You’ve decided that this year you will finally buckle down and lose those last few inches around your thighs or abdomen that you’ve been feeling self conscious about. To achieve your goal you naturally began eating healthier, cutting out the junk food, and started hitting the gym. All those crunches and leg presses are sure to do the trick, right? Much to your dismay, like many people with the same plans, you found out that your hard work and discipline did not deliver the desired results.
It seems logical that doing exercises for the legs, such a squats, would help you to shed fat from the thighs, and that doing sit ups would help you lose stomach fat, but in reality you cannot target fat. While it would be nice to be able to decide that we want to drop the extra weight just around the waist, sadly, we can’t. Weight loss is dependent on where the body stores fat, hormone levels, and your genetics. For women, most fat storage is typically around the hips and in the lower body. Men usually keep their extra pounds in their upper bodies.
Your body is always storing fat and drawing energy from it, from all over the body. Whether you work out at the gym or home, hormones and enzymes are released into the bloodstream while you are exercising. Through the bloodstream they travel throughout the body, fulfilling a demand for more energy and drawing it from wherever they can get it; not just in your legs while you are doing lunges. While fat is being lost all over the body, some places, often those that have the least to loose, usually show the most noticeable results.
Since we cannot choose where to lose fat, people who want to attack some unwanted weight should strive to lose weight overall, not just in one area of the body. Even if the first place to see a slim down is not where you hoped it would be, if you stick to your diet and exercise routine you will eventually see a change in that area.
So why do we lift weights if it won’t help us to lose extra arm flab, or do crunches if it’s not targeting belly fat? The exercises you do may not be singling out fat in a specific place, but they will speed up your metabolism and help you to lose weight overall. Additionally, each exercise is designed to target muscle groups in certain areas of the body. By working these muscles you can become more toned and achieve a leaner and more sculpted look, which will become more prominent as you shed more fat.
A Little Extra Help
Even after an extended period of avoiding the ice cream and waking up at the crack of dawn to get your exercise routine in before work, sometimes fat can be very stubborn. If you have done at least 70% of the work, liposuction can do the other 30%.
If you are relatively close to your ideal body weight, liposuction may be able to help you achieve your goals for a leaner body. While it is not a weight loss solution, and a healthy lifestyle must be maintained in order to continue to see optimal results, the procedure can give you the extra nudge needed to go from looking good to looking great.
There are several types of liposuctions technologies on the market today. Each plastic surgeon has his or her own preferred methods, and some offer various options to their patients. Tumescent liposuction, the conventional technique, uses local anesthesia and a blood vessel narrowing substance known as a vasoconstrictor to increase patient comfort and minimize bleeding. A narrow tube called a cannula is inserted though an incision and used to dislodge unwanted fat deposits. The fat is then suctioned out.
Ultrasonic liposuction, one of the most advanced liposuction techniques, reduces the risk of complications and allows for more athletic looking results. The ultrasound energy first melts the fat before it is removed, limiting trauma to blood vessels, nerves, and the surrounding connective tissue. Using ultrasound assisted liposuction, surgeons are able to control the power of the device and deliver excellent results with minimal bruising, swelling, and recovery time.
There are also several other liposuction techniques, including laser assisted liposuction. For patients that would like a sculpted look, liposculpture can be utilized to better define the muscle structures of the body. In some cases, the skin of an area that receives liposuction may have become too lax to bounce back and will sag. This is also true after weight loss. To correct this problem, various other procedures might be employed, including arm lift, thigh lift, and body lift.