My mother-in-law has so many wrinkles she looks like a Venetian blind
Les Dawson
Someone once told me that you had to choose between your face and your body. She said that as you age, there is a decision to be made between being overweight, but having plumpness and youth in your face, or choosing to stay lean, fit and low body fat, but accepting a sagging and weathered face.
One of the biggest challenges my clients face, is how to combat premature ageing as a consequence of weight loss. They are super pleased about achieving their weight loss milestones, but along with this comes the loss of the all important fat that is holding up their facial features. It’s hard to celebrate the progress of your newly found waist, when you’re starting to age rapidly in your face. Instead of people complimenting your new physique, they begin to say you look tired and exhausted and belittle your efforts, telling you you looked better before you lost the weight.
And that’s no motivation to stay healthy and control weight. But what if you could do both? What if you could lose weight, get the body you’ve always wanted AND keep your youthful complexion? YOU CAN. I’m doing it for my clients every day!
NUTRITION FIRST!
We all know that the foundation for maintaining a healthy body weight, reducing body fat and “living our best life”, is an acute attention to nutrition. This doesn’t mean living off spirulena smoothies, it means acknowledging the old mantra:
“You are what you eat.”
Whatever goes in your mouth is going to have some effect on your health and outer appearance, be it positive or negative. Food is fuel. In order to achieve our greatest performance, we need to give our bodies the right performance petrol. We need fats to maintain our cell membranes and keep us waterproof and protect us from the elements, proteins to help us build and maintain our muscles, carbohydrates to stoke our engines and a billion and one micronutrients to keep our complex bodies in full working order. We’re designed to get these from food and while I’m not averse to the odd protein supplement bar or shake, I try wherever possible to encourage people to get their nutrition from whole foods. Mother nature has a very clever method of seemingly incorporating all the right nutrients we need in the right parcels and for whatever reason, there are countless studies to show whole foods give us far more benefit than their artificially developed supplement cousins.
Our outer appearance is basically a function of the inner workings of our body. Think about it; skin is just a collection of cells, as are the layers that support it. Your skin starts to get spotty, dull and dry when you’re not looking after it on the inside as well as on the outside. If it doesn’t have the massive rainbow of nutrients it needs to maintain the cells and keep them firing like they should be, then it will simply let the skin fade and problems start to arise.
So nutrition needs to be our foundation for ensuring both our bodies AND our faces stay healthy and youthful for as long as possible, through weight gain, loss or maintenance.
Working Out Maintains Mass.
When we’re on a mission to lose weight, we might be doing really well with cutting calories, controlling portions and fighting fat gain. But we also need to ensure we maintain our muscles. If the body is starved, it will start to eat into our protein reserves a.k.a. skeletal muscles. That’s why we often talk about fat loss being more important than overall weight loss. Losing muscle obviously will result in a loss of strength but it could also mean that we’re left a little more deflated than we’d like. Resistance training will help to maintain our muscles, meaning that while we’re losing weight, we’re maintaining some good volume in our skin and keeping that dreaded “sag” at bay. Of course, if you have a lot of excess weight to shed, you may find that you do end up with a lot of excess skin on the body and that’s something that sadly, you would need to have properly removed by a surgeon, but there is a lot we can do to try and minimise this for those losing a moderate amount of weight.
One of the key things to focus on when we’re losing weight to ensure we maximise fat loss and minimise muscle loss, is to include plenty of lean protein and strength training into our routines. This means that as the fat falls away, we are left with a lean and strong body underneath. The principles are the same for the face. I mean, there are some zany facial muscle workouts on the web, why not give them a go?? But if not, know that maintaining your protein levels adequately will enhance your ability to keep hold of muscle on the body and in the face and keep some of the sagging skin at bay in both areas.
Fat has its plus points.
Okay so we know that fat is essential on a microscopic level, but it’s also quite useful on a bigger scale. Fat, bone and muscle provide the scaffolding for the skin of the face. Without it, you’d be an empty bag of skin and brains…not pretty. As we age, the while we tend to battle fight on our bodies, the one place we’d like it to stay (on our faces) is where it starts to naturally shrink and disappear. Along with the robust bones which start to deteriorate and retreat. All this leads to our faces shrinking a bit. But the skin doesn’t shrink too. Instead, it hangs loosely and creates folds, wrinkles and sagging skin.
That’s why I see so often, my clients becoming disheartened about their weight loss results. They’re ecstatic about fitting back into their size 10 jeans, but they look in the mirror and don’t see themselves anymore.
Restructuring.
But there are solutions. You’re eating well, you’re working out and maintaining that body. You’re handing onto the muscle and you’re pleased with your progress. Your skin being nourished from the inside. What else can we do to preserve and rebuild the delicate scaffolding of fat that’s being lost under the skin of the face without piling on the pounds again?
One of the first things to think about is rebuilding the structure. Physically replacing the fat that’s been lost with delicate and subtle drops of hyaluronic acid filler, to rebuild that “bounce” and help keep the skin taught and plumped. People worry that filler will make them look “done” or “fake”. They’re always amazed at how natural the results can be. I’m not here to turn back the clock 10 years, I’m here to help you achieve the best results we possibly can and achieve the healthiest and happiest version of you. Many people are too quick to accept that you must choose your face or your body, but restructuring allows us to build a body we’re proud of and a smile that reflects it.
Resurfacing.
There’s also plenty we need to do to improve the health of our skin at the surface. While nourishment from the inside is important, it’s also paramount that we include topical treatments including the right home skin care routines to preserve elasticity of the skin and make sure we maximise the collagen and elastin which help keep our skin tight and youthful. Professional treatments help to stimulate the body’s collagen supply in the skin and improve the quality of what’s produced there, meaning we have fewer wrinkles to worry about!
We can also help improve exfoliation – all that working out you’re doing means there’s a lot more sweat and oils on your face. This can give you that lovely post-workout glow, but it can also cause spots, greasiness or even dull and dry skin if we don’t take care of it with proper cleansers and moisturisers that are designed for active people.
DON’T CHOOSE.
So there you have it. You don’t have to choose between your body and your face now, or in the future. Instead, you need:
- A solid nutrition foundation, based on whole foods, plenty of veggies and some good lean protein while you’re losing weight.
- A good workout programme incorporating strength training to maintain your muscle mass.
- A tailored skincare routine to ensure your skin can withstand the stresses of your training.
- A touch of magic to rebuild the scaffolding and replace the fat you’re losing – but only where you want it!
Now go forth, get your ideal body and maintain a happy, healthy complexion to go with it! You’re welcome…