Most people are well aware that you can look younger and healthier with a long-term commitment to a healthy diet and active lifestyle. But when spring break is just around the corner, you may be in more of a rush to bring out your best look. There is no simple overnight solution to the perfect look, but there are a number of ways you can tackle your appearance concerns and bring out your very best.
Check out these 16 ways to get a younger, fitter look so you can party like it’s spring break no matter what your age.
1. Watch Your Diet
The first step in getting your youthful glow back is to pay attention to what you’re putting your body. Instead of crash dieting or trying your luck with weight loss pills, just make sure to eat a healthy, balanced diet every day. Limit your caloric intake and amp up your fruits and veggies. Be sure to focus on whole grains instead of refined starches and snack frequently throughout the day to avoid ever getting too hungry. It’s also a good idea to ditch the cigarettes for good and limit your weekly cocktails.
Improving your diet is one of the best ways to stay looking young and healthy over the long-term, but you might be able to notice some changes immediately as well. Eliminating greasy foods, excess sodium and alcohol, for instance, can clear up your skin in as little as a few days.
2. Get Moving
Exercise is another long-term health investment that can have immediate effects. Take the time to move a little bit each day to get your blood pumping and burn off some extra calories. Whether you hit the gym, join a yoga class, go for a bike ride or just take a walk around the block, a daily commitment to physical activity will not only help you slim down, but it will also have a rejuvenating affect on your appearance.
Exercise stimulates blood circulation throughout your body, including your face, bringing a youthful glow into your complexion.
Exercising also has psychological effects, boosting serotonin levels and providing a mood boost. That’s why regular exercise can decrease feelings of depression and increase self-confidence, which can have a noticeable affect on your appearance on its own.
3. Book Your Med Spa Appointment
Once you’ve committed to a healthy lifestyle, it’s time to consult the professionals. Book a medical spa appointment to have a skin evaluation and snag a couple of your favorite facial services.
- A hydrating facial can refresh your complexion instantly by infusing your skin with hydration and growth factors. This quick treatment takes less than 1 hour and boasts immediately noticeable results.
- Deeper peels can minimize or remove spots, scars and fine wrinkles. The deeper the peel, the more dramatic your results, but keep in mind that some peels may cause your skin to gradually flake over the coming days.
- Microdermabrasion smoothes out rough skin texture and minimizes pores with an aggressive exfoliation treatment. This simple procedure can leave you with baby-soft skin and a rejuvenated look.
4. Start a Medical-Grade Skincare Regimen
While you’re at the med spa, ask about medical-grade skincare products. Over-the-counter products have limitations, but licensed medical spas and doctors are able to carry products that reliably deliver real results.
Medical-grade products have been put through rigorous scientific testing to determine their ingredients and proper usage, and can help a range of skin concerns, including dry skin, acne, uneven texture, uneven pigmentation, sun spots, wrinkles and more.
A few “must-haves” include:
- A retinoid cream can fight wrinkles and improve your skin tone and texture.
- A high quality sunscreen can keep you from getting sun damage without making your skin oily.
- A gentle cleanser with skin rejuvenating ingredients, such as tea tree oil, salicylic acid and vitamin E.
- An undereye cream to tighten the skin beneath your eyes and reduce fine lines.
An aesthetician can help you decide on the best skincare products for your skin.
5. Restore Your Facial Contours
Aging doesn’t only show up in the form of wrinkles. Over time, age tends to thin the facial contours due to a loss of collagen and elastin. Poor hydration and smoking can accelerate this process. Deep facial creases, flat or sunken cheeks, and horizontal forehead lines are all common symptoms of the aging process caused by thinning tissue.
Injectable fillers can restore your facial contours by replacing lost volume for a natural, youthful look. Consider using dermal fillers to fill in lines in the nasolabial folds, which travel from the sides of your nostrils to the corners of your mouth. Facial fillers can also lift a sagging brow to smooth out forehead wrinkles, get rid of undereye bags and even improve the shape of your nose. There are many different types of fillers available for different needs. Ask your aesthetic nurse about the right filler for you.
