covered in a previous article,  Healthy eating – How many meals a day?

What should you be eating?

The thought of having to eat four or more meals a day can be quite daunting and can lead to the question, ‘what on earth do I eat for every one of those meals?’  Well the good news is that there are quite a lot of different foods you can choose from and another plus is, with regular exercise your appetite should increase.

Variety is key so that you don’t get bored and end up eating the same thing every day.  Although, some people find it easier and simpler to stick to the same foods day in and day out.  Whatever works for YOU.

The different macro nutrients and foods that will make up your diet:

• Always think PROTEIN.  This should be your main focus, and each of your meals must contain some form of protein.  The reason for this is so that you can constantly supply your body with amino acids necessary for muscle repair and growth, as well as many other bodily functions ( such as hair growth, skin rejuvenation etc).  Some protein food sources include: Chicken, eggs, red meat, fish, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, milk, lentils, quinoa, tofu, nuts.

Your protein content should stay relatively consistent, where as your carbohydrates and fat can be manipulated more, depending on if you’re trying  losing fat or to gain weight.

• Next up, vegetables.  Try to include a bowl of vegetables with at least three of your meals in a day.  Some good vegetables can include: broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, peppers, peas, onions etc.  Vegetables are packed with fibre, vitamins and minerals, all essential for our well being.  Fiber is so good for helping our digestive system, cleaning inside our stomach, and aiding in making us feel full.
• Fruit.  If you read a few magazine articles here and there you can find many people saying you should rather avoid fruit or minimize it as most fruits contain a lot of sugar and fructose.  It’s a good idea to include some fruit in your diet, especially with your breakfast or make sure to eat a piece of fruit just before one of your meals, as they offer many vitamins and minerals naturally.  For instance for your second meal of the day you can have an apple/pear/orange/grapefruit first then continue to have a chicken salad for example.  Fruit also contains fiber which will help keep us full.
• Carbohydrates.  With exercise and especially weigh training, you may find yourself needing a lot of energy.  Good carbohydrates can provide you with the fuel you will need to get through your daily training.  Try to include some carbohydrates at breakfast and before and after you train to provide you with enough energy and recovery.  Some good carbohydrate sources include:  Oats, rice, potatoes and sweet potatoes, quinoa, lentils, cous cous etc. Include a portion of carbohydrates with two or three of the meals, but again, personal preference can come into play here. There are a lot of people who don’t eat much before they train as they feel too full and it causes them to feel like throwing up.  So if you are one of those people, by all means manipulate it to suit your needs.
• Fats.  It’s a long time myth that eating fats cause you to get fat.  This is really not the case.  Fats play an important role within our bodies, regulating our hormones and inducing the production of some hormones.  So to completely eliminate them from your diet would not be a wise decision.  Some good fats include: olive oil, nuts, peanut butter, avocados etc.  It would be a good idea to include some of these fats at breakfast and in your last meals of the day when carbohydrates are low.

So far we have established that you will:

• Be eating four to six meals in a day,
• With each meal containing some form of protein,
• With a portion of vegetables included in at least three of the meals.
• Eat a portion of fruit at breakfast and/or before one other meal.
• Include a portion of carbohydrates in your two meals before and after training and at breakfast.
• Include some good fats with your last two meals of the day.

How many calories and grams should you eat?

In the spirit of keeping things simple we will keep away from saying you should be eating x amount of grams of this food and that food.  There are some articles which state, to calculate how many calories you should be eating, multiply your bodyweight by 14 or 15.  This method is slightly vague and we should rather go according to portions as that former way can get quite complicated, especially for someone who doesn’t know much about calories.

One very important note which you need to be aware of, is that different people have different needs.  Basically the amount of calories and nutrients YOUR body may need to lose fat could be totally different to someone else.

The exact amounts of calories required by you depend on many things, such as your weight, your body fat, the amount of activity you do in a day, the amount of rest you get and need etc. So while each of us needs to find out how much is sufficient for us, there are still basic principles which can be used to get started.

For vegetables you don’t have to worry too much as more is better than less in this case.  So for these you can just chop some vegetables up into a medium sized bowl for each meal.  For your protein, use your fist as a comparison.  So for foods like chicken and fish and mince, one portion should be just bigger than your fist.  For carbohydrates you can use ¾ of a cup to 1 cup as a one portion.  Lastly for fats it’s a bit different.  Use one teaspoon as one portion.  For instance a teaspoon of olive oil, peanut butter or avocado.

So once you put all these portions together with each of your meals, you will start to see how your body responds and from there you can manipulate and change it as you need, decreasing or increasing what you need.

