Shapewear

In a recent post we talked about the importance of placing your body and health first when trying to lose weight and the cellulite that goes with it. Dieting, especially fad and crash diets, can upset your body’s systems, metabolism and blood-sugar levels to a point where, not only are you not able to lose weight as easily, but you are damaging your health and wellbeing. But there are other parts of our lives where, completely unknowingly and without making any real change to our regular routine, we are harming our health and our ability to reduce the amount of fat in our bodies. According to a Gallup poll in the U.S., Americans are getting more than an hour less sleep each day than they did in. The poll suggests that 40% of us get less than the recommended amount of sleep each night. Yet the benefits of getting proper sleep are many and well documented: • Sharper memory • Reduced inflammation • More creativity • Higher levels of physical performance • Better grades • Increased attention span • Less stress • Longer life expectancy Sleep Helps You Lose More Fat & Cellulite There’s one benefit of sleep that has only relatively recently been researched and documented. And it has important implications for anyone who is trying to lose fat as a way to improve the appearance of cellulite. A study was performed at the University of Chicago to examine the effects of sleep loss on overweight and obese participants, whose caloric intake was reduced to 90% of what they needed to maintain their weight without getting exercise. The participants went through two study periods of two weeks each; one where they got the recommended amount of sleep, or about 7.5 hours per night, and the other where they got only 5.5 hours of sleep per night. According to the study’s findings, participants lost the same amount of weight whether or not they got a full night’s sleep. But when dieters slept longer, over 50% of their weight loss was fat. For the sleep-deprived dieters, their weight loss was only about 25% fat. It’s a clear indication that getting the right amount of sleep can double the amount fat that is part of the overall weight loss. Fat is literally the underlying cause of cellulite. If getting more sleep means you lose more fat … well …..zzzzz.

Whether it’s to get into skinny jeans in time for your birthday, or you want to reduce your cellulite, many of us use a weight loss diet to help us reach the goal. In theory, weight loss diets make sense. Watch what you eat, count calories and make sure you burn more of them than you eat. It makes perfect sense. Burn more calories than you eat and you are sure to lose weight, right? Wrong. For the vast majority of weight loss diets, the theory doesn’t work in action. When going on a diet, we tend to forget that we are dealing with something that is far more amazing and complex than anything we ever even imagined. The Human Body. Your body has powerful mechanisms to help ensure its survival – to keep you alive. To do so, it demands a minimum amount of energy every day. If the energy it gets is below that minimum, it kicks into a mode where it uses less energy to compensate. Too often, we think of calories as “fat”. But calories aren’t really anything. They are a unit of measure we use to express how much energy is in a certain food. Yes, when we eat too many calories, instead of getting rid of the excess energy, your body converts it into fat, in case it needs the energy later on when you don’t get enough calories. When you cut calories below the minimum level your body needs every day, it slows down your metabolism so you use less energy. In certain cases, your body can reduce the number of calories it needs per day to a level that is less than what you are eating even on your calorie-reduced diet. That means you could be putting on weight even while you diet. Think About Your Body First Instead of focusing on calories and pounds, which rarely works, focus on what your body needs. The more nutrients you give it in the foods you eat, the more good energy it has and the better able it is to support your weight loss efforts - and the cellulite reduction that goes with it.

While it was a staple in the diets of most of our ancestors, fish isn’t as popular as it once was. Unfortunately for many people it simply tastes too ‘fishy’. But as we all try to improve our eating habits, the health and nutrition benefits of fish are helping it to make a comeback on our dinner plates. And there’s even more good news for anyone trying to lose weight and improve the appearance of their cellulite. Many of the health benefits you can enjoy by adding fish to your diet can also help you reach your weight loss and cellulite goals. 1. Increased Weight Loss The "International Journal of Obesity" published a study in 2007 which showed that by eating three 5.3-ounce servings of lean or fatty fish, every week for four weeks, as part of an otherwise low-calorie diet, produced approximately 2.2 pounds more weight loss versus a similar diet without fish. 2. Smoother Looking Skin It’s the omega 3 fatty acids, including DPA and EPA, in fish that deliver many of its health benefits. DHA is actually part of the structure of your skin, responsible for maintaining the skin-cell membranes. Healthy membranes give you softer, moister, more wrinkle-free skin. EPA promotes healthy skin-oil production and more skin hydration to help prevent premature aging of the skin. 3. Less Depression & Anxiety Many studies have linked the consumption of omega 3s with a reduction in depression. And people suffering anxiety symptoms have reported an improvement in the symptoms after the addition of omega 3 supplements to their diets. 4. Better Sleep From reducing your circulation to interfering with the production of hormones that control your hunger pangs, lack of sleep is a ‘hidden’ contributor to being overweight. Studies have shown that supplementing your diet with omega-3 fatty acids can increase both the length and quality of your sleep. Not all fish are created equal. Some have higher levels of omega-3s, some have higher levels of contaminants and some are farmed or caught in questionable ways. You’ll need to do your research before starting, but when you add the right fish to your diet, you’ll be taking one more step towards less cellulite.

