25 Year Old Trying to Fix a Childhood of Mistakes - West Palm Beach, FL

I am a 25 year old white American male, 5'11 (180 cm) tall. My weight sea-sawed my entire life. I finally maxed out at 17 (2005), weighing in around 310 lbs. I pushed myself and got down to around 250 lbs by the time I got to college, then I gained back another 15 to reach 265 lbs in 2009. My father passed away (I was 21 at the time) and I got some motivation from his death to be more healthy. I did the traditional dieting for a year and got down to around 225 lbs. I think switched to a low card diet and weight came off...FAST. By 2011, I was down to 175. Since then I have plateaued, until to push lower.

I was left a mess, man boobs and massive amount of excess skin. I had gynecomastia surgery in June 2012, just liposuction. The shape was much improve but ultimately looked like an old mans chest, still very wide and my nipples are about an inch lower than they should be. My case was borderline, not big and not small, so my doc suggested I not opt for skin removal to avoid the major scarring that comes with it. I am still not sure if this was the right decision. He says with weight training, the lose skin can be filled in. I have some doubts about that, but eventually I hope to get serious and hit the gym.

The excess skin I had bothered my to no end so I saved like crazy and finally had my lower body lift in September 2013, 8 years after my journey began. I'll save the details of the surgery for a later update. I'll just say this: with the muscle work, it was 48 hours of pure hell and then it got easier by the day!.

As for the results...I have mixed feelings. There is no doubting that it is an improvement, but I still don't accept my body. Part of the problem, I believe, is that my body has natural problems I could not recognize under the layers of fat and skin. My skeletal structure is just strange, very wide from the side view. My hip bone is big, protruding from my lower back to give me humps (I call them sand dunes).

My belly skin is still a bit lose. My doctor said it's impossible to fix completely without doing a vertical incision, which would leave me with a huge scar going down my abdomen. Not sure if this is true or if he is just covering his mistakes.

Another issue is the large about of stretch marks across my whole body. Those are permanent and will be there forever, although I was told they can be minimized with tanning. My doctor also said a small amount of lower belly and lower back fat remains and can be a removed via liposuction revision at some point in the future.

I do feel better and life has improved since the surgery, but I can't help feel disappointment. I think weight loss has revealed my flawed skeletal structure. I look okay with clothes on I guess, but it still depresses me, since I live in Florida, that I can't go to the beach or water park and take of my shirt with pride, and I fear, regardless of the amount of work I put in, I never will..

So I mentioned earlier I was unhappy about my results, particularly my mid section, especially when sitting down. I took some pics to show what I mean. To me, this hardly looks like I even had surgery, it is disgusting my mid section still looks like this.

I will go back and see my doc soon hopefully but he'll probably tell me the same thing he always does. He says that I need to "fill it in" with muscle from exercise and there is a small amount fat he can lipo. But LOOK at it. That is skin, not fat, and enough skin to render working out pointless in my opinion.