Can treatments, creams or leggings melt body fat?

TL;DR: Fat that is released from a treatment or a cream has a chance to be oxidised (“burned”) by muscles and organs and and converted to carbon dioxide (expelled by the lungs) and water (expelled via the urine), IF there is a negative calorie balance in the body.

However, under no circumstances a treatment can “melt” your body fat “which can then removed by the urine”, as some claim. And no, leggings - of any kind - neither release fat or burn it.

“Melt the (body) fat”: does that phrase mean anything?

Can a treatment, cream or even leggings/jeans, "melt body fat which is then naturally expelled by the body via the lymphatic system"?

Absolutely not.

Phrases like those are total garbage and would make any biologist laugh out loud.

Yet such phrases are churned out en masse on the internet by ignorant bloggers, influencers, “journalists”, beauty therapists and even medical aesthetic specialists, who sadly do not even know the most basic biology.

Now I don’t expect the average member of the public to know human biology, so it’s understandable that many lay people fall for this.

But these professionals should know better.

Can you pee fat out of your body?

No, you don’t pee either fat or fat cells, that’s preposterous.

Of course NOTHING melts your fat cells (or even fat in your fat cells) and makes you pee them and then you lose weight.

Claims such as these are as ridiculous as they sound.

Fat is already liquid in your fat cells, it does not need to melt

Fat, for starters, is liquid inside fat cells, so nothing needs to melt, thank you very much.

In fact, fat in fat cells (or triglycerides in adipocytes, to use the proper terminology) are described by scientists as “the adipocyte lipid droplet”.

Fat in fat cells is already liquid. You do not need to melt it further with special leggings, creams or treatments.

Fat is not found in the urine except in pathological circumstances, meaning kidney disease

If you find fat/oil in your urine, run to your doctor now - not tomorrow.

And no, lymphatic drainage does not expel fat from your body via the urine. When you pee after a lymphatic massage you pee water, not fat. Unless you suffer from kidney disease.

Cellulite treatments only release fat from stubborn cellulite fat deposits, they do not burn it

Sometimes such treatments also damage/weaken fat cells, which is great.

But you have to burn the released fat, in your muscles and organs. No treatment ever burns fat, no matter how expensive or how famous the persons who provides it.

Fat burning with a treatment does not exist anywhere in this universe.

This means that with a treatment you can have some localised slimming but you cannot lose weight.

Fat cells which are broken/damaged by a treatment simply get recycled by the body, as any other dead cell in the body

Fat cell damage does not equate to overall weight loss, it just equates to local fat reduction. This means that with a treatment you can have some localised slimming, but you cannot lose weight.

No, slimming leggings with infrared emitting ceramic fibres do not burn or release any fat

And finally, for anyone being naive enough to believe in ‘slimming leggings with ceramic infrared-emitting crystals that melt your fat’, well, they are naive.

I am not going to waste words and precious time to analyse why.

Where does fat go after being released by a treatment?

Fat released after a cellulite treatment (e.g. radiofrequency, cavitation etc) indeed ends up in the lymph and consequently the blood circulation.

Eventually fat reaches the muscles and organs to be used for energy (fat oxidation), IF you are on a calorie deficit, i.e. if you burn more calories than you ingest.

Only then you lose weight, i.e. you must still exercise or diet to lose weight.

If you are not on a calorie deficit, fat released by a treatment ends up in some fat tissue somewhere in the body. Most probably not the same fat tissue it was initially released from, but somewhere in the body.

No treatment, of ANY kind other than liposuction, removes fat from your body and makes you be lighter on the scales.

If treatments do not make you lose weight, what’s the point then?

The utility of a cellulite/fat reduction treatment is to remove fat from stubborn areas, i.e. areas where no diet and exercise can shift fat.

It is NOT to remove fat altogether from your body, as ignorant (and sometimes lying) aesthetic practitioners claim.

So do have a course of non-surgical treatments to remove stubborn cellulite fat.

And perhaps some subcutaneous fat too. The key word here for local fat reduction is ‘SOME’. Don’t expect more than 20-30% of the total subcutaneous fat deposit removed.

And the other keyword here is a ‘COURSE’ of anything between 6-12 sessions. Don’t expect results with those “all you need is one super-expensive and super-unsafe / super-painful” miracle (😂) treatments.

And be on a calorie deficit while you receive your course of cellulite treatments, for maximum results with topical fat reduction. Just don’t expect to lose weight from the actual treatment.

The calorie deficit, i.e. the diet and exercise, is what will help you lose weight, not the treatment. As mentioned above, the treatment is only for lipolysis, i.e. local fat release.

Read more about where fat goes when you lose weight.

So stir clear of websites that sell you those “it melts the fat that ends up in your urine” treatments - they are obviously a fraud.

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