Why Weight loss can make you look older

You did everything right. You lost the weight. You feel healthier. But then you look in the mirror… and your face looks older.  Why is that?  You may feel like this doesn’t make any sense.  

Here’s the problem. Weight loss doesn’t just shrink your body. It deflates your face.  Your face is built on layers of fat that sit under the skin like cushions.  They hold everything up.  They give you shape.  They reflect light in a way that makes you look healthy.

But when you lose weight—especially quickly—those deeper fat layers shrink.

And the skin doesn’t keep up. So instead of tightening up as you lose the weigt, everything falls inward and downward.   Cheeks flatten.  Your temples sink.  Facial lines deepen, and the jawline starts to blur.  Here’s the part most people miss  This isn’t aging.  It’s volume loss.  And , unfortunately, this can happen quite fast.

Especially with significant weight loss, bariatric surgery, or GLP-1 medications like Ozempic.  With the surge in popularity of these drugs, we are seeing more and more people lose weight.  While this is good news for people’s overall health (ie, decreased risk of sleep apnea, diabetes, heart disease), the unfortunate side effect is people also look old.  

Most people try to fix this the wrong way.  They think tighter skin is the answer.  This may be true for some people because their prior support has significantly decreased.  With that loss of support, your face starts to sag.  So there are two things going on…

First, your skin and SMAS have descended.  But underneath, loss of volume from decreased fat means you’ve lost structure underneath as well. 

So in order to look better and more youthful, you have to look at both the overlying skin as well as volume underneath.  Everyone responds differently to the weight loss, depending on your age and ultimately your genetics.  

For some, it’s small volume loss.  In these cases, targeted filler injection can help.

IF you have more significant volume loss AND your skin is elastic , then larger volumes of filler…or even fat transfer can help.

In fat transfer, we use your own fat—carefully placed—to restore natural contours.

However, if your face is also sagging and you get the effect you want by lifting your face, but your skin is also getting loose, then just getting more and more fillers may not be the answer either.  In fact, you might actually look overfilled and unnatural.  Your skin is already too loose to lift from the filler.  In these cases, more filler just becomes more weight that goes down.  And you look unnatural

In these cases, you also need a physical lift.  

There are some nonsurgical options to lift the face.  Threading is very popular in the world, but I’m not a fan of threading at all.  Threading uses dissolvable barbed sutures tunneled almost “blindly” under you skin hoping to engage sagging tissue and pull up.  The failure rate is high, and results don’t last long…maybe a year at most.  My practice might be biased, because almost every patient I see that I mention to say they a) either don’t like that concept, or b) tried it and said it was a terrible experience.  

So , in my practice, if someone needs a physical lift, I almost always recommend some sort of facelift.  

You did something incredible by losing the weight. But I like to tell people that losing weight is a double edge sword.  On the one hand, after you lost the weight, you are healthier.  But unfortunately, you look older.  Volume gives youthfulness.  Think of a baby.  Nice and chubby and youthful.  Picture a marathon runner.. Super healthy but very skinny and often look older.

Your face should reflect your health and also look youthful.  

So if you’re looking in the mirror and thinking, “Why do I look older when I feel healthier?  You’re not imagining it.  And you’re not stuck with it either.  You just need the right strategy.  The challenge with trying to figure out this yourself is risk of making a wrong decision.  It’s not uncommon to believe from med spas that you just need more filler. But if you get too much filler, or placed in wrong spot, or—worse—being told you need filler when that won’t achieve any lift, then you end up looking unnatural and over filled.  

The best way to avoid a mistake is to make sure you consult with reputable facial plastic or plastic surgeons.  If you do go to a medspa, make sure that business is honest and staffed by highly qualified medical professionals with extensive experience.  I’ve met several injectors who are honest with their clients and will not recommend treatments that won’t achieve what their clients want.  If you have noticeable sagging tissue, and your injector keeps pushing you to get more fillers or lasers, I think you should entertain the possibility they are primarily motivated by making money and not doing the right thing.  

For more information about San Antonio facial aesthetic surgery please visit our interactive website at www.dryuplasticsurgery.com. Dr. Kenneth Yu Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is a qualified team of experts serving the San Antonio, Texas area. To schedule a consultation, please contact our Concierge Patient Coordinator at (210) 876-6868 or info@dryuplasticsurgery.com.