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The holidays are coming, with the promise of good food and good times. But we know from experience that holiday temptations can lead to weight gain. Here are some ways to keep yourself slim before the holidays so that you can look good and can enjoy yourself when they arrive.

Eat a Mix of Healthy Foods

Focus on healthy eating now. Get in the habit of eating plenty of vegetables — at least five servings — every day, balanced with lean proteins, modest portions of whole grains, and fresh fruit. Steer clear of highly processed foods, refined carbohydrates like white bread, and foods with added sugar. Better yet, keep those fat-building foods out of your kitchen and out of sight. Instead, keep chopped vegetables on hand for healthy snacking.

Watch Your Portion Sizes

Serve yourself smaller portions. You might use a smaller plate so it looks like you’re getting more. Eat slowly, paying attention to when your hunger is satisfied. Savor your food and stop before you feel stuffed. If there’s anything left over, save it for another meal. Don’t have seconds just because the food is there.

Pay Attention to When You Eat

Start your day with some protein for breakfast. That will keep your hunger at bay through the morning and cut down on the urge to snack before lunch. Eat lightly at the end of the day, when you’re more likely to convert calories to fat. Some people swear by the rule of avoiding carbohydrates after 4 pm. That change in eating habits can reduce your calorie intake by pushing you to eat more vegetables and lean protein.

Drink More Water

Healthy hydration helps your body process the energy and nutrients in food and flush waste from your system. It’s also good for your skin. Keep a water bottle with you as a reminder to hydrate throughout the day. Strategic timing can help, too: two glasses of water before a meal can reduce the urge to overeat.

Get Moving

It can be harder to find time for exercise with shorter days, and the pandemic has limited access to some gyms, but there are always ways to fit in more physical activity. Step up your activity as the holidays approach. A mix of aerobic and resistance workouts will burn calories, build muscle, speed up your metabolism, reduce stress, and brighten your mood. Try walking, running, or biking with family or friends to make it more fun. Or listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks to keep your mind engaged.

Weigh Yourself

The regular feedback of weighing yourself can be a great motivator to stay slim. Weigh yourself at least a couple of times a week, preferably daily. A higher reading works as an immediate alert to watch your eating and step up your exercise to stay on track.

De-Stress

Stress is one of the biggest drivers of unhealthy eating and weight gain. When you’re under stress, you’re more likely to revert to bad habits and succumb to snacking temptations. When you feel your anxiety rising, try deep breathing, yoga, meditation, calming music, or a quick walk outside — whatever works for you — to get back to a healthy state of calm.

Sleep Well

Lack of sleep is another big factor in weight gain. Sleep deprivation can make your hungrier, fog your thinking, reduce your motivation for exercise, and lead you to make impulsive eating decisions. Make healthy sleep habits a priority in your daily routine. Wind down before bedtime with no TV or electronic devices, and stick to a regular bedtime and waking schedule.

Learn More About Body Contouring Treatments in Beverly Hills

Dr. David Kim and Dr. Eugene Kim at Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery have developed an impeccable reputation for stunning, natural-looking cosmetic treatment and plastic surgery results, attracting patients from all over the world. Contact our practice today at (310) 746-5475 or send an online request to schedule a consultation.

The idea of self-care has been around since the 1970s, but it’s only recently that it’s become such a hot buzzword. At its core, it’s the concept of making room for your needs among your many priorities. It’s not about selfishness or vanity. It’s about taking care of yourself so you can be your best in all aspects of your life.

Self-care is making time for valuable relationships. It’s eating well, sleeping well, and getting healthy exercise. It’s mastering stress, rather than letting stress get the better of you. It can also be looking your best so you feel your best – not to impress someone else, but for your self-confidence.

Beauty and Self-Care

We might wish gender roles in our society were different. But the reality is that beauty ideals for men and women are deeply embedded in our psyches. It’s basic human nature to care about our appearance. We want to make a good impression on others – for people to notice, respect, and love us. 

