Ah, who hasn’t dreamed of fat magically taken away overnight? It seems so easy. However, liposuction carries the unwanted side-effect of making other parts of a patient’s  body fatter, a study published in Obesity Journal  has found. The study involved 32 non-obese and healthy women of average weight and in their mid-30s.

Those who had fat reduced from their thighs found that after 1 year the thigh region  remained reduced, but fat accumulated in their abdominal region. The researchers concluded that after liposuction, body fat “was restored and redistributed from the thigh to the abdomen”.

Obesity experts suggest that the human body “defends” its fat, and if you try to lose it, it will find a way to bring it back. And the fat does not return to the targeted area because the liposuction destroys the “scaffolding” infrastructure that holds fat in place, so it finds somewhere else to settle.

For the study, 14 of the women were randomly selected to have a modest amount of fat removed by liposuction from their hips and thighs, the remaining 18 acted as ‘controls’ who did not have the procedure. (The controls were offered liposuction after the study completed).

All the measurements were taken again at 6 weeks, 6 months and 12 months afterwards. The women agreed not to make any lifestyle changes, such as change their eating or exercise habits, while they were enrolled on the study. The researchers compared the measurements taken over the 12 months and found that while initially the liposuctioned women had less fat, by the end of the study the difference was no longer statistically significant. The fat reaccumulated differently at various parts of the body.

However, the findings were not regarded negatively by most  of the women involved.The women who underwent liposuction were happy that fat had been removed permanently from their hated hips and thighs, even at the expense of transferring the  fat elsewhere. And more than half in the ‘control’ group still decided to go ahead with their promised procedures!