Significant weight loss should be a time for celebration. Whether accomplished through diet and exercise or surgical methods, losing a large amount of weight can provide an improved outlook and a fresh start.
Rapid weight loss can often lead to other physical issues such as sagging skin in the upper arms, breasts, abdomen, buttocks, groin and thighs. Because the stretched skin is unable to conform back to a slimmer body, this occurs. Body contouring can help individuals after major weight loss by removing the extra skin and fat and improving the shape and tone of the tissue that supports muscles, fat and skin. Procedures include arm lift, tummy tuck, thigh lift, breast lift and body lift.
Body contouring can be performed in one or multiple stages, depending on what areas need to be treated. Working with you and your physicians, your plastic surgeon will decide how best to schedule the procedures. Factors that play a role in these decisions include your overall health, your goals, how your body reacts to the process and your plastic surgeon’s professional judgment.
It is important to stabilize your weight before proceeding with body contouring. If you plan to lose more weight after the procedures, your skin may sag again. If you gain weight, the stressed skin will stretch causing wider scars and stretch marks, ultimately changing the shape of your body.
When embarking on this final stage of your weight loss journey, the best policy is to be honest and open with your plastic surgeon about your expectations and goals.
There are also several proven options for non-surgical fat elimination, if you’re looking to get rid of the flab without going under the knife the most traditional method of eliminating fat from specific areas of your body is liposuction. Liposuction, however, has related side effects and risks, as well as a rather lengthy recovery time.
Furthermore there are many non-surgical body contouring options available today. These options are not meant for weight loss, but rather to shape your body and remove stubborn fat deposits. But if you have an area of stubborn fat that will not go away no matter how much you exercise or how well you eat, these contouring technologies are an ideal solution to change your body shape.
The main areas that women are most concerned with are in the lower half of the body and are often known by these unflattering terms: love handles, saddlebags, mummy tummy and pot belly. In addition, many women are concerned with flabby arms and back fat.
There are a number of high-tech solutions available today and the technologies are only getting better and better if you want to change and shape your body without the knife.
One of this many technology is lipodissolve it is a treatment that can be used to remove stubborn pockets of fat such as double chins, rounded or saggy cheeks or jowls, neck fat, lower-eye fat pads and other pockets of fat on the body such as love handles, thighs, backs of the arms and knees.
Lipodissolve is a procedure that evolved from Mesotherapy, in which microinjections of a substance called phosphatidylcholine, which occurs naturally in the body, are injected directly into the fat to shrink the fat cells, essentially “dissolving” fat from unwanted areas. Lipodissolve differs from mesotherapy in how deep the injections are placed, how much of the solution is injected, what is injected and the intervals between treatments. The main difference between the two procedures is that with Lipodissolve, it takes fewer treatments to achieve results; and the substances used in Lipodissolve are standardized.
The majority of people see results after about four weeks, with an average of one to four treatments depending on the area and the person being treated.
Another one is Ultrashape is the oldest of the new technologies for eliminating fat without surgery. The fat cell contents, mainly triglycerides, leak out into the surrounding tissues and then are safely carried away by the body’s physiological systems.
It is Health Canada approved and more than 200,000 treatments have been performed worldwide. This newer system also includes radio frequency with massage to further enhance results from the treatment. The recommended number of treatments is three, and can be spaced as closely as two weeks apart.
Thermage is a treatment that has been around for a number of years for facial skin tightening. Thermage uses radiofrequency to tighten collagen, contour the skin and stimulate the production of new collagen. One of the downsides of an aging body is wrinkled skin in the tummy area and Thermage is one of the options to tighten and tone your body. Thermage requires one treatment that lasts for many years.
It is frequently used after liposuction to restore some smoothness to those areas as liposuction can leave you with uneven texture of the skin. Approximately six to eight weekly treatments are required.
These are just some of the treatments available for body contouring without the knife. Though other options such as Zeltiq, Zerona and Lipolaser exist, the above treatments have been available for longer and are in their second or third generation of machines. This means they have been tried, tested and improved with each new version.
Whether or not you want to go under the knife or just settle for the non surgical ways of getting rid of those undesirable fats in your body is totally up to you. Just remember to really think about it and make sure that you only let a trusted surgeon or cosmetic agency to handle you. Remember you only have one body so better take good care of it.
Body contouring can help individuals after major weight loss by removing the extra skin and fat and improving the shape and tone of the tissue that supports muscles, fat and skin. These options are not meant for weight loss, but rather to shape your body and remove stubborn fat deposits. If you have an area of stubborn fat that will not go away no matter how much you exercise or how well you eat, these contouring technologies are an ideal solution to change your body shape.
Lipodissolve is a procedure that evolved from Mesotherapy, in which microinjections of a substance called phosphatidylcholine, which occurs naturally in the body, are injected directly into the fat to shrink the fat cells, essentially “dissolving” fat from unwanted areas. One of the downsides of an aging body is wrinkled skin in the tummy area and Thermage is one of the options to tighten and tone your body.