Importance of Diet in Fighting Cellulite

THE IMPORTANCE OF DIET

The anti-cellulite business appears to be getting bigger all the time. Most of the new treatments have been brought out by major, multi-national cosmetic houses and introduced with huge amounts of hype and enormous advertising budgets. The treatments promise that diligent application will deliver smooth, bulge-free contours, and this message is underlined by pictures of super-slim models displaying impossibly thin thighs.

True, the word ‘cellulite’ is rarely mentioned when these products are advertised. ‘Cellulite’ is a word that is still not officially admitted in respectable cosmetic or medical circles. We hear instead terms like ‘body sculpturing’ and ‘contouring’ – the advertisements are very clever indeed.

Most of these creams and lotions containing the results of the ‘latest scientific research’ are extremely expensive. But do they work? Well, very diligent and dedicated long-term use may make some small difference but the truth is that no anti-cellulite cream, lotion or oil can have very much effect unless you are prepared to undertake the anti-cellulite diet as well. Otherwise, as fast as you are sculpturing your body with the aid of the scientifically developed cream you are encouraging new bulges and bumps to form by eating the wrong food. So you will be fighting a guaranteed losing battle.

I am not suggesting that diet is the only way to deal with cellulite – indeed- body brushing, aromatherapy, exercise, nutrition and massage are all needed to encourage the body to yield up its long-held cellulite deposits. But an effective anti-cellulite regime must start with diet in order to attack the problem from the inside out rather than the outside in.

It used to be believed that the skin was a completely waterproof covering which nothing could penetrate. We now know that this is not the case, and a whole new range of cosmetics and transdermal drugs – where a patch is applied to the skin and the drug seeps through to the area beneath – has been developed which take advantage of this new finding. Also, the growing popularity of research into essential oils has shown that certain substances applied to the skin can have a definite therapeutic effect on the whole body. A number of NHS hospitals in Britain are now using the science of essential oils for treating chronic and severe pain – with excellent results.

Aromatherapy is of proven value in the fight against cellulite, but it can never be the whole answer. In order to rid yourself of cellulite deposits you have to employ both strategies – diet and aromatherapy – and both require quite a lot of hard work.

Any reputable aromatherapist will tell you that at least

sixty per cent of the effort must come from you, and the most important part of that effort comes with the diet. If you are serious about banishing cellulite forever you must stay on the diet for the rest of your life. Of course, the very rigorous initial regime does not have to be kept up – nor should it, as it does not constitute a long-term balanced diet – but it is important to develop a diet for life that will maintain the body in a detoxified and toned-up condition.

The reason for this is that cellulite is always liable to come back, much as dust is always trying to settle on household objects, and tarnish on silver and brass. You can only keep it away by constant vigilance. That is an uncomfortable but true fact of life about cellulite. Cellulite describes fat cells that have become filled with waterlogged toxic deposits, and it is very stubborn stuff indeed. In fact, it can be so very difficult to get rid of that many fat and obesity experts have declared that it is impossible. They tell us that we just have to accept these awful lumps and bumps as part of being a woman.

That’s what I did for twenty years – just assumed that the hard, lumpy deposits were as much a part of me as my ears and eyes. Now that I have straight, bulge-free thighs for the first time in my adult life I know that cellulite is not an inescapable aspect of being a woman but an aberration, something abnormal, something that should not be there.

Nobody should ever feel discouraged. It is perfectly possible to shift cellulite, however long it has been there, if you make up your mind to pay scrupulous attention to your diet. It is now increasingly realised by doctors and scientists that diet plays a far larger part in all aspects of health maintenance than was previously believed. For many years, doctors laughed at the idea that illness could be caused or made worse by diet, and they insisted on telling us that nowadays everybody ate a perfectly balanced, nutritious diet, at least in the West. Those people who suspected that diet might be at the root of their health problems were usually written off as time-wasters and hypochondriacs. Alternative practitioners who tried to treat illnesses by dietary means were dismissed as charlatans and unqualified get-rich-quick merchants.

Now, however, the situation has changed beyond all recognition. Orthodox medical opinion is fast coming round to the view that diet may be a contributory factor to a wide variety of chronic conditions, from arthritis and heart disease to cancer, ME, multiple sclerosis, allergies, asthma, eczema, hyperactivity in children, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, skin disorders, candida albicans, low energy levels, and infertility.

