Healthy weight loss to prevent sagging breasts

Losing weight too quickly, yo-yo dieting and rapidly gaining weight can all lead to sagging breasts, or its medical term, ptosis. If you’re about to embark on a diet, you might well be wondering how to do it whilst keeping your breasts nice and perky.

Losing weight doesn’t mean completely cutting out everything you love and eating only lettuce leaves. For us to lose weight healthily and keep it off, we need to make our diet something that we can stick to in the long term. We need to enjoy what we are eating, and dieting shouldn’t mean taking the enjoyment out of food. Losing weight slowly and healthily is key for your breasts to defy the laws of gravity. So, here’s the low down on slow and healthy weight loss.

How much weight should I lose?

This is personal to you and dependent on how much you need or want to lose, but it helps to make a long-term goal. This goal might not be achievable straight away, and it may mean making smaller goals along the way.

The key is to make your goal realistic and achievable, otherwise it’s going to be near impossible to get there. Evidence shows that aiming to lose 5-10% of your current body weight is a healthy, realistic and achievable goal.

Another guide to working out how much you need to lose is aiming to be a healthy weight according to your body mass index (BMI). The BMI is your weight relative to your height. A healthy BMI ranges between 20-25kg/m². You can work this out by a simple calculation:

BMI = your weight (in kilograms) / your height² (in metres)

Using your current weight, you can work out how much you need to lose to achieve your ideal BMI. For example, if your BMI is 27 and your aim is to have a BMI of 25, you can work out what your weight would be if your BMI were 25. The calculation for this is:

Your height (m) x (Ideal BMI e.g. 25) = Weight (kg)

You can then subtract this result from your current weight to find out how much you need to lose to achieve your ideal BMI.

How quickly should I lose weight?

Losing weight too quickly can cause your breasts to sag. Collagen and elastin, the structural proteins that keep skin firm, can break down quickly when they are put under stress at times of rapid weight loss. Equally, losing weight too quickly often leads to rapid weight regain, again causing breasts to sag. Constantly losing and regaining weight causes the elastin and collagen to become frequently stretched, which is bad news for your breasts.

Losing weight slowly will keep your breasts perky, while at the same time helping you to keep the weight off. A steady and healthy weight loss is about 1-2lbs per week.

What should I do to lose the weight?

In order to lose weight, you need to expend more calories than you take in. Restricting your calories too much can result in losing weight too quickly. To maintain a healthy steady weight loss of 1-2lbs a week, you’ll need a calorie deficit of about 500 calories each day. For a woman, that might mean consuming a total of around 1,500kcals each day.

It’s helpful to strip down your diet and have a thorough look at what you’re eating so you can see where the calories are coming from. Why not try writing down your diet for a typical day or two – and be truthful with yourself! Think about how you are cooking things, as well as how often you eat certain foods. For example, how many times a week do you eat fried foods, confectionery, takeaways or fast food? Once you examine your diet honestly, you can see where you might want to make changes to help cut down on those calories.

What should I eat?

The main principles to help reduce your calorie intake and lose weight are:

• Have a regular meal pattern (including breakfast)
• Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables throughout the day, aiming for at least five portions per day
• Have some starchy carbohydrates at each meal, choosing wholegrain when possible
• Control portion sizes
• Eat a low fat diet
• Eat as little as possible of fried foods, drinks and confectionery high in added sugar, and other high fat foods such as takeaways and fast foods
• Minimise the calories you take in from alcohol

Keep active for at least an hour a day: walk, run, swim or just try to incorporate exercise into your daily routine. Cycle to work, walk to the supermarket, use stairs rather than lifts and leave your car at home when you can. An hour’s walking alone can burn 200 calories, so it is well worth the extra effort.

The role of firming bust creams

If you’re concerned about the effect weight loss will have on your breasts, one option you might consider is to invest in a firming bust cream. OK, so these creams don’t actually contain any ‘magic’ ingredients, but they do act as excellent moisturisers and keep your skin in tip-top condition. As dry skin tends to wrinkle and sag sooner than oily skin anyway, retaining healthy moisture levels is an essential part of improving appearance and overall texture. For further information, the Let’s Talk Breasts team has evaluated a number of beauty products promising to firm, tone and lift in our bust cream review section.

By following the above dietary principles and keeping active, not only will you lose weight slowly and steadily, but you’ll also find it easier to keep the weight off permanently. Combine this new lifestyle with some sensible skin care and you’ll have a great chance of stopping your breasts heading south.