Plumping a gaunt face
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Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:46 am

Miranda you're gorgeous.... and very brave for sharing your picture. Smile

Also just adding the link to the Vital foods to support facial plumpness/smoothness thread as there were some good suggestions in there as mentioned above:
http://www.essentialdayspa.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=37504

free skin care · Tue Mar 02, 2010 9:49 am

jasminerosey wrote:

Miranda, you are such a beauty (interesting/soulful looking as well..which is really just as important to me as beauty in appreciating someone's 'look')

I so agree with this. Thanks Miranda for sharing.

free skin care · Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:41 pm

On the subject of whey protein, I just read about this on Dr. Mercola's newsletter. He has it listed as one of the 7 foods that slow aging.
He states that whey protein increases the stores of glutathion in our bodies. Glutathione increases the integrity of telomeres which shorten as we age.
I just thought I'd share this for those interested.

free skin care · Fri Mar 12, 2010 4:25 pm

I had a very gaunt face...in comparison to Miranda (who is absolutely gorgeous, btw!), Miranda's looks plump!

Just to add another voice to the dialogue, the thing that was worked best for me is facial exercise, followed by massage.

Through mostly exercise, I've rebuilt a significant amount of tissue in my upper face and am now mostly in maintenance mode for my upper cheeks, but am still working on my lower cheeks, which have been much more of a struggle, in large part due to genetics (my mom's side of the family has the tendency to have a gaunt lower face look at normal weight). I've tried six different facial exercise programs, and my favorite one for rebuilding all six muscles of the cheeks is FlexEffect. Hands down, I get the best contractions from their exercises and the most build. Ageless is a distant second for me. Currently, I approach facial exercises like I do when I do serious bodybuilding in order to build the most muscle. That is, I train them once every three days, doing 3-6 sets of 10-15 reps of very high resistance (as close to failure as possible), and I focus on the negative or extension part of the exercise by pulling hard on the muscle to return it to its extended state, rather than letting the muscle simply relax back into the extended position. (Btw, the negative part of a contraction is the most important phase for muscle building, not the positive/contraction phase.) I'm usually sore the next day, but I almost always don't train for another 72 hours. Those who are into bodybuilding will recognize this as about an identical training approach to what serious bodybuilders do Smile

Anyhow, I've been getting much faster gains from this rather than doing one set of 10 reps every day. And my boyfriend can also see my gains are coming a lot faster with this sort of approach, rather than doing one set but training every day.

Other things to consider are

* Massage to beef up the tissue and increase circulation and blood flow

* Diet: Are you getting enough calories, carbs, protein, etc., because if not, that could be holding you back?

* Hydration: Water and electrolytes are equally important here and we need lots of both. Lots of water without electrolytes means your body won't be able to retain the fluid as well and your kidneys will excrete it. I've personally found that the best hydrators are fruits, vegetables, and green smoothies. Lots of water helps, but won't do it all. I suspect that's why Toby and some others are getting great results with facial fullness from drinking smoothies.

* Negative/suction pressure on the face not only increases circulation and blood flow, but may also promote the growth of facial tissue through mechanical tension. In fact, this approach is used by tissue reconstruction specialists in clinical settings. I think I recall that Zenity said that she was experimenting with this and it really helped her fill out her face.

Okay, these are several ideas of what to try. HTH Smile

free skin care · Thu Mar 18, 2010 12:24 pm

TheresaMary wrote:

CM

I got to ask your opinion, do you think Deb and the others who recommend working out daily are wrong to make that suggestion then? Why do they do make that suggestion - as from what you say, its clearly a mistake if we're wanting to get stronger muscles and build. I might give that a go with the reps, but just want to check.

I think training is an individual thing and different people will need different approaches, and even the same people will want to mix up their training frequency (e.g., periodization). Just like in body exercises, sometimes you want to train every day, sometimes you want to train every other day, and sometimes for some muscles you might want to train them very hard but only every four days. It all depends on your goals for that muscle group, your genetics, your recuperation time, your current ability, etc.

In the FlexEffect program, beginners are clearly advised to train every day. I think this is great advice to follow for the first 6 months or longer, and the reason why is in the beginning your activating dormant muscle fibers and increasing strength and muscle recuperation time, plus people are starting to become aware of things like how their natural strengths and weakness affect their facial symmetry, and so on. So it makes sense to focus higher reps, lower weight, and higher training frequency in order to gain control of the muscle, slowly activating more and more fibers and preparing the muscle for increasingly intense workouts.

However, in the FlexEffect program, it is a little more unclear what intermediates should do training-wise. In a majority of cases, I've heard that intermediates should train every day, but in some cases, I have heard that it's very individual. In the second edition, the intermediate trainer is still advised to train every day, so I don't know whether FlexEffect's view on this has changed.

My personal opinion is yes, that the intermediate and advanced exerciser should not automatically just train every day, but should consider their goals for each muscle group, the rate at which they make gains in muscle size for each muscle, and their recovery time. For example, for me, there are some muscles I have trained every day, some I train every other day, and some I train every third day. Right now, I'm currently experimenting with training every muscle either every 2 or 3 days, because I'd rather work harder and rest longer than train more often.

