Body Contouring
In Atlanta, GA Dr. Alexandra Hart
For many patients, significant weight loss often leaves behind sagging skin that cannot be corrected by diet and exercise alone.
Whether achieved through weight loss surgery or dedicated lifestyle changes, these physical reminders can obscure your progress and cause physical discomfort.
Dr. Alexandra Hart specializes in surgical body contouring, providing a comprehensive approach to help you reclaim your body’s shape. Dr. Hart can address multiple treatment areas in a single surgical plan, which is especially beneficial for patients after weight loss surgery seeking to remove excess skin and fat. We invite you to experience our boutique-level care and schedule a personal consultation to create a tailored treatment plan for your final transformation.
What It Is: Various procedures designed to remove excess skin and fat and tighten skin for a smoother profile, with non-invasive options also available to refine body shape without surgery.
Specialization: Dr. Hart is a specialist in body contouring after massive weight loss.
Procedures: May include a tummy tuck, thigh lift, arm lift (brachioplasty), body lift, or a mommy makeover.
Downtime: Recovery time varies by procedure, but most patients return to normal activities within 3–4 weeks.
The Experience: High-touch, empathetic care focused on restoring your contours, comfort, and self-esteem.
Body contouring is a specialized category of plastic surgery aimed at improving the body’s shape and tone, especially following major weight loss.
While nonsurgical options like controlled cooling or radiofrequency energy exist for targeted fat reduction, they are rarely a solution for the excess skin that follows a major transformation.
Surgical body contouring is the gold standard for reducing excess skin and addressing stubborn fat that remains after reaching your ideal weight. These procedures are specifically designed to remove stubborn fat deposits that are resistant to diet and exercise. By removing the physical weight of sagging skin, body contouring procedures help patients achieve a more proportional and comfortable silhouette.
Body contouring can restore tone and contour through a variety of innovative techniques. Common surgical body contouring procedures include:
Often the cornerstone of surgical body contouring, this procedure removes sagging skin from the midsection and repairs abdominal muscles that may have weakened, extended, or separated.
This surgery targets loose skin and stubborn fat on the inner and outer thighs, creating a more contoured leg profile for improved mobility, comfort, and aesthetics.
Designed to address “bat wings,” this procedure removes extra skin from the upper arms, restoring a toned and youthful appearance. Often combined with a lateral thoracoplasty to improve the lateral chest.
A comprehensive approach that addresses the abdomen, hips, and buttocks in a single surgical procedure, effectively removing a circumferential “belt” of excess skin and fat.
Restores a more elevated and feminine breast shape by reducing excess skin and repositioning tissue that has lost volume after weight loss. Some patients choose to incorporate breast augmentation with implants into their breast lift to restore youthful shape and volume.
Frequently used as a body sculpting tool alongside other procedures, liposuction helps remove excess fat from stubborn areas to refine the final body’s shape. Results are achieved as the body gradually eliminates the treated fat cells over several weeks to months following treatment.
Labiaplasty is a procedure that reduces the size of the labia minora (inner lips) to address issues of comfort, appearance, or irritation. It can be a component of a comprehensive body contouring plan, especially for patients who experience changes after significant weight loss.
A cutting-edge, minimally invasive option that uses a purified donor fat matrix to restore volume and smooth out contour irregularities, such as post-liposuction dimples, hip dips, or minor asymmetries, without requiring a separate fat-harvesting liposuction surgery. It creates a natural matrix scaffold beneath the skin, providing immediate structural refinement while encouraging long-term collagen growth.
Renuvion uses helium plasma and radiofrequency energy to tighten skin with precision. This innovative treatment targets sagging areas, promoting a youthful appearance without the need for invasive surgery. By gently heating tissue beneath the skin's surface, it stimulates collagen production, leading to firmer, smoother skin over time.
On the day of your surgery, you will be cared for by our expert surgical team. Depending on your treatment plan, Dr. Hart may perform multiple body contouring procedures in stages to ensure safety and optimal healing.
Body contouring procedures are performed under general anesthesia. During the surgical procedure, Dr. Hart makes precise incisions to remove skin. She meticulously tightens the underlying tissues and drapes the remaining skin to create smoother, more even skin texture. Liposuction is often used to address stubborn fat that doesn’t respond to diet and exercise. Throughout the surgery, Dr. Hart uses advanced techniques to minimize scarring and ensure the results look natural and proportional.
Body contouring is designed to resolve the common physical side effects of significant weight loss:
Dr. Hart can address multiple areas during your journey. Including the abdomen via tummy tuck surgery, the inner and outer thighs, the upper arms, and the breasts.
