Face fat is one of the most bothersome fats on the body. Without proper tone and definition to your face, you will look heavier and more unattractive. A sculpted face often equates to overall better facial balance and beauty.
You can lose face fat through exercises that promote fat burning, such as burpees, running, jump rope exercises, or even just walking. You can also engage in high-intensity interval training (HIIT) once you have more endurance. Strength training, together with other exercises, will give the most optimum results.
Exercise is not as simple as we think it is. Traditional thinking would be that cardio exercises are the best way to lose weight. Although they are indeed very effective, there are also other ways that you can lose weight more effectively, such as HIIT and strength training. Getting creative and knowing your body well are keys to losing the optimum amount of weight with your exercises. Everybody functions differently, and you have to figure out what works best for you.
You should also pair your exercises with a proper diet and focus on high protein and high fiber foods. These help manage your satiety as they will make you feel full for longer than just carbs. Managing your diet plays an integral role in losing fat, so you have to be as diligent as you can. It is much easier to avoid eating too much than exercising your way through all the calories you consume in a day. Most people who aim to lose fat will eat at a calorie deficit (but still at safe amounts) or eat intermittently throughout the day.
Can You Lose Fat in the Face Alone?
Whenever a certain exercise program or routine claims to shed fat in a certain area of the face, you’re most likely looking at false advertising. It isn’t possible to lose weight or fat in a certain portion of your body, meaning you can’t spot-treat any one area. You can’t choose an exercise that will make you lose weight in the thighs or abdomen, for example. This is also true in terms of face fat. No matter how targeted the exercise is, the exercise itself is not what determines where the body loses weight.
Fat Storage in the Body
The body stores fat in fatty tissues. These act as little pockets where fat can go when it’s not yet needed. Each part of the body has different amounts of fatty tissue, and your body doesn’t uniformly absorb fat. This disparity explains why some skinny people have chubby faces even though they are lean. This is also why fat is a huge problem in today’s time. It can be difficult to feel confident about yourself when you’ve tried everything from exercises to diets, and your face fat still doesn’t budge. Unfortunately, there are instances when fat in certain areas is quite stubborn.
Facial Exercises
Facial exercises are specific facial movements that claim to be able to tone your face and prevent aging. Although facial exercises’ goal isn’t really to lose fat, the question of whether it works or not often comes up in discussions on losing face fat. If you look up ways to lose face fat, your search engine will probably bombard you with online articles giving you facial exercises. But the idea of facial exercises making you lose face fat specifically is, as of this moment, unfounded.
Facial exercises don’t make your face lose fat in the sense that you lose fat because you are working your face muscles. Instead, it’s more that you create definition in your facial features through relevant facial movements.
Please take note that facial exercises are still very dubious in terms of their effectiveness. Some initial research studies show that facial exercises have promising results. However, many of these studies do not have the direct goal of losing face fat. Instead, many of them focus more on rejuvenating and fighting the effects of aging. For example, Alam et al. (2018) focused on how facial exercises improved facial quality in middle-aged women. Still, one of the marks of aging on the face is increased fattiness, especially in the area below the chin. So there might be something to it.
On the flip side, several experts believe that facial exercises are nothing but a sham. After all, these exercises have minimal research backing up their claims. What you are inclined to believe is up to you. However, losing weight entails more than just moving your face in certain ways. You are much better off trying out full-body exercises (such as those listed below) as your first option rather than focusing on specific facial motions.
Whole Body Exercises
To lose face fat, you have to target the entirety of your body. Meaning, you have to engage in exercises that speed up your heart rate and burn your fat away. As previously mentioned, you can’t choose which part of your body will lose fat first or where you will lose fat the most. Given that, your best option is to choose exercises that have a high fat-burning capacity.
1. Walking
Simply walking for half an hour each day will make a huge difference in your fat loss journey. It’s especially impactful if you live a sedentary lifestyle and aren’t used to exercising just yet. It’s important to go at your own pace. You can ease yourself into exercising by integrating some time in your routine for a daily walk. Many people end up giving up on losing weight and exercising because they jump into it too fast and lose interest. It s far better to start slow and steady. Brisk walking is also a great option and will speed up your heart rate more. It will improve your endurance as well.
Walking is extremely underrated. It’s a low-intensity exercise, meaning you can do way more of it than equivalent high-intensity exercises that would burn the same amount of calories. You can punch in a podcast or audiobook and actually get outside to experience nature.
However, this is not the most time-effective exercise. While this may be good for you while you are just starting, simply taking a walk should not be your end goal. Think of walking as a stepping stone for gearing up for more intensive exercises or as a supplement. Even brisk walking is a minor physical activity. You’ll need to step up your game in a week or two with other exercises.
2. Running/Jogging
Running is one of the most basic exercises and is relatively simple. Some treat it as a form of relaxation and just a way to wind down after a long day. If you don’t get bored quickly, running in place at home with or without the use of a treadmill is a great option. Running will improve your endurance, especially if you do it consistently. However, it doesn’t work your whole body. While it does offer a lot in terms of endurance, you’ll still need to supplement running with other exercises.
3. Jump Rope Exercises
The jump rope games we used to play as kids were excellent ways to burn off fat. With just yourself and a jump rope, you can lose up to 15 calories per minute. Note that the amount of calories that you lose depends on how much you weigh. There’s no exact number that applies to all people. With a short 15-minute jump rope exercise every day, you can potentially lose many calories per week. As a bonus, it also improves your balance.
Over time, as you get used to jumping, you can incorporate variations of jump rope exercises such as alternating feet jumps or varying the intensity of your jumps. At first, you may take some time to get used to the sensation of jumping rope, but you’ll get the hang of it with enough practice.
