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5’5″, 158lbs, age 29 No Kids– Lipo: Thighs Abdomen Flanks. Chicago, IL – I had always been a chubby child and never had a flat stomach as a teen or adult. I went from a sedentary lifestyle in college to running 6 miles a day, 6 days a week while I was in law school. I got down to a shredded muscular 138, but because of my pear shape I had zero boobs. Despite my shredded physique then, I still had a small lower belly pooch and a pocket of fat on my anterior thighs (right on the top front, near the inner thigh area). These fat pockets have pretty much been my constant companions my whole life.Now that I’m working full time in a position that requires 50% travel, I have a lot less time on my hands for fitness. I still make time for running–I did the Marathon last year and a half marathon in September. In addition to the other races I’ve done this year, I have a 9-mile race scheduled for November 9 too. But I’ve gone up to 158 with a lot more fat spread to the thighs. Those fat-pocket-friends have gotten even bigger. I rarely wear pants to work as I find them too uncomfortable. The fabric bunches in my crotch area because those fat pockets push them up, and they wear out more quickly where my thighs rub together.I decided on lipo after weight training this summer. I have been trying to change my diet to more protein and fewer carbs, still maintaining enough to support my running hobby. Though I’ve seen some results, I want to see what my body would look like without these fat deposits. I didn’t want to wait until after I had children in order to see these results either because–well–why should I postpone my life now for an uncertain future? I’ve talked it over with my boyfriend of two and a half years who is nervous but sweet and supportive, and I’m ready to make this investment in my appearance.Anyway, over the course of about a month, I visited 4 different plastic surgeons in the Chicago area to discuss what I wanted them to do and to get some quotes. The first 2 surgeons I visited were not really interested in taking on my thighs. It strikes me that anything other than the lateral thighs–saddlebags I guess–is too tough aesthetically to yield a solid result. I looked at scores of pictures here and other places and saw a lot of botched jobs. My thighs generally are great and I don’t want to screw them up, so I looked for a surgeon who had done good-looking thigh jobs in the same areas that I really liked.I encountered one surgeon who I seriously considered, but though we had great rapport, she only wanted to give me a tiny waist–not really essential to this process. I ended up finding only one surgeon who would agree to take on my thigh job. He has great reviews, some good-looking thigh job photos for this area (which were mostly done as entire-thigh sculpting), and he seemed confident without being an @$$hole about it. He basically offered me exactly what I wanted: a better, more sculpted version of me. I don’t need to look like I’ve had work done, just have better contour in these areas. He was realistic about what he could do and he told me I didn’t need other work in other areas. No hard sell on a BBL here either (I have a nice booty that I like very much!). I told him I appreciated his honesty about his own skill and about the gimmicks of lipo as a whole. He offered me the option of local anesthetic as opposed to general, and he gave me a decent price compared to some of the other quotes I received. If you’ve spent any time on this site or on the internet in general, you’ll notice that there aren’t many Black folks who have gone under the knife or who are willing to post their stories. I’m here to do just that. I asked my doc about scarring, and he’s told me that he stitches up the incision sites to avoid dark scarring around the incision areas. We’ll see how that works out. I’m nervous, to be sure. I scheduled my surgery on a date that I’d previously scheduled off, and I’m set to travel for the holidays about 9 days after that. I hope that I’m healed enough to feel ok to travel and not look like I just took a beating once I get in front of my family. I plan to keep this thing updated with the hope that other people will get some use out of my story.Here goes.