So yes, I am a little surprised that the relation between the combination of training frequency & intensity on one hand with muscle build on the other hand doesn't get a little more attention in FlexEffect, as this important issue is more well-known in the bodybuilding community than the importance of the eccentric/negative phase of the contractions. But other than training frequency (and the automatically related issue of training volume), everything else FlexEffect does is completely inline with everything I know from bodybuilding.

Here is an awesome introductory article on training frequency, even covering differences between the beginners' and the advanced approaches (p. 3 covers sets, rep, and training frequency recommendations for beginners and the advanced):
* http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KFY/is_4_23/ai_n13790127/
This matches my experience that most serious bodybuilders tend to train a muscle approximately once every 3 days (though sometimes a little less).

TheresaMary wrote:

When you say you do 10-15 reps, what count do you use and am I correct in that you do 10/15 reps, and thats one set that you do 3-6 times?

Usually, for the cheeks, it takes me about 3-4 seconds to complete a rep, and about 2-3 seconds for other facial muscles. I go most slowly on the eccentric/negative/extension part of the rep.

Currently (since I like to mix things up), for most muscles, I do 1-2 sets of 10-15 reps every other days. However, for a few of my cheek muscles, I train them only twice a week, and do 3-6 sets with 10-15 reps per set. I try to work intuitively. If I feel that I've really exhausted a muscle already and had a good workout, then I will do fewer sets. Right now, I'm "going for broke" with a few of my cheek muscles, so I'm training them hard enough for them to be sore for 1-2 days after I work them out. However, having done weight training for several years, I'm very in touch with my recovery time, so know what is overtraining and how to avoid it. I never hesitate to take extra time off to recover. So if you want to try out working out out harder but resting longer, I'd recommend slowly experimenting with this, rather than jumping in. I wouldn't want anyone to do too much too soon and not get the results they want.

TheresaMary wrote:

I wish they explain why they recommend 10 reps at a 6 count, as with what your saying here,

On the DVD, I think "6 counts" is equivalent to 3 seconds.

TheresaMary wrote:

Maybe we need to get Deb's opinion on this - as I'd love to know the reasoning behind that suggestion, and from what your saying it sounds like they are going to do more harm than good working out daily (and if it gives faster gains so much the better in my opinion).

No, no harm at all if you are doing only one set of 10 reps (unless you have issues with your recovery time). Rather, it is probably not enough for some people to get the gains they want in certain muscles. For me, training every day or every other day was enough for most of my muscles, but in a few areas that were particularly lacking in fullness, it wasn't even close to what they needed to really grow. To give an example, I was able to build enough muscle for my likes in my caput infra-orbitale muscle training every day. However, not for zygomaticus muscles that need a lot more build; I actually find I need to take an even more aggressive body-building type approach to them by training super-hard and resting a couple of days.

TheresaMary wrote:

Also when you say you focus on the negative or extension part of the exercise, I'm confused. Do you mean where they used to say stretch it first, and then contract, when your done with the contraction you continue pulling.

I mean that when I elongate the muscle from the fully contracted position, I elongate the muscle slowly and pull even harder on it as I elongate it. The analogy would be in a bicep curl, once you have curled the muscle fully, you would lower it slowly and, if you could, even increase the resistance on the muscle as you lower the weight. Does this help?

TheresaMary wrote:

I thought the negatives from the new book were simply the opposite, where you contract and then by pulling try to uncontract with the force of your hands - or did I completely misunderstand that?

TheresaMary wrote:

How do you know the negative part of the contraction is most important phase for the muscle building - and why haven't Deb/the trainers spoken more about this I wonder?

Oh gosh, I can't cite you an exact source of where I learned this, but I did know about it 15 years ago, when I had a regular subscription to "Muscle & Fitness" magazine. I'm pretty sure that's how I first heard about this. I think most very competitive body-builders know this, but at the next tier down and below, it's not as well-known as it should be. Many people who do weightlift seriously do not necessarily know this.

The importance of negatives in training though is definitely included in this 3rd edition of FlexEffect.

TheresaMary wrote:

When you say water and diet, that pretty much seemed to be their answer to any problem in the old days, but how do you get electrolytes into your water?

You can buy an electrolyte-enhanced sports drink (not usually recommended), drink fresh juice and/or smoothies, or eat fruits and veggies. Some people add sea salt (which is really mostly sodium + chloride) or other electrolyte powders to their waters, too.

HTH Smile

Wed Nov 17, 2010 2:46 pm

This is Miranda wrote:

Hi CM, thanks for the warning. I don't actually know how to delete the photo. I can't remove it from the photo site as I did it as a guest rather than member. And I don't think I can delete the post from EDS. But I'll definitely have to look into it though.

Miranda, if you point out the posts with your photo via the 'report' function, I will delete the links for you… assuming that is something you would like of course! Smile

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