Can I Lose Weight by Having Liposuction?

Episode summary

Liposuction is intended to change body contour, not to serve as a weight-loss treatment. In this episode, New York City board-certified plastic surgeon Darren M. Smith, MD, FACS explains why he plans liposuction around localized concerns and a relatively stable weight, rather than a target number on the scale.

Originally published August 4, 2020. The examples and candidacy preferences described are from Dr. Smith's practice at the time of recording.

Key takeaways

🔬 Fat-cell size and fat removal are different concepts.

Dr. Smith uses an expandable-storage-box analogy to explain how fat cells change with weight gain and loss, then contrasts that with removing fat from a treatment area.

🔬 Removing fat does not change eating or activity patterns.

The episode discusses why surgery should not be used as a substitute for a weight-management plan.

🔎 Weight gain can affect a treated area.

Liposuction does not make someone immune to later changes in body size or proportions.

🎯 Weight stability helps planning.

A substantial change after surgery can alter the proportions on which the original contouring plan was based.

🔬 Skin quality remains part of the assessment.

Dr. Smith discusses how additional weight loss may reveal laxity that was not part of the original plan.

Questions this episode answers

Can I gain weight after liposuction?

Yes. The recording explains that remaining fat cells can enlarge and that weight changes can affect the appearance of both treated and untreated areas. The amount and pattern of change vary; the discussion is not a promise that future weight gain will be invisible.

Do I need to reach an exact goal weight first?

Dr. Smith favors planning around a fairly stable body shape and discusses selected exceptions in consultation. His numerical examples in this 2020 recording are not universal eligibility rules. The useful question is how your goals, anticipated weight changes, and skin quality affect the proposed plan.

🔗 Related reading and consultation

Liposuction and candidacy | Stomach liposuction | Request a consultation with Dr. Smith

This episode is educational and does not establish an individual weight target or treatment plan. Show notes updated September 30, 2026.

Original show notes

Board certified NYC plastic surgeon and liposuction expert Dr. Darren Smith explains the relationship between liposuction and weight loss.

[00:08] I'm Board Certified New York City Plastic Surgeon Dr. Darren Smith, and this is Plastic Surgery Before and After. Your source for the real deal about plastic surgery procedures, news about trends in aesthetic medicine, and candid sessions with industry insiders. We hope you enjoy today's episode. Can I lose weight by having liposuction? The short answer is no. But here we'll explain why that's true and why it's important to be close to your goal weight if you are considering liposuction to make sure that you get the best results. The basics of this answer go back to a simple explanation of fat biology and how your body deals with extra fat. So when you take in more calories in your diet than you're burning through your daily activities and exercise, Your body has an excess of lipids which it stores in fat cells. We can think of these fat cells as expandable storage boxes. As the imbalance between diet and exercise grows or as we take in more calories than we're burning and we have more lipids to store, the body does that by adding lipids to the fat cells and the fat cells expand.

[01:31] In contrast, when we're burning more calories than we're consuming, the fat cells contract as lipids leave the fat cells and are used by the body as energy. And while this intuitively makes sense, it's important to also say what's not happening. When you gain weight, you're not making more fat cells. You're simply storing more lipids in your existing fat cells and they're getting bigger. Similarly, when you lose weight, you're not destroying fat cells. Your body is simply releasing lipids from fat cells and those fat cells are getting smaller. And we know this because research studies have shown that once we're adults, the number of fat cells in our body remains roughly constant in the vast majority of cases. So while the body is constantly making and destroying fat cells, it's doing this at approximately the same rate. So it's making fat cells at the same time that it's destroying fat cells. So it's really the increase in size of fat cells and the decrease in size of fat cells that correlates with weight gain and weight loss respectively, not the creation and destruction of fat cells.

[02:50] So how is all this related to liposuction? When we treat an area with liposuction, we're removing many of the fat cells from that area. We like to say about 75%. And we know that a liter of fat weighs approximately two pounds. So we might think that when we remove a liter of fat, we're going to help our patients lose about two pounds of weight. However, just because we've removed fat cells of liposuction, this doesn't mean we've done anything to alter the balance between diet and exercise of our patient. So if someone has liposuction and their diet and exercise habits remain exactly the same, their calorie deficit, their calorie balance will remain the same. So if they had a need to store a certain amount of fat before liposuction surgery, they're going to still need to store the same amount of fat after liposuction surgery.

[03:46] But since the fat cells in the treatment area are gone, this is not going to prevent them from storing that fat elsewhere. Instead, if we remove approximately a liter of fat from the abdomen, for example, that means that the body is going to have to distribute approximately a liter of fat elsewhere in the body. And that's going to happen by... adding lipids to fat cells elsewhere in the body and having those fat cells grow to compensate for the fat cells that were removed during liposuction. And while that may seem alarming, you know, so we just said we removed a liter of fat from the admin and now is this going to be a really noticeable increase in the fatty volume of a different area of the body? Fortunately, the answer is almost always no. The body tends to do a very good job of evenly distributing this fat around the body so that if we perform liposuction of the abdomen, for example, instead of having the right thigh get very large, that liter of fat is going to be evenly distributed in most cases. And the other thing that kind of prevents this from being a major aesthetic problem is that while a liter of fat may seem like a large volume, the body has a very large surface area over which to distribute that volume. So the body does a really good job of hiding the fat that we remove with liposuction, and that allows the body to maintain its weight as constant. So if we remove a liter of fat from the abdomen that weighs about two pounds, the body's going to redistribute those two pounds evenly throughout itself.

