If you are trying to figure out how to get rid of cellulite on your tights, stomach, or legs, you may be feeling the same things that I was…

• You cringe every time you see the dimpled, lumpy skin on your buttocks, belly or thighs.
• You feel embarrassed by the ugly cottage-cheese skin on your your butt or your thighs, and you wish you could have that smooth, supple skin of your younger days.
• You are hiding your body under your clothes, wearing long pants and skirts – even in summer – because you’d rather be uncomfortable than let anyone see that orange peel on your body.
• You hesitate when it comes to being intimate, embarrassed by what your body looks like and afraid your partner will find your lumps and bumps a total turn off.
• You struggle through exhausting exercise…sweating and straining – yet no matter how hard you try or how tough your workout is, you just can’t get rid of that orange-peel skin.
• You’ve wasted a fortune on sure-thing creams to rid yourself of the awful cottage-cheese skin, followed the directions carefully, used them faithfully only to find your cellulite looks just as bad as before you started.
• You’re convinced there’s no hope, you’re stuck with your dimpled thighs forever, and no matter how hard you try … how intensely you exercise…you are doomed to lumpy skin for the rest of your life.

If you’re agreeing with any of these, keep reading, because there is hope.

Like you, I did not like the way I looked. I felt like everyone was staring at my dimpled skin so I’d hide myself under clothes, even though I was in good shape and by most people’s standards looked just fine. I was frustrated with that lumpy skin on the back of my thighs – I wanted to be rid of that awful looking, ugly cellulite but I had no idea where to start.

What is Cellulite?

Known also as orange peel syndrome, cottage cheese skin, the mattress phenomenon, and hail damage. Whatever the name, cellulite describes a condition that occurs in both men and women – although it is much more common in women – where the skin on the hips, thighs, and butt becomes dimpled. Cellulite can also be located on the back of arms, below the arm pit, and even on the chest.

It is estimated that cellulite affects 90% of all women and for many it is a source of frustration and embarrassment. While cellulite is normal for many women and some men as well, it’s considered unattractive, to the point where wearing a bathing suit or shorts becomes a sheer torture.

Cellulite is a term that is used to describe fat deposits trapped in fibrous pockets close to the skin that give the skin a dimpled or orange-peel like appearance. Fibrous strands of tissue connect your skin to deeper tissue layers, creating compartments of ordinary fat cells. When the fat cells increase in size, the compartments bulge and produce the dimpling appearance on your skin.

Cellulite

In overweight people excess fat is stuffed in these compartments causing them to bulge out. On the surface of the skin the bulging provides the dimply appearance of cellulite, especially in areas such as the hips, buttocks or thighs. However, slim women can develop cellulite too. Factors such as hormones, pregnancy, and aging may all attribute to the weakening of the collagen fibers to give the cellulite appearance.

According to most doctors cellulite is just plain fat. Some people have been speculating that cellulite is a particular “kind” of fat, with a higher level of toxins stored in it, but there is no scientific proof to this theory.

Note that cellulite is unrelated to cellulitis, which is infection of the skin and its underlying connective tissue.

How Do You Get Cellulite?

The causes are poorly understood, and several changes in metabolism and physiology may cause cellulite or contribute to cellulite. One explanation – which also explains cellulite’s very rare occurrence in men – is based on the composition and behavior of women’s fat cells and the connective tissue that holds fat cells in place. The female connective tissue is very inflexible. Thus, as women gain weight and their fat cells expand, and due to the lack of flexibility in the nearby connective tissue, fat cells tend to bulge upwards towards the surface of the skin, giving the classic orange-peel appearance of cellulite. In men, not only is there generally less fat on the thighs, but also the outer skin is thicker and thus obscures what is happening to any surplus fat below.

The reason men typically do not have cellulite is because of the way the fibers within their dermis are shaped. They aren’t crossed, but perpendicular to the skin, and so a build up of sweaty fat beneath the skin never takes place. Not only are the fibrous bands in women crossed, but they tend to be much tighter than men’s which causes a pulling on the skin and ends up causing the actual dimpling effect.

Another reason is because they have tougher skin dermis which doesn’t allow a build up of fat to collect. That is why men have smoother, tighter skin than we do.

Another factor is hormonal. Estrogen rev up fat storage as needed for menstruation and pregnancy. Plus, in the late stages of pregnancy estrogen can actually break collagen tissue fibers apart, which is a crucial step in relaxing the cervix for childbirth. Progesterone plays a role by stressing out our veins, making us retain fluid and causing you to put on the pounds.

Thin People Get Cellulite Too

It is a myth that you won’t get cellulite if you stay slim. Even if you have just 15% body fat, you can still have cellulite, even if you must squeeze the skin to see it.

