metaboliq
Most people who search this have just seen a photo they did not like. Wedding season in India produces a lot of them, shot from below by an uncle with a new phone. The next morning the ads arrive, for jawline trainers at 999 rupees and jade rollers at twice that, and none of them mentions what the research says.
Face fat comes and goes with body fat, so a slimmer face comes from losing weight overall, slowly enough to keep your muscle. Some of what looks like fat is water, which a salty dinner or a short night adds and a full night's sleep removes. Face exercises may firm the muscles underneath without touching the fat on top.
Why does fat show up in the face?
The face has its own pads of fat, in the cheeks, under the jaw and around the eyes. They fill and empty along with fat everywhere else. Vinet Coetzee's research at the University of St Andrews found that how heavy a face looks tracks closely with body-mass index, so people can guess someone's BMI from a photo surprisingly well. Faces judged heavier also tended to belong to people with poorer measures of health.
Two more things decide how much your face shows it. One is family. If your mother and her sisters have had round cheeks at every weight in the old albums, you probably will too, and no routine will change the bone and fat-pad layout you inherited. The other is age. In your twenties the cheek pads sit high and full. By your forties they thin and slip lower, which is why a 45-year-old who loses weight can look drawn much faster than a 27-year-old who loses the same.
Sources: [1]
Can face exercises burn face fat?
No. Working a muscle does not burn the fat sitting on top of it, and the best test of this was done on the belly. Michael Vispute's team gave volunteers six weeks of sit-ups and crunches. Their core muscles got stronger and their belly fat did not budge. There is no reason the cheeks would behave differently.
Face yoga is a separate question, because it changes shape rather than fat. In a small Northwestern University study led by Murad Alam, middle-aged women did half an hour of facial exercises every day for eight weeks, then every other day for twelve more. Dermatologists who could not tell which photos came first rated their cheeks as fuller and their faces as slightly younger. Fat was never measured. So face yoga may firm things up, and you will still need the walk and the smaller dinner.
Why does your face look puffier some mornings?
Mostly it is water. A salty restaurant dinner, a couple of drinks, a late night or a good cry can leave the face swollen the next morning, especially around the eyes. Lying flat for eight hours lets that fluid settle in the face, and it drains as you move about. By lunch it has usually gone, which is why the same face can look so different in two photos taken a day apart.
Think of the morning after a sangeet that ended at 2 am with chole bhature and a few drinks. That is the worst photo of the whole wedding, every time. Short sleep makes it worse in a second way. Karine Spiegel's experiments showed that cutting sleep raises hunger, especially for salty and starchy food, and that food brings more water with it. Before a shoot or a big event, a light, low-salt dinner, no alcohol that night and a full night in bed will do more for your face than any roller.
Sources: [4]
What actually slims a round face?
Steady fat loss over a few months, from the whole body. The changes that get you there are ordinary. The daily cold coffee with cream from the café downstairs becomes a plain coffee. Lunch is dal, sabzi and two rotis carried from home instead of a roll from the canteen. There is a 40-minute walk after work, in the park or around the colony, most days of the week.
Protein makes all of this easier to stick to. Heather Leidy's review of meal studies found that meals higher in protein keep people fuller and eating less later in the day. A bowl of curd at lunch and paneer, eggs or chicken at dinner usually takes care of it. At around half a kilo a week, three or four kilos come off over a couple of months. On a face that carries weight in the cheeks, that is roughly when friends start to comment and photos start to look different.
Sources: [7]
Do jawline trainers, gua sha or chewing gum help?
Not for fat. A jawline trainer is a hard silicone piece you bite on, again and again, to build the chewing muscles at the angle of the jaw. Bigger chewing muscles can make a jaw look squarer. They can also strain the jaw joint, and dentists see clicking, headaches and jaw pain in people who use them for an hour a day. Chewing gum all day works the same muscles with the same risks.
Gua sha stones and face rollers push fluid out of the tissues for a while, so a puffy morning face can look calmer for an hour or so. Kept in the fridge, a roller feels good on a hot Delhi afternoon. That is the whole of the benefit. The fat in your cheeks is unchanged, and no trial has shown otherwise.
Sources: [2]
Which Indian foods make the face look puffy?
Salty ones, eaten late at night. Pickles, papad, namkeen, instant noodles, packet soups, restaurant gravies and a heavy hand with chaat masala can push a day's salt far above what the body needs. The body holds on to extra water to dilute that salt, and overnight some of it gathers in the face and around the eyes.
Weeknight dinner is where most of this happens. Instant noodles or a delivery thali at ten at night, with achaar on the side, is a common pattern in Indian cities. Moving dinner to eight, cooking it at home with less salt and saving the pickle for lunch makes mornings noticeably less puffy for most people within a week or so. Alcohol, long flights and the days before a period cause the same kind of swelling. None of it is fat, which is why it comes and goes so fast.
Sources: [4]
When is a puffy or round face a medical sign?
When it changes along with how you feel. Picture a 44-year-old teacher whose face has grown puffy over a year, along with a tiredness that sleep does not touch. She now wears a cardigan in a staffroom everyone else finds warm, and her hair is thinning. Layal Chaker's review of hypothyroidism describes exactly that cluster. A TSH test at any lab answers the question for a few hundred rupees, and treating an underactive thyroid usually settles the puffiness.
A rarer cause is too much cortisol, called Cushing's syndrome. Lynnette Nieman's Endocrine Society guideline suggests testing when a rounder, flushed face comes with easy bruising, wide purple stretch marks and weak thighs that make stairs hard. Long courses of steroids can do the same thing. That includes strong steroid skin creams, which some chemists still hand over across the counter for rashes and pigmentation.
Does losing weight make the face look older?
It can, and speed is usually why. Crash diets before weddings are a familiar Indian story. Seven kilos come off in six weeks on soup and fruit, the photos show new hollows under the cheekbones, and two aunts ask the bride's mother whether she has been unwell. Losing weight that fast takes muscle with the fat, and the skin has no time to adjust.
Half a kilo a week, with protein at every meal and two short strength sessions, keeps more muscle and lets the skin settle as you go. That is the thinking behind our own programme. Metaboliq is a doctor-led weight programme, and the aim we set with members is "Lose up to 20% of your body weight — and keep your muscle". Results vary; your doctor decides what is right for you. It starts with a home blood test that a doctor reads. A thyroid or sugar problem behind a puffy face would change the plan, so it is worth knowing about first.
Sources: [7]