I'm a 44 year old female, I work out and watch what I eat, never had six pack abs but I've always maintained my body in pretty good shape. I've had several CoolSculpting treatments at Island Dermatology and I love the results. I started with my abdomen and the "love handles", as those were bothering me the most. After turning 40, my body changed in those areas for some reason, and no matter how hard I worked out, I just couldn't get rid of that roll of fat around my waist. The treatment is not painful, there is a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling in the first 5 minutes because the applicator is pulling as much of your fat as it can, but then the area gets numb, so you don't really feel anything until the treatment completes (it takes one hour). Then, once the applicator is removed, the technician does a little massage in that area, and that may get a little uncomfortable again. I read reviews where people say that the treatment is painful, I suppose it depends on each person's pain threshold, but the way I look at it is that I'm not going in for a relaxing facial, I'm actually going to get rid of some fat, so I expect it to be somewhat uncomfortable. Following the treatment I got a bit of swelling for a day or two, and a couple of times I got some bruising and the area was numb, but all that went away in a few days, maximum one week. That didn't prevent me from doing my usual activities right after the treatment, I went to work just like I do every day, and even went to the gym the very same day. There really isn't any downtime. I started seeing a difference about 4 weeks after the treatment, but full results about another month later. I also found that when I repeated the treatment in the same area (about a month after the first), I saw more dramatic results, which I really needed for the flanks. Sheila is the technician/esthetician who did my treatments, she is great. They have different sizes and shapes of applicators, so she made sure to use the right one depending on the area I wanted treated and the result I was looking for -- there is a science to how to do it and she is really good at it. I should mention that I did my upper arms too and she used a flat applicator for that. As far as cost, CoolSculpting is not cheap, but since I knew I wanted several treatments, I took advantage of Island Dermatology's package offers, which saved me some money.