You may be wondering how can you actually have a lump of fat on the outside of your thighs when you’re thin all over. Well, you just can. During the New York City Marathon, a number of female participants still had “cottage-cheese” kind of thighs. If you’re “programmed” to store it there, it’s very, very difficult to get it off, even if you don’t have it anywhere else.

There are a number of reasons thin women can still get cellulite which include the following:

• poor blood circulation
• unhealthy diet
• lack of exercise
• smoking
• yo-yo dieting

Have you ever heard that eating lots of bread or drinking lots of coffee and carbonated drinks causes cellulite? Well, although the result may be an increase in cellulite, the real cause isn’t the soda or bread. Cellulite is just fat deposited under the skin. By eating foods high in fat and calories you will increase your fat level, thus increasing your level of cellulite.

How to Get Rid of Cellulite: Cellulite Treatments and Cures

If cellulite is not even recognized as a disease by a medical field, is there such thing as a “cure?” Well, whether there is a “cure” or not, there are various methods of treatment available out there. All you need to do is begin a search for information about cellulite and you will find yourself bombarded with commercial messages. There are hundreds of resources claiming to reduce or eliminate the embarrassing orange-peel, and “for only $$$ you too can permanently get rid of this condition in just a few days.”

The most widely advertised methods are topical creams, body wrapping, electronic muscle stimulation and liposuction. Let’s take a look at each of them.

There are a lot of methods that claim to cure cellulite.

Topical Treatment Creams

The most popular of these are creams, gels, and bath liquids. These products are said to aid in smoothing, detoxifying, and rehydrating the “affected area”. Some of the claims are:

• Increased collagen production
• Strengthening collagen and elastin fibers
• Cellulite reduction through cellular stimulation to release stored fat
• Weight reduction through appetite suppression, increased metabolism, and fat burning
• Reduced water retention
• Massaging with cellulite cream is said to boost circulation and lymphatic drainage.

The efficacy of these products is often disputed, although some women say they do see some improvement. The use of moisturizing creams rich in the antioxidant vitamins A, C and E can be somewhat beneficial. The objective behind this type of treatment is to enhance the production of collagen which is a key factor in giving skin a smooth, supple appearance.

Whether you believe these claims or not, you want to keep in mind that many people have hidden allergies. These allergies only surface when the individual comes in contact with a “new” trigger. Some of these creams and other topical products contain ingredients that can be potentially harmful for certain people.

So, before you use any new topical treatment, carefully read the labels and follow directions. Obviously, if it contains an allergen that you already know affects you, you won’t want to use that particular product. Also, test the cream on a small area of skin and wait to see if you have any adverse reactions.

Persons who suffer from asthma need to pay particular attention. “Aminophylline,” an approved prescription drug used in the treatment of asthma, is an ingredient used in many thigh creams that claim to dissolve the fat and smooth the skin. Since some individuals suffer from allergic reactions to ethylenediamine, a component of aminophylline, these people may wish to avoid these products so that they don’t develop a sensitization (become allergic) to aminophylline. For these and other reasons the government argues that the majority of “topical agents and thigh creams” should be regulated as drugs.

Avoid most mainstream products because most contain aminophylline that can cause heart palpitations, anxiety and in extreme cases, respiratory failure. Instead you should look for topical cellulite treatments that contain these natural ingredients.

It’s best to stick with natural products, such as essential oils. Essential oils enhance circulation and help eliminate retained water. Some oils you may want to try include peppermint, grapefruit, cypress, juniper, rosemary, thyme, clary sage or lemon added to a base of jojoba oil for a bath oil. Apply essential oils to the affected areas. Theses oils stimulates circulation and get the blood moving in those areas ridden with cellulite.

Body Wrapping

Many spas and salons offer a treatment called body wrapping. This procedure claims to remove inches from the waist, thighs, hips or other parts of the body. The process includes the use of special wraps or clothing and can be used with special lotions or creams that are applied to the skin. Customers are usually told that they can lose “inches” as opposed to pounds and that fat will melt away bringing about a loss of inches in about an hour. One of the claims is that wrapping will work because cellulite is “water logged fatty tissue.”

Who can resist ads for body wraps that promise “to burn away fat even while you sleep,” to “lose 3-6 inches the first day?” What woman wouldn’t love to find a product that will render them slim and trim while they sleep?

So, if you have an event this weekend and need to fit into a dress that is too tight – then you may benefit from body wraps, even if the cellulite reduction is only temporary. Whether the experience reduces your cellulite or not, body wrapping can provide a pleasant and rejuvenating experience.