There is increasing evidence that food intolerance is a very real problem, and may be responsible for a wide range of illnesses. It seems that everyday foods such as milk, wheat and sugar could be at the root of poor health in many cases. Allergies, particularly food allergies, are becoming more common all the time, and doctors are having great success in both diagnosing and treating a large number of allergy complaints by diet.

Most people consider that cellulite is not a serious illness.

In fact, it is usually not considered an illness at all, and concern over cellulite is often seen as an expression of vanity. With so many problems in the world, how dare women worry about a few lumps and bumps? I am sure one of the reasons so many people – including women – deny the existence of cellulite is that there is a guilty feeling that it is wrong to be so concerned about appearance. After all, even if you have cellulite, you probably do not actually feel unwell from it. And if you are dismayed by the sight of your naked body, well, you just have a negative body image which must be overcome by positive thinking. There is a school of thought that says women should be happy with their bodies whatever shape they are, and should not put themselves at the mercy of cosmetic houses and questionable practitioners who have identified yet another area of women’s bodies to worry about. This line of thought says that our present obsession with slimness and eternal youth is media-led, so much nonsense, and that ‘real’ women have lumps, bumps, wrinkles, grey hair and uneven teeth, so we should not all try to look the same, or attempt to conform to an impossible ideal.

To some extent I go along with these arguments. There is no reason why we should all be exactly the same shape and size, production-line women. We are all made differently, and not everybody is going to be five feet ten and size eight, whatever self-tortures are applied.

However, I also believe that it is easier to love oneself and have a positive body image when one has done one’s very best to maintain one’s optimum shape and condition. To worry about cellulite is not the same as worrying about a big nose, or thick ankles – it is not merely a cosmetic concern but an actual health problem. I am now convinced of this. Furthermore, although the presence of cellulite may not exactly make you feel ill, you will certainly feel a great deal better about’ yourself when it has gone. There is no doubt in my mind that my general health improved along with my appearance once I decided to mount a concerted attack on cellulite.

At the same time as my cellulite gradually disappeared – and it took about three months in my case before a real effect was visible – I noticed that I had new energy levels, that I could walk much further without getting tired, and that I felt generally cleaner and less clogged-up inside. So many of us have become used to a less-than-optimum health and energy level that we accept it as normal.

While using myself as a guinea pig I learned a lot about health and nutrition and how my body worked. Before, I had hardly taken any interest, and had just fed it at intervals. Now I am extremely careful about what I eat. My whole system has become more sensitively tuned, and I have started to imagine what might be going on in my body when I have alcohol, butter-covered pasta, coffee and ice-cream all in the same meal. Although this combination is delicious when you are eating it, you don’t feel so good afterwards. On the anti-cellulite diet, you will feel good all the time. Added bonuses are that the condition of your skin and hair will improve and you will experience a whole new positive feeling about yourself. Most cellulite sufferers do not feel in the least bit ill- at least not because of their cellulite, because the body has done its very best to transfer toxic wastes to out-of-the-way areas where they will do least harm. But the very existence of cellulite is an indication that not everything is well inside. It is a warning that your body is taking in more waste matter than it can comfortably handle, and that your circulation is sluggish.

Once you start the diet everything speeds up simultaneously. You will notice that transit time – the amount of time food takes to go through the digestive tract and be eliminated from your body – gets faster and that your head feels much clearer.

The anti-cellulite diet is important because it gives the body a chance to detoxify itself so that the cellulite can be eliminated. The reason it has accumulated in the first place is that the body’s organs of elimination have too much work to do. The only way to detoxify your body is to eat as many pure, natural substances as possible and cut out all the refined, processed, non-nutritive foods. This gives the lymphatic system – the body’s own vacuum cleaner – an opportunity to do its job properly and dispose of toxic substances.

Many people who do not wish to relinquish their bad eating habits have informed me that this or that person eats nothing but Mars bars, gets through thirty cigarettes and a bottle of wine a day, and still has no cellulite. People have told me that most dancers and athletes, some of whom eat a terrible junk-food diet, have not a trace of cellulite.