6. Plump Up Your Lips
Speaking of fillers, injectables can also be applied to the lips for a plumping effect. Whether you were born with naturally thin lips or lost lip volume over time, if you think that having thin lips detracts from your appearance, you might want to consider getting lip enhancement.
Full and defined lips are hallmarks of youth and beauty, and a luscious pair of lips can create a greater sense of balance among facial features.
Lip augmentation isn’t just for making the lips fuller. Applying fillers to the lips can also smooth away lip wrinkles, improve asymmetry and create better lip definition. The procedure only takes a few minutes and your results should develop over the coming days. Many people schedule routine touch-ups once or twice a year to maintain their results.
7. Smooth Away Dynamic Wrinkles
Dynamic wrinkles are wrinkles caused by repeated facial movements. The most common dynamic wrinkles are the thin lines beside the outer eye, known as crow’s feet, and vertical lines between the brows, known as frown lines. BOTOX® Cosmetic is the most popular and effective treatment for these wrinkles, helping you achieve a smoother and younger complexion once again. BOTOX® works by temporarily paralyzing the tiny facial muscles that create these wrinkles, allowing them to relax and fade. If you think you’re too young for BOTOX®, don’t say no just yet. BOTOX® is commonly used as a preventative treatment to delay or stop these wrinkles from forming at all.
8. Get Rid of a Double Chin
The double chin is a fairly common genetic trait, making it difficult to control with weight loss. In many men and women, a double chin might persist despite being otherwise in good shape. Not only is this submental fat often unflattering, but it can also make you appear older than you really are.
Kybella™ is a nonsurgical double chin treatment that eliminates fat pockets under the chin through simple injections into the target area. When injected, Kybella™ breaks down fat cells so that they gradually become eliminated by your body. Most people require 2 to 6 treatments spaced a few weeks apart, but you may see improvements after only your first treatment.
9. Bring Out Your Eyes
The eyes are the windows to the soul and one of the first things people notice about you. As we age, however, our eyes can become diminished or obscured by sagging eyelid skin. Undereye bags can also make us appear permanently tired.
Blepharoplasty, also known as eyelid surgery, is a procedure that refreshes the appearance of the eyes by tightening the surrounding skin, smoothing out wrinkles or folds, and reallocating fatty tissue surrounding your eyes. Redistributing tissue can reduce the appearance of undereye bags, while tightening and trimming away excess skin will reduce folds. The surrounding facial muscles are also gently tightened, allowing for better support of the features of the upper face. The result is a brighter, more youthful look to the eyes.
10. Get a Laser Treatment
Cosmetic treatments that use laser energy to improve the quality of skin or tissue without surgery are becoming increasingly popular. If you’re considering a laser treatment, here are a few of the most effective:
- Laser skin resurfacing is a common procedure for both men and women who are interested in keeping a youthful appearance. The treatment uses energy from lasers to gently lift and tone the skin, stimulate the production of collagen and elastin, and activate your body’s natural healing processes. Laser resurfacing can decrease wrinkles, lighten age spots, improve your skin texture and fade scars. You may have lingering redness for 2 to 4 days after your treatment.
- Deep laser skin resurfacing is also an option if you’re concerned with deeper scars or more pronounced skin damage. This procedure may require up to 1 week of downtime as your skin heals. Your aesthetic nurse can help you decide if deep laser resurfacing is right for you.
- A micro laser peel can also rejuvenate your complexion by gently sloughing away the surface layer of skin cells and stimulating new cell generation. This treatment can deliver a noticeably smoother and more even complexion in only 30 minutes.
11. Heal Sun Damage
Direct sun exposure is one of the biggest accelerants of aging, which is why all skincare experts recommend daily sun protection.
For those of us who didn’t read the memo, sun damage can show up in a number of different ways, including loose or sagging skin, fine lines, age spots and facial redness. Even if you do take steps to protect your skin from the sun, there’s a good chance you’ve developed some amount of damage from age or exposure to other environmental factors.
