Did you hear the one about the 12-year-old girl who had liposuction to lose weight? No, seriously, it happened, to a girl named Brooke Bates of Pflugerville, Texas. The 5-foot-5-inch Brooke weighed 218 pounds before Austin surgeon Robert Ersek, MD, co-author of the book Mega Lipo, liposuctioned 35 pounds of fat from Brooke's arms, back and upper midsection and removed another 10 pounds - most of it skin - by doing a tummy tuck. Most mainstream plastic surgeons limit the amount of fat they draw from adults to about eight pounds per operation.