Nikocado Avocado, the popular YouTuber who shocked the internet with his 250-pound weight loss transformation last year, is ready to bamboozle his followers once more.
On Wednesday, the creator, whose real name is Nicholas Perry, unveiled yet another body transformation to his 4.6 million subscribers. Perry said he underwent a handful of operations in which he removed at least 10 pounds of excess skin, the result of drastic weight loss.
In recent months, the creator has dramatically scaled back on making daily videos, especially ones featuring popular “mukbang” content, in which he’s seen eating enormous amounts of food on camera.
As he navigated life in front of the camera after weight loss, Perry said he was “hiding my loose skin by positioning my body at certain angles, like paying close attention to my clothing and the lighting, but the truth is, I have loose skin in my abdomen, arms, legs, my torso, back, even my neck. I mean, it was everywhere.”
“I’ve never addressed it,” he told NBC News in an interview before the surgery video was uploaded to YouTube. “I’ve ignored all the comments and questions.”
Perry’s “Two Steps Ahead” video from September remains one of his most successful uploads, garnering more than 50 million views on YouTube. But the success came with scrutiny from followers, old and new.
“I flaunted my big 400 pound belly and bounced it around with joy. I loved when people would make fun of me because it was engagement, and it was never that serious,” he said. “Now, people are analyzing my photos and wondering if I had plastic surgery, or did he have gastric bypass surgery, did he do Ozempic, did he do this or that.”
On Wednesday, Perry said he was ready to share what’s been going on behind the scenes. As he secretly recovered from a series of invasive body lift procedures, he slept carefully at a 45-degree angle every night with his limbs positioned on a “mountain of pillows.”
While the recent procedures successfully removed the loose skin all around his body, Perry said they left him feeling like he’d been “sawed in half, spun around and peeled open like an orange.”
Skin-tightening procedures have gained traction in recent years with the rise of weight loss medications like Ozempic, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
But these are high-risk procedures with long, tedious recovery periods, Perry’s plastic surgeon Dr. Timothy Katzen said. After a body lift, a patient must limit movement for weeks — which can necessitate taking two weeks to a month off work, depending on how much physical labor is required at their job.
For Perry, these operations felt like the final step to closing out a weight loss journey that flabbergasted millions online.
Perry, who said he has long held an extreme phobia of medical procedures, said he hopes being open about his journey will “inspire people who are in similar positions” to face their fears.
“It’s a crazy thing having followers. I feel like a normal person just doing silly stuff. But at the end of the day, these are real people that have an infatuation with me for whatever reason,” Perry said. “In a way, this kind of shows people that I’m not special just because I have followers. Like everyone else, I have loose skin that was unavoidable, and I still have insecurities.”
As far as his personal brand goes, he said that in order to maintain his weight loss, he now posts mukbang videos only a few times a month compared to in the past, when he would often post himself eating massive meals once or twice a day.
“I don’t think I’ll ever go back to eating that type of food and that quantity of food frequently,” he said.
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