[05:28] in most cases. Now, there are some people that will preferentially gain weight in certain areas, and sometimes this can happen after liposuction. But in my practice, in my clinical experience, I haven't really seen this to be a clinically significant issue. And I think that's because, for one thing, fat distribution does tend to be fairly even, and for another, the volume of fat that we're removing of liposuction is relatively small compared to the overall volume of fat and surface area of the body. So it's pretty easy for it to be evenly redistributed without causing a noticeable change in the appearance of other body areas. So that's what happens if you have liposuction and maintain your diet and exercise regimen. A very common question that we get asked by our patients is, if I have liposuction and I gain a lot of weight, is that going to ruin the results? And the answer here is if we perform liposuction on a given area, in this case, let's say the flanks or waste, we have permanently removed about 75% of the fat cells in that area. So now, knowing what we know about how fat metabolism works, the body is going to redistribute the fat that used to be stored in those fat cells elsewhere in the body.

[06:49] If someone goes on a Twinkie diet and gains a large amount of weight after a liposuction procedure, they're going to have to store their excess lipids somewhere. And they're going to more or less try to distribute those lipids evenly throughout the fat cells in their body. However, now since there are a lot fewer fat cells in their waist flanks or love handles, they're simply not going to be able to store as much fat there. So that individual after having liposuction of the love handles or flanks if they gain a lot of weight they're going to gain a lot of weight everywhere including where they had a liposuction procedure but it's going to be a lot less noticeable in the area that they had treated with liposuction because there are simply fewer fat cells there to expand to store the excess lipids so again to answer the question will you lose weight by having liposuction the answer is no and it really is quite important that you're fairly close to your goal weight when you're having a liposuction procedure. And the reason for that is we want to perform liposuction when your body and the shape of your body, the contour of your body is in more or less a steady state. We don't want to be designing a liposuction procedure at a moving target. You can imagine that if we're looking at your proportions and deciding how much fat to remove to provide a great outcome, If we perform that procedure and then you lose or gain a significant amount of weight, it is going to change your body's proportions and therefore the aesthetic outcome of the procedure that we've performed. Similarly, in the case of weight loss after liposuction, we've spoken in previous episodes about the question, will I have loose skin after liposuction?

[08:35] And part of the way we make sure your skin isn't loose after liposuction is we assess your skin quality, make sure you don't have too much skin laxity, and we judge how much fat we can remove without causing your skin to become loose or become lax. So if we perform that amount of liposuction, we remove a volume of fat that we judge to be okay without causing excess skin, and then a significant amount of weight is lost after your liposuction procedure, you could see why that might cause excess unplanned for skin laxity. And I did mention that in general it's as good to be as close to your goal weight as possible for a liposuction procedure. However, in some cases liposuction can be very useful and inspiring to people that are looking to lose weight. Some people need a little bit of a jump start and if they could see a certain area of their body significantly change shape with liposuction, they might be inspired to go to the gym and go on a good diet plan and lose the weight. But this is not to say that liposuction is a weight loss procedure. It's definitely not liposuction is a shape change procedure. So if you're a little bit above your goal weight and you think that seeing a significant change in a certain area would kind of spur you on to get into a good fit.

[09:56] this plan, then liposuction might be a good option for you, even if you're not exactly at your goal weight yet. But liposuction is something you really shouldn't be doing until you're within, I'd say, five to 10 pounds of your goal weight. But if you're five to 10 pounds out and you feel like you could use a little motivation, liposuction can be inspiring and kind of spur you on the right path. but this is kind of a careful balance and it's a decision to be made in consultation with a board-certified plastic surgeon that specializes in body contouring so you can have a good sense of what results you can expect and how the additional weight loss that you're planning will affect the results of your procedure. So if liposuction is not a weight change procedure then who is a good candidate for liposuction? We have a recent episode dedicated to exactly that question but in short The best candidates for liposuction are at or very near their goal weight, and they're looking to achieve an improvement in contour of specific areas of their body. So while liposuction is not a weight change procedure, it's a shape change procedure, and these are changes that you'll see in the mirror, not on the scale. It is an extremely powerful procedure.

[11:08] for good candidates and we hope this kind of clarifies some common questions about liposuction and helps you on your journey to get the great aesthetic results that you're looking for.

Original Captivate episode. Original release date: 2020-08-04. The recording is the source for the transcript and episode discussion. Later context in the written summary is identified separately.

• Liposuction and candidacy
• Stomach liposuction
• Request a consultation with Dr. Smith
• Related episode: Am I a Good Candidate for Liposuction?
• Related episode: What Parts of My Body Can I Liposuction? Can we do all of it?!
• Dr. Smith’s background and training