Excuse me while I puke from anxiety.
You guys? I have never, ever, ever liked showing my stomach in the company of close friends at a pool party, even back when I was a skinny 16 year old cheerleader with nary a stretch mark to be found.
I am about to show it all off, purple stretch marks included, and I kind of want to die.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m REALLY happy with the results of the CoolSculpting treatments I had done this summer (upper & lower abs, and right and left flank), but I’m no super model. I’m a mother of 2 kids who did a doozie on this body of mine.
I contemplated just showing off the results with clothes on, but that’s not fair. And really, ultimately, I’m okay with this body. I’m happy with it! I’m just… scared of the inevitable criticism, I guess? Okay, enough trying to talk myself out of it. Here goes.
A reminder of where I started, as illustrated by me…
To clarify and remind, that “cheeseburger” is an actual cheeseburger I ate probably 20 years ago that still resided in my belly fat…not a disgusting name for my lady parts.
If you haven’t been following my journey, or need a refresher, here’s a little bit about CoolSculpting and how it works:
Developed by Harvard scientists, our unique, FDA-cleared, patented procedure uses a targeted cooling process that kills the fat cells underneath the skin, literally freezing them to the point of elimination. Only fat cells are frozen. Your healthy skin cells remain, well, healthy. No knives. No suction hoses. No needles. No scars. Once crystallized, the fat cells die and are naturally eliminated from your body. In a few months, boom: say hello to a new you.
Basically, they attached these giant sucker machines to me that froze my fat into what looked like a stick of butter. I wrote more about all that here.
These are the official before and after pics, taken by EpiCentre Park Lane in Dallas. I had my treatments done there and at EpiCentre at Legacy in Plano. Yes, I’m wearing my swimsuit in the after pics. We had a hot date at an indoor water park right after my appointment.
Now, I don’t think the official pics do my results justice, I guess since they are so up close and really accentuate the stretch marks? So I took some after pics of my own.
Please know that these results are 99% entirely from the CoolSculpting. Despite my intentions to work out hard at the gym and get rock-hard abs over the months between treatments and reveal, that just didn’t happen. Like, at all. Okay, like 3 or 4 times.
So maybe I would have something a bit more dramatic to show you if I had worked out, but I think this is more accurate to show you this way, you know? Totally my reason for not working out. Definitely planned it that way. Let’s go with that.
As I said, I’m really happy with it. My clothes fit completely different. I can wear my pants lower on my hips now, and not worry about a muffin top bulging over. My lower belly is still a bit bulgy, but that’s mostly because of all the saggy skin left from pregnancy, and nothing a little bit of Spanx can’t fix. I went from a size 8 to a size 6, and again, that was all with next to NO working out.
Do I think it’s worth it? I do! So much so, that I’m considering saving up for treatments to my upper back, and maybe one more for my lower abs. I know a lot will say that I could have experienced results like this if I just went to the gym for those few months, and to a degree I agree.
However, even when I’ve been my most fit, I have ALWAYS had a bulgy lower tummy and love handles. Those areas are so much smaller now that I know it won’t take nearly as long to get everything toned up and looking great.
I have to say a million thanks to the EpiCentre teams at both Park Lane in Dallas and Legacy in Plano. They were so wonderful to work with, and my appointments were all super relaxing. I’m also extremely grateful to CoolSculpting for offering these services to me at no cost in exchange for my honest reviews. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them below or shoot me an email if you want to ask in private.