Shortcut to a Six pack?

I have had several people call our office and ask if we do abdominal etching.  For those of you who have never heard of it, abdominal etching is a relatively new trend in liposuction.  Today I’m going to explain what abdominal etching is, and why I don’t perform it.

Traditional liposuction removes fat.  Despite this fact, liposuction is not a weight-loss method: removing more than about 10lbs of fat causes fluid shifts throughout the body, and this requires an overnight stay in the hospital for monitoring, as the excess fluids can cause difficulty breathing.   Even though the amount of fat that can be removed is relatively small, liposuction works very well if you are at or near your goal weight, and have stubborn areas such as the lower tummy or lateral thighs (saddle-bags) where fat may persist.

Abdominal etching is a different concept entirely.  In addition to simply removing fat, the remaining fat is sculpted to give the appearance of underlying muscles.  If you have a beer belly, it is literally carved into a six-pack.  It sounds great in theory, but I find carving fat into fake muscles looks… fake.  In addition, skin tends to sag as we age, and a saggy artificial six-pack looks even worse.  Unfortunately there is no short cut to great looking abs.