u/LEROSE_Clinic

If you're naturally thin and don't want filler in your body, but you're after a curvier line, what would you do?
Fat grafting is the natural route, but a lot of people talk themselves out of even booking a consult because they assume there's not enough fat to work with.

If that's you, this post might change your mind.

Looking at the before photos, this isn't someone with a lot of body fat. No area really stands out as having extra volume to spare. From the front, the waist runs straight down into the hip with no curve at all. From the back, the waist to thigh line is flat the whole way down, no shape to it.

The after photos look completely different.

The waist flares out into the hip naturally, and from the back there's real volume and lift in the glutes. The lower body silhouette went from a straight line to an actual curve, and this was done entirely with her own fat. No implants.

So where did the fat actually come from?

Even on a thin frame, fat is never distributed perfectly evenly. Inner thighs, lower abdomen, lower back, these areas might each look like nothing on their own, but when you harvest carefully from several small spots, it adds up to enough to reshape the silhouette. The real factor isn't how much fat there is, it's where it goes and how precisely it's placed.

That said, if someone is at true essential fat levels, there just isn't enough to harvest, and grafting becomes difficult. That's something we assess in consultation by feel and by checking fat thickness directly. This isn't a blanket "yes, this always works for thin people" claim.

So instead of ruling it out yourself because you're slim, it's worth getting it checked in person and letting that determine whether it's possible.

One thing worth knowing: smaller graft volumes actually allow for more precision. You can control exactly how much goes where, down to very specific placement. That's why the result doesn't look added on, it looks like the body was always shaped this way.

The after photos also aren't the final result yet. Grafted fat cells settle in over several months, and the shape becomes more refined as that happens. What you're seeing now isn't as sharp as the final outcome will be.

The attached photos have certain areas masked to protect patient privacy. Nothing else has been edited or retouched.

Has anyone here written off fat grafting because you assumed you didn't have enough fat to spare? Curious if a consult ever changed your mind on that.

Most people who look into liposuction for their arms have already spent a long time trying to fix the problem themselves. Months or years of working out consistently, eating well, losing weight in other places, and watching that one specific area just stay exactly the same. At some point the question stops being "Am I doing enough ?" and starts being "Is there actually something different about this area ?" and the reality is, they is.

The fat cells in the upper arm and bra line area have a much higher concentration of estrogen receptors than most other parts of the body. In simple terms,this means these areas are directly influenced by hormones, rather than simply responding to calorie expenditure or a strict diet.

This is why arm liposuction can be particularly effective for women. Instead of reducing fat cells through calorie expenditure, it directly removes the fat cells themselves, making it one of the fastest ways to achieve a noticeable change.

In this case liposuction was performed across the arms, bra line, waist, and abdomen all together. The bra line isn't just limited to the back. It wraps around the torso in a continuous contour, so excess volume in this area can make your entire silhouette look broader, not just from the front but from the side as well. That's why multiple areas were treated together. Addressing only one area can leave the body looking unbalanced, while treating them together creates a smoother, more natural-looking body contour.

These after photos are from one month post-op. The patient is wearing post-surgical recovery wear, which is completely standard at this stage; that's why the lower half looks different from the before photos. There is still some swelling present, and the final shape will keep settling over the next few months. Even so, the difference in the side profile is already clear. The waist has an inward curve that wasn't there before, the abdomen sits flat, and the whole silhouette reads differently.

Standard privacy masking has been applied to these images, but nothing has been retouched or altered beyond that.

Has anyone here spent a long time assuming this was just an effort problem before finding out it might not have been?

You get one area treated, recover, and then a few months later something else starts bothering you. Not because the procedure failed. But because the body is a proportional system and changing one part of it shifts where your eye goes next.

It's pretty straightforward when you think about it. The waist gets slimmer but the thighs stay the same, and suddenly the thighs become the thing you notice every time you look in the mirror. Nothing about them actually changed.The surrounding proportions did. That contrast can make them feel much more noticeable, which is why many people start considering a second procedure.

This case is a good example of what happens when the whole picture gets addressed from the start instead. The areas treated here were the abdomen, waist, arms, bra line, thighs, pelvis, hip dips, and buttocks, all in one procedure. Areas with excess volume were sculpted through liposuction, while the buttocks were enhanced with stem cell-enriched fat grafting to add volume where it was needed.

The stem cell part is worth explaining because most people don't know what it actually changes. When fat is harvested for grafting, a portion of those fat cells don't survive the transfer and get reabsorbed over time. The stem cell kit processes the harvested fat to concentrate the regenerative cells within it, which are then mixed back into the graft before placement. Those cells support the survival and integration of the transplanted fat, meaning more of the grafted volume actually takes and holds long term rather than gradually disappearing. It's not standard in every fat grafting procedure and it makes a real difference in how stable the result ends up being.

Looking at the before photos, the fullness is distributed fairly evenly across the whole body rather than concentrated in one obvious place. The waist doesn't narrow much relative to the hips so the torso reads as one straight block from the front. From the back there's very little curve between the waist and hip, and the buttock sits fairly flat without much projection. The thighs are full enough that there's no real visual separation between them and the lower hip area.

Quick note on the images: the black blocks are privacy masking to protect the patient's identity. Nothing else in these photos has been altered.

