Bit of a specific one but I know some of you have been exactly here. Long story short I dropped 14kg over about a year and a half, went from a big soft lad to something like lean, and I am proud of that. Problem is the chest did not read the memo. The soft stuff around the sides definitely shrank, my whole shape changed, but the two firm bits right behind the nipples are sitting there exactly as they were. If anything they look MORE obvious now the surrounding padding has gone, which is a cruel joke.
So the actual question. Am I past the point where more weight loss does anything? Should I be trying to get even leaner before I think about an op, or is that just chasing something that was never going to shift because it is gland not fat. And if I do book, do surgeons want you to lose more first or are they fine operating on me as I am now. I do not want to lose another 5kg for nothing and I do not want to book and get told to come back thinner.
You already answered your own question mate. The bits that got smaller were fat. The bits that did not move are gland. Gland does not care how lean you get, it is not fuel, your body will not burn it off. So no, more weight loss is not going to touch those two discs.
The reason surgeons ask about weight is different. They want you near a stable weight so the result holds, not because dropping more will sort the gland.
This was me almost to the letter. I got told to get to a weight I could actually hold and then come back, because a fatty chest can settle a bit with weight change and they wanted to see what was left once it had. I lost about a stone, the soft part came down, the firm cores did not budge a millimetre, and that was the answer really. What was still there after I stabilised was what they took out.
#4February 13, 2026, 1:18 pm Ben, I lived this one for years so let me lay it out honestly, because it is the exact confusion I started this site over.
I lost weight and then lifted seriously for two years convinced I could train the chest flat. The fat came off, the shape of everything else changed, and the firm fullness directly behind each nipple stayed precisely where it had always been. That was the day the penny dropped that established glandular tissue does not melt with diet or the gym, and no amount of effort was going to move it. So to your direct question: if the firm cores have survived a 14kg drop, more weight loss almost certainly will not shift them. That is not fat any more, that is the gland.
What weight loss IS good for is the other half of the picture, and it is why surgeons ask about it. The operation re-contours a chest, it does not lower your body fat and it does not build the pec underneath, so they want you near a stable weight first, both so the fatty part has settled to what it is going to be and so the flat result actually holds afterwards. A big weight gain later can bring fullness back even after a good operation, which is why a steady weight protects it. Our piece on surgery versus weight loss sets out which bit each one actually addresses, and what the operation will not fix is worth reading before you spend a penny, because it saved me from expecting a gym chest out of it.
One honest caveat. I am a patient, not your surgeon. Whether you are lean enough to operate on now or whether they would want another few kilos off is a judgement for someone examining your actual chest, not a number any of us can hand you from here.
Coming at this from the other side, I am not a lean man and I always assumed mine was mostly just fat because of that. Turns out I have got the firm discs too, the exact thing everyone is describing. So the lesson I have taken is that being lean or not lean does not actually tell you whether there is gland. You can be lean like Ben and still have it, or carrying weight like me and still have it underneath.
Right, that has genuinely settled it, cheers all. Not going to grind off another 5kg chasing something that is not fat. Booking a consult at a stable weight and going in with the gland versus fat question rather than pretending another diet will do it. Will let you know what they say the split is.
This thread stopped getting replies two months back, so it is now closed. Anything about your own chest, an incision that is healing oddly, a lump you can still feel, or a side that has swollen belongs with your surgeon at a proper follow-up, where they can put hands on it rather than guess.
