Body Contouring After Weight Loss: What Are My Options?

Reaching your goal weight can be a rewarding experience. However, even after considerable weight loss, you may still be unhappy with certain aspects of your appearance. Loose skin is a common ailment after weight loss and specific fat deposits may not respond to diet and exercise. 

Today, there are more noninvasive body contouring procedures available than ever before. This makes it much easier to reach your aesthetic goals without undergoing surgery with a lengthy recovery period. Below, we’ll go over some of the most popular procedures for body contouring after weight loss.

Skin Tightening

After significant weight loss, loose, sagging skin is very common. While skin laxity may improve with time, in most cases treatment is required to address the issue. There are many devices on the modern market designed to tighten skin, including BodyFX, Morpheus 8, Evolve Tite, and Profound RF. They work by administering radiofrequency energy, which causes collagen to remodel and shrink the skin.

For some patients, RF treatments are highly effective and relatively painless. Treatment typically takes less than 30 minutes and comes with varying amounts of downtime depending on the specific device. Recovery can range anywhere from zero to several days.

However, RF treatment doesn’t work for every patient. Some patients’ skin does not respond well to radiofrequency energy and those who are sensitive to heat may have trouble tolerating treatment. If you have lost an extreme amount of weight (i.e., 100 pounds or more) you may have severe skin laxity issues that require more invasive, surgical treatment.

Removing Unwanted Fat Deposits

Due to a combination of hormones and genetics, fat tends to deposit in specific areas of our bodies. Even if you are at a healthy, stable weight, some fat deposits do not respond to strict diet and exercise. Many non-invasive body contouring treatments correct this issue by removing fat from targeted areas.

CoolSculpting uses extremely cold temperatures to kill fat cells in targeted areas of the body. Currently, it is the only FDA approved non-surgical fat reduction treatment available. When treatment is successful, CoolSculpting can result in a 20 to 25% reduction in fat cells in a specific area of the body.

During treatment, your practitioner starts by applying a clear gel and cooling hand piece to the treatment area. You will feel cold initially, but this usually only lasts for a few minutes. The procedure is painless and takes between 30 and 60 minutes.  Most people need four to five treatments for optimal results. This varies greatly depending on your personal needs and size of area to be treated.

There are also heat or RF treatments – such as Inmode Evolve – that use heat to injure fat cells causing cell death, which are cleared and expelled by the lymphatic system. Results are typically similar to CoolSculpting, but RF treatments may require more sessions. In addition to this, as we touched on above, some patients do not respond to RF treatments.

Toning And Muscle Building

One of the most exciting things about weight loss is that it makes muscle tone and definition far more apparent. However, patients often hit plateaus during weight training and are unable to achieve their goals through exercise alone. Emsculpt uses High-Intensity Focused Electromagnetic (HIFEM) technology to induce rapid muscle contractions that cause your body to quickly develop muscle.

Emsculpt can be used anywhere on the body except the chest and is often used to target the buttocks and abdomen. The procedure gives you the same results you would get from months of bodybuilding within only four 30 minute sessions. While you may feel sore a few days afterwards, Emsculpt requires no downtime.

Another device that helps with muscle building is Evolve Tone, but it uses electromagnetic stimulation instead of HIFEM. However, the experience and results are similar to what you’d expect from Emsculpt.

Body Contouring After Weight Loss: The Bottom Line

Once you finish your weight loss journey, it’s common to still have insecurities about your body. When diet and exercise fail to help you reach your goals, non-invasive treatments get you past plateaus to help you look and feel better.

Body contouring after extreme weight loss, especially regarding skin tightening procedures, may require surgery. However, for many patients, the above procedures can be highly effective. The best way to determine if a specific treatment is right for you is to book a consultation with a professional.

At BLUSH Beverly Hills, our talented team of practitioners have decades worth of experience in aesthetic medicine. We work with every patient one-on-one to ensure their treatment plan will help them meet their aesthetic goals. Reach out here to book an appointment.