The world has certainly changed to the point where more and more women are succeeding at work based on their skills, intelligence, creativity, and interpersonal savvy. But looks still matter. A woman has to care about her appearance as part of her personal and professional image — her brand. That’s true for men, too, though ingrained biases continue to hold women to a different standard. 

It’s also true that after a life of being judged by our appearance, we can internalize feelings of self-worth based on our looks. We may try to deny it, but we feel better about ourselves, more confident and self-assured when we feel good about our appearance. That can affect the way we think and behave.

According to a 2019 survey conducted on behalf of Real Self by The Harris Poll, more than a third of American adults are considering cosmetic treatments, and the most common reasons are “to improve self-esteem/confidence” and “to look as good as I feel.”

Investing in Your Self-Worth

Women have become accustomed to spending money on their clothes, their makeup, and their hair to look and feel their best. A survey by SkinStore, described in Allure magazine, found the average American woman spends about $300,000 over her lifetime on cosmetics alone.

While most self-care advocates don’t suggest excessive spending to attend to your needs – it can have the opposite effect when you get the credit card bill – they do recommend personal reflection on what matters most to you. If the steps you take to improve your appearance boost your feelings of self-worth, that can be money well spent.

How Cosmetic Surgery Has Become a Better Value

Plastic surgery techniques and technologies continue to advance by leaps and bounds every year. With each innovation, the options become faster, more effective, less expensive, and safer. With each innovation, the options become faster, more effective, less expensive, and safer. A continuum has also emerged, ranging from the surgical standbys of tummy tucks, facelifts, and breast surgery — all greatly improved in recent years — to less invasive treatments like CoolSculpting and dermal fillers that rejuvenate the skin and recontour the body with little or no downtime.

Where plastic surgery was once a luxury for the rich and famous, it has now become a commonplace and widely accepted way to improve our appearance. And the results, in the hands of a skilled plastic surgeon, are so subtle and natural that others often notice them with “Wow, you look great!” comments, rather than questions about surgery.

Do It for Yourself

If you’re spending money on cosmetics to hide facial imperfections or shopping for clothes that conceal unwanted bulges or the lack of curves, it might be time to consider cosmetic surgery. 

But do it for yourself. Ask yourself the question: “Why am I thinking about this?” If it’s for you, to make you feel good about yourself, that can be a sound self-care reason. If it’s to impress someone else or make them happy, you’re probably not going to feel satisfied with your results.

Dr. David Kim and Dr. Eugene Kim at Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery have developed an impeccable reputation for their stunning, natural-looking results. Contact them today at (310) 746-5475 or send an online request to schedule a consultation.

It’s a big decision to have a breast lift. It’s an investment in yourself that can give you a huge boost to your self-esteem. And you want the results to last. 

Clearly, you need to follow your doctor’s guidance in the days and weeks immediately after the procedure to promote healing and optimal results. But what steps can you take longer-term to help your breasts stay perky? 

Here are some habits you can adopt at home to maintain your youthful shape.

Maintain Your Weight With Healthy Eating

The see-saw effects of weight gain and loss can take a big toll on the appearance of your breasts. Weight fluctuations cause the skin on your breasts and the supportive tissue inside to stretch and contract. Over time, this leads to a loss of elasticity and sagging. 

Diet and exercise both contribute to weight changes. Exercise is important to your health, and we’ll get to that next. But healthy eating habits are a powerful factor in tipping the scales in the right direction. 

If you want to keep your breasts in their newly perky form, it’s important to break the cycle of seasonal dieting and weight gain. Instead, get into the habit of eating healthy food in moderate portions as your new normal. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Switch to whole grains and stay away from refined carbohydrates. Drink water throughout the day. Keep unhealthy foods, like ice cream and fattening desserts, out of your house to eliminate temptation. 

Once healthy eating becomes a habit, you’ll find that you enjoy eating better-quality food and that you have more energy. Good nutrition also contributes to healthy skin and is critical to your overall well-being.

Exercise

You know that exercise is important to your overall health. The right kinds of exercise habits can also help you maintain the perkiness of the breasts.