A common piece of advice to manage stress, anger and/or unhappiness is to start paying more attention to your inner voice and thoughts to see what triggers the unwanted emotions and feelings. But there’s an added bonus to the advice – you find out more about yourself than just what makes you mad or upset. So how does your cellulite make you feel? Judging from the millions of dollars spent every year to get rid of it, not very good. Cellulite can make even the most beautiful people feel unattractive. It can make you avoid situations like the beach or gym that might otherwise be fun. Just the name ‘cellulite’ can change your mood. But you can change all that by changing the way you view cellulite. By shifting your perceptions, you can learn to stop making cellulite the villain of your feelings and deal with it in a more positive way. Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind the next time the sight or thought of your cellulite gets you down. 1. Cellulite Really Isn’t Anything It’s the unevenness of the layer of fat immediately below your skin that produces the ‘dimples’ on the surface of your skin. Cellulite is an effect, not a thing. 2. (Almost) Everyone Has Cellulite 90% of women have cellulite to some degree. You just don’t see everyone else like you see yourself in the bathroom mirror every morning. 3. There is No ‘Cure’ No matter what you read, how great the promises sound or how quickly they say you can be ‘dimple-free’, there is no known process or treatment to permanently get rid of cellulite. So, if it really is just a symptom of something else; and more or less every woman has it; and there is no way to completely get rid of it, then why do you let it get you down so much? Instead, the next time you feel the sight of your cellulite starting to burst your bubble, start thinking about everything you can do to improve the appearance of it, from eating a healthier diet to wearing shapewear that massages your skin. Then you can move forward knowing that you’re doing something to improve the condition, instead of letting it bring you down.

Most people despise fat because they blame it for making them overweight and contributing to their cellulite. But you need fat to live. Fat helps improve your brain function, it protects your internal organs and it boosts your immune system. Unfortunately, that means robbing your body of essential fats through low-fat diets is an unhealthy way to lose weight and battle cellulite. You might lose some weight, but you have just as much chance of increasing your risk of illnesses. And chances are high that you’ll gain all the weight back, and more. Anti-Cellulite Shapewear’s One-Two Punch What if you could find a cellulite fighter that didn’t interfere with the essential fats that keep you healthy? Anti-cellulite shapewear does just that. And it helps you fight cellulite in more ways than one. In the face of so many seemingly unbelievable claims like ‘banishing cellulite’ and ‘blast cellulite away’, it might also sound incredible that just wearing an article of clothing can help you reduce your cellulite (notice we didn’t say ‘banish’!). First of all, the ability for Mass & Slim Shapewear Leggings to reduce the appearance of cellulite, and your thigh and waist circumference, is clinically-proven. Here are the two ways that shapewear helps you fight cellulite: 1. Massaging Action Infused with thousands of Tourmaline beads, shapewear helps to gently massage the skin it contacts. That massaging action promotes blood and lymph flow in the area to irrigate fat cells and help reduce the appearance of cellulite. 2. Increases Skin Temperature The same massage action also increases local skin temperature, which helps to burn fat cells to also reduce the orange-peel effect that cellulite has on your skin. There’s no ‘magic pill’ that eliminates cellulite. You need to use whatever tools you can and shapewear offers you two tools in one.

“Burn more calories than you eat”. It’s the simple principle of weight loss, and it can be the guiding light in your fight against cellulite. But as simple as it is, it seems difficult or impossible for most people to follow. Unfortunately we live in a world of convenience and, when it comes to the foods we eat, that means processed foods from the grocery store and fast foods whenever we don’t have time for meals at home. Excess fats and sugars in processed and fast foods, and many of the snack foods we crave, are really what make it difficult to burn more calories than you consume. When you don’t, the excess energy that you fail to burn off is stored by your body in fat cells, including those that increase your cellulite. The Glycemic Index (GI) Carbohydrates (carbs) are an essential part of a healthy diet. They give your body the energy it needs to function. But your body converts the energy from some carbs (like sugar) faster than from others. When it does, your blood sugar levels increase and so does the chance that you won’t be able to burn off all the extra energy. If you were able to know which foods increased your blood sugar levels the most, you could avoid them and make healthier choices. Using a scale from 1 to 100, the Glycemic Index tells you how much a particular carbohydrate-rich food will raise your blood sugar levels; 1 being the least and 100 being the most. White bread and glucose (sugar) have been given the highest GI of 100 and they are the standard by which all other foods are rated on the GI. While there are times where you may want to eat a high GI food, like if you’re feeling unusually sluggish and plan to exercise, choosing mostly low GI foods can offer a number of health benefits. • Lower risk of diabetes • High fibre content • Can reduce cholesterol levels Using the GI is just one more tool to help you eat healthier foods towards managing your weight and cellulite. The more tools you have at your disposal, the easier it is to reach your goals.

