I Tried Renuva Fat Injections to Restore Facial Volume After Losing 60 Pounds on a GLP-1

Nothing gets us more excited than talking about a not-so-little tweakment or a nip-tuck procedure. In the spirit of transparency, Marie Claire’s aesthetics column, Life in Plastic, delivers a first-hand peek into what goes on behind the doctor’s door.

Liz is a 40-year-old woman living in Brooklyn. She had one session of Renuva, a non-surgical fat filler that stimulates your own fat growth to restore volume with Dr. Haideh Hirmand, a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York City. This is her experience, shared with Marie Claire, edited and condensed for clarity.

As an unashamed 40-year-old, I will report that for the last ten years, I’ve had a roundish face, soft features, and, at my heaviest, a little bit of a double chin. I didn’t even try Botox until I was already pretty far into losing weight via Wegovy, so loose skin wasn’t really something I was thinking about. Then the phrase “Ozempic face” started showing up everywhere. I’m also terrible at noticing tiny changes, especially in my own face. So whenever I heard people talk about Ozempic face, I thought, "that’s obviously not happening to me. That happens to people who have lost a truly insane amount of weight."

As it turns out, I’ve lost about 60 pounds since early summer 2024, and I guess 60 pounds is, objectively, a lot.

In the mix of my weight loss journey, I started a new job where a lot of my training happened over Zoom and was recorded so I could go back and rewatch it. This is how I ended up studying my own face on video much more closely than anyone should. That was when I first noticed it. When I smiled, talked, or basically moved my face at all, I could see wrinkles and a kind of looseness in my skin that I didn’t remember being there before. Likely it had been happening gradually and I just hadn’t clocked it (again, bad at noticing details over here). Once I saw it, I couldn’t really unsee it. That is how I ended up going down the aesthetic treatment rabbit hole.

I had tried filler once after losing the weight, and honestly, I really liked it. It made my face feel a little more like my face again. It's funny how having a plastic surgeon point out a millimeter difference in your chin before and after will do that. The downside was that filler fades, so after a few months you’re right back in the chair getting more. And even with someone really skilled, there’s always the small possibility that it could look a little different each time.

Renuva felt more appealing because it offered a longer-term option. Also, Renuva prompts your body to grow new fat, whereas traditional filler is a synthetic gel that adds immediate physical volume. The treatment itself took about as long as filler, and, for me, was about equally uncomfortable.

So after weighing everything (ha), I decided it was worth it, especially with a provider I trusted. I was fortunate enough to see Dr. Haideh Hirmand. She took the time to look at photos of my face at different points in my life and really think through where to place it and how much to use, which made the whole thing feel a lot less intimidating.

Pre-Renuva Treatment Prep

The pre-treatment exam was honestly what sold me on the whole thing. Dr. Hirmand asked a ton of questions about my weight-loss journey: how long I’d been on Wegovy, what side effects I’d had, how quickly I was losing weight, where I tended to lose it first, how much I’d lost overall, and, maybe most importantly, whether I thought I might gain it back. That part matters because Renuva is permanent. Its goal is to regenerate fat where it is placed, meaning if I gained weight later, my face could end up looking fuller because of the treatment. I’ve personally decided to stay on a GLP-1 long-term, with my primary care doctor overseeing it, so I felt comfortable with that.

Once we got through all of that, Dr. Hirmand asked me to send a clear photo of my face from every year I could find. I ended up going back about a decade. She looked closely at how my face had changed over time, and then we basically chose which era of my face we were trying to get back to.

The Renuva Treatment Day

Treatment day was pretty uneventful. I was a little nervous about the idea of “permanent” filler, because permanent is obviously a scary word when you’re talking about your face. But once Dr. Hirmand and staff walked me through the plan again, I remembered why I felt comfortable doing it in the first place. I asked whether any patients had ever regretted getting Renuva. Dr. Hirmand said that, as far as she knew, none had. She had, however, treated plenty of patients over the years who wanted their filler dissolved. We were going to take it slowly, look at everything as we went, and decide together how much Renuva to use and exactly where it should go.

Staff had me wash my face before swiping with a disinfectant of sorts. Then they numbed the injection areas, but I have a pretty high pain tolerance and had already done filler before, so none of it felt especially unusual. The whole treatment probably took around 40 minutes. It felt very similar to getting filler, although I was somehow more aware of the Renuva literally filling in the areas that had lost volume. There were also a few moments when I could hear a faint crunchy sound as it moved through the cannula, which can apparently happen with filler too. Not exactly pleasant, but also not nearly as dramatic as it sounds.

My Renuva Aftercare and Final Results

Aftercare was easy. I just had to look after the tiny scabs where the cannula went in, which was no different from caring for a small scratch.

The results were immediate enough that she and I could look everything over right away and make sure we were happy with it. I was warned that I might have some swelling in the treated areas, but I honestly didn’t notice any. What I saw that day is pretty much exactly what I’m still seeing months later. Since [the initial treatment day], my face has tolerated the Renuva well, and even at my three-month check-in, the results looked pretty much the same. I had the option to do a touch-up, but Dr. Hirmand and I both agreed it wasn’t necessary.

The results have been really subtle, which is exactly what I wanted. I’m terrible at noticing small details, but in photos and videos, I feel like my face looks more like me again, even though my body is a very different shape than it used to be.

I honestly wouldn’t change anything about the treatment or the experience. Now that I’ve reached my maintenance weight, it’s been a real confidence boost to feel like my face doesn’t look sunken as a trade-off for everything else my body has gone through. Dr. Hirmand and her staff were also a huge part of why the treatment went so well for me. It can be easy to feel a little self-conscious about losing weight with the help of a GLP-1, but she never made any of it feel like a big deal: not how much I’d lost, why I’d lost it, how long I’d been taking it, or the fact that I plan to stay on it. Dr. Hirmand made it clear that the goal was simply for me to recognize myself again. And that’s exactly what we did.

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