The Nitty Gritty: Liposuction or Weight Loss?

You know what they say – summer bodies are created in the winter. So, if you’ve recently started reassessing those love handles or balloon bellies, you’re in real good company, sis.

Truth be told, a banging body is freaking hard to get and even harder to maintain, and what’s worse is that there is no easy, clear-cut answer to fat loss because drum roll, please…

There are several different types of fat, and they are far from created equal.

Now, to the all-important question – liposuction or weight loss? Unfortunately, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, and it depends mainly on your body’s fat content and ratio.

How much do you know about your fat, and why is that important when considering the above options?

Both weight loss and liposuction reduce fat; however, only one type of fat can be safely removed during liposuction.

Though your bod has several different types of fat, we’re going to focus only on external and internal fat.

External or Subcutaneous Fat

Poke your belly – seriously, go ahead and indulge us -- no one is looking!

Do you feel the jiggly layer that’s soft to the touch? Say hello to your external or subcutaneous fat!

The external fat lives just under the skin, and while it sucks to have fat of any kind, this type is the most common, making up about 90% of a person’s overall body fat, and is often the hardest to lose.

How apropos because the person with excessive external fat is the ideal candidate for lipo, as subcutaneous fat is the only kind that can be removed during the procedure. And remove is the keyword here because liposuction actually eradicates the fat cells altogether. That’s right - once the cells are gone, you can kiss the fat goodbye forever. Awesome, right?

Internal or Visceral Fat

Next up is your visceral or internal fat. Unfortunately, you can’t have as intimate a meeting with this pesky cling-on because it lives just under the abdominal wall, out of reach.

All fat is cruddy, but this is the really scary stuff - the disease-causing kind. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, asthma, dementia, indeed the list of nasty side effects from too much visceral fat is far from short.

And sadly, this is also the type of fat that has to be lost rather than removed, and while losing visceral fat is really, really important, weight loss only encourages fat cells to shrink, not to go away altogether.

 Let’s break it down…

Summing up, fat loss, no matter whether the fat is internal or external, shrinks the cells rather than removes them. Whereas liposuction can only be used as an effective tool for external fat, it does remove the fat completely. Lipo is a permanent solution to external fat.

Patients with high external fat are the ideal candidates for lipo. In contrast, others who have high visceral fat and low subcutaneous fat are often encouraged to lose weight before liposuction treatment.

Two excellent options that depend on your body’s composition, the experience you hope to have and your surgeon’s input. Choose wisely, my friends, and enjoy because either way, your dream body is just over the horizon!