There's a widespread misconception that after getting liposuction, you can eat Taco Bell for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and keep the weight off, says Forouzanpour. "But if you�re not watching what you're eating, the fat will come back." Everybody is born with a certain number of fat cells, he explains. And while liposuction removes the fat cells from a certain body part, the fat in the food you eat still has to go somewhere. Where does it go? To the untreated areas of your body first, since there are more fat cells there. That's why you often see unevenness in body fat after lipo, Forouzanpour explains.
The better option: Eat right, exercise, and lipo only if you must
"We won't recommend liposuction if you just want to lose weight," says Forouzanpour. Rather, it's meant to be a "helping device to get you jumpstarted on your process to lose more weight and maintain it," he says. "Liposuction was perfected for people who do all the right stuff, eat the right things, work out, but can't get rid of the stubborn fat in certain areas."
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The quick fix: Fillers
Fillers like Juvederm and Restylane help plump up your lips, get rid of your laugh lines, and fill in your cheekbones. "These are quick fixes," says Forouzanpour. However, you have to make sure that the doctor you're going to is respectable and can guarantee the quality of the injections.
Forouzanpour says that when people try to get fillers on the cheap, there's a good chance of things going wrong. He points to one case where doctors in Florida were injecting animal products from China because they were cheaper, and injected too much -- so much that the client ended up in the hospital. He notes another horror story, where a woman who went to Mexico to get Juvederm fillers "got injected with who knows what and she ended up with scars, lumps, and bumps," he says. "And you can't correct something like that, because we don't know what the injection was."
The better option: Exilis
Forouzanpour recommends a nonsurgical procedure like Exilis, an FDA-approved radio frequency treatment that helps tighten the skin through heat. The collagen in the skin becomes tighter, thereby reducing fine lines and wrinkles. "It's nothing like surgery," he says. "While it doesn't give you the same result, it does give a nice, refreshing look to the skin. And there aren't side effects."
Sure, patience may be a virtue -- but it's an increasingly hard one to value in this age of quick fixes and instant gratification. When we buy something online it can be delivered that day. If we hear a song we like we can immediately download it via iTunes. Hungry? Drive two minutes, pull up at a drive-thru, and pick up a No. 2 with a diet coke.
So when we want to be ourselves, but, say, 20 pounds lighter, hairless in certain areas, and with the wrinkle-less face of a 23-year-old, we're tempted by the option that guarantees the fastest results.
"All of us are looking for a quick fix that'll make us look and feel better," says board-certified cosmetic surgeon Dr. Fardad Forouzanpour of Beverly Hills Cosmetic Surgical Group. "But quick fixes often come with risks."
To make sure you're armed with all the beauty tips you need before you sign on the dotted line, we asked dermatologists, doctors, and beauty experts to fill us in what can go wrong with certain beauty treatments -- and the safer options that'll give you similar results. Here's what they had to say.
