Five Ways to Reduce Cellulite

Eat, exercise and treat your legs right to keep cellulite at bay

Step One: TONE
Regular exercise– walking or any form of cardio work – will help with circulation and toning your legs. Start off with a brisk walk on the treadmill if you’re at the gym. Move on to jogging and crosstraining to help reduce fat. Include reps of squats and lunges with light weights at the end of your workouts every other day, to tone your glutes.

Try these fitness moves for great legs

If you can’t get to the gym, doing heel lifts on the stairs is a great alternative. Face the stairs and stand on the edge of a step with your heels hanging over the edge. Lower yourself up and down, alternating turning your feet outward and inward for maximum stretch.

Step Two: DIET
Eating a wide variety of brightly coloured fruit and vegetables should help to improve skin circulation, reducing the appearance of cellulite. Coloured fruit and vegetables contain the most antioxidants, helping your body shed toxins. Eating unhealthy, fatty foods can lead to reduced skin elasticity and sluggish circulation.

Drink away your cellulite with an antioxidant-rich detox drink
Add raspberries, strawberries and blueberries to your diet. Mangoes and bananas also encourage blood flow, which will again help to reduce the appearance of cellulite. Try to include lots of vitamin C which boosts levels of collagen in the skin; eating oily fish and white lean meat will also help. Salt is an aggravating factor for cellulite, so avoid high-salt foods such as crisps and halloumi cheese.

Step Three: UNDERWEAR
Wearing looser fitting undergarments can help prevent cellulite which can be aggravated by over-tight elastic restricting the circulation. Tight underwear can hinder the body’s ability to move fat where it needs to go.

Step Four: SKINCARE
Combine regular body brushing with regular moisturising:body brushing can help to remove dead skin and give the skin a healthier, more youthful appearance. Investing in a good, plumping moisturiser can also help breathe life back into weakened skin cells and will make cellulite feel less ‘lumpy and bumpy’.

Step Five: TREATMENT
Genetics play a big part in cellulite, so despite all efforts some people will unfortunately always suffer the dreaded orange peel look to siome extent. If you are eating healthily, taking care of your legs and exercising regularly but still can’t get rid of it, you might want to consider a more drastic option.

Velashape, available at The Private Clinic in London’s Harley Street, for example, combines radio frequency, infra-red, vacuum and mechanical massage to tackle the appearance of cellulite. The treatment boosts circulation, targets the dimpled skin to firm problem areas, makes the skin feel smoother and reduces the circumference of the area treated.