How to lose 5 inches (for ever!)

Ever since I can remember I have hated my hips and thighs. I distinctly recall a photograph of me wearing a ballet leotard that appeared in the local newspaper when I was 13.

I’ve long since forgotten what I was doing in the ballet outfit, but the awful spectacle of myself encased in Eighties low-leg Lycra is burnt on my brain.

As a young teenager I would stand on my head, hoping the fat would ‘sink’. Once I grasped that human anatomy made this phenomenon unlikely, I moved on to my mother’s Callanetics videos, which I played until they were worn out.

Ever since I can remember I have hated my hips and thighs. Pictured before: 41in, size 12

Diet and exercise hasn’t worked. I am 44 and have run ten half-marathons. I see a personal trainer twice a week, take care of what I eat and don’t drink alcohol.

The result, however, is that the rest of my body has shrunk while my saddlebags resolutely remain, well, sturdy.

I look as though I was designed using a game of ‘heads, bodies and legs’.

It isn’t just the size I hate, it’s the texture, too. I have taken advice on this from Harley Street’s leading cellulite man, Dr Aamer Khan (co-founder of the Harley Street Skin Clinic) — a quite mortifying interview during which I stood in his office in my knickers while he gazed earnestly at my bottom.

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He awarded it a ‘grade two’, which, he explained, means I have ‘moderate’ cellulite.

The trouble is that it doesn’t look moderate to me. It looks monstrous.

Of course, there are some drastic options, such as liposuction. But aside from the scarring and significant downtime needed to recover, my imagination is far too vivid to let me go under the knife.

I would surely die from some dreadful reaction to the anaesthetic or a post-surgical blood clot. I would be leaving my children motherless just because I wanted to look better in a bikini.

My final measurement? Thirty-six inches. That’s 5 in off my saddlebags! That’s a loss of a dress size and then some. Pictured above: 36in, size 10 

Like so many British ‘pears’, I have just resorted to dressing my problem area as best I can — skirts rather than dresses, jackets that stop at the waist or well below the hip (never on it). No patterns or exciting colours below the waist, and definitely no horizontal stripes.

However, when I heard that a fat-eliminating treatment called ‘Fire and Ice’ had come to Britain from the U.S. (where it is widely used), I wondered if this might finally be the answer to my problem.

It didn’t involve knives or needles. There was no downtime and minimal risk.

Fat reduction of 20 to 25 per cent was likely, but some people had seen up to 40 per cent. Furthermore, the treatment promised to tackle not just fat, but also skin tone.

In other words, I would not only see inches disappear, but also witness the skin become smoother and tighter.

The treatment is being pioneered at the London clinic of Dr Michael Prager, already famous as Britain’s Botox guru. Dr Prager is always on the look-out for cosmetic treatments that fit easily into the busy lives of his high-flying clients. These have become known as ‘tweakments’.

‘A lot of my patients who have had lipo still wouldn’t wear a bikini,’ he says.

‘That’s because when you reduce fat you can actually make dimpling and uneven texture worse. It’s as though you have to choose between two evils — size or texture. With the Fire and Ice treatment, you can take on both.’

The treatment is, in fact, a combination of two distinct therapies. The first of these (the ice part), says Dr Prager, involves killing fat cells by freezing them, a process called cryolipolysis.

Because we don’t develop many new fat cells after puberty, what makes us fat is not the production of more fat cells, but rather the filling of those we already have.

If the fat cells aren’t there, they can’t fill up.

Cryolipolysis kills fat cells, allowing them to be excreted harmlessly from the body while leaving other cells unharmed. You need only one treatment, but it takes between one and three months to work.

Relax: Before the treatment, Renee carefully marks out in pen the areas on the side of my hips to be treated and applies protective gel. The suction is uncomfortable rather than painful (a four out of ten), but the freezing bit does hurt — more like a six or a seven

However, as with liposuction, removing fat by freezing it can lead to dimpling, making the cellulite appear worse rather than better.

This is where the ‘Fire’ part of this new therapy comes in.

During this part of the treatment, a device that delivers radio frequencies is used to heat the collagen below the skin, causing it to tighten and then regenerate.

While ‘Fire and Ice’ therapy isn’t surgical, it doesn’t sound that pleasant, either.

Dr Prager says some people find cryolipolysis painful and others experience numbness or aching after the procedure — a bit like being bruised.

As to which body parts you can have frozen, it’s ‘anywhere you can pinch, apart from the breasts’. My wobbly saddlebags are, he says, perfect candidates for treatment.

As they currently measure 41 in (a size 12), Dr Prager reckons that, with luck, I’ll be looking at the loss of at least one dress size.

To achieve that, however, I’d need to lose at least 4 in. That sounds a little optimistic to me.

On the morning of the freezing treatment, I’m face down on a treatment bed in Dr Prager’s clinic, wearing nothing but my underwear and a fluffy robe.

His lovely therapist, Renee, is wielding the cryolipolysis CoolSculpting machine, the business end of which resembles a vacuum cleaner with multiple attachments. The bottom-sculpting tool looks a bit like a curved dish.

