Liposuction is a procedure that removes the pockets of fat that seem to go nowhere with diet and exercise. Despite that, a question still persists: can fat return after liposuction?
The procedure sucks the fat out of any localized area of the patient’s body through the use of different technologies. You can see the new contour of your body right away even with swelling and bruising caused by the procedure.
The procedure’s almost instantaneous results are the reason for its popularity. Not only patients with high body mass index seek it, but also more regular-sized ones are targeting one single area that bothers them.
The results of liposuction are also long-lasting, but they surely are not forever. Your overall lifestyle and diet are what will determine if your body retains the mass body level the surgery provided you with.
Fat Return After Liposuction
There was one study that tracked women who had liposuction and their body mass index for over a year. And with their results, they did indeed determine that: Yes. The fat does come back after the procedure, but not in the same place.
After a year, the women’s body mass index rose to almost the same level they had before the procedure. Still, the new fat was nowhere visible in the regions it was previously extracted from. However, it appeared in other areas left untouched by the previous liposuction.
For example, if one of the women had liposuction in their thighs and abdomen, fat came back in zones like the arms, chest, or back. The inverse was also true. The reason as to why the body relocates the new fat in the zone, avoiding the ones operated before is still debated.
Some surgeons simply state that the body senses there’s missing amounts of fat and seeks to restore them. Some go as far as to say that it has to do with liposuction directly sucking out fat cells from the body. The number of fat cells remains stable throughout life, and the body does not replace them after liposuction. If you lose weight, you do not lose fat cells, they simply shrink, inversely, if you gain weight they expand.
What the body does is compensate for the loss of fat by activating and charging fat cells previously dormant or less used.
Preventing Fat Return After Liposuction
The advised change for preserving a liposuction’s results is the same as the ones probably tried before: diet and exercise.
Following a strict diet regime where you only consume fewer calories than you burn is the key for it. If you enforce portion control over what you eat and sticky to a healthy diet, there is little to worry about. It is also necessary to limit the drinking of alcohol to a moderate level, as for smoking, consider abandoning it completely.
If the patient sticks by the regime, it would only be necessary for them to engage in walking as an exercise to prevent fat return after liposuction.