CoolSculpting: Stories

I thought I would share my experience since I used this site so much when I was researching the procedure beforehand. I've never been happy with my stomach my entire adult life and no matter how much I worked out or lost weight, I always had a little pooch that annoyed me. I'm 5'7", 29 years old, 143 pounds, have an athletic frame and work out 4-6 days a week. I had looked into smart lipo a few years ago but did not want to commit to going under the knife for a minimal problem. When I heard it was only going to be $499 during my initial conversation, I decided to go through with it.

I had coolsculpting performed on my lower abdomen (small applicator) last Thursday. The device definitely felt like it was trying to suck the insides out of me at first. It was very uncomfortable and I thought there was no way that I was going to last an hour with that thing on me. Like the tech said, after 10 minutes, it felt more numb and I was able to read a book for the rest of the time. After it was removed, I could not believe what the fat looked like! I was embarrassed that I even had that much. It looked like a stick of butter or a brick or something. The nurse massaged it for a minute and it went down to normal. That was not comfortable either. They put a compression wrap on and then I was good to go. The whole area was very swollen and bloated for the next 24 hours with minimal bruising.

Over the past 5 days, I have to say that I'm surprised by how much pain I'm in from the procedure. I've had plenty of surgeries in the past and thought this would be cake. It is a very different feeling b/c it is tender to touch and then you have the pins and needles/numbness feeling. I have a large puppy that seems to like to jump on my stomach whenever possible as well. I was able to play tennis on the first day but it was pretty awkward and somewhat painful. I definitely don't know how anyone could go on a run though. I tried doing a jumping jack today and I thought I was going to die. It's definitely going to be awhile before I'm going to be able to continue my normal exercise DVD routines. The compression wrap does help with the pain a little bit but it is very bulky and hot. I've been taking advil but it doesn't seem to help. I'm hoping it doesn't get worse but it seems like several people on this site say it gets worse after a week. I'm sitting down right now and I can feel the numbness/tension on my stomach.

I took a few pictures today to count as the "before" pictures. My stomach is a little swollen still but it is pretty representative of what it looked like prior to coolscuplting. I can't wait to see results. I will continue to post pictures. I just started a food diary and I've been losing weight so it will be hard to know whether weight lost was because of the procedure or counting calories.