Male Skin Removal Surgery After Massive Weight Loss - ZachAttacksFat

Zach:

I'm ready to just be done with all this skin. It's never something that I had anticipated. I didn't think when I lost weight that I would have all of this extra skin. I really thought... I don't know what I thought to be honest.

Dr. Katzen:

You will not wake up during the surgery, you will not feel the surgery. When I am finished, say, "Okay, we're done," in about 10, 15 minutes later he turns on the dials, boom. Magically you wake up. Everyone wakes up. Those are usually the top fears. Am I going to wake up? Am I going to feel it? Am I going to be able to go to sleep? Yeah. Boom, all of those. Boom, boom.

Zach:

I'm Zach, I live in Hemet, California, I'm 24 years old, I'm a real estate agent and I'm also a personal trainer. Personal training isn't really that lucrative, at least not yet. My highest weight was 463 pounds.

I was always uncomfortable with being overweight. I didn't like the way I looked, I didn't like the way I felt, I didn't like not being able to do certain things, but I've always been really outgoing and really social. That aspect of my life never really lacked.

I was never an outsider, I never didn't have friends, I was always pretty popular, but I wasn't confident in my body image. That was never really enough to get me to lose weight. I had tried a few times here and there, and then it was like, I would lose a couple pounds doing whatever fad diet, whatever this, whatever that, but it never really stuck.

It wasn't until I was 19. My dad, he's overweight and he's always been overweight. He had a heart attack in 2012. After he had his heart attack, it scared me a little bit to look into my own health. I scheduled a doctor's appointment to just get a general checkup, and I got diagnosed with hypertension at 19. That's also when I was 460 pounds.

That was my moment of, Oh, crap. If you don't do something about this... You already have high blood pressure, you're already on high blood pressure medication; if you don't do something about this now, you're just going to die from this. It wasn't until it was a life or death situation to where I was finally like, No. Enough screwing around. It's time to get serious about this.

How long am I going to be out of the gym?

Dr. Katzen:

That's a really good question. There's upper body and lower body. I would say, two to three weeks. At two to three weeks you can do biceps and triceps.

Zach:

Oh, wow! Moderate intensity.

Dr. Katzen:

Yeah. Two to three weeks. Maybe you can isolate gastrocs, your calf muscles. Maybe at about a month, a month will get you walking, and maybe... Do you run? Probably not.

Zach:

No, I don't run, no. I'm mainly just...

Dr. Katzen:

Gym.

Zach:

I do jump rope, but I mainly just power lifting, lifting heavy weights.

Dr. Katzen:

Power lifting, heavy weights, maybe at about six to eight weeks.

Zach:

I was mentally preparing for eight weeks.

Dr. Katzen:

Six to eight weeks. How much do you lift?

Zach:

Which lift?

Dr. Katzen:

Bench, bench.

Zach:

Bench? My bench is my weakest. I'm only at a 245 bench.

Speaker 3:

But what's your squat?

Zach:

I got a 400 pound squat and I got a 425 dead lift.

Dr. Katzen:

Wow, 425. That's crazy.

Zach:

The goal is after I heal, next year I'm going to do training and then try, and compete in my first power lifting meet somewhere in the next summer.

Dr. Katzen:

Cool.

Zach:

Around September, October.

I'm getting the circumferential body lift as well as a chest reduction. I'm ready to just be done with all this skin. Clothes fitting better is definitely one thing that I'm super excited for, especially pants. Pants, I struggle with because it's like, you have this either/or. You're either going to tuck all this skin into your pants or you're going to have it all hang over above it. Either way it's not that comfortable and it ends up pulling on my skin and hurting.

So that's what I'm most excited for, is just clothes fitting better and just not having to worry so much or be self-conscious about when I'm just taking my shirt off at the beach or at the pool. It's not that comfortable to have people stare at you.

People do stare at me. With the amount of loose skin I have, I can't blame people for looking, because it's out of the ordinary. People are going to look. But it's not a great feeling.

Speaker 4:

[inaudible]

Speaker 5:

You think that's-

Speaker 7:

Perfect.

Dr. Katzen:

Good deal. Have a great ride, have a great trip. Think of a good vacation stop; Hawaii's pretty awesome.

Zach:

I'm excited.

Dr. Katzen:

Relax.

Zach:

I'm really excited. [inaudible]...

Luckily, I did my research and I feel 100% confident in Katzen. I've been following him on all the social media outlets, I've watched his YouTube videos and everything. That's definitely given me a lot more confidence in just the whole procedure as a whole, because I know at least I can have my general anxieties about surgery, but I don't have the anxieties about who's doing my surgeries, or if it's going to turn out well or if I'm going to be in good hands or anything like that.

Dr. Katzen:

How many weeks are we?

Speaker 3:

We'll be three weeks on Friday.

Zach:

Friday will be three. My bellybutton. I was like, Oh, wow! There's already spots that are no scabs.

Speaker 3:

That always sticks a little bit up there.

