Dr Leah will see you now: The Apprentice winner on how to slim down post-Christmas while improving your skin

Dr Leah gives her professional advice on how to most effectively shift the Christmas bulge
Dr. Leah12 January 2016

If like most of us you have overindulged over the festive period and cannot wait to get rid of the post festive bulge, these top tips for a post-festive slim down will help you to achieve your New Year resolutions.

Weight gained over the festive period can prove more stubborn to shift and studies have shown that on an average we can gain anything between 0.8kg up to 8kg over the holiday season.

This could be due to overindulging, with an average Christmas dinner serving adding up to around 2300 calories per sitting or a little too much Christmas pudding, which can contain up to 400 calories per portion.

Diet

You won’t be surprised to hear that diet and exercise is key. The average lifestyle in London is fast paced and the consequence of this is that there can be a tendency to opt for convenient, easily accessible and fast food.

The issue with this type of food is that quite often they are high in sodium, sugar and fats all of which when consumed in high amounts can hinder weight loss efforts.

Even if you are a health food junkie, the shop bought low fat options can be worse for you than the more indulgent choices, due to the substitution of fats for sugars.

Maintaining a healthy balanced diet of what you want to eat compared to what you should eat, is essential to a healthy lifestyle and a key component when trying to shift stubborn inches of fat.

Drink Water

It's frequently reported that drinking water regularly helps to rehydrate you and this hydration helps to aid the removal of toxins from our system.

The human body uses an average of 2.5L water just to function internally, this then needs to be replenished on a daily basis, it has been suggested that by adding up to 1.5L to our baseline amount can aid weight reduction by 20%.

In addition water contributes to joint lubrication, digestion fluidity, nourishing the brain, which can in turn alleviate headaches and finally 2% of all of the water we consume contributes to improving our skin.

A recent trial performed by a national news outlet showed the astounding affect of how simply raising the amount of water we drink can affect weight loss and dramatically improve appearance.

Exercise

Recent studies suggest that doing regular short bursts of exercise is more beneficial for us than the old fashioned hour-long sessions we thought we had to endure.

By doing high intensity exercise you can burn anything from 340 calories by swimming for 30 minutes to 540 calories by jogging for the same amount of time. Both are good for the heart and mind and gear you up for a healthy new year.

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Portion Control

One of the biggest mistakes is to roughly estimate the amount of food we are taking in and the calories that coincide with that intake. Portion control is a must in order to maintain a good balance.

I find a good way of monitoring calories and exercise is to log them using an app that are widely available on both Android and Apple devices, my personal favourite is called MyFitnessPal.

Not only can you calculate your intake, but it also helps to break down what you should and shouldn't be consuming in an easily discernible pie chart.

For example a 2000-calorie-a-day diet should have no more than 66 grams of fat, less than 20 grams saturated, 2400 milligrams of sodium and 300 grams of total carbohydrate including sugars although this will vary depending on individual needs.

A Helping Hand

For those particularly stubborn areas, there is nothing wrong with introducing a helping hand to target those hard to shift areas and to aid you in your ultimate goal.

Fast working fat-reducing body treatments are flooding the market at the moment and we are excited to have headed the wave back in 2014 when we first launched our cosmetic clinic in London with the 3D Lipo Med body machine. It uses innovative technology to target areas of concern and re-sculpt and reduce the body rapidly.

One such technology is Fat Freezing. This fat reduction treatment works using cryo-electro-lyposis to non-invasively penetrate deep into the skin; using -5 temperatures and an electric current.

This causes a breakdown of fat cells and will allow the body to expel them naturally. This is a specific way to effectively target unwanted fat pockets and in turn help to lose inches quickly.

One requirement is to drink a minimum of 4 Litres of water in a day in order to maximise the difference in your results. The treatment takes 16 weeks to finalise which ties in perfectly with obtaining that summer body we are all dreaming of.

At Dr Leah's Skin Clinic in London, we have introduced a New Year New You promotion of 15% off per area of our Fat Freezing to help you get a kick-start on becoming the best version of yourself in 2016.

Another route to explore involves cavitation based Inch Loss and Skin Tightening treatment, which works via a radio frequency wave.

This treatment benefits those who want a circumference reduction as appose to targeted pockets. If you are looking for a helping hand to coincide with a new years resolution exercise regime then this will tie in nicely.

In some cases, treatments can be combined with other fat reduction treatments such as: Inch Loss, Radio Frequency Skin Tightening and Cellulite reducing Dermology. These results are advocated by the likes of Coleen Rooney, Gemma Collins, Amy Childs and many more who swear by the efficacy of 3D Lipo fat reduction treatments.

So if you're looking for a reason to start your journey to a healthier, happier and slimmer you then there's no shame in taking advantage of the ever-changing technologies. Fat reduction treatments can be aided by the use of DermaQuest Stem Cell 3D Body Crème to tighten the skin and allow it to remain soft and supple whilst the process is completing, it has been clinically proven to improve the appearance of lax skin by up to 55% in 10 days and can be used anywhere on the body.

Dr Leah's Skin Clinic offers many of the latest body treatments for to get you back to a better you - with treatment costs starting from as little as £230 for Fat Freezing. You can also follow Leah's career progress as she is set to open her brand new clinic in Loughton, Essex by Summer 2016.

For more details on Dr Leah Clinics and full price list of treatments, visit drleah.co.uk

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