‘My Face Paid The Price For My Weight Loss. Here’s How Full Face Harmonisation Brought It Back To Life’

Whether you’ve lost weight and it’s made your face look a little drawn, or you simply want to make your skin look fresher (and younger), you’re going to want to see our latest treatment case study! 

Alice visited Secret Aesthetics in Birmingham to see Dr Asad Naqvi in action, showcasing how natural-looking full-face harmonisation can be used to revitalise your appearance, by combining Galderma’s full portfolio of Restylane fillers and Skinboosters (because, no, not all fillers are the same). The result? We simply can’t get enough of Monica’s beautiful before-and-afters below…

Monica came to Dr Asad’s clinic after some significant weight loss. She wanted to improve the overall look of her face and to restore some lost volume.”What happens with weight loss is that you can lose not only volume in your face but also the quality of the skin; it becomes crepey, loses its brightness and firmness, and you start getting fine lines,” explains Dr Asad. “One of the reasons behind this is that the fat cells under the skin produce a small amount of oestrogen, which helps with collagen and elastin stimulation.”

Luckily, Dr Asad is rather good at treating all these side effects, especially with the full face harmonisation technique…

What is full face harmonisation?

Full harmonisation is all about looking at your face as a whole, rather than spot treating one specific area (even if that’s what the patient initially is focused on).

“I commonly get patients who come in, and they’ll say, ‘my smile lines are quite deep, and they’re making me look old, can you please inject them?’, reveals Dr Asad.

But, if ‘looking generally older’ is your core concern, that might not actually be the best option.

“If I just fix the nasolabial folds, it will take off maybe 4% of your age,” Dr Asad continues. “But, if I fill your jowl area, that’s another 4%; and your temples, maybe 5%. What then slowly happens is that I can take off in total about 20% of your age. That is the beauty of doing the full bespoke harmonisation.”

What are the key benefits of full face harmonisation?

“Facial harmonisation is the most impactful way of making a difference to someone’s face,” says Dr Asad. “Ageing is a process that affects the entire face so you are not going to take years off your age by just treating one area. When you age, your lips become thin, you form nasolabial folds, you lose your fat pads in the mid-face, you form jowls, marionette lines, and your skin quality reduces as well. So, if you’re addressing just one of these things, how will it make an impact? You need to tackle everything.”

If that sounds like you’ll be having quite a lot of filler (and you’re particularly worried about looking ‘done’), fear not.

A full face can take up to 15 or even 20ml in one session (different types of people need different amounts of filler, and 1ml is really not going to cut it), but placed appropriately, it is able to look natural and lovely, Alice herself reassures.

Ultimately, that’s why it’s so important not only to see a well-trained practitioner recommended by experts, but also to ensure they are using the right type of filler for the technique…

Why use Restylane?

Restylane is a portfolio of dermal fillers from leading aesthetics brand Galderma, which has been around for nearly 30 years. (Extra impressive considering we all know how much the industry loves something ‘new’).

“What I love about working with Restylane is that a lot of research has gone into the technology behind it,” explains Dr Asad. That’s helped influence how flexible and firm the filler is, how well it integrates into the face, and how much water it draws in.

Those are all super important considerations, not least because Restylane fillers are celebrated for:

• offering a breadth of options for all aspects of the face
• not migrating in the face, making them ideal for areas such as the lips
• providing natural-looking results due to excellent tissue integration
• offering High G-prime gels if required, allowing for the same effect with less product, providing lift and volume efficiently.

How are different Restylane fillers adapted to specific areas of the face?

Each area of your face has unique features and needs, so within full face harmonisation, the products your practitioner uses need to provide a personalised, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

For the more mobile areas of the face

“If somebody wanted fillers in the more mobile areas of the face, for example, around the mouth, the lips, the nasolabial folds, and marionettes, then you want something soft and stretchy because the area is moving the whole time,” explains Dr Asad.

The flexibility of the filler used in these areas is so important because if your filler doesn’t move as your face does – for example, when you smile – it can ‘pop up’ and be fairly noticeable that it isn’t meant to be there.

“That’s why you need a filler product that integrates, and the OBT (which stands for Optimal Balance Technology) in Restylane products (which basically indicates the flexibility of the filler) means they integrate beautifully,” recommends Dr Asad. “The more flexible the filler is and the more it integrates into the tissue, the more natural it becomes, so you won’t be seeing a lump on top of your face.”

For structural areas 

“If you’re doing noses, or jawline or chin, you want something firmer, that is going to give a sharper angle and stay put,” says Dr Asad. “For that, we move the focus onto Restylane’s NASHA (Non-Animal Stabilised Hyaluronic Acid) technology, which gives the firmest, deepest, highest G-Prime – a fancy way of saying how resistant and stiff a filler is. Within the Restylane portfolio, Lyft, has the highest G-Prime and then Defyne. The latter can also be helpful for older individuals who need the firmness but with some more flexibility, as they have very thin skin and not much fat to cover the filler.

What Restylane dermal fillers did Dr Asad use for Monica?

In Monica’s case specifically, Dr Asad used:

• Lyft: Adds lift and structure to areas that need support, restoring facial contours and volume. (0.2ml in her nasolabial folds, 0.5ml in her chin and 0.4ml in her nose)

• Volyme: Provides deep volumising to enhance and sculpt facial features, giving a fuller, youthful appearance. (0.3ml in her nasolabial folds, 0.8ml in her Marionette lines, 1.5ml in her temples, 0.5ml in the mid face and 1ml in front of the ear, all per side).

• Defyne: Softens deeper lines while maintaining natural facial movement and flexibility. (0.3ml in the jowl area)

• Kysse: Enhances lip shape, definition, and softness for natural-looking fullness. (0.7ml for the lips)

Can you combine fillers with other treatments to boost the results of face harmonisation?

Absolutely – and it’s something Dr Asad loves to do, especially using skin boosters to improve the overall look and feel of the skin.

“For weight loss specifically, you want to address the decreasing skin quality, so we can combine dermal fillers with the injection of skin boosters throughout the entire face,” says Dr Asad. “I use Restylane Skinboosters Vital as, uniquely, they not only hydrate the skin (as other skinboosters do); they also combine this benefit with the NASHA technology (for some firmness), which gives you a very subtle bit of lift, without adding any volume or puffiness to the face.”

The result:

And here’s what Monica had to say when she looked in the mirror post-treatment: “Wow, this looks even better than I expected.”

According to Dr Asad, Monica’s response is a very common one! Other patients are also quick to highlight how natural-looking the results are – which is exactly what we were hoping for.

Interested in other helpful tips and tricks for getting the most out of your tweakment experiences? Head to The Guide to view our full selection of articles.

This article is written with the support of Galderma