This is a pretty good question actually, because it creates the opportunity to get a couple of things across to people about breast implants. The first thing to consider is what is body fat percentage and how might breast implants affect that? When we think about what exactly is body fat percentage, it is a ratio between the part of your body that is comprised STRICTLY OF FAT to all the rest of your body. You then have to decide what units you are measuring or considering for that ratio. That is, are you looking at the percentage of the WEIGHT of your body that is fat, or the VOLUME of your body, or some other measure. Typically, we are talking about body weight, so let's use that for now. Thus, if you are a 100 pound lady, and you are carrying a total of 20 pounds of fat throughout your body, you will have a body fat percentage of 20% by weight. That is, 20 pounds of fat divided by 100 total pounds of weight. The ONLY way you can increase your body fat percentage is to add ADDITIONAL FAT weight to the body, while keeping the NON-FAT WEIGHT stable, or at least adding less in non-fat weight than you do in fat weight. For example, if our 100 pound lady with 20 total pounds of fat on her body overindulges on vacation and puts on 10 more pounds of PURE FAT, she now becomes 110 pounds total body weight with 30 pounds of total fat. So, doing our calculation, we have 30 divided by 110 which equals 27.3% body fat. That's how the body fat percentage increases. Now, here's the great surprise for you girls fixated on body fat percentage: assuming that EVERYTHING ELSE stays the same - your body fat composition and your NATURAL BODY'S non-body fat composition, by adding silicone gel implants, you will actually DECREASE your body fat percentage!!! LOL, isn't that fun??!! Here's why: our 100 pound friend gets two beautiful new silicone gel filled breast implants, each 350 cc volume. The density of silicone gel is roughly that of water. They're actually a little tiny bit denser in reality, meaning that volume for volume, silicone gel weighs ever-so-slightly more than water, but it's so slight that for the purposes of our exercise here, let's call it the same. Water weighs about 2.2 pounds to the kilogram, or 1000 cc of volume. Thus, two 350 cc implants are 700 cc total, so less than 1000 cc, or less than a kilgram (again, 1 kg = 2.2 lb). Let's call it an even 2 pounds to be simple. So, she would be adding about 2 pounds of NON-FAT WEIGHT to her body with her 350 cc silicone gel implants. This goes in the denominator of the body fat percentage calculation, remembering that we said everything else was staying the same. So our 100 pound lady now weighs a wopping 102 pounds total after surgery, but she still has only 20 pounds of total body fat - the silicone implants aren't fat, so they won't add to the body fat. Doing our calculation now, we find that 20 divided by 102 is 19.6% - not a huge decrease from 20%, but still a decrease nonetheless, and certainly not an increase!! This was fun for me, so thanks for posting this one. I hope that not only did I answer your question, but that I provided you with a fun little surprise and hopefully a smile! In a practical sense, I don't find that any of my patients have concerns around weight or body fat after breast augmentation surgery, especially with very reasonably sized implants like 350 cc. This includes even my patients who compete in body building, figures, physique, and bikini competitions, who are some of the most particular people when it comes to those issues. So, go right ahead and get your breast augmentation without any guilt, at least as far as your weight and body fat percentage go!! Best of luck!
