Liposuction: Why I Did It
This post is part of our Encyclopedia of Grooming: 2015 Edition.
Click here to view the entire guide.
I used to be fat. That Freshman 15 I put on in University managed to become 50 over the course of my early 20s. In five short years I’d gone from looking like a young, lean Gary Busey to looking like, well, Gary Busey. The further my navel got from my spine, the closer I got to a lifetime of bowling shirts and pants with elastic waistbands. I wasn’t even the fun kind of fat like a Kevin James or a John Goodman. I was miserable and looked it.
Fortunately, learning proper diet and exercise and the shock of hitting 30 changed things for me. I managed to drop 50 pounds. I got into decent shape. I even managed to keep the weight off for another 10 years before a few pounds here and there found their way back onto my frame. Turns out that carbs can add weight to your body, but so can marriage, kids, and middle age. By the time my 40th birthday rolled around, I was sporting a Dad Bod despite a decent diet and four days (or more) per week at the gym. The muscle was there, but so was the persistent layer of flab.
Like most men, I simply figured there was nothing I could do about it. I was perfectly healthy, my doctor told me, but that spare tire was simply part of being in my 40s. I didn’t have the metabolism of a 20 year-old anymore and likely wasn’t going to have the body of one anymore, either.
Then I went under the knife.
Everyone’s heard about liposuction. I thought I knew all about it, too: for the price of a timeshare in Florida, some doctor sticks a rod into you and sucks your fat into a bag, leaving you as lean and svelte as a trophy wife. But there’s more to it than that. What I learned over the next six months is that liposuction is a quick procedure, but a very long process. In fact, it’s one I’m still experiencing every day, even as you read this. It’s invasive, painful, complicated — and, damn it, totally worth it.
It’s invasive, painful, complicated — and, damn it, totally worth it.
People constantly ask me why I decided to do it. There were many reasons I gave for weeks afterward, ranging from my never-ending vanity to the fact that I work in showbiz and feel middle age creeping into my career faster than I’d like. After several months of thought, however, I realize that I did it for the same reason anyone gets voluntary plastic surgery: I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. I felt insecure and depressed and like I’d never regain the nice shape I worked so hard to achieve years before.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make, either. This isn’t a few injections of Botox into the forehead; it’s invasive surgery that involves months of recovery. I also had virtually no one to ask about it. “Men get plastic surgery all the time,” says Dr. Peter Bray of Elements Wellness and Medispa, one of the top plastic surgeons in Toronto and the guy I trusted to reshape my torso. “They just don’t talk about it. Women get breast implants and can’t wait to tell people about it.”
Liposuction involves thin tubes (cannula) being inserted through tiny cuts in the skin. I had six incisions (three in the front, three in the back) from which over two litres of fat was suctioned out. That sounds incredible, of course, but it doesn’t translate to a huge difference on the scale. In the end, I wound up only about five pounds lighter than I was going in, but that was never the point. The idea is to suck the fat out of the right places, reshape the area, and get closer to that “V” shape that we all crave.
I had the work done right there at the Elements Medispa, no hospital required. I was there in the morning and home by dinnertime. That doesn’t mean it was like a visit to the dentist. Not unless your dentist straps you to a rotating table and knocks you out with morphine for about four hours. As comfortable as the Elements surgery room looks walking in, you’re made very aware that you’re about to have surgery when you see all the equipment, IV machines, and staff standing around in scrubs.
I slept through my surgery, thanks to excellent anesthesia, waking up hours later with a list of rules to obey for the next few days, weeks, and months. The pain doesn’t kick in for a good 24 hours and then — thanks to prescribed meds — really just feels like an intense sunburn. I had the surgery done on a Friday and was back at the office the following Tuesday, sore but completely functional. The only evidence that anything was amiss was the compression suit I was wearing underneath my clothes; a suit I had to wear for the next six weeks. It almost feels like being a superhero, hiding his skin-tight costume from the rest of the world. Imagine Aquaman with a hole cut into the crotch in his outfit so he can relieve himself.
From there, it’s a lot more waiting and witnessing. Your body changes drastically in a matter of hours, then continues to do so for the next few months. The first time I took off my compression suit—a couple of days after the surgery—I was in shock by what I saw in the mirror. The skinny guy I used to know was there, albeit wounded and bandaged and bruised. The skin was tight, as if I had aged in reverse, and a strange numbness covered the entire treated area. Besides a tingling sensation, I couldn’t feel anything when I touched the skin where my love handles used to be. Little did I know, that was only the beginning and the swelling was yet to kick in. A few days later, I was a marshmallow as the treated area inflamed, pushing at the seams of the compression suit and causing me to look and feel bloated. This routine repeated every few days for nearly two months.
The biggest hurdle to overcome is impatience. There’s the desire to see the final results right away, and what you see in the mirror changes from week to week. Oddly enough, you tend to look better at week three than you do at week eight. Some doctors suggest you don’t even look in the mirror for at least four months. By month three, however, my suit jackets were loose where they once had been snug and my belt had moved a few notches.
For a while, it remained a dirty little secret. But after hearing about this entire experience, the people I shared it with — men and women — all wanted to know the same thing: Would I do it again?
Absolutely.
I look at myself in the mirror with a confidence that had long been gone and feel my clothes fitting the way I remember they used to.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a license to eat pizza and drink beer every day. Liposuction isn’t a miracle cure for obesity, nor is it even recommended for weight loss. It’s body sculpting. The best candidates are people already within 10 to 15 pounds from their ideal weight, and you have to maintain a healthy lifestyle to continue seeing the results. All that fat sucked off my abs won’t do any good if I fill out the belly underneath it, so I’m still at the gym several days per week. The difference is that now I can focus on staying in shape without being depressed about the parts of me that weren’t responding to my efforts before.
I feel a thousand times better about my appearance these days. I look at myself in the mirror with a confidence that had long been gone and feel my clothes fitting the way I remember they used to. My wife, at first skeptical, has noticed my improved attitude. She’s glad I’m no longer obsessing over the love handles I cursed every day in the mirror.
“Some men are afraid they’ll look like they took the easy way out,” Dr. Bray tells me when we’re taking the “After” photos four months post-surgery, “as if they cheated, somehow, in terms of getting into shape.”
That’s exactly the feeling expressed to me by several of my friends who admitted they were considering having liposuction themselves. What I tell them is that — six months after having it done — I feel like I saved myself decades of insecurity and self-consciousness. The last thing I feel is like I somehow cheated myself thin. If I did, I would just be like tens of thousands of other men and keep my mouth shut. Or I’d say that I’ve been hitting the gym more often.