First, we should dispel a myth. Many women avoid vigorous exercise out of fear that the bouncing will cause their breasts to sag. However, there is no connection between bouncing and breast sag. Especially with the use of a supportive sports bra, you shouldn’t worry about any exercise negatively impacting your breasts. On the other hand, there are loads of scientific evidence tying exercise to maintaining a healthy weight. And maintaining your weight is key to keeping your youthful breast shape and position.

So find a way to work regular exercise into your daily and weekly routine until it becomes a habit — something you do to feel good rather than something you have to force yourself to do.

Certain muscle-strengthening exercises can also help firm up the shape of your chest and improve your posture, both of which can have a modest effect on maintaining your breast-lift results. These include bench presses with dumbells, push-ups, and planks. If you belong to a gym, a trainer can show you other exercises to improve your upper body posture and strengthen your pectoral muscles, the muscles that lie just below your breasts.

Take Care of Your Skin

Use quality moisturizers and sunscreen to help your skin stay strong and firm. Skin tone and elasticity are factors in breast droop, and exposure to the sun’s UV rays is one of the biggest factors in skin damage. The chest is a common spot for sunburn, and that can weaken and coarsen the skin on your breasts. 

Make it a habit to keep your skin moisturized. Use sunscreen regularly and avoid harmful overexposure to the sun.

Wear a Well-Fitted Bra

You’ll need to wear a supportive bra while you heal from your breast lift. After that, a well-fitted bra continues to be important, but for different reasons. Bras that give too much lift can actually weaken the muscles supporting your breasts. They may look great while you’re wearing them but aren’t the best option for everyday use. Instead, get yourself fitted with bras that provide some support but that allow breasts to do some of the work themselves. It’s worth getting a professional fitting at a lingerie store now that your breasts have been reshaped. The bras you had from before your surgery may not be providing the support you need.

Get a Free Professional Consultation

To learn more about how a breast lift can transform your appearance, make an appointment with Dr. David Kim and Dr. Eugene Kim at Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery. Contact them today at (310) 746-5475 or send an online request to schedule a free consultation.

“Side boob” has entered the fashion lexicon as a term for outfits that reveal the sides of the breasts — and it has been a hot trend for the past few years. It’s the new cleavage, shifting the peek from the center to the sides. Look back at pictures of Reese Witherspoon in a Jason Wu for Hugo Boss dress at the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar party, or Gwynneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lawrence in their Oscar dresses. Since then, other stars and personalities have jumped on the trend, notably Kate Hudson, Kendall Jenner, Rihanna, Bella Hadid, and Kim and Chloe Kardashian.

How do they pull it off? And could you?

Side-Boob Dressing Tips

The side-boob look can be super sexy if you do it right. But you’ll need to be careful if you want to keep it tasteful — and avoid a wardrobe malfunction. Here are some of the secrets:

When doing a top reveal, whether it’s deep cleavage or a side boob, it’s a good idea to keep the rest of your outfit conservative. You don’t want to overdo it and distract from the effect by showing too much leg, for example.

3 Ways to Enhance Your Silhouette

The other key to pulling off the side-boob look, of course, is your breasts. Some women have the natural curves for an alluring side-boob peek, while others don’t. If you need a bit more volume or less sag to rock with this look, consider a breast lift or breast augmentation with implants or fat grafting.

Breast Lift

A breast lift gets rid of the droop and gives your boobs a younger-looking projection. An outfit with side-boob exposure is going to show how your breasts have sagged with age, weight changes, or motherhood, or how their volume has shifted from top to bottom. A breast lift raises and reshapes your breasts so you’ll feel confident about that peek.

Breast Augmentation With Implants

Breast implants enhance the size and shape of your breasts for a sexier look. A successful side-boob look doesn’t require huge breasts — it can be a knockout with B cups — but it does look better with a noticeably round shape. The goal should be to choose a size and form that fits naturally with your body, and that looks great with a bit of reveal.

