Liposuction- Should I tell? Or was it just “diet and exercise”?

Posted on June 23, 2010

Plastic surgery is always a personal, private decision. 

Most of my patients who do liposuction have tried to lose weight with diet and exercise.Their weight is stable.  They do liposuction not to “lose weight” but to sculpt–reduce the love handle bulges over the jeans or thighs which rub together (ug. especially on those warm summer days…). 

Should you tell?

I will repeat, it is a personal, private decision.  I don’t think you should be ashamed.  Liposuction is not a weight loss technique.  There are some things which are difficult to fix.  Liposuction is ideal for people who have a problem area- the true “pear” who buys a pant size to fit their legs and but then must take them in at the waist, or the “apple” who has the opposite problem.  Or for some, they “fell off the wagon” at some point- gained more than the baby weight, were depressed, lived in Italy for a year and couldn’t stop eating pasta, had a sport injury and couldn’t exercise- and that incident increased their fat load.  When you have increased fat load, it can make it hard to get to your ideal weight.  It can change your set point, so you plateau at a higher weight, and have to fight to keep a lower weight.  You know what I mean- you don’t think at all to weigh 140, but to get to 130- eek.  You work out daily, watch every morsel you put in your mouth, and if you slip on vacation- poof! it is all back.

If you are comfortable, I think it is good to be honest.  I am dismayed by the celebrities who say they “eat broiled fish and exercise”, when it seems clear to most of us they had surgery. Liposuction has been one of the top three plastic surgical procedures for the last decade, and the number of people getting cosmetic surgery continues to rise. 

But for those who don’t know you well, feel free to say it was diet and exercise.  To maintain your liposuction results, that is not a fib- you need to have a good exercise and diet regiment.