Are Lipo Results Permanent?

Has your self-confidence plummeted as a result of gradual weight gain over the years? Have you tried everything to lose weight, including fad diets, weight loss shakes, fat-burning teas, and even ephedra? Are you concerned that you cannot sculpt your ideal contours on your own? Having a lipo procedure with Dr. Bruce Kadz of Kadz Plastic Surgery in Beverly Hills, CA, may be the solution you’re looking for.

Is Lipo Permanent?

Fat cells have a unique nature that allows liposuction to produce permanent results. Almost every other type of cell in your body, such as skin cells, can be regenerated, but when you reach the age of 25, your body is no longer able to produce new fat cells. For a solid understanding of what results can realistically be expected from this procedure, though, you must first understand its scope.

During this procedure, only a portion of the fat cells in the treated areas are removed. Based on such factors as your body fat distribution, your goals, and the size of the area targeted for treatment, the specific percentage of localized fat cells that are removed will vary. It is possible to eliminate up to 80% of fat cells from a small area, but in a large area, we may only remove around 26% of fat cells.

It’s important to remember that fat can still be stored in the remaining fat cells. Your body will never re-grow new fat cells to replace the ones you lost in lipo, but you can undo your own results by eating too much of the wrong foods. It’s important to maintain a healthy diet to keep your results for life.

How Can I Maintain My Results?

Maintaining your improved contours requires a balance between what you eat and what you do. Every now and then, you can consume too many calories, especially if you make up for it by eating less the next day or two. Nevertheless, it is important that you do not gain more than 10 pounds of fat after your procedure.

Genetics determines how fat is stored, but most people store fat in one area at a time. If you gain weight, there’s a good chance the remaining fat cells in your problem areas will continue to grow. That’s because your body decides where to distribute fat.

Maintaining your weight by using some of these tips is highly recommended:

Build Muscle

Lifting weights helps maintain your ideal contours because it helps you build muscle. Because muscle is two and a half times as metabolically active as fat, building muscle mass is an excellent way to maintain your ideal shape. That is to say, your muscles burn more calories than your fat cells even while you are sleeping, rest, or otherwise not using them. Muscle tissue gives you the ability to eat more calories while maintaining your ideal body shape.

Using proper form, using a spotter when necessary, pushing your muscles to exhaustion, and eating plenty of protein afterward are all key to gaining muscle effectively. If you don’t have anyone to spot for you, stick to weight machines that help you move efficiently and correctly. You also don’t need to go quickly: all that does is use momentum instead of actual muscle to do a lot of the work.

Instead, go slowly, never letting the weights rest at the end of a rep. Keep going until you literally cannot push or pull the weight again. This is “muscle exhaustion” and means you’ve emptied your muscles of all their spare sugar reserves. Over the next day or two, your muscles will rebuild themselves even larger than before.

Take It Easy on the Booze and Soda

After a long day of work, there is nothing wrong with relaxing with a cold beer or glass of wine. Alcohol should, however, be consumed in moderation. A unit of alcohol contains 96 calories if it is a single shot of liquor. Beer and wine contain well over 100 calories per unit due to the carbohydrates present in the beverages. If you like sugary mixers, the calorie count goes up a lot faster than you might think.

Soda is another diet killer. It’s far too easy to drink your calories, and yet you don’t feel as satisfied after drinking them as you do after eating them. Even diet sodas are now suspect: despite the fact that they don’t have calories in lab tests, people who drink a lot of them still struggle to lose weight. It may just be that your body is too smart not to react even to “fake” sweeteners.

Walk and Swim

You don’t have to go pounding down the pavement or spend hours on the elliptical or bike to maintain your results. In fact, you shouldn’t. These exercises are very hard on your joints, and you can get just as much benefit from walking and swimming, which are easy on the joints (and often easier to fit into your life, too).

The important thing is to pair your aerobic exercise with weight lifting. Aerobics on their own don’t do much unless you remain in a constant calorie deficit (read: hungry all the time). But by combining these types of exercises with weight lifting, you can build muscle while also staying active, keeping your blood moving, and remaining limber.

Am I a Good Candidate for This Procedure?

A consultation is necessary to determine if you are a good candidate for liposuction. There are several things that will take place during your consultation. We need to verify that you have no medical conditions that would preclude you from this procedure, for example. Your current health and medications taken in the last two weeks will also be discussed.

We will also assess your areas of concern to determine whether lipo would be beneficial for you, in addition to determining whether you are healthy enough for this procedure. Having sufficient excess subcutaneous fat in your target areas is important as well as not having too much excess subcutaneous fat. Here are some of the things we will discuss:

Your Medical Condition

Most people are good candidates for this procedure, but it’s still important for us to evaluate a few things. Be sure to bring a list of all medications and supplements you’re currently taking. We may need to ask you to pause a few things before your lipo treatment, so in some cases, we’ll need to discuss with your doctor about whether that’s safe for you.

If your main concern is cellulite rather than actual fat, this might not be the right choice for you. But when you come to talk with us, we can help you decide on what’s right for you.

Family Plans

During your initial consultation, we will discuss your family planning goals with you. It is important to keep in mind that if you decide to become pregnant after your procedure, you may gain fat. Some people lose pregnancy weight quickly, while others struggle with it for years. Getting pregnant may require you to undergo a maintenance procedure in the future if you want to keep your results permanent.

Body Fat Distribution

Weight and body fat distribution will be taken into account when determining if you are a good candidate. There should be enough fat in the areas you are targeting for treatment, but not too much fat. A candidate must be at least 30 pounds from his or her ideal weight to qualify for this procedure.

The idea is to keep your weight no more than 30 pounds away from your goal weight since fat loss is similar to taking a sheet off of a roll of paper towels. Taking a sheet off a new roll does not make a noticeable difference. Removing a sheet makes a big difference when there are only a few left. An area of concern should have at least an inch of pinchable fat, but the smaller the area, the less fat there will usually be.

Talk to Us To Get Started

Although liposuction permanently eliminates fat cells from the body, the permanence of your new contours is entirely up to you. After your procedure, your remaining fat cells may store excess fat if you don’t maintain a healthy lifestyle. Schedule your initial consultation with Dr. Bruce Kadz at Kadz Plastic Surgery in Beverly Hills, CA, to learn more about this procedure and what you can do to maintain your ideal contours.