cool sculpting

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Trish1c
Trish1c Posts: 549 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Does anybody know anything about this? It's supposed to freeze the fat to make it easier to lose, especially belly fat. I assume it's a scam but I can't find much about it from the FDA the AMA or some other legitimate source. Mostly all I find are advertisements.

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  • _Waffle_
    _Waffle_ Posts: 13,049 Member
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    Trish1c wrote: »
    Does anybody know anything about this? It's supposed to freeze the fat to make it easier to lose, especially belly fat. I assume it's a scam but I can't find much about it from the FDA the AMA or some other legitimate source. Mostly all I find are advertisements.

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  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    I have read some research showing that there is some improvement with it. However, it was something like up to a 25% improvement on fairly small areas, not 25% of your body's body fat reserves going away or even 25% of your whole stomach.
  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,641 Member
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    It's not so much a scam, but too much risk of bad results or no results at all for the amount of money you pay.
  • Bxqtie116
    Bxqtie116 Posts: 552 Member
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    Cool sculpting is an alternative to liposuction without anesthesia. It freezes the fat in a particular area and they say the fat doesn't return to that area. However, if you were to gain weight again, the fat can return to other areas of your body.
  • rankinsect
    rankinsect Posts: 2,238 Member
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    It's not a scam, but it also won't help you lose any weight.

    What it does - and it does work for this - is change where the weight is distributed in your body. So, for example, if you have this done on your stomach, you will lose stomach fat, but it will move to your arms, legs, chest, back, etc. Normally the distribution of fat in your body is genetic, but this lets you alter that to a degree by selectively killing some fat cells, which redistributes their contents to other (still living) fat cells elsewhere.

    Weight loss is still about calories, but this can be useful if you want to maintain the same weight but carry it differently. It's best used if you're already fairly lean, as apparently on larger deposits of fat it can be uneven or lumpy.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    rankinsect wrote: »
    It's not a scam, but it also won't help you lose any weight.

    What it does - and it does work for this - is change where the weight is distributed in your body. So, for example, if you have this done on your stomach, you will lose stomach fat, but it will move to your arms, legs, chest, back, etc. Normally the distribution of fat in your body is genetic, but this lets you alter that to a degree by selectively killing some fat cells, which redistributes their contents to other (still living) fat cells elsewhere.

    Weight loss is still about calories, but this can be useful if you want to maintain the same weight but carry it differently. It's best used if you're already fairly lean, as apparently on larger deposits of fat it can be uneven or lumpy.

    That is interesting. It sounds like it's really a crapshoot as far as where the contents go. So you could get your stomach zapped and then end up with a chubby face or upper arms or ankles.
  • AllSpiceNice
    AllSpiceNice Posts: 120 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    rankinsect wrote: »
    It's not a scam, but it also won't help you lose any weight.

    What it does - and it does work for this - is change where the weight is distributed in your body. So, for example, if you have this done on your stomach, you will lose stomach fat, but it will move to your arms, legs, chest, back, etc. Normally the distribution of fat in your body is genetic, but this lets you alter that to a degree by selectively killing some fat cells, which redistributes their contents to other (still living) fat cells elsewhere.

    Weight loss is still about calories, but this can be useful if you want to maintain the same weight but carry it differently. It's best used if you're already fairly lean, as apparently on larger deposits of fat it can be uneven or lumpy.

    That is interesting. It sounds like it's really a crapshoot as far as where the contents go. So you could get your stomach zapped and then end up with a chubby face or upper arms or ankles.


    The fat that is treated with the cool sculpt procedure is killed and eliminated from the body through normal excretion process. It doesn't redistribute.

    However, if you then go into a calorie surplus and gain weight, the new fat will accumulate in the remaining fat cells that weren't treated. So get your tummy zapped, and when you gain new weight you keep the smaller tummy but the new fat shows up somewhere else on your body.

    I haven't had it done myself, but I did investigate the procedure and got this info from a reputable Doctor.
  • rankinsect
    rankinsect Posts: 2,238 Member
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    AllSpiceNice wrote: »
    The fat that is treated with the cool sculpt procedure is killed and eliminated from the body through normal excretion process. It doesn't redistribute.

    Well, that's somewhat misleading. The fat isn't directly excreted. What they mean when they say the body "processes it normally and eliminates it" is that the fat that was in the cells enters the bloodstream, and is burned as fuel, just like other fatty acids in the blood. It won't produce any net weight loss on its own, because CICO still applies - in order to get your body to metabolize that fat, you must burn the calories. Eventually the fat is burned as fuel and excreted as CO2 and H2O.

    The long and short of it is that if you eat at maintenance and have this procedure done, you won't have any net weight loss, and since you'll lose fat in some areas, you must therefore gain in others.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
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    It is a scam because their promise is to "get rid of the stubborn fat that you can't get rid of through diet and exercise."
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    edited August 2016
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    It's also not accurate that this is intended for larger areas like the stomach. The purpose of this is to be a less invasive alternative to lipo that can be used on smaller areas such as the chin when overall weight loss isn't a goal (say you've reached your goal weight but still have a little more fat on your chin than you'd like).

    And yes, while the fat in the treated area will be processed normally by the body, processing that fat will lead to an excess of calories so that the calories you eat will be stored as fat elsewhere (assuming a maintenance diet).
  • AllSpiceNice
    AllSpiceNice Posts: 120 Member
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    Perhaps - I'm not a medical expert. But that's not how it was presented by a doctor that I trust. Do you have sources you can reference?

    I do appreciate the alternate point of view...time for me to do more research and see if I can find some reputable sources to back my doctor's info.
  • rainbowbow
    rainbowbow Posts: 7,490 Member
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    check out realself.com for reviews of all sorts of cosmetic procedures and info about treatments,

    https://www.realself.com/coolsculpting-by-zeltiq
  • AllSpiceNice
    AllSpiceNice Posts: 120 Member
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    rainbowbow wrote: »
    check out realself.com for reviews of all sorts of cosmetic procedures and info about treatments,

    https://www.realself.com/coolsculpting-by-zeltiq

    Thank you!

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