teitelbaum

Liposuction is only cheating if it is done for the wrong reason. Liposuction is not for someone who is overweight with an even weight distribution; it is for someone at their ideal weight or even a bit above it, but for whom the fat distribution is imbalanced or causes a contour irregularity. How do you know which category you fit into? Look at yourself in the mirror. If everything seems balanced for your age and gender- neck, breasts, back, stomach, etc. - then you probably do need to lose weight, and in that case it would be cheating to do liposuction. But if there is a bulge in one area that is disproportionate to the surrounding areas, then liposuction is probably your only solution, and it certainly isn't cheating. The clearcut example of this is the woman with a size 2 waist and size 6 thighs, but it is also the woman with a size 10 waist and size 14 thighs. Or it can be the patient who says, "The only way I can make my thighs look right is if I lose so much weight that my breasts disappear or my face looks too gaunt." And there are some people who complain about a bulge that is present no matter how much weight they lose. For all of these people, liposuction would certainly not be cheating; in fact, it is possibly their only option. One general rule I have, is that if a patient asks for "lipo of my arms, neck, back, waist, stomach, and thighs," then in most cases the issue is excessive weight. But when someone comes in and says, "no matter what I do, I have a bulge here and here," pointing to one or several areas, then they are more frequently liposuction candidates. And here's another thing: lipo doesn't work all that well when you do it all over. It can't smoothly thin you out from head to toe; it reduces and reshapes discrete problem areas. Only dieting can reduce you all over, so even if you tried to do "total body lipo", it would never substitute for weight loss. The most frequent concern patients have that are considering liposuction is whether the fat goes somewhere else. When you do it on an isolated bulge or two, it does not go elsewhere. But if someone is diffusely overweight, no matter how many areas you treat, the untreated areas tend to thicken up a bit over time, unless the patient really watches their weight. But if the patient started out with a weight issue, it is by definition highly improbably they will be totally in control of their weight. I know that's a bummer. Everyone wishes liposuction were a way to cheat around weight loss, but it isn't.