“The more I practice, the more I get excited about what I can do for my patients.” – Dr. Michael Vennemeyer
Do you want a flatter tummy? You have probably tried hitting the gym and dieting on rabbit food without sustainable or sufficient results. A good reason to stop beating yourself up is knowing exercise does not tighten skin. Core toning exercises are important and helpful to looking good and being healthy, but they have no effect on shrinking your birthday suit. In fact, skin can deflate more as you lose weight if it has poor elasticity. If your skin has been stretched too far from weight gain or pregnancy (especially repeated cycles), the elasticity is diminished, degrading skin’s ability to shrink wrap to your smaller body. Stretch marks and thin, crpey skin are common signs of this damage.
How can you get rid of extra tummy skin?
Abdominoplasty, or tummy tuck, directly removes extra skin so that it tightens around that area. Dr. Vennemeyer specializes in making the lowest scars possible (to hide in your underwear or bikini) and sculpting beautiful belly buttons. Some are hesitant about the scar and declare they would never get a tummy tuck for that reason. Before closing the door, consider the following: Would you be happier keeping your body in its current state for the rest of your life, or would you rather feel confident and look hotter with a scar that hides in your new bikini?
Most of our tummy tuck patients haven’t donned a two-piece in years, pre-abdominoplasty. They’re hesitant to even get their hopes up or admit they want to be able to wear one. One woman was so scar averse, she nearly didn’t have surgery, but she was so unhappy with her tummy she ended up proceeding. She scoffed about the fact she would be able to hide the low scar and remarked to Dr. Vennemeyer, “I’m 65 years old, I have no intention of wearing a bikini after my tummy tuck.”
Fast forward to her 6-week post-op visit, and the moment Dr. Vennemeyer walked into the room she burst out, “I bought a new bikini and I look AMAZING!” These are the moments everyone at Vennemeyer Plastic Surgery is passionate about sharing with our patients. We would rest our case, but we’ve only gone skin deep, so far (sorry for the cliché).
What happens to your abs during pregnancy or weight gain?
What about those core muscles? Pregnancy and weight gain force the six-pack muscles apart out of necessity to create more room in the abdomen. The muscles themselves retract well when you deliver the baby or lose weight; however, the fascia connecting them together does not. This is called a rectus diastasis—a separation of the six-pack muscles, and the effect is a bulging abdomen and larger waistline. Many women misinterpret this bulge as fat under the skin that can be removed with liposuction, so most try a boat-load of sit-ups, crunches and other tummy-torture. They are usually left feeling disempowered with a tighter bulge, as exercise tones the muscles, but fails to pull them closer together.
The solution is repairing the diastasis during your abdominoplasty. Dr. Vennemeyer stitches the rectus muscles back together, flattening your tummy, and narrowing your waist. The effect is like tightening a corset and you’ll see noticeable results.
Do you get a new belly button during a tummy tuck?
Belly buttons get their fair share of abuse, including piercing-misadventures, pregnancy, and massive weight loss. Many women are hesitant about getting a tummy tuck because they fear a Frankenstein-ish belly button, but patients at Vennemeyer Plastic Surgery rave about their new belly buttons because Dr. Vennemeyer is passionate about the details, which makes an enormous difference in your final result.
Dr. Vennemeyer has a reputation for creating incredibly natural-appearing belly buttons. Umbilicoplasty is the term plastic surgeons use to describe reviving an umbilicus that has seen better days. Dr. Vennemeyer’s proprietary technique has evolved over the years to create belly buttons with hidden scars and 3-dimensional contour, rather than a stuck-on appearance. So, get excited for not only a flatter stomach, but also a cute new belly button with your tummy tuck.
Will a tummy tuck make your waist thinner?
Abdominoplasty is a really powerful procedure when it comes to flattening your tummy, but how do you narrow your waist? The myth that targeting areas of fat excess with exercise will reduce fat in those specific areas is widespread. “Although exercise can reduce overall body fat, you cannot choose where it comes off,” explains Dr. Vennemeyer. “I can target those areas with liposuction and create the best possible shape for your body in surgery—better than what you can achieve with years in the gym.”
