Introduction
Body sculpting/contouring is an exciting and rapidly changing aspect of plastic surgery. It involves surgical and non-surgical procedures designed to reshape and sculpt the body. The procedure makes it possible to tone, tighten, and smooth your body. It’s an exciting alternative to regular invasive liposuction.
Body sculpting comes with an array of myths and misinformation, though.
Most patients approach body sculpting with wrong assumptions, erroneously believing that it prevents weight gain, helps with sagging skin, that the results are short-term, that it is painful, that you need a long recovery, and much more.
Many people don’t fully understand what the procedure entails and its benefits. We want to demystify most of these myths.
So in the spirit of clarity, we’ve outlined a list of myths about body sculpting treatments (and their corresponding facts) below.
1. Body sculpting is suitable for sagging skin
Body contouring kills off and removes excess fat cells to sculpt and tighten your body. Although it helps tighten sagging skin, it’s not designed to target that problem.
The freezing procedure impacts your superficial skin layer fat cells and does not directly impact the skin.
However, there are other procedures to consider that target and improve skin elasticity and sagging.
2. Body sculpting is not effective
The main issue with nonsurgical body contouring is that it’ll take a few sessions before noticing any significant change. Thus, once you manage your expectations, you’ll realise that the procedure is safer and more effective than surgical alternatives.
While there are differences in performed treatments and the number of treatments required, plenty of non-surgical procedures yield results.
Most of these non-invasive procedures have been studied to verify their results. It’s essential to research these treatments before proceeding.
In addition, it’s equally important to exercise and watch your diet as it plays a vital role in maximising your results.
3. Body sculpting equals losing weight
Arguably, this is the most widespread misconception regarding body contouring. However, the truth is that these non-surgical body sculpting treatments reduce stubborn fat pockets on specific body parts.
Therefore, they don’t help an overweight or obese person lose weight.
In fact, the most suitable patient for body sculpting treatments is someone close to their ideal BMI. These people aim to improve the shape of specific areas such as thighs, flanks, abdomen, etc.
4. Body sculpting prevents weight gain
A body contouring procedure such as CoolSculpting works to remove portions of fat from specific body areas. Thus, it doesn’t cause any drastic weight loss, and all it does is help reshape your body.
Patients after the procedure might still experience weight gain if they don’t adhere to a healthy lifestyle.