Sometimes the Fat Comes Back

Losing weight is HARD WORK, but it can be especially frustrating when you GAIN IT BACK (Anne Strieber talks about how to solve this problem in her famous diet book What I Learned from the Fat Years). Lately women who have had lipsuction have discovered that the fat comes back, but in DIFFERENT PLACES.

In the May 1st edition of the New York Times, Gina Kolata writes that "a new study, led by Drs. Teri L. Hernandez and Robert H. Eckel has answered those questions (about regaining fat). And what he found is not good news." Kolata reports that the "fat came back after it was suctioned out. It took a year, but it all returned. But it did not reappear in the women’s thighs." She quotes Eckel as saying that instead, "’It was redistributed upstairs,’ mostly in the upper abdomen, but also around the shoulders and triceps of the arms."

It turns out that our bodies control the number of its fat cells as carefully as it controls the amount of fat. Fat cells die and new ones are born throughout our lives–in fact, fat cell live for only about 7 years. Alas for dieters, every time one dies, another one if formed that takes his place. So why wouldn’t the women who had liposuction in, for instance, their thighs grow new fat cells in the same area? The answer may be because liposuction violently destroys the fishnet structure under the skin where fat cells live. Kolata quotes obesity researcher Rudolph Leibel as saying, "It’s another chapter in the ‘You can’t fool Mother Nature’ story."