The best results are achieved and maintained with a combination of plastic surgery, eating anti-inflammatory foods, and physical fitness. When you add 360 core liposuction to a tummy tuck, the result is worlds better for women who have excess fat in the hips, flanks, and bra roll areas. The liposuction erases the square shape and replaces it with a more hourglass-shaped waist. Even women without very much fat can benefit if there is enough in the wrong places. Some of our thin patients ask for help improving what they feel is a boy-ish looking figure.
Dr. Vennemeyer uses a game-changing liposuction technique that is vastly superior to previous methods of lipo. By using power-assisted liposuction equipment that mechanically breaks up the fat, this leads to less traumatic, smoother fat removal. Power-assisted liposuction avoids the potentially problematic heat created by laser and ultrasonic liposuction techniques, which is desirable because excess heat can burn the skin, causing scars and hyperpigmentation (dark patches on the skin).
How does power-assisted liposuction work?
Dr. Vennemeyer uses a well-established, 3-step process that starts with separating the fat using a vibrating cannula until it is the consistency of coarse crumbs. He follows that with artistically sculpting each area of your body from multiple incision sites to get the best 3-dimensional shape possible. Gravity affects your shape differently when laying flat, so Dr. Vennemeyer places you in multiple positions to account for this and ensure you have great contours when standing. The final step is similar to the first, where fat is equalized with a vibrating cannula to correct irregularities and ensure the remaining layer of desirable fat creates a smooth contour and proper transitions between body areas.
This technique also has advantages beyond smoother contours. Dr. Vennemeyer treats the entire circumferential core as a whole, taking the result to another level beyond what you can achieve with the outdated approach of treating only the “problem areas.” The circumferential treatment enhances the ability of the skin to retract and redistribute, facilitating more profound reshaping with less risk of excess skin or contour irregularities.
Will fat grafting improve your body contour?
We’ve tightened your tummy, we’ve snatched your waist, what could be left for improvement? What is the absolute state-of-the-art way to get the best body possible? Non-ideal body contours can arise from extra skin and extra fat, as we’ve discussed, but can too little fat be a problem? YES!
The final ingredient in an amazing result is adding volume to the right places to create beautiful S curves from your waist to your hips, thighs, and butt. This is where Dr. Vennemeyer’s passion and skill really shine – he loves the opportunity to dramatically re-shape his patients using liposuction to remove excess fat and fat transfer/grafting to enhance curves, stating: “It allows me to completely re-shape women who have very square-shaped or V-shaped hips/buttocks to create a more A-shaped frame, and our patients are shocked when I tell them we can do this.”
People are just starting to appreciate the game-changing ability of fat grafting to reshape nearly every area of the body. The synergy of even subtle amounts of addition to (fat grafting) and subtraction (liposuction) from adjacent areas is the solution for the best-possible shape for most patients. “The advances in liposuction and fat grafting techniques over the past decade have literally revolutionized the results I can achieve for my patients,” explains Dr. Vennemeyer.
One of the biggest opportunities to improve results with 360 liposuction and abdominoplasty is using fat grafting to smooth the transition from hips to thighs and thighs to buttocks to create beautiful, feminine S curves. Gluteal fat transfer, also known as a BBL (Brazilian butt lift), is an extension of this where fat is also added to the butt. Some women are afraid of fat transfer because they think they’re going to end up with a big butt. However, they are completely missing the subtle contour irregularities that exist around their lateral hips, thighs, and buttocks. While liposuction helps improve the areas that protrude too much, it fails to help the indented areas, and that’s where fat transfer allows for creating that ideal body shape.
Now you want a flatter tummy, but don’t know where to begin?
Call Vennemeyer Plastic Surgery at (817) 761-0864 or click here to schedule your personal consultation with Dr. Vennemeyer and his staff, where you’ll have the opportunity to share your story and body goals, and then discuss Dr. Vennemeyer’s recommendations that will get you the best possible results.
We look forward to hearing from you!
