Do you have lipedema and wonder whether a healthy diet and plenty of exercise could help you lose weight? Maybe even get rid of your lipedema altogether? Unfortunately, nothing you've tried so far seems to work? In this article, we'll explain why you shouldn't give up.
Our Experience
The bad news first: exercise and a healthy diet alone cannot cure your lipedema. The only way to get rid of the symptoms is liposuction - surgical fat removal. The good news: with a healthy diet and enough exercise, you prepare your body optimally for the time after lipedema surgery. Here at med-plast, we perform over 1,000 surgeries a year - exclusively on patients affected by lipedema. During consultations, we often find that some patients aren't paying enough attention to diet and exercise. Of course, we all know that salad is healthier than a burger, and that sparkling water has less sugar than cola.
That said, we also believe that many people affected by lipedema don't take up the fight against excess fat because their expectations of what they themselves can achieve are far too low.
To help you, and to provide better information on this topic, we've put together a few tips and insights. To make sure this is grounded in real expertise, we consulted Dr. Birgit Jungehülsing. She has worked at our specialized clinic in Berlin since 2018 and knows exactly what our patients struggle with, day in and day out.
By the way: at every consultation, we offer you the chance to speak with Nadine, our med-plast nutrition counselor. If you have lipedema and would like advice on nutrition, book an appointment and come visit our lipedema clinic in Berlin.
Lipedema Is a Tough Fight
It's important that you pay attention to a healthy diet and plenty of exercise despite - or precisely because of - your lipedema. In practice, that means:
1. eating a balanced diet and eating mindfully (i.e., with a calorie deficit)
2. increasing your calorie expenditure
We know this advice is very general. And we can't tell you exactly what or how much of anything you should eat, since we don't know you yet. But if you think or know you have lipedema, feel free to book an appointment here and come to our specialized lipedema clinic in Berlin. There, we can look closely at you and your condition and give you much more specific advice.
"Finally weighing less" is a big topic for all our patients. So far, there's likely been no woman who came to us without wanting to lose a significant amount of weight. What matters here is that liposuction gives you less pain and greater freedom of movement. The surgeries make it possible for you to reduce your weight through targeted exercise and diet. We know that losing weight with lipedema, while seeing little to no visible results, and still motivating yourself day after day, is seriously hard and takes a lot of perseverance!
Not sure if this applies to you?
Book a free, no-obligation consultation with our specialists.
Sticking With It Pays Off
But sticking with it does pay off. If you keep at it, you'll notice that you lose weight especially in the areas that aren't - or are barely - affected by lipedema. That's the first, visible sign that will hopefully help you stick to your diet and exercise plan. By the way, you can also lose weight in the areas affected by lipedema! There, the normal fat cells - everything that isn't disease-related - respond to your changed energy balance. Please believe us: plenty of exercise and a healthy diet do not leave your body unaffected!
A small tip for you: please don't think in "giant leaps." You shouldn't set overly high expectations - instead, celebrate small wins. Set yourself challenges you can actually accomplish. We don't mean kilogram goals here, but tangible things. Did you walk up to the 3rd floor today instead of taking the elevator? Great! Did you take your bike instead of the car, and go for a walk after dinner? That helps burn energy too. Precisely because you're carrying extra weight, it's important not to push yourself too hard. All these small extra bits of activity, built into your everyday life, aren't just manageable - you can also increase or scale them back. The main thing: stick with it!
Why All This?
Why should you engage with lipedema-friendly nutrition and exercise even before your surgery? Because surgery is very demanding on your body. After all, you can lose 3 to 10 liters of fat per operation in a very short time with us. Usually, it takes two to three liposuction sessions before the diseased fat cells are sustainably reduced in the affected areas, so they don't come back. And if you only start working on "nutrition" and "exercise" after your demanding surgery, that can put a real strain on your body.
Dr. Jungehülsing also emphasizes that patients who already pay attention to exercise before lipedema surgery have a noticeably easier time afterward. The two support each other: "After surgery, with a few kilos less, the same movements become considerably easier and support recuperation - in other words, the patient's recovery," says Dr. Jungehülsing. "Our patients simply keep up their nutrition and exercise routines and move, step by step, toward a healthier body."
