Liposuction is a wonderful way for someone to drop unwanted pounds.   What would normally take months of dieting and exercising can be done in a matter of hours through a simple cosmetic surgery procedure.   However, liposuction is not a “miracle” cure.  It simply takes the fat off.  It does not prevent the body from putting it back on. Like any other form of weight loss, if you want to maintain the effects of the procedure, you must eat healthy foods, watch your portion sizes, and monitor how often you eat.   If you revert back to poor eating habits and a lack of exercise, the weight will come back.    Do not believe us?   Just ask this girl.

In 2006, At age 12, Brooke Bates weighed 220 pounds, and she was teased mercilessly by her peers.  Due to the constant teasing, she developed low self-esteem, which in turn caused to her to beg her parents to let her become the youngest person ever to undergo liposuction.  At first, they said no, but after their daughter’s daily persistence, they eventually relented and let her undergo the plastic surgery procedure. Everything went off without a hitch, and for the first few months things appeared to be going according to plan. The excess weight was gone, and she had never felt happier.  But, there was something 12-year-old Brooke did not know:  in order to keep the weight off, she could not just eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.   Just as quickly as she had lost the weight, through unhealthy eating habits, it all came back again.

Now 19 years old, she says this about her 12-year-old self:

I didn’t understand that I needed to diet for the rest of my life in order to maintain a new body. Soon after slipping back into my old compulsive eating habits and snacking on junk food in between every meal, the weight piled back on just as quickly as it had come off.

The truth is there are many people that could say the exact same thing, whether they get a face lift, breast implants, or, like Brooke, liposuction.  While it is great to see the popularity of cosmetic surgery continue to grow by leaps and bounds, that newfound popularity has also contributed to the misconception that a patient’s results are irreversible, regardless of what they do after surgery.   That is simply not true.  Without living a healthy lifestyle and following a surgeon’s instructions, the lifespan of any surgical result will be reduced.