Our understanding of what is a ‘toxin’ is evolving. Technically speaking, a toxin is a naturally-produced poison, like snake venom. But that definition has been stretched to include manufactured chemicals that are ‘poisonous’, or harmful to us, including those found in the foods we eat. So your de-tox diet isn’t aimed at getting rid of things like snake venom, but the harmful substances in the foods you eat. Reducing the level of toxins in your body and how many you consume is generally considered an integral step in living a healthier lifestyle. But it can help you in other ways to, including a reduction in the appearance of cellulite. How Fewer Toxins Can Lead to Less Cellulite You’ve heard it a million times, but few clichés are truer than “your body is an amazing thing”.  Knowing that the harmful substances in food are not good for you, your body fights to keep toxins away from your vital organs. Instead, it will store excess toxins (those your liver and kidneys can’t get rid of immediately) in layers of fat until they can be expelled later. But that means more fat is needed to store the toxins and added fat can add to your cellulite. How to Reduce Toxin Intake to Minimize Cellulite By making small adjustments to your diet, you can reduce your toxin intake and, in turn, your cellulite. 1. Eat Fresh Vegetables Fresh vegetables are alkaline-forming foods. Not only does that alkalinity not add to the toxins in your body, but it draws out the acidic toxins already there. 2. Drink Lots of Water Just like it washes the dirt from your, water helps to flush your body of toxins. And the added moisture in your skin helps to reduce the orange-peel appearance of cellulite. 3. Reduce Salt Salt is essential to life, but you only need about a teaspoon of it every day. Any more, and it upsets the moisture balance in your body, contributing to dehydration and the wrinkled appearance of your skin. 4. Massage With the addition of alkaline-forming foods and more water, tissue massage helps to stimulate the lymphatic and blood circulation systems to help get rid of toxins, and the fat that goes with it. Unfortunately, cellulite is a reality for most people. But by continuing to take steps to reduce it, you can look and feel your best.

Straight up: there is no cream, or seaweed or coffee grounds that, by themselves, will reduce or get rid of cellulite. We told you before that the notion of an easy fix for cellulite has spawned these myths and more. We decided to look at recent headlines we found online about cellulite reduction and cures, and point out exactly why they can’t deliver what’s promised. Before we begin, here’s a brief definition of cellulite and how it can be reduced. Cellulite is a wavy, orange-peel-like appearance on your skin, especially around the thighs and butt. It is caused by a layer of fat just below the surface of your skin being pinched by the connective tissue that keeps your skin in place. The only way to reduce cellulite is through the reduction of the fat layer beneath the skin. This can happen through a combination of healthy weight loss methods, including a balanced diet, proper nutrition and physical activity along with stimulating blood and lymph flow in the area utilizing anti-cellulite shapewear. In a nutshell: that’s it. That’s cellulite and how it can be reduced. Now let’s look at theses anti-cellulite headlines: “Does Kim Kardashian’s Pre-Workout Cellulite Trick Really Work?” – Yes, Kim Kardashian, like most people, has cellulite. It turns out her cellulite “trick” isn’t very tricky. She rubs three different oils on her body before she goes for her morning hike. One of them is called “Miracle Oil”, another “Elasticity Oil”. If KK has seen any reduction in cellulite, it could only have come from the rubbing action when she applied the oil. “How to Get Rid of Cellulite on the Butt” – It is impossible to “target” where you will lose weight on your body. Your best hope is that, by doing some butt exercises, and building up your glutes, when you do manage to lose weight all over your body, your butt may appear more toned because the muscle is closer to the surface of the skin. Anti-Cellulite Remedies That Work – Here are their so-called five remedies 1. Eat Cayenne Pepper There are a number of reports and studies that say cayenne pepper helps weight loss by reducing your appetite (not an advisable weight loss tactic because you risk overeating later), boosting your metabolism and burning calories (the calorie burn is a result of the increased metabolism). Even if all this is true, cayenne peppers do nothing specifically to reduce your cellulite. 2. Dry Brushing If it has any effect on your cellulite, it comes from stimulating blood and lymph flow beneath your skin. You’re certainly not “brushing” away anything. 3. Coffee Scrub Ditto – it’s the rubbing motion that will produce an effect, if any. Caffeine may also tighten you skin, which can reduce the appearance of cellulite, but it doesn’t reduce cellulite. 4. Eat Boron Apparently it balances your hormones. But it doesn’t get rid of fat, which is how you get rid of cellulite. 5. Drink Green Tea The claim is that green tea “helps your body to burn excess fat and calories” (which, in this sense, are the same thing). If so, it’s not specific to the fat that is the reason for the appearance of cellulite. Beware of the headlines. If anything sounds too good to be true, it is.

From TV’s Food Network and food apps on your smartphone, to food blogs and “how to” cooking videos on the web, today’s technology makes food more present throughout your day. Using data from their own survey in cooperation with Ipsos, Google recently released data that North American's now use technology in many stages of their interaction with food. According to the survey, the following are the percentages of North American's who say they use their smartphone to help them decide: 55% - where to eat 37% - what to eat 12% - who to eat with Technology’s influence on our food habits is not insignificant, and it’s increasing as we speak. It’s also changing our relationship with food as we use it to show the world our own food habits. The survey noted the following trends over just one year: +64% - increase in mobile search interest for “takeout and delivery” +38% - increase is search interest in “recipes” 28% now regularly or occasionally take photos of their food Fortunately, American's are also using technology to help them eat better. We all know that cooking at home is one of the best ways to eat healthier foods, control portions and reduce calorie intake. The average American household has six cookbooks, but anyone with a smartphone has access to any recipe, cooking tip or ”how to” advice on the internet. 47% osay they regularly or occasionally prepare food by following a recipe on a website or app 30% who use smartphones for food or drink ideas say that it is their main cookbook 51% who regularly or sometimes watch food/drink videos on YouTube say that they look for “How Tos”, tips or hacks Whether or not technology is actually changing our food behavior and relationship, there’s no denying that its influence is getting stronger. In just the last year, behavior patterns have shifted significantly towards increased mindfulness about what we eat and its health and nutritional value. That trend can only help us in the ongoing battles against extra cellulite and its symptoms. 58% say that they are more mindful about cooking at home than they were a year ago 59% say they are more mindful of the nutritional value of the food they eat versus a year ago 78% look for health and nutritional information on food packaging We are all looking for ways to eat healthier, and/or lose weight, and/or get rid of cellulite. It makes sense to put every weapon at your disposal, including your mobile device and computer, to work for you.

