One of the selling points with the DIEP flap reconstruction surgery is that it uses your own body fat (belly fat) to reconstruct your breast. In the decision making process one of the “advantages” to this type of reconstruction is that as you gain or lose weight, your breasts will resize too. But what they don’t tell you is that the fat used to make your new breasts isn’t the same as breast tissue (OK that should be obvious), but what isn’t obvious is that as you lose weight, if you normally would have lost that weight in your belly first, it means you lose that weight in your breasts first.

I’m finally starting to shed some of the chemo and surgery weight that I gained. I’m down 20 lbs from my post-surgery weight in March 2015. What I’ve noticed with the last 10 lbs is that my boobs are deflating. I can no longer fill the tops of my dresses. Unfortunately, I’m not lose any of the width around my thighs. This is making fitting into clothing an interesting challenge, as my upper body is not aligning with my lower body.

It has me wondering about my vanity again. In some ways I feel shallow. I’m feeling the cultural pressure to not do anything, because in my circles getting plastic surgery for vanity reasons just isn’t something that is done. And yet I wonder. If my boobs deflate too much (I think right now I’m the only one that really notices the difference), I find myself wondering about fat grafting. My plastic surgeon could take some excess fat from my thighs and graft it to my breasts helping to balance things out again. But that feels like pure vanity. I’m not really likely to jump into another surgery anytime soon – well almost not, I’m going to have a procedure done on my arthritic toe to help resolve that never ending pain but that is another story – I’m not someone who would voluntarily chose to do plastic surgery. And yet, I did. I didn’t have to do breast reconstruction, but I am very glad that I did. Every time I put on a swimsuit or change at the gym, I’m happy that I had reconstruction done. I’m even OK with showing my scars, although I do try to be discrete about it.

Just like when I reported that my body floated differently in the pool, I thought it interesting to share that as I lose weight the places the fat shrinks first has changed.

Did you have a DIEP procedure? Did you notice a difference when gaining or losing weight?

Feature image CC0 from Pixabay