Finally, a Liposuction & Tummy Tuck Story From a Black Plastic-Surgery Patient

I dieted for two years and lost, like, 60 pounds, but I had loose skin in my stomach because of my weight loss. I couldn’t ever get defined abs. For the amount that I was working out, it didn’t make sense. [Explains Dr. Williams, “Unfortunately physical therapy, or core workout exercises, does little to restore the alignment of these muscles once they are separated.”] 

So, I went to a plastic surgeon, Dr. James Parker, to talk to him about it. I actually ended up going based on a recommendation from my closest friend who has one daughter, too, and looked totally different after pregnancy. Her reasoning for getting surgery was very similar to mine.

Dr. Parker said it doesn’t matter how many crunches you do, you’re never gonna get abs back unless I go in and reconstruct your muscles. And that is what he did. He went in and reconstructed my muscles. [Fort had an abdominoplasty, in which a doctor “brings stomach muscles into alignment and sutures them in place during the body’s healing process after the surgery,” says Dr. Williams.] I had a lot of fat on my flanks [the sides of the lower waist and back], so he went in and lipo’d my hips, basically. 

I had been feeling like I was doing a lot of work dieting and exercising and was not seeing results. I felt validated when I went to the surgeon and he said my body became the way it was because of my labor. I had a breast reduction because I was uncomfortable. With the weight I had lost, I was disproportionate — it was too heavy. Basically, I got the “mommy makeover,” but I split it into two surgeries: a tummy tuck and lipo out of my flanks and in my stomach, in October 2022. And the breast reduction, for which they lipo’d a little bit of my boobs, was in October 2021. 

I was so nervous [before the surgeries]. I had anxiety, especially about me not waking up from the anesthesia. I had never had surgery before. I had three or four prayer calls with my stepfather, who is a minister, just to calm my nerves around having anesthesia. 

Why My Lipo Results Looking Natural Was Important to Me 

I can’t speak for all the Black women who get surgery, but I can say that I purposely wanted to look as natural as possible. Unless you saw my abdominoplasty scar, which appears as a long C-section scar, you wouldn’t even know I had anything done.