New Year’s Beauty Resolutions

As a busy plastic surgeon in San Diego, Dr. Abhay Gupta sees men and women every day that want to look and feel their best. A solid at-home routine is essential to maintaining a beautiful appearance, and the beginning of the year is an excellent time to re-evaluate beauty routines and incorporate new habits.

If you want to step up your beauty routine and look your best in 2016, here are a few ideas to get you started:

Get the Rest Your Body Needs

Quality sleep is critical to any anti-aging routine. Depriving your body of the sleep it needs can aggravate skin issues and accelerate aging. Your body needs to sleep for six to eight hours every night so your skin can restore and repair itself.

Toss the Cigarettes

Even smoking occasionally in social situations can take its toll on your skin, teeth and nails. Also, if you are contemplating plastic surgery, cigarettes can raise the risks and contribute to poor wound healing and bad scarring.

Maintain a Stable Weight

Constant yo-yo dieting and weight fluctuation is actually bad for your appearance. Your skin can lose elasticity and start to look saggy, and you can develop unsavory stretch marks. If you want to shed some extra pounds, ask your doctor about a safe and sustainable way to go about it. Once you have achieved your goal weight, resolve to maintain it with healthy habits.

Recalibrate Your Skincare Product Regimen

Your skincare needs are different at age 37 than they were at 27. Certain conditions (e.g., acne) may resolve in your 30s and other problems (e.g., wrinkles) become a possibility. Ask an expert about what you should be focusing on at your age, and recalibrate your product regimen to suit those goals.

Be Bold

We all have a signature hairstyle or makeup look that is comfortable and classic. But why not shake things up this year and try something new? Challenge yourself to a few beauty dares: try a bright red lipstick or a new part in your hair. YouTube is a great place to seek inspiration. One of these ideas may stick and become part of your new regular routine!

Protect Yourself from the Sun

It has been said before (but bears repeating in a climate like San Diego’s) that sun protection is critical to healthy and beautiful skin. A foolproof way to make sure your skin is always protected is to choose a daily facial moisturizer that contains sunscreen. Also, keep a travel size bottle of body sunscreen in your purse or car for unexpected moments.

Lay Off the Heat

We all want strong, lustrous locks, but daily heat styling (with blow dryers, straightening irons and curling irons) is very harmful to our hair. Try to go heat-free every few days by air-drying and minimal styling to give your strands time to recover.

Let Dr. Gupta Help You Achieve Your Ideal Appearance

Is there a feature or imperfection that makes you feel self-conscious of your appearance? Perhaps forehead wrinkles are making you look prematurely aged, or you would like bigger, fuller lips. Talk to Dr. Gupta about your cosmetic treatment options during a personal consultation. Call (858) 408-6100 today to make your appointment.

Fun Fact of the Month: The amount of time you spend primping depends on the day of the week. The average morning routine takes about 76 minutes on a Monday and drops down to 19 minutes by Friday.