Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - What Is CoolSculpting and Does It Work? (What 17 Studies Show)

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

CoolSculpting… The name itself reminds me of the 70s, perhaps an artist scene. Rebel against the government by making radical statues (back when radical was less “feminist” and more “Sonic the Hedgehog on a skateboard”.) Fight against the institution like Greek statues fight against pornographic standards of penis sizes. Then I learned it was a fat loss technique popular with middle-aged mothers with too much money and instantly felt like I needed to apologize to sculptors everywhere for the comparison. Then I looked into it. Boy, does this shoe taste bad. Shouldn’t have stepped into the realm of judging things by their cover if it just made my foot go into my mouth. Can’t really blame me though. After browsing a ton of CoolSculpting reviews I felt like I was so far into mommy blog territory that I needed to bring spare nappies and a welcoming gift of scented candles and wine just to continue listening. It was only after I googled the scientific name, cryolipolysis, that I understood how such a cool process with such a cool name could catch on. So what is CoolSculpting? Who thought of this positively radical name, and will it help my kickflips and graffiti? Not much, but it could help your family members from looking like bulldogs with their jowls ... if they have the money for it. --- Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/ --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will

save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Cool sculpting. Does it work? That's going to be the topic of this discussion. Can you really freeze fat away? And is it safe? Now, when I first heard about this, I, of of course thought it was a scam. Cool scamming. Great. Just what we need. But then when I looked into it, it has FDA approval, which doesn't necessarily mean all that much to be honest, but there are a lot of impressive before and afters

online. There's quite a bit of research on it and it quickly became clear that, wait a minute, there actually is something to this. And so then as I actually looked into it and understood what it was, it made sense that yes, indeed, it can help you get rid of unwanted fat, but it is not a magic bullet. It can't take you from overweight to lean. Why? And how does it work? And how effective is it? Well, let's talk about that. Let's start with what CoolSculpting is. It is a procedure known as cryolipolysis. Cryo, C-R-Y-O, called lipolysis. L-I-P-O-L-Y-S-I-S, which is the process whereby your body mobilizes fat for burning. And what this procedure does is it uses cold to kill fat cells. And this is a topical procedure as well. So it's not surgery. It's not like liposuction. It's non-invasive and it's intended

for reducing specific fat deposits, not for just reducing your overall body fat percentage, but specific fat deposits. Now, why is that a thing? Why does that work? Well, it turns out that fat tissue is more susceptible to damage from cold exposure than other tissues. And so what scientists found then is they can kill the fat cells using cold without damaging skin and neurons. And so what you have then with CoolSculpting is you have a device that exposes the skin to a cold temperature for a certain period of time, which is long enough to kill fat cells, but not so long as to cause unwanted damage, like through frostbite, for example. Now, what does your body do with damaged and dead cells? It gets rid of them, right right so you have damage now and you have dead

fat cells and you have an inflammation response which the body then uses to increase blood flow and to get rid of the waste and so what that means then is cool sculpting cryolipolysis can allow you to sculpt your body to some degree using cool temperatures. Think of it as contouring the outer layers of your fat deposits. What it can't do though is help you lose a bunch of fat. Hey, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and every dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. To check everything out, just head over to legionathletics.com. And just to show how much

I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire order if it is your first purchase with us. And if it is not your first purchase with us, you will get double reward points on your entire order. That's essentially 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, the URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. So if you have, let's say normal body fat levels, or even maybe a little bit lower than normal body fat levels, but you have some unsightly bulges and for whatever reason you don't want to diet them away cool sculpting might be

able to help but if you are very overweight if you have a lot of fat to lose cool sculpting is not the way to go again think of it as a localized treatment where you pick a certain small region and sculpt that. Not a way to, it's not a way to drop, let's say 50 pounds of fat. Now I should also mention that CoolSculpting has only been scientifically tested in people who had a lot of fat to lose. It hasn't been tested in lean people. So as it only affects the outer layer of fat, we don't really know how it might work or not work with lean individuals. And it is not a replacement for proper dieting. It is not a replacement for weight loss surgery or liposuction. It really is just a kind of nifty little quote-unquote hack for getting rid of small bulges of fat. Another

problem is it's very expensive, which means you got to have deep pockets to even want to mess with it. And if that's you, if you have a lot of money to blow on your body and you want to occasionally trim little bits of fat, which of course will come back if you're not addressing, let's say your calorie intake on the whole, which is keeping your body fat level too high. And if though you do just want to do it because you'd rather spend the money and spend the time doing cool sculpting than just addressing your meal planning and your exercising, then I suppose you can. It is relatively safe, but it's kind of like a spa toy, not a serious weight loss hack. Now, as far as safety goes,

as I mentioned, it does have FDA approval for treatment of fat bulges and there is some nerve impairment that can occur but it usually lasts no more than a month or so and is really not a serious side effect so on the whole it would appear that cool sculpting that cryolipolysis is safe and so there's nothing really to worry about in terms of short or long-term unwanted side effects. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements,

including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over a hundred dollars. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick

review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you're using to listen, and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming. And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself, and I'm always looking

for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this email myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.