5 Easy Tips to Keep off Fat and Maintain Results After Liposuction

Having liposuction gave you the fat-removing, slimming results you desired. But now, how do you keep your belly flat and your arms looking slim and fit without putting the flab back on? At NuBody Concepts Nashville and NuBody Concepts Memphis, our board-certified plastic surgeons have performed thousands of liposuction procedures for many years with excellent results.

Below our cosmetic surgery team has outlined five tips to stay slim, firm, and maintain results after liposuction. And make sure you read till the end for our bonus tip on how to achieve even better liposuction results!

How to Keep Weight Off

1. Drink Water

Increasing the amount of water you drink can help you keep your weight stable – or even lose weight. For the best outcome, it is recommended to drink up to 64 ounces of water per day to lose weight and to maintain weight loss. Drinking water helps a person lose weight by:

  • Helping the body burn more calories via a resting energy expenditure of calories. Adults tend to lose between 24 and 30 percent more weight after drinking cold water.
  • Reducing body size. Not only does drinking water help you lose weight, but it also reduces a person’s body mass index (BMI), waist size and body fat. So if you had liposuction performed to remove body fat, drinking water can keep that body fat off.
  • Drinking water just before meals; this helps a person feel fuller and reduces appetite, especially in adults aged 40 and older.
  • Choosing to drink water rather than other caloric drinks; this helps maintain your figure and keep weight off.

2. Follow a Regular Exercise Regimen

Surprisingly, this is not so difficult. While the promise of a slimmer figure is often not enough motivation to try to achieve it with diet and exercise, the reality of a slimmer figure that you can admire every day is a different story. It’s a powerful motivator that will make you look forward to the exercise you’ve dreaded before.

Liposuction before and after of NuBody Concepts patient
NuBody Concepts patient before and after liposuction. Visit our Liposuction Gallery.*

Also, most people who decide to have liposuction choose to do so because they have already lost weight but are still saddled with pockets of stubborn belly fat. These hard-working individuals most likely already know how important exercising is as a way to lose weight and keeping it off.

It only takes about one to two weeks after surgery to fully exercise again. The sooner you establish a regular exercise routine, the easier it will be to ensure the best liposuction results. Just be sure to follow your cosmetic surgeon’s advice on what exercise is permissible at what time.

Aerobic Exercises

Your plastic surgeon will most likely recommend that you get up and start moving within forty-eight hours of your procedure. You will need to listen to your body’s hints as to when you’ve had enough exercise in the first three weeks after the procedure. You shouldn’t return to more strenuous types of exercise such as aerobics and running until about two weeks after surgery (and again, please listen to the specific directions given by your plastic surgeon). You’ll need to start off slowly and gradually regain your strength to maintain results after liposuction.

Resistance Exercises

During the second week after liposuction, most plastic surgeons allow their patients to begin resistance training. Initially, you’ll need to avoid exercising the surgical area. But once the area of the surgery is back to normal, you may begin exercising your abs or underarms, starting slowly and gradually increasing your amount of effort. A rubber band and small weights are great tools to get into the habit of regular resistance exercises that don’t take much of your time.

3. Avoid a Sedentary Lifestyle

In addition to aerobic and spot exercises, you should increase your general level of activity to keep yourself active and in good overall physical condition. Sitting too much hampers your health and may cause you to sag in areas that you’d like to keep flat.

Here are some ideas on how to beat back a sedentary lifestyle:

  • Stand up and move your legs about every 20 to 30 minutes, even if it is only for a short amount of time. Walk around your office, and up and down hallways. Most smart watches have reminders and/or exercise rings that help you keep on track.
  • Stand up to work. Get a standing desk.
  • Stand up for phone calls.
  • Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
  • Get up and do something during TV commercials. It’s a great time to do the resistance exercises mentioned above.
  • Limit TV viewing and time spent recreationally using the computer.

Don’t be a couch potato. It doesn’t take all that much to get up and move to keep looking great after liposuction.

4. Make Healthy Diet Choices

Your liposuction smoothed out the bulging areas of your body. Now is not the time to revert to bad eating habits and put the bulges back on! One way to keep extra fat off is to eat a healthy diet that is low in fat, sugar, and processed food. The great news is, fat cells removed during liposuction won’t return. But if you eat a high calorie, high-fat diet, you’ll gain new fat cells in all the wrong places and put on new weight. For a healthy diet, choose low-fat, lean foods full of protein, vegetables, fruit, and low-fat meat with visible fat removed. Make sure you have plenty of fiber in your diet, and focus on cooking methods like broiling, boiling, and baking instead of frying or using a lot of butter.

If you select healthy foods, your liposuction results will be surprisingly easy to maintain.

5. Reduce Stress

Stress remains one of the main causes of weight gain. This means that to avoid weight gain, you’ll need to learn to relax.

Stress raises levels of cortisol in a person’s system, which in turn creates a craving for all kinds of unhealthy foods. Some studies even suggest that raised cortisol levels reduce the number of calories burned by the body. This reduction may be caused by the junk food eaten during stressful periods causing higher levels of insulin. Higher levels of insulin cause increased fat storage, which you want to avoid if you have had liposuction.

Here are a few suggestions to keep from gaining weight after liposuction and reduce your stress levels.

One important way to keep from being stressed and help you lose or maintain weight is to strive for a consistent daily routine. Here are some additional stress reduction tips:

  • Have a consistent, predictable daily routine
  • Stay positive
  • Explore your spiritual side
  • Take some time each day to mediate, i.e. visualize a calm scene and be aware of your breath
  • Make a habit of taking a soaking bath or sitting in a hot tub
  • Be grateful for the good things in your life

Wait… There is More!

And now for the promised bonus tip on how to achieve even better liposuction.

Liposuction is a fat removal procedure. It does a great job at contouring your body by removing unsightly and stubborn pockets of fat. But it doesn’t do much for the look of your skin after the fat is removed. In fact, your skin can look worse than it did before liposuction. If you picture a balloon left over from the party two weeks ago, you will know exactly what we mean. Yes it will have shrunk and look slimmer, but it will also look wrinkly because the extra skin has no place to go.

The solution: Adding skin tightening such as Renuvion or BodyTite to your liposuction procedure. It’s minimally-invasive just like liposuction, doesn’t add that much extra procedure time as it piggy-backs on the anesthesia and small incisions for the tiny cannula already in place, and its results are designed keep improving over the course of 6-12 months!

NuBody Concepts Nashville Renuvion skin tightening patient 3 months after procedure
NuBody Concepts Nashville patient who had Skin tightening with Renuvion*
Patient with cellulite on thighs before and after BodyTite treatment at NuBody Concepts
NuBody Concepts Memphis patient after Skin tightening with BodyTite to address the appearance of cellulite*

We hope that our five simple steps will help you maintain the slimmed-down look you wanted when you got liposuction. Drink water, exercise, keep moving, make healthy food choices, and reduce stress in your life. Not only are these five steps a good idea for optimal health, but they keep fat off, too, and help you maintain your awesome liposuction look.

And if you haven’t had skin tightening yet, we can help! Simply click the pink button to schedule a consultation today!

* Results may vary from patient to patient and are not guaranteed


Each patient is unique. What your treatment will look like is determined by you and the plastic surgeon who you will meet with in a personal consultation.