Choosing the Best Body Contouring Procedure For Your Body

No matter how hard you work through diet and exercise to get and keep the body you want, Mother Nature seems to have her own ideas. Stores of fat appear to have minds of their own when it comes to body contouring, resisting all your efforts to reshape.

The good news is that you’re no longer at nature’s mercy when it comes to body shape. Of course, diet and exercise remain important, since a healthy body weight is the foundation upon which your contouring efforts are built. But you can augment your results now with both traditional and new techniques, using surgical, semi-surgical, or non-invasive procedures, or even combinations of these.

Your best approach is as unique as you are, so book a consultation with Jack Hensel Jr., MD, at Lowcountry Plastic Surgery Center to discuss your options and expectations. The body of your dreams may be closer than you think.

Surgical body contouring

Liposuction remains a very effective way to address fat stores in your body that remain after weight loss and exercise attempts. It’s the most dramatic body contouring option in terms of radical reshaping, and Dr. Hensel can safely perform liposuction on your abdomen, arms, back, face, and neck.

Using a hollow tube called a cannula, Dr. Hensel targets the fat tissue that’s causing the bulges you want gone and removes them from your body. Other surgical procedures, such as a tummy tuck, for example, can be done in the same session as your liposuction.

But since liposuction is a surgical technique, there’s a longer recovery time than other alternatives, a period during which your body heals. The fat loss, though, is permanent. Provided you don’t undergo a sudden and substantial weight gain later, you can say goodbye to those fat cells forever.

Unlike other temporary cosmetic techniques, any procedure (surgical or not) that reduces the amount of fat cells in your body can be permanent, so body contouring is an investment in yourself.  

Minimally invasive body contouring

There are body sculpting procedures that are less invasive that liposuction surgery. These may be an option when your contouring goals don’t justify the cost and recovery time that liposuction requires. SmartLipo®, for example, uses a laser-assisted variation of liposuction.

A single laser fiber delivers light energy directly into the fat tissue in your target area. The laser gently warms the fat cells while leaving surrounding tissue unaffected. This warming breaks down the fat cells, producing immediate results as well as starting a process where the body removes the rest of the affected cells over time.

SmartLipo starts a controlled inflammatory response that also leaves skin firmer and younger-looking. Recovery time is only a few days.

Non-invasive body contouring

Both heat and cold can compromise the integrity of fat cells, causing the body to flush them through the lymphatic and circulatory systems. If fat tissue could be warmed or cooled without incisions into the skin, body contouring could be done with no recovery time required. Your body would flush the fat in the same way that SmartLipo does.

SculpSure® and CoolSculpting® are, respectively, the warming and cooling body contouring procedures that provide non-surgical treatments to reshape your body. While overall results aren’t as dramatic as liposuction, you may not need a major contouring option.

Rather than waiting until your body requires surgery, you can turn to SculpSure or CoolSculpting to provide body contouring without downtime or other side effects. Results take several weeks to show, but for modest reshaping, one of these may be the right option.

To learn about and discuss which body contouring procedure is best for you, call or click today to request a consultation with Dr. Hensel at Lowcountry Plastic Surgery Center.