Why are non-invasive body contouring treatments still so hush-hush?

If you don’t wish to go under the knife, body contouring is an option that is slowly gaining traction. Why is it not spoken about more freely though?

Last month, a friend in my pilates class whispered to me that she had figured out the secret. She was still going to follow her thrice-a-week workout and eat well and drink enough water, but she had also just enrolled herself for a four--session Emsculpt Neo regimen. She visited her dermatologist for 30 minutes, and left giving her core a workout that rivaled doing 200,000 sit-ups. “It feels like your abs are being pulverised and then put back together,” she told me, “and then you experience that feels-so-good soreness that comes from a really hard workout.” The machine, she said, used electromagnetic waves to build muscle fibres and reduce fat in the area. “It was the coolest thing I’ve tried,” she confirmed. My interest was definitely piqued—I was down to try anything new and I’d heard a lot about the technology. But what struck me is what she told me as we said our goodbyes at the end of class: “Don’t tell anyone I’m doing this, I want my wedding body to look like it was all natural.”

A week later, I went to Dr Geetika Mittal Gupta’s ISAAC Luxe Clinic to check it out for myself. Emsculpt Neo is new to India, but it has become super popular in the United States, the United Kingdom and across Europe. According to its manufacturers, it is said to build muscle fibres by 16 per cent, thanks to its ability to trigger supramaximal contractions in the muscle, which can improve abdominal tone, strengthen the muscles and therefore improve fat-loss potential in the area. It’s also approved for use on the butt, arms and thighs, so you can tighten, sculpt and slim any area you want. When I asked what the side-effects were, the doctor assured me that it was super safe—it was just like an intense, trumped-up workout. So she put the machine onto my abdomen and kept increasing the intensity level until it reached its max. It kneaded, pounded and drove my muscles into submission, telling them to undergo cellular changes until they got thicker and stronger, indicating the fat cells in the area they were not needed either. Thirty minutes later, I left with the hope that all that signaling had told my body what it needed to do.

Not the ultimate solution

There’s a new body contouring or sculpting device that hits the market every month. It sounds too good to be true, right? You don’t have to go under the knife, and you’ll still be able to pick and choose how you want your body to look. Between Sculpsure, Coolsculpting, Velashape, Cooltone and several others, there’s an option for everyone. According to research, the global body contouring market had reached a value of $7.3 billion in 2021. Looking forward, it is expected to reach $11.1 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 6.9 per cent during 2022-2027. The idea is the same as micro-needling or botox or fillers—if you want to change something about yourself without actually having to deal with the cost, the downtime or the potential consequences of surgery, you can get modest results that you’re happy with. To be sure, doctors know that none of these work as well as liposuction (just as a laser treatment won’t match up to plastic surgery), but they do the job well enough without a lot of the side-effects.

The first question is whether these technologies work. We’ve been taught to believe that things that are too easy, or that quick-fixes are just that: quick fixes that won’t last. But as technology advances and gets better, could it actually do the job it’s saying it will? Dr Kiran Sethi, a New Delhi-based dermatologist, replies in the affirmative. “Non-invasive body contouring is safe and effective,” she says, citing the example of the US FDA-approved Sculpsure, “which uses a laser to kill fat with minimal downtime and side effects and no pain.” She says that 90 per cent of her patients feel like they have good results. “Their bulges have softened, their bodies have improved and they feel confident,” she says. Dr Mittal Gupta agrees. She finds that her patients use these treatments as a way to kickstart a better, healthier lifestyle. She cites examples of a woman post a cesarean operation or a man too obese to safely start working out at the gym—technologies that get rid of fat and build muscle are a good way to start a wellness and health journey. “I feel like patients leave their treatments feeling motivated to eat well and exercise and generally live a healthier life,” she says. She tells her patients that these are not weight-loss programmes—you have to do that part all by yourself. These simply help give your body a well-meaning nudge.

The shape of things to come

However, why are these treatments so vilified? Why was my friend at pilates class talking about it in whispers? When weight is lost thanks to a strict diet and a grueling exercise regime, it is considered more celebrated than if you went to the doctor and just got it done in a couple of hours. But the celebrities that people hold these standards to are likely getting such treatments done regularly. “People believe that they should do all the hard work, follow a diet and exercise their way to perfection, but that’s not always possible or rational,” says Dr Sethi. “Even celebrities undergo these procedures and don’t tell anyone, claiming that their bodies are just a result of a healthy lifestyle,” she says. This might be changing—a tad bit. Bollywood celebrities aren’t as open about it yet, but major personalities such as Jennifer Aniston, Megan Fox, Addison Rae and Khloe Kardashian have spoken about their love for different types of non-invasive body contouring treatments.

Dr Mittal Gupta believes that people might be embarrassed to reveal that they got a little extra help. “People feel it’s easier to say they achieved the results by doing yoga or using aloe vera gel rather than investing in a technology,” she says. But she counsels her patients by telling them that deciding how you want to look is a personal choice—if you want a flatter stomach or a rounder, more perkier butt, you should be able to do that for yourself, because isn’t that what true body positivity is anyway? But that’s not to say that it can’t take a turn. We might be all for making some tweaks where it counts, but if you use a technology to totally change your body shape and leave feeling worse than you felt before, you can run into issues. “If a patient has a totally skewed or unhealthy view of their body, I don’t treat them with body contouring devices. If they have body dysmorphia, no matter how much you do, they’ll still feel insecure, and that isn’t the end goal here,” says Dr Sethi.

I met my friend at pilates class this week, and she was two treatments down. She loves it. She feels like she’s leaner, and can feel her muscles more intensely when she’s working on her core in class. She’s going to try it on her arms in the following sessions too—that’s the problem area she wants to attack next. But when she posts about her wedding health and fitness routine on Instagram, she’s only going to tag her trainer and nutritionist, and will probably bookend it with an inspirational quote about how putting in the work really pays off.

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