Maybe you inherited your grandmother’s wild curls, or your father’s shoulders, or your mother’s jawline. No matter how you feel about your genetics, there’s only so much you can do to change them permanently without surgery—except when it comes to fat cells. All of us are born with a certain number of fat cells in very specific areas, but through CoolSculpting, you can eliminate them naturally.

“We have a set number of fat cells in our body, and that number is set at adolescence,” says Brittney Morris, OrangeTwist’s regional director. “We often have similar shape bulges as our family members or different shape problem areas as our family members. Whether you gain weight or you lose weight, that shape maintains. It’s a permanent contouring treatment.”

To date, OrangeTwist has performed more than 50,000+ CoolSculpting treatments—more than anyone else. You could say we’re the experts. Morris breaks down everything you need to know.

Question: Who is a good candidate for CoolSculpting?

Brittney Morris: The ideal CoolSculpting candidates are clients that are within 15 to 30 pounds of their ideal weight. They have distinct pockets or bulges that are out of proportion compared to the rest of their body. Those pockets of fat are typically resistant to diet and exercise. Even if a client were to lose weight, they would still have distinguishable bulges. Those are the areas that respond best to CoolSculpting—those little pockets of fat that are out of proportion.

Q: Are we talking about a muffin top, or fat on your arms, or things like that?

BM: Yes. CoolSculpting can reduce fat on the neck, the arms, the abdomen, the back, bra bulges, inner thighs, outer thighs—anywhere you have a stubborn bulge that’s pretty much resistant to diet and exercise, or you just want to reduce it in size.

Q: How do you prepare for your treatment? Is there anything special you should do leading up to it?

BM: There’s no special preparation for CoolSculpting. It’s completely non-invasive. There’s no downtime. There’s no change to your everyday activities. The only planning you need to do is to figure out when you want to get to your results. It takes anywhere from three to four weeks to start to show and up to 12 weeks for your final results. If you’re planning for a special event, you definitely want to do CoolSculpting at least two months before that event, in order to have the best results by then.

Q: What happens during the CoolSculpting treatment?

BM: We’re actually extracting heat out of the fat cells. If you take enough heat out of the fat cells, there’s no heat to conduct energy in the cell. If you don’t have energy in a cell, then there’s no life in a cell. We freeze that fat cell to temperature it can’t withstand anymore, and it breaks down, and it dies naturally. Any time you have a dead cell in your body, your body sends a little smoke signal to your immune system. Your immune system says, “We need to get rid of these dead cells.” They leave through your lymph system and your digestive system, and you excrete them out through urine, sweat, and waste over the course of three to 12 weeks’ time. You don’t even realize what’s happening. It’s just over time you’re getting a reduction in the fat layer, little by little. Your skin is tightening at the same time, which is amazing. There’s no downtime and no fatigue after. You go about your day as nothing happened. 

Q: Is there anything special you should do afterward?

BM: The best thing you can do after the treatment is to maintain a healthy lifestyle, including a healthy diet and exercise regimen, and increase your water intake. Alkaline water or water with a slice of lemon or lime can help expedite the lymphatic drainage and improve the elimination process of the fat cell. It can help your body flush out those cells a little bit faster.

Recently, we added the latest technology in the aesthetic and fitness arena–CoolTone, by CoolSculpting.  It’s a non-invasive, pain-free way of building and sculpting muscle tone in minutes through Magnetic Muscle Stimulation. In just a single 30 to 60-minute treatment, you can start to tone and tighten areas on the body such as your buttocks, thighs and of course, abdomen. The sky is the limit with the number of treatments and results you can achieve! There’s no downtime and you can return to daily activities immediately after.

Q: What are some common mistakes people make around CoolSculpting?

BM: I would say sometimes clients will use CoolSculpting as a crutch to eat more or just to completely stop exercising. Although CoolSculpting will work and eliminate fat on any area we use it on, if you continue to overeat and you’re not exercising, the fat cells that are left on your body can still get bigger in size. It doesn’t mean you need to lose weight, but if you do gain a considerable amount of weight after CoolSculpting, you’re not going to be as happy with the outcome, because the rest of the fat cells in your body can get bigger. For optimal results and satisfaction, we recommend that you maintain a healthy lifestyle.