Old and angry isn’t a look any woman covets, certainly not one who makes her living as a personality on a morning television show. French actress Catherine Deneuve, who reportedly said, “After a certain age, you have to choose between your fanny and your face.” Still, there are women who have old face/young body, and has been known to tell clients in the past, “Sorry, you just might have to choose between your face and your rear end.”
Why?
Many of the things you do in the name of staying in shape, begin to do a number on your face as you close in on 40. You start to lose facial volume, which can cause eyes to look slightly sunken, cheeks to hollow out, and skin to lose its firmness and elasticity. Maintaining a low body mass index (BMI) exacerbates the problem because fat is the very thing that helps plump out lines and wrinkles
But do we have to compromise?
Research on twins illustrates just how much weight affects the signs of aging. Researchers set out to determine how much of facial aging is genetically predetermined and how much of it has to do with lifestyle. Turns out, only a small part has to do with genes; most of what ages you can be traced to lifestyle habits and environment.
“it was clear that excessive weight loss can be detrimental to youthfulness and attractiveness,”
if you aren’t keen on resorting to extreme dermatologic interventions, here’s the best advice:
While exercising outside can wreak havoc on your skin, working out, in general, has been found to help it. A 2008 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that regular exercisers had longer telomeres, tags at the ends of chromosomes that shorten with age. People who did even a moderate amount of cardio—about three 30-minute sessions a week—had telomeres that looked like those of someone about six years younger. Other studies suggest that cardio reduces stress—another major factor in aging, according to Guyuron’s twins study, which found that people who’d been through the rigors of a divorce looked almost two years older than their married, single, or even widowed siblings.
“When you’re feeling stressed, you use muscles that are synergistic with the gravity effect,” explains Guyuron. “Gravity pulls the neck, creating and deepening two lines between the chin and the neck. The more stress you go through in your life, the more visible those lines are going to become.”Some experts believe exercises specifically for the face can erase these lines. Facial yoga, for instance, combines traditional yoga poses that are believed to make your face look younger (downward dog, for one, increases blood flow to the head) with moves that take their cue from the yogic tradition of deep breathing (like puffing up your cheeks with air, then transferring the air from cheek to cheek while exhaling). These moves supposedly boost the production of elastin and collagen.
What’s certain is that a healthy diet is as important for your face as it is for your fanny.
In the end, the secret to looking young and staying fit isn’t really much of a secret at all, but something we’ve known all along: Eat right, exercise often, slather on sunscreen every single day (SPF 30, please), and follow the bonus advice in this article: https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/aging-advice