How many times have you thought “I think I’ll get more nutrition in my diet to help reduce my cellulite”? If you’re like most, the answer would be “never”. And that’s why Nutrition was Secret Weapon #1 in the Battle Against Cellulite. In this episode, and sticking with the idea that these are “secrets” because you probably have never thought of them – or used them – to fight cellulite, we look at the anti-cellulite effects of strength training. BUT – Don’t Click Away Just Yet Yes, we know that most people don’t want to bulk up. Heck, most people aren’t into strength training at all. But we think it’s important for you to know its benefits against cellulite and then you can decide for yourself whether or not it’s worthwhile. In the Nutrition post, we learned once again that losing the fat that causes cellulite is just about the only way to really reduce it. And we talked about how nutrition supports healthy, sustainable weight loos. The Problem With Weight Loss that Strength Training Solves When you lose weight, your measurements, including thigh circumference and hip circumference, will shrink according to how many pounds you shed. That means there will be less fat between your skin and the underlying muscle. If there is a problem with weight loss as an anti-cellulite fighter, it is that, unless you lose an incredibly unhealthy amount of weight (cellulite would be the least of your problems if you lost that much weight), you will still have a certain amount of fat between your skin and the muscle tissue beneath it, a layer of fat that contributes the orange-peel effect of cellulite. Strength Training to The Rescue When you do some strength training (make sure to talk to your doctor before you begin), you will build muscle. Not enough to walk around with a six-pack necessarily – you can get away with even slight, unnoticeable increases in muscle mass. But when you do, it helps your fight against cellulite in a number of ways: 1. Larger Muscles Even if the change in the size of your muscles is unnoticeable, they are larger and extend closer to your skin, thereby reducing the thickness of the fat layer, which in turn reduces the appearance of cellulite. 2. Increased Metabolism A higher metabolism helps you burn more calories. 3. Lower Weight In addition to the increase in metabolic rate, you will burn more calories just from the activities you do in your strength training program. We know strength training isn’t for everyone. But we also know it can work to reduce your cellulite. And now you know.

We just did a quick internet search for “cellulite” and here are lines from some of the results we found: Cellulite-Busting Body Scrub DIY Intensive Cellulite Cream I Dry-Brushed for a Month to Get Rid of Cellulite Banishing Cellulite: The Foam Roller Detox The Cellulite Cure You’ve Never Heard About There’s one thing that all of these results have in common. Unfortunately, that commonality isn’t what you would hope it to be. No, despite the amazing claims they make, none of these products eliminate cellulite. Instead, the only thing they have in common is that none of them will “cure”, “bust”, “banish”, “brush”, “roll”, “detox”, or in any other way get rid of cellulite. Why These Sorts of Products Don’t Work as Promised The fat in your body is really stored energy. You eat to give your body the energy it needs to function and that energy is measured in calories. Your body has a powerful survival mode. In history, we humans didn’t always have a fridge full of food waiting to be raided any time we get peckish. Back then, we might feast after a good hunt, or during a harvest, but starve at other times. As our bodies evolved, they developed the defense mechanism of storing any excess energy consumed when food was plentiful. Then, if and when food became scarce, the body could use the stored energy to stay alive. So the only way to get rid of that extra energy, which is stored as fat, is for the body to use it up. And that’s why creams, rollers, scrubs, etc., don’t really work on your cellulite. Cellulite is caused by fat. Limited Cellulite Reduction With all that said, some cellulite treatments similar to those listed above can produce limited results in reducing the appearance of cellulite. Massaging the skin, especially in areas where cellulite is most prevalent, helps improve blood and lymph flow and can increase local skin temperatures. The improved flow of fluids helps to maintain a more even layer of fat beneath the skin, which can somewhat reduce the appearance of cellulite. The heat produced can also help burn off some calories and reduce fat. But with only temporary rubbing, rollering and massage, the results are limited at best. How Nutrition Helps You Reduce Cellulite In the end, the best way to reduce cellulite significantly is through the ongoing burning of excess calories to reduce fat deposits. In other words, a healthy diet and exercise will work as well or better than any cellulite treatment out there. But, unfortunately, too many people feel that using a crash diet is the best way to lose weight. But study after study shows that weight loss diets do not produce long-lasting results. Nearly two-thirds of dieters regain all the weight they lose within three years. And only 5% of crash-dieters keep the weight off permanently. Crash diets don’t work because your body likes to keep things the way they are. It’s called homeostasis, which refers to the body’s tendency to maintain an internal equilibrium. It’s why you get a “high” fever if your temperature goes up just one or two degrees. Crash diets disturb your body’s homeostasis by quickly and drastically reducing your calorie – or energy – intake. When your body detects a threat to the energy it needs each day, it can trigger a number of powerful defense mechanisms that can work against your efforts to lose weight. 1. Reduced metabolism Basically, when you cut calories, your body slows down to conserve energy. It can slow down so much that you might still gain weight on a calorie-reduced diet. 2. Less Energy With less energy intake, your body simply doesn’t have the energy it needs to function at the accustomed level each day, which further counteracts the effect of weight loss. 3.You Could Lose Muscle Mass Your body needs energy from three macronutrients: fats, carbohydrates and proteins. During a crash diet, in addition to conserving fat to maintain minimal energy levels, your body takes the protein it needs from your muscles. 4. Nutrition to The Rescue If, instead on depending on a crash diets to get quick results, you focus on maintaining your body’s nutrition levels, you greatly improve your chances of not disturbing your body’s homeostasis. Instead of simply cutting calories, you should try to add healthier, more nutrient-rich foods to your diet. That way, you get more energy from the foods you eat, while consuming similar or fewer calories. But don’t forget the other ways you can help your body to maximize the reduction of cellulite. Mass & Slim shapewear constantly massages your skin as you wear it. The increased heat, blood and lymph flow all contribute to a reduction in the appearance of cellulite. Stay tuned for our next blog post to find out what the Secret Weapon #2 is in the Battle Against Cellulite.

