Mama June Deemed Too Heavy for Excess Skin Removal Surgery Despite Weight Loss

Her daughter might call her a “sexmous mama,” because Mama June from the now-canceled Here Comes Honey Boo Boo has shed an impressive 150 pounds and is proudly flaunting her new figure all over social media. But, according to Page Six, the slimmed-down reality star will have to wait a little longer to have all her excess skin removed.

Now 245 pounds — and standing 5 feet 6 inches tall — June, whose real name is June Shannon, lost the weight over the course of the past year through a combination of dieting and gastric sleeve surgery, according to Page Six. On Tuesday, she appeared on an episode of the E! series Botched to discuss her desire for the surgical skin removal, also called body contouring, with one of the show’s resident doctors, Terry Dubrow.

On her flight, she happened to run into Entertainment Tonight co-host Kevin Frazier (PR stunt? Perhaps, but fun nonetheless).

But when Dubrow assessed June, 36, things took an unexpected turn: The doctor diagnosed the reality star with abdominal panniculus, meaning “a sheet of fat tissue that is present in the lower abdominal area” as the result of obesity, pregnancy, and/or recent weight loss,” according to MedicineNet — and all three apply to June.

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“So BMI is the way we doctors figure out who’s an appropriate candidate for surgery and who should lose some more weight,” Dubrow explained on Botched, according to Page Six. “Your BMI is 39, OK?” he continued. “So we like to see a BMI of like 28, so you lose 75 pounds, you come back to us, we’ll remove that and make you happy.”

Mark Soldin, a London-based consultant plastic surgeon and British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) member, told Yahoo Beauty that the decision to perform body-contouring surgery on a patient who has experienced drastic weight loss is based on three criteria: The patient must have a BMI of 28 or below (as June’s doctors explained), the patient must demonstrate the ability to keep the weight off for 12 months or more, and the patient must have “functional disturbances” related to excess skin (Soldin emphasizes that is very different from simply being displeased with the appearance of saggy skin).

“The body of evidence available suggests that in the weight-loss patient, the higher their weight is at the time of their surgery, the more likely they are to develop postoperative problems,” warns Soldin. Complications from skin-removal surgery on patients who are still too heavy, he says, include wounds that won’t heal, persistent infection, and deep-vein thrombosis — a potentially fatal condition that affects blood clotting.

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June appreciated the information from her Botched surgeons, praising them for expressing her desire to make them proud by losing enough weight to make her a candidate for safe skin-removal surgery. “This will be my reward for everything that I’ve done,” a determined June said, according to the article.

Skin-removal surgery has come a long way in recent years, according to eMedicineHealth. The procedures started in Brazil and France more than 40 years ago, the site states, “but were fraught with complications, poor scarring, unnatural contours, long recovery time, and inconsistent results.” Today the quality of the technologies for these kinds of surgeries have increased dramatically.

Soldin dedicates himself to regulating the guidelines of body-contouring procedures. He chairs the committee addressing guidance for body contouring, and his primary concern is the long-term health of patients who have experienced drastic weight loss and seek body-contouring procedures. That, he says, includes making sure patients are in the right state of mind for such surgeries.

“What made [some patients] obese in the first place was the inability of the mind to deal with everyday stresses,” Soldin notes. “We can identify these people and advise them on how to optimize their health in order to safely have the surgery they want.” If Soldin believes a patient does not understand the implications of surgery or has unrealistic expectations of the outcome, he will refer them to psychologists he works with. “The psychological aspect needs to be carefully understood for each individual,” he says. “Consultations with psychologists are very important.”

It’s unclear whether or not June has undergone psychiatric evaluation for her decision to undergo skin-removal surgery, but suffice to say she is complying with her doctors’ recommendations, at least insofar as we can tell from her appearance on Botched.

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