Congratulations! You’ve succeeded at your resolution to exercise, get fit, and lose weight. Unfortunately, though, sometimes every silver lining comes with a dark cloud. While you may like your new figure, improved health, and better energy, you might not be happy with the new, aged appearance of your face.
Fortunately, there are ways to try to counteract this effect so you can enjoy your slimmer figure as well as a more youthful appearance.
Why Losing Weight Can Age You
People who carry more weight tend to look a little younger. How much younger? Twin studies revealed that a person who has a BMI 4 points higher can look 2-4 years younger.
The reason is that the face naturally loses fat as we get older. Features such as full lips and round cheeks are associated with youth. But as we get older, the fat in these areas can be depleted, leading to thin lips and sunken cheeks. Carrying a little extra weight in the face can help maintain a youthful appearance longer.
But if you lose that weight, it can cause the face to become depleted. Even worse, as we get older, our skin loses elasticity. Without the volume to support it, skin can sag and fold, leading to facial folds, wrinkles, turkey neck, and jowls.
The combination can make a big difference in your facial appearance, and for some people it can have a much more dramatic effect, making you look more than just four years older.
A Youthful Appearance and a Healthy Weight
What can you do about this problem? The most common recommendation is just trying to maintain a healthy weight over the long term. Stable weight helps your body to balance fat in the face. Yo-yo dieting is the worst. As your body adds weight in the face, it stretches the skin, which then sags more when you lose the weight.
You can counteract this problem to some extent by helping your skin stay youthful. Facials provide your skin with nutrients and stimulate the body’s own healing mechanisms to help your skin look younger.
But everyone’s body stores fat differently, and there’s nothing you can do to alter the body’s decisions about where to store fat. For some people, maintaining a healthy body weight means having an emaciated facial appearance. If that’s the case for you, facial fillers like Juvéderm can help. Juvéderm can reverse some of the aging impacts of weight loss. It’s a very smooth filler, which gives great results for lip plumping, giving you attractive, natural results. Juvéderm can also be used to fill out the cheeks, and it has good structural stability, which helps your cheeks look natural and youthful.
An Achievement You Can Be Proud of
Congratulations again on achieving your weight loss goals. It’s not an easy thing to do, and you should be proud, no matter what. But if an aged facial appearance dampens your excitement about this achievement, we can help in several different ways.
To learn more about how our aesthetic services can help you look younger at your new, lower weight, please call (509) 927-2273 today for an appointment with a Spokane Valley esthetician at Collins Dentistry & Aesthetics.