These portion sizes are relatively small, but should be adequate for the average woman.  Depending on your weight and body fat you can adjust them to suit your needs.  This is all just a guideline to help you get started and to see how you need to eat to maximise your results, be fit and healthy and achieve a great body

Here is another great article about the benefits of weight training for women and why females should want to gain muscle.  If you are still not convinced check these reasons out! 10 reasons why females should be obsessed with gaining muscle

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Whenever I suggest weight training to a girl, I seem to get this bewildered and shocked look.  Most girls go to the gym just to ‘keep fit’ and end up doing a few minutes on every piece of cardio equipment that there is in the gym!  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not taking anything away from cardio, and I do believe in doing cardio, but it does have its time, place and purpose.

Most girls give the impression that they are scared of the weights section of the gym and say it is only for the guys.  Girls, you really shouldn’t be scared of it at all, as everyone’s there for one reason (well at least they should be), to train.  Another reason, and one of the most common ones I keep hearing of,

is the misconception that if a female trains with weights they will ‘bulk’ up and gain a lot of muscle creating a more manly look, and an unfeminine appearance.  What you need to understand is that these very big and incredibly muscular women, whom you see in some of these bodybuilding competitions, have been taking testosterone and other anabolic steroids (in addition to working hard, eating right and training intensely).

These anabolic agents enable them to build such large amounts of muscle compared to an average woman and even the average man.  You see women do not have sufficient amounts of testosterone within them to allow for such extreme muscle growth, no matter how much weight training you do.  Granted some women will grow quicker than others, while some may lose weight easier than others, but the reasons for this can be quite vast.  It could be due to such things like different genetics, different diets etc.  In the end we are all unique and may respond differently to different things.  That catch is to experiment and find what exactly works for us individually.

So what’s the point and the reasons for all this hype on weight training.  The reason is that there are so many benefits associated with weight training:

1. Increase your overall muscle mass on your body

This in turn raises your metabolism and allows you to burn more calories at rest.

Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat.  Muscle needs more attention than fat.

In simpler terms while you’re just sitting, the muscles on your body need a supply of nutrients and blood constantly to repair, build and maintain the muscle as opposed to fat which needs far less nutrients.

2. Increase in appetite

Your appetite should increase and thus you can eat more without gaining a lot of fat, and with the training you are most likely going to need those extra nutrients.

3. Deeper sleep

You will sleep like a baby!  Weight training will definitely help you get better sleep.  Ok pretty much doing any physical activity will help with sleep, but weight training also stimulates the release of growth hormone.

When you have a good deep sleep, your body releases small amounts of growth hormone.  This helps with a number of bodily functions from creating hair growth, fat burning and how the body stores fat, all the way to aiding in the reduction of wrinkles, as it stimulates growth and cell reproduction and regeneration.  It also aids in repairing your muscles.

Growth hormone production in our bodies declines as we get older, thus the reason why we should maximise its effects while we can.  This is why we see so many of the older celebrities getting growth hormone ‘treatments’ to make them look so much younger.

4. Tone and tighten up

Weight training helps you achieve that toned and tight look.  It tones your muscles far faster and better than any other form of training and also assists in keeping your skin tight.  Another big thing which girls hate is cellulite, which it helps getting rid of.

5. Release endorphins

When you train, and get your heart rate up your body releases these ‘feel good hormones’ and endorphins which help to calm and relax yourself, even after the training.

And to some it’s a form of release, which is really a big plus with all the stress of our everyday lives.

6. Increase your self confidence

It will make you look and feel even better about yourself!  I don’t think we even need any other reasons to do it besides this

Something I really love about it as well, is that it forces you to become disciplined and enables you to attain a lot more focus both in an out of the gym.

If you don’t have that motivation to hit the weights alone, try get a gym partner to join you, and by doing so you two can push each other and ensure you both do everything correctly.  Or better yet take your better half with you and have fun together.  But if neither of these cases works out for you, don’t be sad, you can always start with one of the classes that they give at the gym.  Just find out what the class entails, as there are many different ones for all different goals and types of training.  Try to find one with a lot of resistance type exercises with bands and even some with weights or kettle bells.  If in doubt speak to one of the personal trainers or one of the aerobics instructors, they should be more than willing to help you.

Here’s a great article on how to bench press for the ladies, A Girl’s Gotta Bench It’s all good to train hard and intensely, but if you do not eat right, you may never achieve the results which you want.

Check out Part 2 of this article, more focused on the right nutrition for women:  Women and Weight Training – Part 2 – Getting Clued Up on the Right Nutrition

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