Fat Grafting

Fat grafting is another, subtler way to enhance your silhouette. A talented plastic surgeon can remove excess fat from a donor area of your body using liposuction, then processes and injects the fat cells into parts of the breasts that need a volume boost. The results are long-lasting and use only your body’s fat tissue. Fat grafting has a double advantage of slimming with liposuction, while simultaneously building more roundness in your breasts.

Combining two procedures — a breast lift with either type of augmentation — can be a great way to sculpt your breasts for optimal effect. 

Imagine feeling so confident about your body and so secure in your sexy silhouette that you delight in turning heads with a stunning side-boob outfit!

Get a Free Professional Consultation

Dr. David Kim and Dr. Eugene Kim at Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery have developed an impeccable reputation for their stunning, natural-looking results and high patient satisfaction. Contact them today at 310-746-5475, or send an online request to schedule a consultation.

You’re happy with your lean runner’s body, but wish you had more of a figure up top. If you’ve dismissed breast augmentation as a change that would get in the way of your fitness goals, think again. With the right choices, you can have it all — a more feminine figure and a commitment to healthy physical activity. A significant number of competitive runners and cyclists have had breast augmentation surgery for the same reason, and carried on with their push for faster times. 

In this article, we’ll discuss some key choices and answer some commonly asked questions.

Freedom of Movement

Size and shape matter in breast implants, both for your looks and for your ability to run with comfort. To avoid any interference with your arm movement while you run, you’ll want to minimize “spill-out” to the sides of your breasts. You also want to avoid adding too much weight to your chest with overly large implants to avoid back strain and chafing, not to mention slowing your uphill pace. 

If your body is lean from running, you’re probably not looking for a big increase in breast size anyway — it could give you an unbalanced appearance. So you might think C cup rather than D cup. That’s in keeping with an overall trend of more modest augmentations. If you do go for a larger size, a well-fitted sports bra can help you stay comfortable on the road and track.

Talk with the surgeon, too, about the shape of the implants. A higher-profile implant — one with a narrower base and more forward projection — will have less spread to the sides than will a lower-profile implant — one with a wide base. Of course, the choice of implant size and shape should be whatever provides the most natural fit with your anatomy.

Placement

A surgeon can place breast implants either beneath the chest wall muscles (subpectoral placement) or above them (subglandular placement), and each choice has its advantages. 

If you lift weights or are a competitive sprinter, subglandular placement is probably the better choice. When implants are below the muscles, the intense contractions involved in building upper-body strength can distort the implants or shift their position.

If you’re like most runners, with a slender upper body profile and no plans for a more muscular chest, subpectoral placement may be more comfortable. But either placement option should be fine. Your plastic surgeon can explain which of the options will give you the most natural breast look and feel.

Silicone or Saline?

The choice of silicone or saline implants is another decision with several factors to consider. If you are very thin, with little body fat or breast tissue, the softer silicone implants may produce a more natural look and feel than saline implants. But neither option has an absolute advantage for all runners.

Will Implants Hold up Under the Stresses of Running?

Some female athletes are concerned about the durability of implants. Remember, these are medical devices designed to withstand significant trauma, such as hitting the steering wheel in a car accident. So the movement of running won’t affect the implants themselves. To avoid stretching the skin of your breasts when running after augmentation, it’s a good idea to wear a well-fitting sports bra.

Timing

The timing of the procedure is the final consideration. You will need to have some downtime to heal. That means at least two weeks with no strenuous exercise, then a gradual buildup to your normal training and competition routine. 

Many runners schedule the procedure soon after their most important race of the year, when they will have downtime for physical recovery anyway. Or, they plan the procedure for the winter months, when they would ordinarily be on a lighter training routine.

As you begin to resume your running routine, get a professional fitting for a sports bra with extra support. With appropriate care, and without pushing yourself too hard or too fast, you should be back in your normal routine in a few weeks.

Get a Free Professional Consultation

Dr. David Kim and Dr. Eugene Kim at Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery have developed an impeccable reputation for their stunning, natural-looking results and consistently high level of patient satisfaction, and they have experience working with athletes. Contact them today at 310-746-5475 or send an online request to schedule a complimentary consultation.