If you want to get rid of your cellulite, you’ll no doubt have found a “permanent cure” somewhere on the web or in a magazine, only to have your hopes dashed after you tried it and didn’t get the results you wanted. In just two words, the term “permanent cure” tells two lies about cellulite. First, nothing you can do to battle cellulite will get rid of it permanently, unless you keep up the fight. Second, there is no “cure” for cellulite. Regardless of what you hear about miracle creams, diets and seaweed wraps, they will not eliminate cellulite. Many of the false promises are based on commonly-held myths about cellulite. The myths are promoted by an industry that makes millions of dollars by selling you the hope of a quick, permanent way to live life without cellulite – which is simply untrue. Here are just a few of the cellulite myths that you should be on the look out for: 1. You Only Get Cellulite if You’re Overweight Cellulite is caused by fat cells, just under the surface of the skin, that push up between the tissue that connects the skin to your body. Everyone has that layer of fat to some extent, and cellulite can appear on bodies of all shapes and sizes. 2, Dieting Will Get Rid of Cellulite Nope. Not true. Dieting may reduce the levels of fat in your body, but it won’t eliminate the dimples. In fact, by causing fluctuations in the levels of fat in your body, dieting can make the dimpling worse. 3. Liposuction Will Take Care of it Once and For All Nice try. While it might seem to make sense that, if cellulite is caused by fat, sucking all the fat out will make it disappear. But, even if it was possible to suck all the fat out of your body (which it isn’t) your body would immediately produce more. And the liposuction could make the layer of remaining fat uneven, which could actually create larger bumps than what you had before. There are ways to improve the appearance of your cellulite like anti-cellulite shapewear along with balanced nutrition and exercise, which put together help firm and skulpt your body.

If you’ve been on a weight loss program or are trying to manage your weight on an ongoing basis, you’ve probably seen the recent publicity surrounding a study of contestants from the TV show “The Biggest Loser”. The study followed contestants from Season 8 for six years after the season ended. In a nutshell, the study found that the majority of the contestants gained back much, if not all the weight they lost and some weigh even more now than they did before the show. But the surprising results are not necessarily because the contestants fell back into old habits. In fact, many must now fight harder than the rest of us just to keep their weight stable. The reason has to do with their metabolism and how it is affected by the extreme weight loss that many Biggest Loser contestants experience. What happened to them is nicely explained in a recent article in the New York Times: “Researchers knew that just about anyone who deliberately loses weight — even if they start at a normal weight or even underweight — will have a slower metabolism when the diet ends. What shocked the researchers was what happened (after the show): As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight.” This is one of the first long-term studies of the effects of major weight loss in a short time. As such, conclusions are difficult to make until the results are studied and other research is conducted. But that hasn’t stopped a deluge of articles and reports in the media stating that exercising for weight loss doesn’t work and long-term weight loss is impossible. How Exercise Helps You Lose Weight The plain fact is that, yes, exercise can help you lose weight. The problem is that how it does so is not as simple as we make it out to be. It’s not a straight line equation. If you live a sedentary lifestyle and add more activity to your day, while consuming the same number of calories, you will very likely see some weight loss and a reduction in the symptoms of the extra weight, like cellulite. But the mistake we make when we see some results from the initial increase in calories burned is to assume that, if we exercise more, we will burn more calories and lose more weight. In The Biggest Loser, contestants go through an intense increase in activity and decrease in calories consumed to amplify the effect of the weight loss. Unfortunately, once you cross a certain threshold of calories in versus calories out, a threshold that is different in each of us, your body detects that something’s not “right”. It doesn’t know that you want to lose weight. It is programmed by nature to survive. When it detects any threat to that survival, like a disruption in calorie intake and/or burn, it executes powerful defense mechanisms to counteract the threat. That includes slowing down your metabolism to conserve energy. In some cases, metabolic rates can drop enough that, even if a person is on a calorie-reduced diet, and getting regular exercise, he or she might still gain weight. In the case of season 8’s winner, Danny Cahill, who has regained almost 50% of the weight he lost, he must eat 800 calories less per day than an average man of his weight just to avoid putting on more weight. So the lesson is that crash diets and/or heavy exercise plans have very little chance of working for ongoing weight loss. But if you adjust your lifestyle to eat a healthy, balanced diet, and live more actively, in ways that do not disrupt your body’s systems, you have every chance of seeing ongoing weight loss benefits, including a reduction in the appearance of cellulite.

