Liposuction is one of the top five most common surgical procedures in the United States. Approximately 363,912 procedures are performed each year. While every lay person knows that liposuction sucks out fat, many are misguided about the procedure in terms of who is an appropriate candidate, how long the results last, and what the procedure can and cannot accomplish. Here, I set the record straight:
Myth: Fat Will Come Back Somewhere Else After Lipo.
The “fat return” fear is something plastic surgeons hear about pretty often. New fat does not find its way elsewhere after liposuction. This is one of the most common liposuction myths out there. Liposuction removes part of the fat in an area, but if the body is overwhelmed by a large amount of calories that are not burned they are stored proportionately in every remaining fat cell in the body, Fat cells aren’t distributed evenly to begin with, and after lipo (or any type of fat cell removal) they definitely won’t be distributed evenly. Even though individual fat cells grow evenly, there will be fewer in the places where the lipo happened, so those places won’t fill out the same way they used to, which is what lipo patients want. Remaining fat cells in the rest of the body will pick up the slack. These cells will gain fat evenly, but not in the areas you’re used to gaining in, since the fat cells in those places were liposuctioned out. The more fat cells removed, the more the remaining fat cells will gain when you gain weight.”
