# Can I just cut off my belly? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 19, 2015, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955 "2015-06-19T16:58:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955/21 "2015-06-20T10:41:47Z")
> [@Wile\_E](#): > > \*aka a cartoon. For someone with your username, that IS a documentary. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955/22 "2015-06-20T13:35:19Z")
Is the fat in a pot gut under the abdominal wall, or just under the skin? You wouldn’t want to remove the abdominal muscles. Does liposuction just remove subcutaneous fat, or do they suck out visceral fat as well? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955/23 "2015-06-20T13:57:00Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Is the fat in a pot gut under the abdominal wall, or just under the skin? You wouldn’t want to remove the abdominal muscles. > > Does liposuction just remove subcutaneous fat, or do they suck out visceral fat as well? > > Regards, > Shodan No, liposuction only removes subcutaneous fat. While there’s been some preliminary research on removing visceral fat laproscopically, it’s not a done thing yet. It’s much more tricky, as the fat actually wraps _around_ the organs, so you’ve got to move organs around, which comes with risks of more blood loss and more nerve damage. A man’s firm but protruding “beer belly” is quite often visceral fat, while a woman’s soft squishy thighs and belly are more often subcutaneous fat. When you’re into obesity levels, there’s usually both, though, and both genders can have an excess of both kinds of fat. My husband’s Tweedledum physique is firm, but carries a lot of subq fat, as was very evident when he had an abdominal surgery left open to close by secondary intention - I could actually see a two inch layer of fat under the skin when I packed his wound with gauze. Looks just like chicken fat, if the chicken was really big. There’s some evidence that liposuction removal of subcutaneous fat actually encourages the growth of (the much more dangerous) visceral fat. Often people who get liposuction end up with uneven fat distribution, scarring, and uneven regrowth of the subcutaneous fat, as well. So the results are often less than optimal in the long term. The best results with lipo are in people who are generally optimal body weight with a pocket or two of excess subcutaneous fat. If you’re fat all over, lipo isn’t a great treatment. Darn it. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955/24 "2015-06-20T14:02:53Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > You can cut out some fat, but not all of it or, usually, even most of it. Fat isn’t just fat. There’s also connective tissue and blood in there. Doctors have to be very careful about how much blood and how many inches of blood vessels they take out at once, or your hemostasis goes all wonky. Your body struggles to maintain your blood pressure, and your brain may be starved of oxygen. In an emergency, of course, they may lop off a whole leg at once, but they’re going to have you in ICU with a crash cart nearby and lots of blood pressure needs and fluids on hand to keep you going. > > Not to mention infection and scarring, of course. ISn’t that why they prefer you to actually have lost a lot of the desired weight before they go in to lop off the excess skin and rummage through the fat to get the larger reserves of it out? I remember back in the 80s when they had those bloody and graphic operations on some DIscovery Channel program [one was some sort of brain operation, another was a heart operation and I could swear there was one that was the fat and skin reduction one.] ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955/25 "2015-06-20T14:14:15Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > ISn’t that why they prefer you to actually have lost a lot of the desired weight before they go in to lop off the excess skin and rummage through the fat to get the larger reserves of it out? Yep. Mostly for the poor healing, lumpy bumpy regrowth problem, but also, just in general, [obese people have more complications after surgery](http://www.webmd.com/diet/20070314/surgery-risks-higher-for-obese). So whether you’re going in for gastric bypass or gallbladder removal, if you can lose some weight before surgery, you probably should. Surgical removal of body fat (I mean, not lipo, but cutting in and removing body fat from an open incision) is pretty rare. I’ve only seen it done on television, for super morbidly obese patients, and even then they have to lose 100 pounds or more on their own before the doctor will consider it. I think this is partly to do with safety issues removing a large amount of tissue at once, and partly because we view obesity as a moral failure, not a legit medical disease, but that’s another rant for another day. ---
**Author:** ![CerebrAl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@CerebrAl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CerebrAl)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955/26 "2015-06-20T21:12:28Z")
First off \*\*I AM NOT A DOCTOR **yes I think you can do that. I cut my finger last week and it was no big deal. Either way… be sure to post the video on youtube and the link to it in this thread**. \*\*Hope this helps :o ---
**Author:** ![BaldDudePeekskill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5e925/32.png) [@BaldDudePeekskill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BaldDudePeekskill)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955/27 "2015-06-22T00:29:48Z")
I’ve heard of combining a panniculectomy with a gastric bypass, but the complications are more severe and it’s not done as a matter of course ---
**Author:** ![Battle\_Pope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955/28 "2015-06-22T01:12:08Z")
If we ever figure out how to make lightsabers before developing force sensitivity I think we’ll see this question answered a lot in the first few months. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-just-cut-off-my-belly/722955.md?page=1)