The after photos are at two weeks, so swelling is still present and the final shape will look more refined over the next few months. Even so, the shift in overall balance is already clearly visible. There's a defined waist now. The thighs have more separation. From the back the silhouette narrows and then curves outward rather than dropping straight down. And because everything was treated together, nothing looks disproportionate relative to everything around it.

Has anyone here gone back for a second procedure on a completely different area after realising the first result made them more aware of something else?

Anyone who has tried to lose weight can probably relate: the upper arms are one of the most stubborn areas when it comes to diet and exercise.

In fact, many people are relatively slim overall but still feel self-conscious because their arms appear disproportionately large. Since a fuller-looking upper body can make the entire physique seem heavier, it's common for patients to seek treatment specifically for their arms.

The problem is that arm fat doesn't exist in isolation. the fat along the outer shoulder and bra line sits in the same connected compartment. slim down just the arms and everything adjacent to them gets more visible by contrast, not less. it's the reason some people finish recovery, see slimmer arms, and still feel like something looks wrong but can't figure out what. the arms did change. slimming one part of a connected zone just made everything around it more obvious.

Before doing anything else though, it's worth figuring out what you're actually dealing with. pinch the back of your arm or the bra line area. if there's a solid layer that doesn't compress much, that's fat and liposuction addresses it well. if the skin folds and there's not much thickness to grab, the concern is skin laxity rather than fat volume, and liposuction in that case can make things look worse rather than better. this distinction doesn't always come up in consultations but it should, because the approach for each is completely different.

note: the images have been edited to cover the patient's private areas using Photoshop to protect their privacy. the results themselves are unedited.

In this patient's case the fullness was running across all three areas. from the side in the before photos, the shoulder and bra line were adding bulk to the silhouette in a way that made the whole upper body read heavier than it was. the after photos show what changes when everything is treated as one connected shape. the arms are slimmer, the shoulder line is cleaner, the bra line has flattened out, and the side profile looks different because every part of it was addressed, not just the most visible one.
By addressing the entire area rather than just the most obvious concern, the overall side silhouette became smoother and more balanced, creating a result that looks natural and in harmony with the patient's body proportions.

Has anyone here been told their arms weren't a good candidate for liposuction because of muscle?

Ok so this comes up in pretty much every consultation, so let's just settle it: you cannot exercise your way out of hip dips.

The actual term is trochanteric depression, and it's caused by how the pelvis is shaped and exactly where the femur connects to the hip bone. There's simply no soft tissue in that spot to begin with, between skin and bone. So no matter how much fat you lose, how much glute muscle you build, every lateral lunge and side-lying leg raise you find on instagram, the dip stays exactly where it was. There was never volume there to lose or gain in the first place.

This patient was already slim, which is the first thing worth noting in the before photos. This wasn't about weight loss or fat redistribution. Her concern was purely the silhouette. From the back, her shape went straight up and down with no curve between waist and hip, and almost no projection.

Three things were addressed together in this case: hip dip correction, pelvis contouring, and buttock fat grafting. They weren't treated as separate problems. Fill in the hip dips alone and ignore overall projection, and the result looks patchy instead of proportional. The waist, hip, and buttock had to be planned as one connected shape, not three individual fixes.

Results like this also take time to settle. There's some swelling in the first few weeks after fat grafting, and the grafted fat needs time to take before the final shape shows. What's in these after photos is past that settling period, which is part of why the proportions read as natural instead of fresh out of surgery.

The change itself isn't the kind that jumps out immediately, and that's actually the point. From the front, the hip line now has a gentle outward curve where before it dropped straight down from the waist.

From the back, the most noticeable shift is in the outer hip just below the waist, right where the dip used to be. That indent is filled in now and sits flush with the rest of the hip. The buttock has more projection and a rounder shape compared to the flat, almost concave look in the before photos. The waist even reads as narrower, even though nothing was done to it directly, simply because the added volume on either side of it creates a contrast that wasn't there before.

It ends up looking less like surgery and more like a body that was always shaped this way.

If you've got hip dips, were you ever told it was something you could eventually train away? curious how common that advice actually is.

We’ve been wanting to share this case for a while, and we've finally put it together.

When this patient first came in, her concern was relatively simple. For women, no matter how much they exercise, certain areas just won’t budge; the upper arms, the bra line, the stomach…

It’s not that they’re overweight, or have poor eating habits like eating only fast food, or don’t exercise; it’s just that these specific areas refuse to change.

However, this is where her case became interesting. While fat was concentrated in her upper body, her hips had almost no natural volume, and her thick waist made them appear relatively flatter, resulting in an awkward overall silhouette.

So, instead of simply removing the fat, we decided to make the most of it.

We performed liposuction on her arms, bra line, and entire abdomen (upper and lower), carefully extracted the fat, and meticulously transplanted it in layers to her hips without using implants or other foreign materials.

The most critical factor in fat grafting is the survival rate of the transplanted fat. If the transplanted cells fail to connect with the surrounding blood vessels, the survival rate decreases. Therefore, it is important to inject the fat in thin layers rather than all at once, and to avoid applying pressure to the graft site until the fat has successfully engrafted.

Residual swelling may persist for up to three months post-surgery, and the extent of fat survival can only be assessed after that period.

The recovery itself is not as difficult as one might expect. Light daily activities are possible starting the very next day, provided you take care to avoid putting pressure on the transplanted area.

If you have any questions about suitability for the procedure or the recovery process, please feel free to leave a comment at any time.