Does Plastic Surgery Have a Place in your Fitness Plan?

 

By Ryan

 

Getting fit is a worthwhile goal and can be an incredible journey both physically and emotionally. Yet it requires a certain level of commitment, dedication, and energy to see your plans through. Regular exercise and a healthy diet will boost energy levels and make you feel better, but it can take some time for pounds to see the results in the mirror which can be discouraging. Some find that jumpstarting a fitness plan with plastic surgery helps them to retain dedication and focus, with the motivation that this physical transformation offers. Could it play a role in your fitness plan?

 

 

How Plastic Surgery can contribute to Fitness

On a psychological level, cosmetic surgery can boost your motivation. You can start out ahead by sculpting your body with cosmetic procedures, and then create a fitness plan that will work towards maintaining it. Some find this psychologically easier than attaining an impossible standard with exercise and diet alone. Another benefit to plastic surgery is that it can do things that exercise can’t do, such as eliminating excess skin or changing body parts that you’re self-conscious about. You may have lost the weight, but if you’re unhappy with a certain facial feature it may seem like your hard work was for nothing. If you’re wistfully browsing rhinoplasty before and after with Dr Jeremy Hunt photos and feeling bad about your own nose, it may be time to think about taking the plunge.  Losing a great deal of weight can cause saggy skin, particularly if the weight is lost rapidly.

 

Working out alone may help you build muscle, but even after dieting this can be covered with a layer of fat. This can be frustrating and de-motivating, which is why procedures like liposuction are so popular on top of a sound fitness routine. This is a way to eliminate excess fat in partnership with a healthy lifestyle. Those who have a lot to lose may find fitness programs discouraging due to the toll that vigorous exercise can take on the joints. By reducing body mass ahead of time, workouts may run more smoothly. These are just a few potential ways that plastic surgery could be worked into a fitness plan. Yet it’s also important to remember that plastic surgery without a healthy lifestyle could lead to the results being undone, particularly with procedures like liposuction.

 

 

Questions to Ask Yourself First

Naturally, plastic surgery isn’t for everyone. You may find that you’re able to achieve your desired results and stay motivated without going under the knife. Plastic surgery isn’t a magic bullet that will inspire you to eat right and exercise, nor will it automatically boost your self-esteem. Before agreeing to any procedure, it’s a good idea to sit down and ask yourself a few questions. Write down what your goals and motivations are for having the surgery, and ask if there are any other ways to achieve the results. Are you expecting the surgery to change more than just your appearance? Surgeries can’t make you more athletic or improve your relationships. Keep a realistic outlook ahead of time and you’ll stand a better chance of being pleased with the outcome.

 

Whether you hire a personal trainer or opt to undergo cosmetic surgery, in both cases you’ll still be responsible for the bulk of the work. Surgery, like exercise and diet, is just one piece of the puzzle for physical well-being.

 

Photo by www.localfitness.com.au / Wikimedia Commons

Categories: fitness, Plan, plastic surgery

Is Facial Symmetry Beautiful?Things You Didn"t Know About Beauty

 There is much talk about beauty being completely in the eye of the beholder, but research suggests that certain physical qualities are universally and objectively beautiful. People are naturally drawn to faces whose features are placed in certain arrangements. The ideal proportions are so delicate that a deviation of mere millimeters can be the difference between being beautiful and being plain.

 

The Golden Ratio

The golden ratio is a number that is found in the proportions of great works of art. People who are considered very attractive usually have face shapes that fit into the golden ratio. A face that meets this standard would be about 1.6 times longer than it is wide. The eyes should form a line of demarcation at the exact point where the face’s length begins to exceed its width, or about one-third of the way down from the forehead.

 

 

Symmetry

Symmetry is another mathematical concept that determines beauty. Studies have repeatedly shown that people’s eyes are naturally drawn to faces that are perfectly symmetrical. It has also been shown that given a pair of faces, people tend to select a face that is more perfectly symmetrical mathematically as more attractive to them. This certainly isn’t universal, but most often it tends to be the preference of our eyes.

 

 

Innate Narcissism

Studies show that people are instinctively attracted to people who look like them, even if they do not consider themselves particularly attractive. When a man is shown a digitally feminized picture of himself, he thinks he is looking at the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen. It would not occur to him that he is looking at his own altered photograph. Women have similar reactions when their pictures were made more masculine.

 

 

The Uncanny Valley

Though society values beauty at all costs, it resists beauty that appears artificial. When a face is technically perfect but has lost its intangible aura of humanity, it has entered the uncanny valley. This happens when people get so much plastic surgery that their features are distorted beyond anything that is found in nature. These people no longer look like real human beings.

 

 

Mimicking Celebrities

People who want to improve their looks often visit clinics such as About Face (a Scottsdale plastic surgeon) with the goal of looking exactly like a famous actor or actress. This is impossible to achieve. Acquiring the nose, chin or eye shape of a famous actress will not make a patient look like that actress. It is important to have realistic expectations and to understand that becoming a better version of oneself is better than turning into someone else.