A photofacial uses light therapy to reverse sun damage on the skin, helping your complexion stay clear and refreshed. By stimulating healing in the underlying facial tissues without disturbing the surface layer of skin, a photofacial helps your skin heal from the inside out. In addition to reducing hyperpigmentation, age spots and sun damage, this 30-minute treatment can also improve acne and pore size.
12. Book a Facelift
Depending on the extent of your facial aging, you may feel ready for the big guns. There is no right or wrong age to get a facelift, since everyone ages differently based on genetics and lifestyle. A facelift is the ultimate anti-aging procedure, lifting and tightening the skin, tissue and underlying facial musculature to create a more youthful appearance. Today’s facelifts are focused on natural-looking results, creating a firmer and more youthful face that still looks like you, only years younger. You’ll need to take at least 1 week away from your normal routine as you heal. Supplement with other facial treatments and products to help your results last.
13. Freeze the Fat Away
Despite your best intentions at the start of the year, the beginning of spring finds many unprepared for swimsuit season. Holiday weight can linger on long after sweater weather is finished, especially in places like the abdomen and love handles where fat is hard to burn.
CoolSculpting® is a nonsurgical fat reduction procedure that uses a process called cryolipolysis to freeze away fat cells. This alternative to liposuction allows men and women to slim down their midsections or another problem area by placing the patented CoolSculpting® device over the target area and simply waiting while the subcutaneous layer of fat, which lies directly under the skin, is gradually cooled. Once the fat cells reach freezing temperatures, they essentially dissolve and become eliminated from the body over time.
One of the primary reasons to consider CoolSculpting® is the procedure requires no downtime. Simply walk out after your appointment and return to your normal routine. You may have some bruising for a few days.
14. Get Rid of Those Pesky Bulges
Liposuction is still the go-to method of fat removal for men and women worldwide. One of the longest-standing cosmetic surgery procedures, lipo permanently removes fat cells from the body through several small incisions that allow your surgeon to manually break apart fat cells and suction them out of your problem areas. Streamlining your figure can help you fit into some of your favorite warm-weather clothes, reduce skin irritations like chafing and inspire a more positive self-image. Liposuction is commonly used on the abdomen, love handles, flanks, thighs, buttocks, arms and back.
While liposuction is not a weight loss procedure, it can help out with your weight loss goals.
You should be at or near your target weight before even getting lipo, making the procedure a powerful motivator. You’ll also need to maintain your results with a healthy lifestyle, further cementing your commitment to looking your best. Some further benefits of liposuction may include a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, lipo has been linked to reduced triglyceride levels, a type of fat commonly linked to heart disease.
15. Flatten Your Tummy
It’s fairly common to have some extra pudginess in your belly, but pregnancy or dramatic weight loss can leave you with more than just a little something extra. Excess skin can sag and make clothing unflattering or uncomfortable. Pregnancy or weight fluctuations can also result in diastasis recti, when the two halves of the abdominal muscles are separated. While liposuction can remove fat cells, the procedure on its own won’t tighten loose skin or tone your abdominals.
If you’ve reached your weight loss goals, completed your family and are ready for your bikini body, a tummy tuck may be in store for you. Also known as abdominoplasty, this common mommy makeover procedure is popular among men as well as women for reshaping the midsection. A tummy tuck removes excess skin, reduces the amount of lingering fatty tissue in the abdominal cavity and tightens the abdominal muscles, but there are also several other benefits to getting a tummy tuck, including reducing urinary stress incontinence. In some cases, a tummy tuck can even result in increased satiety, helping men and women achieve and maintain their long-term weight loss goals.
16. Restore Your Curves
If you feel as if your breasts have seen better days, you’re not alone. Aging, combined with life events like pregnancy, weight fluctuations or nursing, can cause the breasts to lose volume and appear deflated. Breast augmentation can restore your youthful curves using breast implants to boost your bust line. Breast enlargement is one of the most popular elective surgeries for women worldwide, but be sure to plan your procedure wisely. You’ll need to take at least 1 week away from work and your normal routine, and your final results may take up to 6 months to fully develop. For some, spring is the best time to get breast implants as the summer weather hasn’t hit yet and there’s still plenty of time to shop for a new wardrobe.
