Chubby cheeks are great … for a five-year old. At 25, flab that ripples across your face when you shake your head or hangs limply even as you pucker your lips for a selfie is not. Neither is the loose fold of skin hanging beneath your jawline. But spot reduction, or losing weight from a specific part of the body, is technically difficult. So what do you do to lose facial fat?
Work on your entire body and do these simple face yoga and exercises to tone your face and reduce puffiness.
5 Face Exercises To Lose Face Fat
Your face has about 50 muscles, and they undergo a lot of tension every day. Exercising them also helps you relieve tension in the face and the neck as well as eye strain. Face exercises will also firm up your face muscles and reduce wrinkles. Making faces can be fun when you have such a ready excuse.
1. Pucker Up Your Lips
This gives the cheek muscles good exercise and keeps the cheeks in shape.
- Suck your cheeks in and pucker your lips.
- Hold it for 30 seconds.
- Release and breathe out.
- Repeat 10 times, twice a day.
2. Blow Out Your Cheeks
This provides firmness to your cheeks and chin, giving the muscles a good workout.
- Fill your mouth with air.
- Press your lips together.
- Move the trapped air from one side to another.
- Practice this daily for 5 minutes.
3. Take A Breather
This too is for you to strengthen your cheek muscles.
- Take a deep breath.
- Exhale slowly from the mouth.
- Do this 4 times, twice a day.
4. Kiss The Sky
The stretch that you feel on your throat is good news. It’s toning up the chin.
- Tilt your head back and look up toward the ceiling.
- Stretch the throat.
- Pucker up your lips as though to kiss the ceiling.
- Hold the pose for 10 seconds. Then relax.
- Repeat this 10 times.
5. Smile All The Way
A wide smile can fix everything, even stubborn face fat, by helping you lose it fast.
- Place your palms around your cheekbones.
- Gently stretch your face so that you smile wide.
- Hold for 10 seconds.
- Now stop smiling and bring the lips back to normal, without releasing the cheeks.
- Repeat 5 times, twice a day.
Eat Your Fill Of Healthy Foods
[pullquote]”Load up smaller bowls to trick your brain into feeling fuller with less food.”[/pullquote]
Fill yourself up with fresh vegetables, fruits, fibrous foods, and protein-rich foods instead of sugar-rich snacks and savory finger food.
The starchy, sugary carbs make your insulin levels rise, and insulin being responsible for fat storage, it makes you gain fat faster. So keep the carbs low and eat proteins and a healthy fat with your meals.
Cut down on your portion sizes and eat in smaller bowls and plates to trick your brain into thinking that you’re eating enough,1 and eat your meals at the correct time for good digestion. Snack on small portions of fruits and vegetables between meals.
Drink Like A Fish, But Just Water
Agreed, frequent loo breaks make drinking gallons of water a practical problem. But this is a necessary evil. The more water you drink the more toxins you flush out of your body. This is the simplest trick in the book.
You needn’t be told that alcohol abuse shows up in puffy faces. So does an excess of sugar or salt. These face bloaters make all your body’s tissues, including those in your face, hold on to water. And because alcohol dehydrates you, your body is more apt to retain any water flowing through it.
So, loo breaks notwithstanding, drink a lot of water to reduce fat from your face.
Sleep Like A Baby
[pullquote]”Sleep for 7 hours at least; any less will make you eat more.”[/pullquote]
Make sure you get enough restful, restorative sleep every night. When you sleep less than 7 hours a night, you are prone to gain weight because of problems in glucose metabolism. Also cutting back on sleeping hours causes a drop in leptin, the hormone that reduces your appetite and helps you burn calories, and a hike in ghrelin, the hormone that does just the opposite.2
Pamper Yourself Now And Then
Take some time out of your busy schedule for a facial massage or clay mask every now and then. Facial massage restores the elasticity of the skin3 and reduces stress or anxiety, which is yet another cause of fat gain.4
What’s your trick to lose face fat? Share with us in the comments below.
References
| ↑1 | Wansink, Brian, and Koert Van Ittersum. “The visual illusions of food: Why plates, bowls, and spoons can bias consumption volume.” The FASEB Journal 20, no. 4 (2006): A618-A618. |
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| ↑2 | Knutson, Kristen L., Karine Spiegel, Plamen Penev, and Eve Van Cauter. “The metabolic consequences of sleep deprivation.” Sleep medicine reviews 11, no. 3 (2007): 163-178. |
| ↑3 | Iida, I., and K. Noro. “An analysis of the reduction of elasticity on the ageing of human skin and the recovering effect of a facial massage.” Ergonomics 38, no. 9 (1995): 1921-1931. |
| ↑4 | Hatayama, Tomoko, Shingo Kitamura, Chihiro Tamura, Mayumi Nagano, and Koichiro Ohnuki. “The facial massage reduced anxiety and negative mood status, and increased sympathetic nervous activity.” Biomedical Research 29, no. 6 (2008): 317-320. |