Dr. Katzen:

All right. So what we do is-

Zach:

Hey! It's a lot better today.

Dr. Katzen:

Well, that's what we wanted, right?

Zach:

Yeah! I'm just surprised.

Dr. Katzen:

A little swelling out in here. Betadine looks great. That looks fine.

Speaker 3:

He's really worried about right there. Yeah, that's...

Dr. Katzen:

It's all going to squeeze out. I think there's a little stitch right underneath there.

Speaker 3:

All right.

Dr. Katzen:

Good technique, good.

Speaker 3:

Aw, that was nice of you to say.

Dr. Katzen:

Really good. Let's make sure it's not swelling or anything.

Zach:

It's swelling to me.

Dr. Katzen:

It is swollen. I'm just making sure it's not fluid. Big difference, and it's not. Very good.

Zach:

Gotcha.

Dr. Katzen:

Let's spin around. Looks good. This point looks fine, that looks fine.

Zach:

I'm not that bad but it's definitely... I know it's there, that's for sure.

Dr. Katzen:

Good. And then this guy.

Zach:

This nipple looks way better.

Dr. Katzen:

The body's kind of cool. If you...

Speaker 3:

Take care of it.

Dr. Katzen:

... study military warfare, that's what the body does. It picks off the small battles first.

Speaker 3:

Wow, interesting.

Dr. Katzen:

It does the little wounds first. It's healing up that, it's diverting all its energy to that while everything else is at bay. Once this is healed, then the body will concentrate on this guy.

Speaker 3:

That's fascinating.

Dr. Katzen:

And then probably the back side and then probably this side, because if you exert all your energies across all battlefronts, you're going to lose. Devote all your energy to here, win that war. Go to the next one, go to the next one.

Zach is a prime example of patients who have lost weight and the skin really just doesn't bounce back. Now Zach lost 233 pounds on his own, no gastric bypass, no lap-band; just eat right and exercise all the time like a maniac and lost all this weight.

When that happens, when patients are morbidly obese, the skin is stretched out. When we lose the weight, all the elastic fibers in the skin try to recoil, try to contract and try to bounce back. But the body's not perfect, it can't recoil all the way. No matter how much exercise you do or no matter how much good food you eat, there's no way that skin's going to bounce back.

After a 233-pound weight loss, there's no way the skin's going to bounce back. That's where plastic surgeons come in and we trim up that extra skin. We get rid of that loose hanging skin that just won't bounce back after that massive weight lose.

Zach:

Life's pretty good. I'm back basically feeling normal. I'm back in the gym, back lifting, back working. I would say the top things after surgery that I've noticed, number one, is definitely the way clothes fit.

Clothes fit me so much better now, to where it was like, I used to wear an extra-large shirt. That was mainly just because it was more loose around my abdomen. The extra-larges would fit me pretty tight up here still, but down in my abdomen I would want my shirts to fit looser around my body because I had all that skin and all those folds. Now, I just wear a large shirt; which, I wore some large shirts before but now I'm so much more comfortable in them.

The way pants fit is completely different too. I used to have to play this game of, Well, am I going to try, and tuck my skin down into these pants or am I going to hang my skin over these pants? Now, it's just pants just fit flat all the way, around me. It was surreal the first time I put pair of pants on.

Now, when I'm working out, I like jump roping. One thing I notice when I'm jumping, not having all that skin jumping up and down with me has been a big difference to where it's a lot more comfortable, for sure.

I don't know if this is too R-rated, but honestly, just having sex is a lot better, mainly just because when you're on top and gravity's pulling all your skin down, it gets in the way and things aren't as good. That's another thing that I've noticed, it's really like, Oh, wow! This is a big difference.

Luckily, I stuck to exactly what Doctor Katzen told me to do. I rested for as long as he told me to rest, I changed my bandages when he told me to change them, I did everything that he told me to do. I don't really feel like there was much I would change.

Before I got my surgery, I knew I was going to be down a long time, so I meal prepped a bunch of meals before my surgery. That way I had enough food to keep me on track through that. I feel like I was pretty prepared and there was not really much that was unexpected.

Obviously, the pain was unexpected. I was not expecting to be in that much pain. Other than that, I feel like I was in good hands in the sense that if I listened to what he was telling me to do, things went pretty smoothly.

I was definitely very on edge before my surgery. I told a couple of friends of mine, I really felt like just getting in my car, driving away, getting a hotel room for the night, the night before my surgery and just ghosting everybody. Just showing up a few days later, "Hey guys! I'm back. My bad," because it's scary.

It is a big procedure, when my position, I've never really had any sort of major surgeries before, so I was really intimidated by it. But now, looking back on it is, I'm very glad that I did it. I'm very glad.

Speaker 8:

Would you do it all over again?

Zach:

Yes.

Speaker 8:

[inaudible]

Zach:

I would do it again if I had to. Well, if I could go back in time I wouldn't change my decision to do it.