Liposuction and the Mystical Returning Fat
Millions of people around the world have undergone liposuction to spot-reduce fat. They’ve done this because they have come to realize that there is no other way to accomplish spot-reduction. We here this from fitness trainers all the time, and yet the accumulation of stubborn fat in specific areas continues to be something we try to manage with diet and exercise. If you’re like the millions who have grown tired of this rut, you may have thought about liposuction for your hips, thighs, or love handles. If you’ve thought about liposuction, you may also be questioning the validity of this procedure for long-term results.
It is valuable to question how liposuction can work for you. The more you know about what this procedure can and cannot do, the more realistic you can be about the potential for your situation. We appreciate questions like this because it indicates a sense of seriousness about expectations. The fact is that liposuction has been performed millions of times because it works. Now we just need to discuss how to take what has worked and make those results last.
Fat Cells: One of These Things is Not Like the Others
The body has hundreds of thousands of cells. Many of them go through the cycle of life, death, and life. For instance, the skin cells that make up your epidermis today won’t be there a year from now; they will have died and fallen off so healthy new cells can take their place. Fat cells aren’t like this. The fat cells that you have today are pretty much all you’re going to get.
The way that fat cells work is that they expand and shrink. This is why we can gain weight and lose it without changing the number of fat cells we have. This is something to celebrate because if you’re considering liposuction to remove a certain amount of fat from a trouble spot, you can know that no new cells will grow in that area. You can also feel confident knowing that the body will not compensate for those missing cells by holding on to fat or shifting fat from one area to another.
So What About Post-Lipo Weight Gain?
We have seen evidence that liposuction “doesn’t work.” That’s not the full truth, though. Liposuction works. It provides a clean slate for body contouring. It removes unwanted fat and refines the shape of the body. What happens from there is up to the individual patient.
Remembering that existing fat cells can grow and shrink, your liposuction results can be easily maintained. Choosing to exercise at least several days a week and to feed your body well, you have the ability to keep looking and feeling your best years after your liposuction spot-reduction treatment.
Contact us to learn more about liposuction and our non-surgical body contouring treatments at 610-527-4833. We would love to see you in our Bryn Mawr office.