4. Burpees
Burpees can be quite challenging to do when you are a beginner. This exercise works your chest, shoulders, arms, and core. Overall, it’s a pretty good overall body exercise. You can do a burpee by standing in a side-straddle position and then squatting. You can then kick your feet back to get into a plank position. Immediately after, you should jump back to a squat and then jump with your arms up.
Burpees will keep your heart rate up, especially after a couple of repetitions. It is important to maintain proper form during a burpee to achieve the exercise’s maximum potential. Make sure to keep your back neutral and your core engaged. If you are a beginner, your form will probably be off by a bit. You can try and record yourself to watch out for any form issues that you may have. With enough repetitions and practice, your form will improve.
5. Jumping Jacks
Jumping jacks are pretty easy to perform and can burn a lot of fat due to all the jumps involved. If you are starting, you can incorporate some jumping jacks into your routine. If you need more of a challenge, there are different jumping jacks, such as split squat jacks or crossover jacks. You can even add some ankle weights to make the exercise more challenging.
One of the things you may need to watch out for in jumping exercises like this one is landing softly on your feet. It’s not likely that you will get injured with such minor jumps, but you should take it slow and avoid very intense jumps in the beginning.
Weight Training
Weight training is exercising in a way that promotes strength and muscle conditioning through lifting weights. Weight training in itself won’t make you lose fat as much as cardio or HIIT will. However, weight training helps boost your metabolism, and you will burn more calories at rest. In terms of long-term weight loss, weight training is ideal.
Plus, you can start by adding a couple of weights to your workouts at home. But you shouldn’t stop there. You can train with a local trainer in your area so that you can learn the proper technique and pace with using weights. If you don’t do it properly, you may sustain some injuries with weight training. While you still don’t know the ins and outs of weight training and the proper weights to use for your goals, spending on a good trainer is well worth your money. You’ll be less at risk of any issues later on if you start training properly.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
Doing HIIT workouts give the body a way to burn calories even after the workout is over. According to this study by Skelly et al. (2014), the amount of calories burned from a 50-minute endurance exercise is equal to the number of calories burned in 24 hours from a 20-minute HIIT. These results indicate that HIIT is a prime choice for those who want to go the extra mile.
Do note that HIIT is challenging. If you come from a sedentary lifestyle or haven’t worked out before, you will have difficulty with HIIT. You’ll need a lot of endurance for many of the workout programs for HIIT. Exercises for HIIT are supposed to be tough on the body, fast, and high intensity so that you can burn as much as possible in a short amount of time.
If HIIT piques your interest, you can slowly build up your endurance for a couple of weeks before jumping into a HIIT workout. Remember that your body has limits, and pushing it farther than it can go will negatively affect your body. Doing workouts beyond your levels of endurance and strength can lead to injuries. You’ll have less of a drive to continue working out. Remember to pace yourself accordingly.
Stubborn Face Fat
Unfortunately, there are some cases when you can’t seem to lose fat in your face. You are not alone in this issue as there are many men and women worldwide who find that they can lose weight on the rest of their body, but their face fat seems incredibly stubborn. In those cases, you may need certain cosmetic procedures to get rid of your face fat.
There are noninvasive options for removing stubborn face fat if you are not up to plastic surgery risks. There are certain types of fat-melting injections that you can try out. However, whether surgical or non-surgical, cosmetic interventions are not a replacement for weight loss. These procedures’ main goal is for the patient to lose the stubborn fat they cannot get rid of through diet and exercise. While it is perfectly alright to get a cosmetic procedure, jumping to it as the first solution can be expensive, and you are better off trying to exercise first.
If you have lots of fat under your chin, you might have a low hyoid. If you can’t lose in your zygomatic/cheek region, consider a buccal fat reduction:
Facial Exercises Worth Trying Out
If you do decide to try out facial exercises, here are a couple that you can try out. These are easy and perfect for beginners.
1. Fish Face
Making a fish face is the most popular facial exercise because it is quick and easy to do. Of course, you have to start by making a fish face. Suck in your cheeks and pucker out your lips to imitate the lips of a fish. After that, try to smile. Naturally, this will feel quite uncomfortable, and you will feel resistance in your cheeks. Attempt to smile and then hold that position for around 6-8 seconds. Do about five repetitions of this exercise.
Don’t stretch yourself too thin, and know when to stop if it feels too uncomfortable. You can start with only a few repetitions and gradually build from there. Ideally, being uncomfortable is a good thing because it means that you are working your muscles. Supposedly, this will help define your cheek area.
2. Fish Face and Chin Up
This exercise is quite similar to the first one but targets a different area. Begin by sucking in your cheeks to create a fish face. Then, tilt your chin up as much as you can. For the exercise to be effective, hold the position for 5 seconds, and do ten repetitions. Make sure to suck in your cheeks as much as possible and to tilt your head back as far as you can.
The result of this facial exercise should be a slimmer face as it targets your jawline and chin area. This exercise should also help tone the area underneath your chin.
3. Finger Resistance
This one is an odd one out of the three. Start by placing two or three fingers (your pointer, middle, and ring finger) on the hollows of your cheek. Then, open your mouth as wide as you can and try to smile. Attempting to smile will create the necessary resistance for your muscles. It will be uncomfortable initially, especially as you are still getting used to the motions, but it should get easier over time. You don’t have to hold the smiling position, and after a moment of smiling, you can go back to the initial close-mouthed position. However, you still need to do the exercise for about 20-30 repetitions.
