Women struggling to lose weight and chronic dieters will end up looking older than they actually are by the time they turn 38, a new study comes to show. Because of yo-yo dieting and the fact that, in extreme slimmers, most of the fat goes from the face, they will actually look with approximately four years older than women their age who have not lost weight, researchers say.

Rajiv Grover, secretary of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, shares that the secret recipe for beauty is not a grueling, strict dieting and workout plan, but rather a healthy appetite. Women with more fat in their cheeks and face in general usually appear younger than their dieting counterparts. Dieting can roughen the facial traits, emphasizing already existent wrinkles and even creating more.

“It’s not wrinkles and lines that make people look older, it’s changes in the shape of the face. People have this thing about being thin. It perhaps gives them a slimmer body but they certainly age in the face more quickly.” Grover adds, as quoted by the Daily Mail.

The latest study took into consideration 200 pairs of identical twins, whose cases were monitored for about two years. At the end of this period, it became clear that the differences in appearance could only be explained by a contrast in lifestyle rather than in their DNA.

One of these differences was the Body Mass Index (BMI), which directly linked it to the aspect of the countenance. “The twins were divided into groups based on a four-point BMI difference. A BMI higher by four points was found to result in a younger appearance of between two and four years in women over 40 years old.” researcher Dr. Bahaman Guyuron explains for the aforementioned publication.

What this means is that, while dieting can be extremely helpful in the short term, in the long run it can prove to become a woman’s worst enemy, from her most reliable sidekick in early years. Of course, smoking, depression, antidepressants and divorce also add years to the face, as another study of the kind clearly showed a while back. However, researchers point out, eliminating as many of these factors as possible can actually help us reach the once-dreaded but still critical age of 50 looking like we feel – forever 25.