In our last post, we showed you why there really is only one way to reduce or get rid of cellulite. While the unsightly skin dimpling that cellulite produces makes it feel like something is wrong with you, it really is just the symptom of too much subcutaneous (below the skin) fat. Lose the fat and you’ll lose the cellulite. Of course, that’s far easier said than done. If you’ve struggled with extra weight, you know that permanently losing it, and the cellulite that goes with it, is not as simple as hopping on the latest diet craze, or sweating it out at the gym, or some combination of both. Healthily losing weight is an often complex combination of factors that include eating a balanced diet and getting the 2.5 hours of moderate activity per week that Health Canada recommends. It only took a short paragraph to mention diet and exercise, but they are each hugely daunting tasks. When you put them together, it can make you want to give up before you even start a weight loss program. One Step at a Time But if you breakdown the process into more doable parts, you’ll increase your chances of starting and sticking with it. While more exercise is usually the last thing that people want to do, there is no denying it‘s role in helping you lose weight and cellulite. How to Improve Your Results from Exercise The problem with exercise is that, unlike a lot of what you might hear, you can’t “target” cellulite. When you increase activity levels, your body burns fat in equal proportions all over your body. Yes, you can do thigh and butt exercises, but they don’t increase the fat burn in those areas, they just increase the size of the muscles that lie underneath. Then, when you do lose the fat, you may looked more toned in those areas. But shapewear actually does help to burn fat in the areas of the body that it contacts. When you wear shapewear shorts, the massaging action of the fabric increases skin heat and circulation where the shorts touch you body – your thighs and butt. Here’s the One-Two Punch When you combine moderate exercise and the use of shapewear while you do it, you can lose weight and get results targeted to where you see the most cellulite. Again, it’s just one step in the overall battle against cellulite, but every weapon you have helps.

Yes, you can probably find endless pages of website listings and pack your email box full of links to sites trumpeting headlines like “How to Get Rid of Cellulite Fast” and “42 Great Ways to Target Cellulite”. We’re not saying that those articles are wrong.  But they use sensational headlines to get you to read them. Those headlines can create false expectations about cellulite and how quickly you can get rid of it - or how many different ways you can get rid of it. The Causes of Cellulite Cellulite is caused by fat that is stored just under the surface of your skin. Your skin stays attached to your body partly due to strands of connective tissue. When the fat beneath your skin pushes up, it doesn’t do so around the connective tissue, so you get the dreaded dimpling that gives cellulite its bad name. Despite its unsightly appearance, cellulite is perfectly normal and is not a sign that anything is wrong with you. It could happen anywhere on your body, but because both men and women store more fat around their butts and thighs, that’s where you generally see cellulite the most. Unfortunately for women, their bodies generally carry less muscle tissue than men’s bodies, which makes them somewhat more prone to cellulite. The Only Way to Get Rid of Cellulite The fact that cellulite is caused by fat points to the only way to get rid of it, which is to get rid of fat. That’s why many of the sensational headlines about lots of ways to get rid of cellulite, and how to get rid of it fast, are misleading. And there is only one way to get rid of fat: Eat a balanced diet that does not give you any more energy than you need to live healthily, while you burn excess fat on your body through exercise, massage, strength training, etc.. How Shapewear Helps: Shapewear is designed to burn fat in precisely those areas that cellulite affects most by gently massaging your skin as you go about your daily activities. The massaging action raises your skin temperature, which helps facilitate increased fat burn.