 

 

Plastic surgery can adjust the features so that they come closer to fulfilling the balance set forth in the golden ratio, but very few people will achieve perfection. Individual quirks are just as valuable as objective beauty is. However, many people are able to find great satisfaction and happiness in the improvements they can get from plastic surgery options. Each of us is different, but many of us have similar preferences when it comes to what beauty means.

 

Categories: beautiful, beauty, face, facial, golden ratio, naturally drawn, nbsp, nbsp nbsp, people, plastic surgery, symmetry, uncanny valley

Does Plastic Surgery Actually Make You More Attractive?

Is anti-ageing wellness the same as looking attractive? Not according to a new study, as researchers have found that even though facial plastic surgery may turn back the hands of time, it may not, alas, also boost your attractiveness.

 

For the study, which only involved 50 participants, the researchers showed the volunteers photos of 49 patients either before or after facial plastic surgery. The participants were asked to guess the age of each patient, as well as subjectively ranking their attractiveness. The results of the study revealed that while surgical intervention did indeed manage to shave a few years off the patients’ perceived ages, it did nothing to boost anyone’s overall level of attractiveness. According to study lead author Dr. Joshua Zimm, an attending surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Institute of North Shore-LIJ Health System in New York City, the issue here is that patients’ expectations don’t match up with how the surgery will actually affect their wellbeing.

 

‘When we’re doing this kind of surgery I’m telling patients that they’ll look fresher, more energetic and less tired, and we have some data in the literature that indicates you will look younger, as we found,’ Zimm notes. ‘But clearly I cannot say that they will look more attractive.’ However, Zimm is quick to point out that the findings are based on the work of just one surgeon – maybe the 49 patients should have gone to someone else! – and there are also limitations to the design of the study. ‘This is not the final word on the subject,’ Zimm assures. ‘But certainly I think you can take away from this that if you’re looking to have aesthetic facial surgery to look younger, we’ve shown that you will. Beyond that … it is not clear that everyone will definitely look more attractive.’

 

For the study, which was published in the online edition of the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, the team of researchers focused on certain clients at a Toronto private-practice facility. Between 2006 and 2010, all of the clients had either had a face lift, neck lift, upper or lower eyelid lift, or brow-lift, and they were all between the ages of 42 and 73 years old. The researchers took facial photos – in which makeup and jewellery were forbidden – both before and six-months after the surgery. The patients were also banned from having additional cosmetic procedures (such as Botox injections or laser skin resurfacing) between the before-and-after photo sessions. The raters only ever saw a pre-surgery or a post-surgery photo of a particular patient – never both.

 

Zimm asserts that the findings do not accurately portray how your friends and relatives might react to any surgery you might have, as they will have a very clear frame of reference for assessing both age and beauty. He adds that the researchers may have created a ‘kind of subconscious attractiveness bias’ by asking the raters to assess age and attractiveness at the same time. However, he comments, ‘At the end of the day the goal is to make people happy, so we have to know what’s possible in order to determine if any particular patient is someone I can help.’

 

However, Dr. Laurie Casas, a senior clinician educator at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, argues, ‘Certainly when I see a new patient I have to decide if what the patient is after is achievable or even realistic. And it’s a very complex process because the perception of beauty has to be evaluated by both the surgeon and the patient. The end game is that they want to look more attractive, but this study doesn’t get me anywhere with that process because it’s impossible to make any sense out of the data. It’s totally subjective, so the results have no meaning.’

Categories: Attractiveness, facial plastic, patient, Patients, plastic surgery, Research, study, surgery

Warning: Plastic Surgery Doesn’t Make You More Attractive

When it comes to anti-aging, plastic surgery is usually seen as the last resort – the trump card when all other methods don’t seem to be working anymore. Although there are ways in which plastic surgery can negatively affect your wellness and wellbeing, it has generally been considered effective. A new study, however, that has just been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that whilst plastic surgery can visually reverse the signs of aging, it cannot increase attractiveness.

 

The researchers were surprised to find that there were no statistically significant improvements in attractiveness amongst those who had had facial plastic surgery. They looked at date from 37 women and 12 men aged 42 to 73 who had had procedures affecting the face, such as facelifts, brow lifts and neck lifts, and these people were photographed before and after their surgery.

 

As part of the research, a team of 50 ‘raters’ was recruited, and these were randomly assigned to a rating group. The groups were then shown around 200 photographs of the participants, both before and after their facial surgery. The raters had to note how old they thought each patient was, and rate their attractiveness using a score from 1 to 10.

 

After surgery, patients were rated on average as being 3.1 years younger, but their attractiveness ratings didn’t change. Around 75 percent of the people in the study were rated between a 4 and a 7 in terms of looks, and the numbers did not change much between their pre and post-operative pictures. Contrary to what you might expect, nobody jumped up from (say) a 4 to a 9 as a result of their facial surgery.

 

For this reason, most cosmetic surgeons use phrases such as ‘refreshed’ or ‘less tired’ when describing the results patients can experience, and steer clear of claiming to improve attractiveness.

Categories: attractive, Attractiveness, facial, facial surgery, nbsp, plastic, plastic surgery, surgery, surgery nbsp