Endermology

During that treatment, for about 35 minutes a therapist works over the patient’s body with the machine, which looks like some type of space age vacuum. At one end of the hose is a hand piece, which the therapist rolls over the cellulite areas. Kind of like massaging fingers, the vacuum pump pulls a fold of skin up and kneads it between rollers.

Basically the way it works is by a combination of negative and positive pressure from rollers and suction works to swell the skin. The actual cellulite is not reduced, but the skin is slightly swollen after treatment. This swelling causes the cellulite to be slightly less noticeable. The swelling usually only lasts for 24 hours and then returns the normal.

Treatment is expensive and for most isn’t practical at all. A package of 20 sessions, 2 a week, can run from $1,500 to $2,200! Should you consider this? The answer is simply, No.

Hydrotherapy

Hydrotherapy, saunas, and the like, use the power of water to cleanse, detoxify, and stimulate. The idea is similar to that of creams. Ingredients used in hydrotherapy include ginkgo biloba, soy lecithin, grape seed bioflavanoids, sweet clover extract, evening primrose oil and fish oil.

Electric Muscle Stimulation (EMS)

The concept behind electrical muscle stimulation is toning and reshaping, as tiny micro nutrients of energy conspire to lift and smooth the skin. One treatment usually lasts about 15 minutes and costs about $30.

Electrical muscle stimulation has been used by doctors for some time to increase blood circulation, prevent blood clots, relax muscle spasms, and rehabilitate muscle function after a stroke. Providers of EMS equipment for consumer use will tell you that the process will reduce breast size, remove wrinkles, perform face lifts and remove cellulite, although there is no clinical evidence that proves these claims.

The premise is that using EMS, the brain sends a nerve impulse to the “motor point” of the muscle you desire to change. This signal is a message to the muscle to expand and contract. Electrodes are placed on specific motor points of the muscle group(s) to be exercised. When the electrical stimulation is applied through the electrodes using a mild current the muscle will expand and contract. The theory is that this makes it possible to duplicate regular exercise without the effort using conventional means.

During conventional exercise, your brain is sending messages down the spinal cord through the nerves with the muscles you are using, causing them to relax and contract. Your brain is controlling the muscle with voluntary muscle action.

EMS uses the outside electrical source to stimulate the nerves and send signals to your muscle to expand and contract. It sends an electrical current through adhesive electrodes creating the expansion and contraction. This would be considered involuntary muscle action. It is believed by some that EMS stimulates large nerve axons, or long outgrowths of a nerve cell body. Some of these cannot be stimulated voluntarily so the logic is that EMS might allow for increased development of tissue by enlarging it without multiplying cells.

The EMS equipment for consumer use is a “massage like” device that consists of a hand held motorized device with two adjustable rollers and suction which creates a symmetrical skin-fold. The marketers claim that “the skin gently folds and unfolds under the continuous action of the rollers allowing for smooth and regulated deep tissue mobilization. As the viscosity of the subcutaneous fat layer decreases, blood flow and lymphatic drainage increase, facilitating the elimination of excess fluid and metabolites, while improving overall cellular function.” Whether you believe those claims or not, keep in mind that if not used properly these devices can produce harmful effects. If you ask me, this is a waste of time and money.

Liposuction Surgery

Another procedure being touted for the treatment of cellulite is liposuction surgery. Liposuction is an invasive procedure and involves surgery with a tool equipped with a v-shaped blade that is inserted through small excisions in the skin to cut the fibrous X shaped bands of tissue that form the structure where the cellulite is formed.

Once these bands are cut, some fat (cellulite) is suctioned out and some fat reinjected. This can produce a temporary smoothing, but eventually the cellulite almost always returns.

If you ask me, this is a very costly price to pay for temporary results and a risky procedure.

There is Hope!

No cream, oil, electronic device, or surgery can completely eliminate cellulite. Some may in fact slow down the accumulation and lesson appearance of cellulite temporarily, but none have been proven to actually reduce it.

With all this said, I am sure you are wondering if there is hope. Well,there really is hope. Study after study has shown that the key to reducing cellulite significantly is by a combination of both proper diet and anti Top Hamstrings Exercises for Cellulite Reduction , Killer Cellulite Exercises For Your Legs and Butt and Get Rid of Cellulite the Old-Fashioned Way.

We all wish there was a “magic genie bottle” to help us get rid of orange-peel, but there really is no substitute for good, old-fashioned, healthy nutrition and exercise.

The following are tried and true methods that DO work if you stick with them. They may not be easy for you, but as a bonus you will get a healthy and beautiful body.

