Health

Four Ways Your Healthy Lifestyle Could Be Making You Look Worse

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A healthy lifestyle is something that we should absolutely all aspire to. The benefits for our mental and physical wellbeing are enormous, from a lower risk of many diseases and illnesses, to maintaining a healthy body weight. The danger lies in taking it to extremes. Sometimes, we can become so sold on the positive benefits clean living brings to our lives, that we forget just how important moderation is. It’s moderation that allows us to live clean and still have the occasional treat. And if that’s not compelling enough an argument on it’s own, if you take healthy habits to too much of an extreme, they can start to impact negatively on your body and how you look:

The Curse of the Yo-Yo

Many people end up trapped in a cycle of dropping weight through extreme diets, only to put it back on when real life kicks in again. But studies have found that if you drop and gain more than 11 pounds in a year, it’s not only your metabolism which suffers, but also your face. It turns out that crash diets followed by weight gain permanently damage the facial ligaments, and can alter the shape of the face, causing an aged appearance. This is not something that can be corrected with a cream or a serum. To avoid this effect, always opt for a gradual weight loss approach, aiming to lose no more than one pound per week. Try the 80/20 approach, where you follow a clean eating regime for five days of the week and a more relaxed one for two days.

Eating Too Much Sugar

Modern diets are loaded with the white stuff – even things you assume are savoury, such as jars of pasta sauce! Sugar converts to glucose in the body, and once in the bloodstream, they attach to skin proteins and cause damage, making you look older by causing sagging, wrinkled skin. Excess sugar consumption also damages your teeth and can cause decay and yellowing which only Full Coverage Dental Insurance will be able to correct. There are so many good reasons to limit sugar, which also provides empty calories with no nutritional value that make us gain weight. Be aware of everywhere they appear under different names (such as fructose, sucrose, maltodextrin etc) and make your food fresh to avoid consuming excess amounts in processed products.

Your Daily Run

You may feel virtuous pounding the pavements for a daily five mile run, but it could well be aging you! Exercising outdoors without using the proper sunscreen is a recipe for a prematurely aged face, as wind and sun damage, and all that squinting, add up to pigmentation, fine lines and wrinkles. To combat this, select a good broad spectrum facial suncream with a high Sun Protection Factor, and apply generously at least 20 minutes before your run. Combine it with antioxidant care to combat damaging free radicals from air pollution  – your skin will thank you later!

Too Much Weight Loss

Particularly after the age of 35, can cause you to look gaunt in the face and older than your years. In a famous study, 186 pairs of identical twins were compared on appearance – and on average, the one who weighed slightly more was perceived as looking younger! So don’t fixate too much on the numbers on the scale – better that extra slice of cake and a less ages appearance.

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