There is nothing wrong with being overweight. If you are comfortable with yourself, eat a balanced diet and are somewhat physically active, you might be healthier than many “slimmer” people. But it’s the things that are beyond your control that often make it less bearable to be above average in weight. It’s the odd comment, usually uttered without any ill intent, that hurts you to the core; or the photograph of you beside your rail-thin cousin; or the wavy, orange-peel appearance of cellulite on your butt and thighs that takes the wind out of your sails every time. So, even while you’re relatively comfortable in your skin, and the weight you carry isn’t necessarily bad for your health, your weight is almost constantly present in your life. You think about it many times a day. And even if you’re not thinking about it, you’re often unexpectedly reminded of it anyway, like when you catch your reflection in a store window. Why You Don’t Do Anything About Your Weight Aside from the fact that you’re OK with extra weight, despite the potential downsides, maybe you’ve tried to lose the weight, but haven’t had any long-term success. You’ve tried the diets, bought the gym memberships and embarrassing exercise outfits and generally made yourself miserable, only to have all the weight you managed to lose reappear not that long after you finish whatever program you tried. And you really enjoy your meals. When you have to eat certain things, and very few of them, you’re robbed of one of the great pleasures of life. It’s stressful when you’re on a diet and you never quite feel like yourself. Filling Foods – Feel Satisfied Without the Calories What if you were able to eat until you felt full and content all the way to your next meal? Really, feeling full and avoiding hunger pangs is a big part of the reason you enjoy eating, and also why you have a difficult time with diets. And imagine getting visible progress on weight loss, cellulite reduction and your overall health, without feeling like you’re making a huge sacrifice. Foods that are high in fiber and protein, and low in fat and calories, tend to make you feel fuller, and can increase your metabolism. Eating them in similar quantities of other, less filling foods, can help you stay satisfied with your diet, even while you reduce your calorie intake. 1. The Baked Potato – If baked potatoes were human, they would sue for slander considering how unfairly vilified they are in the weight loss diet community. Yes, they are high in carbohydrates, but they are also packed with lots of healthy nutrients, vitamins and fiber. And fiber is what makes them a filling food. Even though they are higher in carbs, potatoes fill you up to the point where it’s difficult to eat more than one at a meal. In one study of 38 satiating foods, the baked potato edged out all other competitors as the food that made participants feel fuller up to two hours after eating. 2. Pistachios – Nuts in general, particularly peanuts, almonds and walnuts, are all filling, deliver high levels of protein and are a great substitute for the unhealthy snacks that can defeat even the most ambitious weight-loss program. Pistachios deliver many of the usual benefits of nuts, but they also happen to be somewhat lower in calories. 48 pistachios contain the same number of calories as 28 peanuts and 22 almonds. 3. Bean Soup – Soup fills you up in more ways than one, especially when its bean soup. Soup has a high water content, which fills you up with relatively few calories. But beans, including lentils, lima beans, peas and black beans, are chock full of fibre, protein and resistant starch, which slows the release of sugar into the bloodstream. And beans have relatively few calories. Put it all together, and bean soup is one of the most filling dishes you can have with just 150 calories per cup. 4. Berries – if there is one taste sensation dieters miss more than others, it’s the occasional sweet treat. Berries, including raspberries, strawberries and blueberries, deliver your hit of delicious sweetness in a package that is also high in fibre, which helps make you feel satisfied. And they are full of healthy anti-oxidants. 5. Breakfast Cereal – Due to the high sugar content in many cereals, they are another oft-maligned food in many diets. But there are a number of healthier, filling breakfast cereals that are not excessively high in sugar. Look for wholegrain cereals and check the label for sugar content. It’s important to remember that there is no one simple answer to losing weight, reducing cellulite or keeping your weight at a certain level. But every adjustment you make, that you can sustain, is a step in the right direction.

It seems like the world is populated by slim people. How do they do it? You’ve been getting more active, you watch what you eat and yet you can’t get the weigh scale to budge. It’s usually at this point that many people give up and decide that they “just can’t lose weight”. They resign themselves to living an overweight life and tolerating everything that comes with that, from the hurtful comments, to the bubbly looking cellulite on their butts and thighs. First of all, with few exceptions, most people are physically able to lose weight. That’s not to say that the seeming inability to lose weight is purely a mental or emotional problem, but it’s certainly at least as much so as it is physical. It’s yet another reason why fad diets rarely produce lasting weight loss. They set up unreasonable short-term expectations which, when not met, would need massive emotional fortitude to conquer. But you’re over that. You now the secret to permanent weight loss is to eat a healthy, balanced diet and get as much activity as you can. So Why Do You Still Not Lose Weight? It is so disheartening to make huge adjustments in your lifestyle and diet, only to have it all produce zero results. The fat and cellulite remain. There are two basic reasons why eating well and getting exercise doesn’t work for everyone. 1. You Overestimate the Calories Burned During Exercise Regardless of whether you lost weight or not, you must admit that you feel great (at least after you catch your breath and cool down) after a good workout. Even a brisk walk can get your blood flowing, increase your metabolism and give you energy. But, in a way, all that good feeling and energy is the problem. We feel so good, we think we’ve burned way more calories than we actually did. A study done by the University of Ottawa found that, when participants were asked to eat the number of calories they thought they burned during a workout, they consistently ate two or three times more calories than they burned. 2. You Underestimate How Many Calories You Eat Numerous studies prove that we all underestimate how many calories we eat and even how often we cheat on our healthy eating habits. Even if you eat nothing but health foods, there is a tendency to think that, if it’s good for you, you can eat it, regardless of how much you’ve eaten already today. It’s when the “over estimating how much we burn” and “underestimating how much we eat” phenomena collide that some serious damage can happen. Like when we use food as a reward for a good workout. Let’s say you went for a very brisk walk of 6.5 km/h (normal walking speed is about 5 km/h), for half an hour every day. That would be quite an achievement. So you wouldn’t be blamed for encouraging yourself on the way home with a treat, especially a relatively healthy one like a bran muffin. If you did that exercise/reward combination, you would gain over a third of a pound every week – even while doing a fairly strenuous exercise.

