Cellulite – What You Can Do About it including a DIY Scrub that really works!

Cellulite. Let’s face it, if a woman doesn’t have it she is a rarity. Genes, diet and lifestyle all play a part, and girls as young as 16 can get it. It can extend all the way from your bum to your knees, and you don’t have to be especially overweight to get it. Cellulite is essentially a buckling in the connective tissue beneath the skin, and fat deposits and toxins accumulate in these buckled areas creating a dimpled look. Extra weight doesn’t help as the excess fat accentuates the cellulite, but you will see it on slim girls too! As you age connective tissue tend to weaken as part of the ageing process and if you already had cellulite and you don’t exercise enough and eat an inflammatory diet, cellulite tends to look worse and worse.  So now is the time to do something about it.

The truth is that you can never completely get rid of it, but you can definitely improve the appearance of cellulite and given that most women have got it, improving it goes a long way toward having a healthier looking body, and, helping us to feel better about our bodies.

Rather than spending your money on expensive products and treatments touted as the ‘cure’ here are some practical things you can do as well as a DIY scrub that really helps.

• Most importantly, follow an anti-inflammatory diet. Reducing inflammation will will help your metabolism, facilitate weight loss and help to reduce the toxicity in your body. My anti-inflammatory cookbook is not a fad diet, but simply a healthy way of eating which I have been following for many, many years. It maximises the anti-inflammatory nutrients that you can eat through food with recipes that are simple, quick and contain readily available foods, herbs and spices. The recipes also taste good! Don’t eat packaged foods, just eat real food when trying to improve your cellulite. Avoid refined sugar, sugary drinks, salty packaged food such as chips ,and of course a diet high in saturated fats such as fried food, excesses of red meat and dairy won’t be good for cellulite.
• Have a burst of cold water at the end of your shower. Make the water temperature as cold as you can tolerate and get it onto the affected areas. Make sure to get the cold water on the lymph glands in the groin (along the bikini line) and if you are up for it also on the glands under the arms and in the neck (much easier to do in Summer!). You only need a few seconds in each spot. This will pump the lymph which carries toxins out of the body and when the lymph is congested cellulite will look worse. It really helps and is worth a few seconds of aaargh..
• Lymphatic drainage massage with a qualified practitioner is effective in aiding the removal of toxins out of the body and really improves the look of cellulite
• Dry skin brushing using a natural loofa or brush. Before a shower very gently brush over the whole body toward the belly button, feels great and is also good for you skin
• Detox and lymphatic herbs to reduce toxicity levels and improve lymphatic drainage in your body. See your qualified practitioner
• Exercise. Any type really, just move. Exercise will tighten the connective tissue and pump the lymph (and make you feel a whole lot better).

 

It is also a good idea to work on the cellulite externally and I make a DIY cellulite scrub that really helps. It is cheap and easy to make with simple ingredients, and best of all it is really good for your skin leaving it feeling soft and invigorated. It contains caffeine which is found in the ground coffee beans. Caffeine helps cellulite because of its circulatory effect: getting the blood and lymph moving. Since we massage the scrub in ( and I like to really massage vigorously) the massage also contributes to the improvement of cellulite. Get the blood in the area, and the lymph will move the toxins away. Voila! With the addition of Celtic Sea Salt, a natural sea salt containing a lot of minerals, we are exfoliating the skin, and unrefined coconut oil is anti-inflammatory and leaves the skin sooo soft. Here’s how to make it:

DIY Cellulite Exfoliating Scrub

Ingredients:

1 and 1/4 cup ground coffee beans ( unused, not coffee grounds, as you will have the most caffeine this way)

8 tablespoons quality unrefined coconut oil

3 tablespoons Celtic Sea Salt

Method:

Melt the coconut oil in a bowl by putting it over another bowl of hot water ( or else you could melt in the microwave ). Mix all the ingredients together in with the melted coconut oil. Spoon into a glass jar and you are done.

The scrub smells great! Since coconut oil has a tendency to harden back up again depending on the temperature, I place the jar of Cellulite Exfoliating Scrub where the warm shower water will contact it for a little while, and this softens it up again. Easy.

Use the scrub in a warm shower by massaging vigorously in an upward motion. Use once a week, or daily if you really want to work on the cellulite. You will notice a definite improvement especially if you are following an anti-inflammatory diet and the suggestions above. Good luck!

 

Margaret Boyd-Squires is a Naturopath practising in Melbourne, Australia with nearly 25 years experience. She conducts online telephone or Skype consultations for those living far away. Recently she published her first book Feel Great and Look your Best: Anti-Inflammatory Recipes as she is so passionate about reducing inflammation.