For those seeking enhanced volume elsewhere, she may incorporate a Brazilian butt lift using fat transfer from the treated areas.
The physical and emotional benefits of body contouring can be life-changing for patients who have completed a weight loss journey, including patients who have undergone weight loss surgery.
By reducing excess skin, you eliminate the source of sagging and chaffing that can hinder your active lifestyle. Patients achieve greater ease of movement, making it easier to maintain a healthy lifestyle and continue their fitness goals.
Finalizing your journey with body sculpting helps your outward appearance to finally match the hard work you’ve put in. Seeing your true body's shape in the mirror provides a profound boost in self-esteem and mental well-being.
Candidates for body contouring should have reached their ideal weight and maintained it for at least six months. It is essential that you have finished your weight loss journey, as future weight fluctuations can negatively impact your body contouring results.
During your personal consultation, Dr. Hart will review your medical history and discuss your aesthetic goals. Candidates should be in general good health, non-smokers, and have realistic expectations about the recovery process and scarring. If you are ready to take the final step in your weight loss journey, contact our team to schedule your personal consultation with Dr. Hart today.
Your recovery time will depend on the procedures in your personalized body sculpting plan.
Dr. Hart prioritizes high-touch recovery support to ensure your comfort at every step. Temporary redness is a common and mild side effect after body sculpting treatments, and it typically resolves quickly. You will likely wear specialized compression garments to minimize swelling and support the new contours in the treated areas.
While normal activities can usually be resumed within a few weeks, you must avoid strenuous activity for at least six weeks. Dr. Hart’s team provides a detailed roadmap for your recovery process, ensuring you feel safe and supported at every milestone of your healing process.
Initial body sculpting results are visible almost immediately, though your final contours will be fully realized as swelling subsides over the next several months.
You will notice a dramatic improvement in your skin texture and a more defined, athletic body shape.
As long as you maintain a stable weight and healthy lifestyle, these results are permanent. The fat cells removed during the surgical procedure are gone forever, and skin removal creates a lasting, taut profile that honors your incredible weight loss achievement.
At Dr. Alexandra Hart Plastic Surgery, we believe that clinical excellence and approachable luxury should go hand-in-hand.
Dr. Hart is a board-certified plastic surgeon with a background in plastic and reconstructive surgery, allowing her to navigate the intricacies of multiple body contouring procedures with a steady, expert hand.
Her embrace of unique technologies and treatment techniques like BRIJJIT to reduce scarring makes her an excellent choice for patients who demand excellence in their surgical outcomes. From your initial personal consultation to your final follow-up, you are supported by a dedicated surgical team and a surgeon who remains personally invested in your aesthetic goals. When you choose Dr. Hart, you are choosing a partner who values your safety, your comfort, and the enduring beauty of your results.
Ready to get started? Call our office at (858) 633-3350 or complete our online form to schedule your consultation with Dr. Alexandra Hart today.
The answer to this question depends on your body, the procedures you want performed, and your planned recovery. Dr. Hart attempts to balance your goals and lifestyle to make the body contouring process as comfortable as possible. While the goal is typically to combine multiple procedures, Dr. Hart may recommend scheduling more comprehensive body contouring procedures in two stages, several months apart, to ensure patient safety. This allows your body to heal properly between surgical procedures. We will determine the best timeline during the development of your personalized treatment plan.
No, body contouring surgery is intended for patients who have completed their weight loss journey and are near their ideal weight. Its purpose is to tighten skin and remove excess fat that is resistant to diet and exercise.
Surgical body contouring involves incisions to remove excess skin, resulting in permanent scars. However, Dr. Hart is meticulous about incision placement, often hiding them within natural skin folds or areas easily covered by clothing. Good candidates for surgical body sculpting understand that some scarring is inevitable and feel that the benefits of the surgery outweigh concerns about scars.
Non-surgical options, such as Runuvion, RF microneedling, laser skin tightening, or controlled cooling with CoolSculpting, are designed for patients who still have good skin elasticity. For weight loss surgery patients with sagging skin, only surgical procedures can effectively remove excess fat and reduce excess skin.
The most important factor is avoiding significant weight fluctuations. By maintaining a healthy lifestyle and following the lifestyle changes you made during your weight loss, your new body’s shape can last a lifetime.
One of the side effects of using GLP-1 inhibitors for weight loss can be sagging or loose skin. However, patients seeking body contouring surgery to correct this will need to stop taking their GLP-1s for at least two weeks for anesthesia, as well as 4 weeks for healing after the surgery. Dr. Hart recommends Juven woundcare nutrition support for these patients, which gives the body additional collagen protein to help the healing process and build lean body mass.
