THEY'RE THE LAST PEOPLE YOU'D think would need liposuction - personal trainers, runners, gym rats and athletes who spend hours and hours every week seeking a perfect physique.
Tito Hernandez is a personal trainer based in Los Angeles, where getting the perfect body is a high priority. He works out five days a week but was frustrated that no number of crunches could give him the stomach he wanted. 'I had put on a little weight around my belly,' says Hernandez, 35. 'I wanted the six-pack abs I had when I was younger.'
So Hernandez spent a recent afternoon in a Los Angeles plastic surgeon's office, undergoing liposuction. But not just any liposuction. Hernandez experienced a new technique that has the Hollywood celebrity community abuzz. It's called Vaser High-Definition Liposculpture and it not only removes fat but, as the name suggests, creates a highly defined and sculpted look.
Plastic surgeons' offices in California and parts of Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand are fielding inquiries from a growing number of clients, especially men, eager to exchange soft stomachs for six-packs, love handles and saddlebags for a sleeker profile (one LA doctor has performed the procedure on 14 patients in the past two months), making Vaser high-def the latest trend in the search for a perfect body - with the least amount of effort.
'I have marathon runners and triathletes coming in who still have love handles, and those aren't going away no matter how much they exercise,' says John Millard, a cosmetic surgeon in private practice who helped develop the Vaser technique.
Vaser high-def (which stands for Vibration Amplification of Sound Energy at Resonance) is not for everyone.