Suck in that gut!

I actually got the nerve to look in a mirror in the nude.  Scary!  There's my roll of belly fat, giant legs, floppy arms, saggy...yeah, you get the idea. Instinctively I pulled in my stomach--and my stomach pulled in!  Didn't get rid of the roll of belly fat, but the muscles behind it are working.  Earlier last year I could barely pull it in at all. The following picture is not actually me. (I'm not that brave!)

Middle-age belly fat roll?

This picture comes from a plastic surgeon's website promoting surgical removal of the belly fat and excess skin (tummy tuck).  I admit the "after" picture is attractive, but at what cost?

I've had two c-sections, and as a result, there are two-three inches of my belly muscles that have been cut through and sewn together. I think that's part of what makes my belly sag like this picture--so surgery seems like more of a stop-gap than a solution.  She may look better now, but what about in ten years?  Will the scarring cause more long-term muscle loss? I admit I don't know much about plastic surgery for tummy tucks. I do not know if it even affects the muscles at all, but any surgery is trauma to the body and carries some risk with it.

Then again, maybe the trade-off is worth it to her. I'm just saying it's not my place to judge her motivations. Maybe she has lost weight everywhere else and just needs this to feel good about herself.  Want to see the after-picture?  I'll show you in a minute. But first...

Ironically, the first place I found this picture was on Explicit Gists and was being used to promote home remedies to reduce belly fat!  The title of the picture indicated plastic surgery, so I went digging a little deeper and found the original on the surgery site.

The first site appears to be one of those SEO's* written by someone extremely underpaid.  Not only did they dishonestly use a picture that was originally from plastic surgery, not from naturally reducing belly fat, but they failed to give credit for the picture.  On top of that, they did not even bother to rename it, so their fraud could be exposed. 

It just might be worth it, after I get down to a proper, healthy weight.

*SEO--Search Engine Optimizer.  Brief articles written and posted on sites to promote a product or attract advertisers. They use key words often to attach to links or advertising. The key words are also used often so that they show up in a web search more readily.  The labels on a post may also be the keywords. In fact if you arrived here by accident, it's a good possibility you found it because of some of these keywords. However, I assert that I am not working for an SEO, I do not get paid for my posts from anyone, and the post ideas arise from own personal experience. That is one reason I do not have ads on the page. When I do post links, I do so to give proper credit for using another entity's work or website. This is similar to academic references and citations on a professional paper.

I think I am going to place the words in that assertion in my side bar, so you may just see it twice. Not that I really think anyone reads the sidebar.