Well, so they might. And if you haven’t got any cellulite, then you can continue eating all the rubbish you like. But if you have, and you wish to get rid of it, you have no choice but to follow the diet. If you have cellulite, and have had it for a long time, you are not going to lose it on a diet of chips, sausages, ice-cream, chocolate, cigarettes and alcohol.

Dancers and athletes do not have cellulite because even though they may eat a terrible diet they are on the move all the time and exercise strenuously. Cellulite does not have a chance to form on them. But these same people often succumb to arthritis in later life, and this is very likely closely connected with the bad diet they ate when in training.

The problem is, the vast majority of women who suffer from cellulite are couch potatoes – as well as eating self indulgently, they never take any exercise. This was me for twenty years. I have always been a greedy pig over food, and at the same time physically lazy. I smoked and drank and took the contraceptive pill throughout my twenties. I hated exercise, I couldn’t bear the thought of Spartan eating regimes. I shared the attitude of Milton’s Comus

…if all the world should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse

Drink the clear stream and nothing wear but frieze,

The all-Giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known and yet despised…

Now I have a different attitude. I believe that if all the world did feed on pulses (a wonderful anti-cellulite food, and also good for unfurring the arteries) and drank the clear, unpolluted stream, the world’s health would improve enormously and very many of our ‘diseases of civilization’, as author Brian Inglis has called them, would disappear – including cellulite.

The relationship of diet to cellulite means that the worse the diet, the higher the risk of cellulite deposits. Not everybody who smokes fifty cigarettes a day will die oflung cancer, but they are at high risk. The same with cellulite. The more junk you put in your system, the higher the risk of cellulite will be. You may not succumb – but your chances are not good.

If you have cellulite – and around eighty per cent of Western women have – then it will have been encouraged to form by a combination of a toxic diet, sedentary habits causing poor circulation, and taking in more pollutants of all kinds than your body can comfortably handle. There is also a hereditary factor in cellulite – if your mother has it then your chances of getting it will be high.

Modern processed foods encourage cellulite deposits because the body is not equipped to deal with artificial colours, flavours, pesticides, hormones from dairy produce, and large amounts of refined sugar. So it rebels, in one way or another. One woman may have terrible headaches, while another has cellulite. Men develop beer bellies and suffer heart attacks. Children often become hyperactive. Nobody is immune from the bad effects of an unhealthy diet, and there are many ways that ill health of one sort or another may manifest itself.

Even if we eat a highly nutritious diet we still take in waste products and toxic matter. But if the diet is basically pure and natural the digestive system will be able to cope with any rubbish, sending it to the organs of elimination (the skin, bowels, kidneys and lymphatic system) to be passed out of the body. To facilitate this, the colon contains bacteria which work to break down food particles into a form that can be processed. However, if there is not enough beneficial bacteria in the colon, waste matter becomes re-absorbed into the bloodstream where it can cause a variety of conditions. In women, although not in men, the female hormone oestrogen does its best to make sure these toxic wastes do not go anywhere near vital organs in the event of a pregnancy. So it sends them to the thighs, hips, buttocks and upper arms.

The trouble is, beneficial bacteria are easily killed off by many aspects of modern living, such as antibiotics, high fat and heavy protein diets, high sugar consumption and too little dietary fibre. The anti-cellulite diet, however, will encourage the body’s eco-system to return to normal and to eliminate waste matter effectively.

The main purpose of the anti-cellulite diet is to enable the body to detoxify itself by eliminating long-held wastes. It is not a reducing diet as such, although if you are overweight as well it will certainly help you get your weight back to normal.

I cannot overstress the importance of the right diet in an effective anti-cellulite regime. When I first embarked on the programme myselfI was highly sceptical and also, if the truth be told, extremely reluctant to give up all the foods I enjoyed – rich cheesecakes, cheesy moussakas, buttery pasta dishes. All these foods are described by nutritionists as ‘highly palatable’, as they deliver a feeling of fullness and satisfaction. But they don’t always do such nice things to your innards. While your are giving your taste buds short-term satisfaction you may be being unkind to your body.

Many women imagine that crinkly, bumpy skin is inevitable as they grow older. But although skin and contours cannot indefinitely keep the smooth, wrinkle-free appearance of youth, cellulite need never be a problem. It’s ageing, unsightly and unhealthy, and your outward sign of a sluggish system. Embark on the anti-cellulite diet and you are halfway towards getting rid of it.