December 23, 2022
Liposuction is one of the most popular and widely performed surgeries in the plastic surgery industry, and we totally get why. Liposuction targets unwanted fat, and although fat in all the right places is highly sought after these days, for many individuals fat in the wrong places is still something they’d prefer to see gone.
As with every popular surgery out there, there is a plethora of information about liposuction that you can find. Some of it is misinformation, though, and you want to weed out the right information from the wrong about what this surgery can do for you.
So we’re here to dispel some of the most common—and a few maybe not so common—myths about liposuction.
This is probably one of the biggest misconceptions about liposuction; that it’s a surgery that can be your ticket to losing a significant amount of weight. To be honest, no cosmetic surgical procedure is a primary tool for weight loss. For any surgical procedure, we will always recommend that you be within 10-20 lbs of your goal weight.
This is particularly important with liposuction, because you want to ensure that you’re at a realistic goal weight that you can easily maintain with your lifestyle following your surgery in order to preserve your result.
Another reason that liposuction nor any other cosmetic surgery is the primary tool for weight loss is that you need to be within a specific BMI (Body Mass Index) range in order to undergo surgery to minimize any potential surgical risk.
Liposuction is really a body contouring procedure. It’s there to remove unwanted stubborn pockets of fat in target areas of the body that are resistant to diet and exercise, in order to sculpt and contour the body, and give it a more proportional overall result.
Nope. Fat migrating to a different part of your body after liposuction is scientifically impossible. During your liposuction procedure the fat cells are removed so they can’t migrate anywhere else.
In some cases, what you might notice is that untreated areas of the body may look larger than they did before, or because a new silhouette has been created, your hips or your thighs may have become more noticeable because your waist is now slim.
That being said, at The Plastic Surgery Clinic, we assess your concerns and approach surgery in a holistic way, so this would be very unlikely to happen.
There’s a misconception that after liposuction you can’t gain weight in the areas where the fat was removed. This, in a perfect world would be amazing, but is unfortunately not true when it comes to liposuction. It’s true that your fat cells are removed during liposuction, but your body eventually does regenerate them, meaning that you can absolutely gain weight in your liposuction treated areas.
This is why it’s so important to come into a liposuction procedure at more or less your goal weight, and one that you can realistically keep up following the procedure. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle after liposuction is key to conserving an optimal result, and ensuring the permanency of the procedure.
While liposuction can certainly improve the appearance of cellulite, liposuction is not a surgery that’s done in order to treat cellulite. If cellulite is your primary concern, there are a number of non-surgical treatment options that are better suited to reducing the appearance of cellulite, such as thread lifts, Morpheus8 Body, Sculptra and Radiesse, that we’d be happy to talk to you about.
Liposuction itself will not leave your skin stretched out, but it is possible to be left with some lax skin following your procedure depending on the amount of fat that’s been removed.
If you’re concerned about skin laxity following your procedure, or if we see that it’s something that will need to be addressed, we will combine your liposuction surgery with BodyTite and/or a series of Morpheus8 Body treatments, which are radiofrequency (RF) tightening treatments.
Depending on how much fat was removed, it may take time for the skin to respond and tighten. It will do this on its own but we can also help it along with RF tightening post-surgery as well.
No surgical result is immediate. Surgical results always take time! And it’s extremely important to be patient with your recovery and your body. You will see a much different result following your liposuction surgery at 6-12 months than you will at 3 months for example.
It’s also super important to keep in mind that liposuction patients can experience swelling for up to 12 months! So you really do need to give your result time to reveal itself. But once it does, you’ll know it was all worth it.
Did we answer all your questions? Our goal is to ensure you have the best information possible to make your decision. If you still have questions, we’re here to help.
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