Cellulite is fat. It’s fat that’s trapped just below your skin between the fibrous connective tissue that keeps your skin in place. So if you want to reduce the unsightly orange-peel effect that cellulite creates on your skin, you need to lose fat. Most people take a straight-line approach to fat reduction: reduce your daily calorie intake until it’s lower than how many calories you burn. It makes sense, and it can work. But it rarely does. Everyone needs to eat and you need a minimum amount of food calories per day to remain healthy. When you start to play around with calorie reduction, it can create havoc with your metabolism and your body’s other systems. The results can be disastrous. Reducing how much you eat also sets you up for failure in your plan to reduce fat and cellulite. Not eating enough food makes you hungry all the time and increases the chance of not just going off the diet, but going off it in a big, unhealthy way. Instead of focusing on how much you eat, work on what you eat and it will help you burn fat while still eating enough to keep you satisfied. Here are five “swaps” you can make in your daily diet that will burn more fat without necessarily reducing how much your eat (as long as you’re not overeating!)   1. Eat Smaller Meals More Often During the Day Spreading your daily calorie intake throughout the day helps keep your calorie burning stable and avoids spikes in your blood sugar levels. 2. Eat More Whole Grains Bread, pasta, rice; when you eat them, make sure they are whole grains and not processed. 3. Drop Sugary Drinks and Foods You will get almost twice the daily intake of sugar recommended by the World Health Organization from on can of Coke. Try vegetable juice or green tea and snack on nuts, seeds and whole fruits. And drink lots of water. 4. Cut the Fat You can lose a significant number of calories from meals by trimming the visible fat from meats. On chicken, avoid the skin. If you want to reduce cellulite and the fat that causes it, what you eat is as important as how much you eat.

It has no taste, no color, no real nutritional value and, if you lived near a pristine stream, it would have no cost. Yet, while it seems to not have a lot going for it, water is essential for life. As if that wasn’t enough reason to drink more water, water also delivers a number of benefits for weight loss, not the least of which is its ability to reduce the appearance of cellulite on your skin. Before we get into water benefits for cellulite reduction, it helps to understand exactly what is cellulite. Everyone has a layer of fat cells just below their layers of skin. The skin is also connected to the underlying muscle tissue through fibrous connective “cords”. When enough fat accumulates, it tends to push up against the underside of your skin. But the cords pull down on your skin. The result is the wavy, “orange peel” appearance of cellulite you see on the surface of your skin. How Drinking Water Helps Reduce Cellulite 1. Water Gives You More Energy When you don’t get enough water, your muscles don’t work as well. That reduces the amount of activity you can do before feeling fatigue. More water means more activity, which burns more calories, which reduces fat. 2. Strengthens Your Skin Your skin needs water. Without it, skin gets dry and somewhat thinner; this makes it more susceptible to showing the signs of cellulite. 3. Water Helps You Reduce Calorie Intake In addition to giving you more energy to burn calories, water helps reduce stress (a big reason for emotional eating), fills you up at meal time (so you eat less) and helps reduce your consumption of sugary drinks, all of which are a huge boost to any weight loss program. Drink up! Water is not a standalone cellulite cure. But when used in combination with other cellulite treatments and weight loss initiatives, water helps deliver results, and many more benefits to your overall health.

It’s really an unfortunate phenomenon. As if it isn’t enough that overweight people are often made to feel bad about themselves from the constant bombardment of images of skinny people in the media, but there’s ongoing evidence that overweight people can face discrimination in the workplace. And none of that includes the unsolicited comments and unfeeling jokes. What Can You Do? You eat healthily. You’re otherwise in good shape. And, quite frankly, you don’t feel you need to burden yourself with starvation diets and expensive gym memberships to fit the image other people have of what’s “normal”. Yet, as much as you try to ignore the comments and carry on “in your own skin”, there are times when you can’t help but wonder what it would be like f you didn’t have quite as much weight. What if there were ways to improve your body shape and/or the look of your skin – like reducing unsightly cellulite – without going over the top with calorie cutting and exhausting workouts. Well, here’s two: • Octopolar Radio Frequency Technology (ORFT) – First, let’s unpack the name for you: octopolar refers to 8 electrodes, or prongs used on the device. Radio Frequency refers to the radio waves passed through each electrode to generate heat. Commercially available as the Venus Freeze system, the device uses Pulsed Magnetic Resonance to minimize heat in the electrodes and distribute the heat more evenly. In a nutshell, the device is used directly on the skin to generate deep-penetrating heat. That heat increases the amount of oxygen, nutrients and blood under the skin. Production of the hormone collagen is also stimulated. Collagen improves skin tightness and helps reduce the appearance of cellulite. The ORFT has also been shown to produce noticeable reductions in thigh circumference. • Shapewear – Advances in shapewear technology have resulted in a product that doesn’t just enhance your shape. In fact, independent studies prove that the latest shapewear advancements actually promote weight loss and cellulite reduction. If extra weight has been a problem all your life, you know there is no easy solution. It’s not like any of the options above will drastically change your body or your life. But if you want to simply feel a little slimmer, these are great, easy, non-invasive ways to do so.