Will Your Tattoo Change If You Lose Weight? Check With Me!
Weight loss is usually a great thing for a person’s health and lifestyle. It can have many benefits, especially if you were quite overweight, and it was causing issues with your health. Even though losing weight is usually a great thing, people who are losing the weight may be concerned about what effect it may have on their tattoos – do tattoos get ugly if you lose weight?
Depending on just how much weight you lose, your tattoo may change. If you lose a very small amount of weight, your ink will be unaffected; however, if you lose a significant amount of weight, that may change the shape, size, and appearance of your tattoo.
Weight loss is a huge adjustment for your body to go through – no matter how much weight you lose, your body and skin will always need to adjust and tighten to fit your new weight. As amazing as our bodies are at doing this, sometimes weight is lost too quickly, and your skin doesn’t cope as well. Let us look at how weight loss may affect your tattoos.
Do Tattoos Get Ugly If You Lose Weight?
Body art does not necessarily “get ugly” when you lose weight; however, they may become unrecognizable – this will also depend on how you lost the weight, where your ink was placed, and the size of your ink to begin with.
If you have gradually lost weight over a few years, the chances are that your skin had the time to shrink back down with your body as is it was getting smaller, and although you will most likely have some loose skin, for the most part, your skin will be relatively tight and well fitted to your body.
If you have lost a drastic amount of weight in a short amount of time, for instance, if you had undergone a weight loss surgery and lost hundreds of pounds in a matter of months, your skin would not have been able to keep up with how fast your body was losing weight. Chances are this would you would leave you with large amounts of loose skin.
If you had a tattoo before your weight loss, and you lost the weight slowly and gradually, your body art will more than likely still be in great condition. Where the tattooed skin sits on your body may have changed, as your skin may have shifted.
After very fast weight loss, a tattoo can be unrecognizable
For example, if you had a tattoo on the right side of your torso, just below your ribs, as you lose weight, your skin will tighten and shift, and your ink may end up sitting closer to your stomach and higher on your ribs.
Even though your tattoo shifted, it should still look the same as it did before.
If you lost your weight drastically and quickly, and most of your skin is now saggy, there is a good chance your ink will no longer look as nice as it did before, especially if it is placed on a section of skin that has sagged, as the skin is not tight enough for you to be able to properly see the tattoo design – this may make your original tattoo/body adornment unrecognizable.
Will Losing Weight Prevent Me From Getting Tattoos In The Future?
If you have a lot of loose skin left over from a drastic weight loss, this may affect if you can get a tattoo in the future.
Many tattoo artists are very weary of tattooing lose, saggy skin and scarring, as it would need to be stretched tightly in order to be tattooed, and then after it has been tattooed, you may not be able to clearly tell what the tattoo is unless the skin is stretched out again.
This is only one out of many examples as to why it is less than ideal to tattoo any loose skin – another reason being that when the skin that a tattoo artist is working on is not tight, things like blowouts can happen over and over again, with no fault of the artist.
Because of these reasons and more, many tattoo artists are not comfortable tattooing skin that has been stretched out and then not had time to shrink down again, leaving it loose and saggy.
You will most likely not be refused as a client if you have loose skin; no matter how tricky it may be for the tattoo artist, they will usually do everything in their power to try and give you the tattoo of your dreams.
They may, however, try and find a part of your body with the least amount of loose skin to do the tattoo on – like your back or your calf, for example, to try to get as much detail in the tattoo as they possibly can without the loose skin becoming a problem.
What Do Tattoos Look Like When You Lose Weight?
Tattoos that you had done before you lost weight will usually change their appearance in some way by the time you are at the end of your weight loss journey – but what they look like will depend again on how much weight you have lost.
People who have lost a great amount of weight but slowly over time, and their skin managed to shirk down with their bodies, might find that their tattoos look larger after they have lost weight. You could think of this being like a canvas; the same size drawing is going to look far smaller on a large canvas than it would on a small canvas.
So, whereas before it might have seemed that your thigh tattoo did not take up that much space on your leg when your leg is half the size it used to be, it will, of course, look a lot larger and seem to take up a much bigger space of your leg, even though it is the same size tattoo.
If your skin has become very loose in the area that your tattoo was done, there is a chance your tattoo may just look like a blob of tattoo ink until you stretch it out.
If your skin has become saggy and now folds over the tattoo, you may not even be able to see your tattoo at all.
Or, your ink may not change its appearance at all. Each person’s body and skin are completely unique, and there is a chance that even with fast, drastic weight loss, you may still be able to see what your ink is exactly. Skin is a truly amazing thing and can sometimes be unpredictable.
Do tattoo artists care if you’re fat?
Any professional tattoo artist will not care about your weight in any way. They may ask you a few questions about your weight simply so they know the best place that they could place a tattoo for you, but they will in no way not want you as a client simply because of your weight.
The only thing a tattoo artist is ever concerned about is the quality of their work, and if they raise any concerns with you about your weight, it will only ever be for this reason – not because of any personal views or feelings.
Your weight is your own concern, but your tattoo is their concern, so if your artist ever makes suggestions as to how they want to change your tattoo because of your weight, do not take it personally, as they are trying to give you the best tattoo they can.
Conclusion
Even though your skin is incredibly flexible and will change with your body through its highs and lows, your tattoo may not.
Any change to one’s skin could lead to undesired effects on an existing tattoo, and since weight loss is often a drastic change to the skin, it should be no surprise that your tattoo may change as your skin does.
If you are now planning to lose weight, but you are worried about how it may affect your tattoos, try aim to lose the weight slow and steady – giving your skin time to change with your body, tightening up along the way, and thus allowing your tattoo designs to remain on as tight an area of skin as possible.