• Watch your diet.
• Incorporate fresh and natural foods into your diet.
• Drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration. Even better, drink plenty of freshly made fruit and vegetable juices.
• Limit the consumption of caffeine and alcohol.
• Avoid high fat foods.
• Get plenty of fiber.
• Quit or cut down on smoking.
• Avoid medications not necessary to health and well being.
• Get plenty of exercise. Read more in my cellulite removal exercises post.

Following a regimen of good health, nutrition and exercise will help your body rid itself of toxins and promote a general state of health that is optimum for pursuing any program for dealing with cellulite.

You have learned that genetics dictate whether you have a predisposition for the condition. If you do, there is no amount of money or procedures that can prevent it from happening to you.

Some of the treatments we presented may help in reducing the problem but they certainly won’t eliminate it totally if you carry the gene.

By all means do your own research to determine if any of the treatments or methods we’ve mentioned here might help you. Again, all we recommend is that you have realistic expectations.

Lastly, think twice or three times before investing huge amounts of cash for so-called treatments or cures. You are now armed with the most important tool you need on your journey to Conquering Cellulite. That tool is knowledge! Use it wisely!

Remember that many processes in the body, including fat breakdown and elimination of toxins, can be slowed down by food allergies, improper digestion and absorption, caused mainly by an unhealthy diet. Try eliminating as much of the modern-day processed and manufactured food products from your diet as possible. In my opinion, the best thing you can do for stubborn pockets of fat is to eat a diet free of fatty, processed and refined foods, sugar and other problem food products. Also you should limit or eliminate completely from your diet all animal products, including diary, meats, poultry and fish. If you don’t want to eliminate them entirely, try to limit them to once or twice a week, or use them in small amounts as condiments rather than the main component of the meal.

Will a natural, plant-based diet, along with the best fitness program you can manage, make your cellulite disappear completely? I don’t know. But I do know that short of liposuction (which I definitely do not recommend), it has the best chance of success.

Read more on my blog How to Get Rid of Cellulite. To learn about other methods that you may try, visit Body Wraps for Cellulite Removal and other methods to Get Rid of Cellulite. Also read Top Hamstrings Exercises for Cellulite Reduction , Killer Cellulite Exercises For Your Legs and Butt.

Consider this fact: there are women who are thin with the appearance of cellulite, and there are women who are overweight with no signs of cellulite.

If we were to analyze the fat from the two women mentioned above, we would find no physiological or biological difference between the fat in their lower bodies.

BUT we would find some structural differences along with several other factors that are affected by lifestyle habits.

Here’s what we would find structurally:

In the woman WITHOUT the appearance of cellulite…the muscles beneath the fat are firmer and more toned. The connective tissue that sits between the deepest layers of the skin and the outermost layers of the fat is tighter and smoother. The fat deposits themselves are more evenly distributed.

In addition to these structural differences there are, most likely, differences in everyday lifestyle, such as:

1. Proper exercise, improper exercise – or no exercise at all.
2. Nutrition: what foods are eaten, how much is eaten, hydration habits (types and amount of daily fluid intake), sodium intake levels, levels of other minerals in relation to sodium (potassium, etc).
3. Smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, other bad habits.

So – when we look at the factors above - we can assume that a woman who is affected by the appearance of cellulite in the form of fat combined with several structural challenges can definitely reduce the appearance of that cellulite by incorporating healthy nutrition and living habits with targeted exercise routine, combined with proper hydration and reduced sodium intake.

From all this, it should be easy to understand that the appearance of cellulite in the thin woman has nothing to do with her having a different kind of fat under her skin that other women don’t have. There are rather several structural factors that result in the bumpy skin texture.

It is also very likely that these structural factors are ‘in addition to’ poor health habits and the lack of proper exercise.

So cellulite, or simply ”fat” really, can be reduced and many times even removed completely.

In reality we are simply changing the appearance of the surface of the skin. We do this with slight changes in the muscle, nutrient balance, hydration and connective tissue tightness. We should stop eating mostly acid diet, and consume more alkaline foods, such as raw fruits and veggies. Exercise is the catalyst that drives the reasons for change in the structural components that make up the layers behind the surface of the skin.

There is lots more for me to talk about regarding getting rid of cellulite and types of cellulite -  such as teen cellulite, pregnancy cellulite (pre, during and post), menopausal cellulite – and a bunch of others – as well as how companies that promote creams, pills, wraps and other such ineffective or somewhat effective products are allowed to lie to you and falsely advertise their products to you – FULLY knowing that you will not get rid of your cellulite by using their products.

So keep checking my site for more information on how to get rid of cellulite, Killer Anti Cellulite Exercises For Your Legs and Butt and Top Hamstrings Exercises for Cellulite Removal.