Before the treatment, Renee carefully marks out in pen the areas on the side of my hips to be treated and applies protective gel. The suction is uncomfortable rather than painful (a four out of ten), but the freezing bit does hurt — more like a six or a seven.

Sensing my discomfort (the gritted teeth may have given it away), Renee assures me that the pain only lasts for about ten minutes. After that, you’re numb.

She is right, and I am left to read my book in peace for the remainder of the 45-minute treatment before it’s repeated on the other hip.

When the session finishes, it’s time for a deep-tissue massage (apparently, this helps break down the fat even further). Renee invites me to feel the skin before she begins and it’s extremely peculiar — cold, hard and lumpy, like crushed ice cubes under a blanket.

Slimline Anna: I’m starting to think I’ll be stuck with my aisle-blocking bottom half for ever. Then, all of a sudden, there is a change. A big one. I’m running for a train when my trousers nearly fall down

For the next week, the treated area is numb, and when sensation returns, it feels bruised. It’s as though I’ve been ice skating and landed on my bottom.

Two weeks later, it’s time for my first ‘Fire’ treatment. This time it takes less than an hour and, rather than sucking the fat in, the head of the machine (called a Venus Legacy) that delivers the radio frequencies is swept over the skin surface.

The machine generates heat under the skin, to stimulate the body’s natural healing reactions, creating more collagen and elastin fibres.

Every time the head of the machine gets too hot for comfort (it feels as though I’m leaning against a hot radiator), Renee turns it down. Unlike the freezing treatment, there are no unpleasant side-effects.

In fact, a niggling hip injury (the result, I suspect, of all that running) improves slightly. Renee thinks it might be down to the increased circulation in the area.

After all those years of standing with my bottom facing a full-length mirror, twisting over one shoulder to see if the latest half- marathon, set of lunges or radical diet has made any difference to my back view, I know my dimples and craters off by heart.

The moment the first ‘Fire’ treatment is finished, I am scrutinising my posterior for signs of change. For about a week, there is nothing and then, slowly but surely, the dimples start to smooth over and — praise be — disappear.

An independent confirmation of the changes comes when I take a winter holiday in the Canary Islands at Christmas.

‘Wow, you look amazing!’ is my sister-in-law’s first response as we meet next to the sun loungers in our bikinis on Boxing Day. ‘What have you been doing?’

As the ‘Fire’ treatments progress, I try hard to limit my mirror time as I wait with growing impatience for the ‘Ice’ treatment to kick in.

Other women who have had the same procedure have warned me that it can take three months to work (and sometimes seems to do so fairly suddenly), so it’s pointless checking my silhouette obsessively. I will know when it happens.

Days and weeks go by and the smoothing effect of the ‘Fire’ treatment carries on nicely. But my clothes are no looser and when I’m dressed you wouldn’t know that I’d had anything done.

Before and after: The treatment isn’t cheap, but when I add up the money I’ve spent on personal trainers, gym memberships, diet guides, supplements and support pants over the years, it seems pretty reasonable

As two months elapse with little change in my measurements, my faith in ‘Fire and Ice’ evaporates and my mood drops.

I’m starting to think I’ll be stuck with my aisle-blocking bottom half for ever.

Then, all of a sudden, there is a change. A big one. I’m running for a train when my trousers nearly fall down.

Like most women with a pear-shaped silhouette, anything that fits around my hips is always miles too big around the waist.

I’m used to it. I wear tops that cover my gaping waistband and rely on my capacious hips to hold up trousers and skirts.

But now it feels as though I’ve lost them overnight. As I stand at the station clutching my descending trews and watching my train home from London disappear without me, I know that the freezing has worked.

I have never been so pleased to be stranded.

Dr Prager isn’t surprised by the good results. ‘The treatment works best on stubborn areas of fat like yours,’ he says. ‘Those are a common problem for British women.’

Apparently, it is also good for thighs (inner or outer), tummies, waists and backs (particularly those pockets of fat that bulge underneath a bra strap).

He does have a couple of warnings, though. For starters, ‘Fire and Ice’ isn’t a silver bullet for obesity. If you’re seriously overweight, you need to diet first, then once your weight has stabilised you can refine your silhouette with the treatment.

Second, though cryolipolysis causes permanent fat loss, the fat cells around the treated site can still fill up with fat if you begin over- eating — so while the area you’ve had the treatment on will stay slim, you could end up with fat elsewhere.

My final measurement? Thirty-six inches. That’s 5 in off my saddlebags! That’s a loss of a dress size and then some. Finally, I love my legs.

‘Fire and Ice’ has done what years of diets, running and ridiculous cellulite ‘cures’ (yes, I even tried those caffeine-laced tights that were supposed to boost circulation) could never do.

The treatment isn’t cheap, but when I add up the money I’ve spent on personal trainers, gym memberships, diet guides, supplements and support pants over the years, it seems pretty reasonable.

I say give it a go. You’ve got nothing to lose but your wobbly bits.

CoolSculpt (freezing) costs from £750 per area. Venus Legacy is £300 per session (six to eight). More information at drmichaelprager.com