How Can Weight Gain Affect Your Breasts after Augmentation Surgery?

You’ve been nothing but thrilled with your breast augmentation surgery. It boosted your confidence and made you feel more comfortable with who you are. However, the novelty of your enhanced breasts will wear off after some time, as you become accustomed to the size and shape of your new breasts.

Part of this may include not sticking to your diet as faithfully as you did prior to your surgery, causing you to slip back into some old bad habits. This can actually affect the size and shape of your breasts.

How can weight gain affect the size and shape of the breasts, and what can be done to prevent it or reduce the odds of it happening? Read further, as our staff at Jefferson Plastic Surgery explains how weight gain can affect the look and feel of your breasts.

Anatomy of the Breast

It is important to understand the anatomy of the breast to see how breast implants can affect your body if you gain weight. To start, the breast is mainly made up of fat cells, in addition to mammary glands that sit just behind the nipple.

Fat cells will respond relatively quickly to changes in diet and exercise, which may explain why your breasts may sometimes show weight gain before other parts of your body. The proportion of fat cell tissue to gland tissue in the breast will vary from woman to woman; it is usually determined by genetics.

Effect on the Breasts

Weight gain is often due to lack of exercise and a poor diet. While it may not be true for all women, many will also gain weight in their breasts. This weight gain may cause the breasts to become larger than the size you want.

It is not unusual for you to see some weight fluctuation of anywhere from five to 10 pounds within the first four to six weeks following your breast augmentation surgery, as there will be a certain amount of swelling and fluid retention. This should not affect the size and shape of your breasts.

Preventing Weight Gain

The answer to preventing weight gain after breast augmentation surgery is to give your body the time it needs to heal. Of course, this does not mean that you should be sedentary, but be careful not to over exert yourself.

For the first week or two after surgery, take it easy. Focus on a diet that provides you lots of nutrients. Our surgeons recommend you move around as much as possible. Start with short walks around your home, and gradually work your way up to a modestly paced walk around the block.

By the third to fourth week, you can start to pick up the pace of your exercise to include aerobics and lower-body strength exercises. Finally, by the time you get to four to six weeks following surgery, you should be clear to return to your normal exercise activities.

In general, our surgeons recommend reaching a stable weight before undergoing your breast augmentation surgery. However, a modest weight gain most likely will not affect the results of your surgery. Nevertheless, you should continue your efforts to maintain a stable weight.