This article is reviewed by a team of registered dietitians and medical doctors with extensive, practical clinical and public health experience.
How To Gain Weight In Face: 6 Healthful Tips To Try At Home

Are fuller cheeks the secret to tauter facial skin and an improved skin tone? It could be, and you don’t need to increase your body mass index in order to achieve a more youthful look.
The truth is simple: healthy skin is more attractive, and it feels incredible, to boot. Facemasks, better nutrition from natural energy sources, and good lifestyle habits are all key when it comes to maximizing the appearance of your skin and your facial bones. Read on to learn more about how to get chubby cheeks without gaining body weight. Here’s our take on how to gain weight in your face.
6 Natural Home Remedies on How to Gain Weight in Your Face
Improving the appearance of saggy cheeks the healthy way is easy. The following methods may be able to help you achieve fuller cheeks without a single visit to the doctor’s office:
- A healthy lifestyle
- Good sun protection
- Eating foods that make your face fat
- Doing facial yoga daily
- Using retinoids
- Trying other natural remedies for healthy fat in your cheeks
Your facial appearance is usually going to be tied to the health of your skin and your body overall—plump cheeks may be only a few simple lifestyle adjustments away. Here’s how you can get started.
Living Well Can Help You Gain Weight in Face
“Sugar sag[1]” is all too real—one of the best ways to prevent weight gain in the face without reducing the fullness of your cheeks is to limit your intake of refined sugar, especially alcohol[2]. Weight gain usually isn’t the goal. Instead, chubby cheeks should be achieved through good health, physical activity, and comprehensive nutrition.
Smoking is another major habit you should try to cut out. It inhibits your skin’s ability to renew itself[3] through cellular turnover. If you sleep poorly at night, this problem may be exacerbated greatly[4]. Try to get seven to eight hours of deep sleep per night, drink plenty of water throughout the day, and do what you can to maintain both a daytime and a nighttime skincare routine.
How to Gain Weight on Face Through Good Sun Protection Habits
Sun exposure is one of the most dangerous risk factors when it comes to the appearance of your skin—formerly chubby cheeks may become sallow, dry, and hypo- or hyperpigmented[5]. Avoid damage from the sun by staying indoors whenever possible.
If you do find yourself outside, be sure to protect your skin with sunscreen, preferably rated at SPF 30 or above. This even includes any time you’re driving in your car on a sunny day. Hats and parasols can also be used to keep your skin out of harm’s way.
Eat Foods That Make Your Face Fat
Your diet should include plenty of healthy fats—olive oil and coconut oil are two of our favorites, as well as natural sources of fatty acids like chia seeds, avocado, nuts, and flax. We love to eat nuts with healthy meals full of complex carbohydrates (carbs) for breakfast; mashed oats, smoothies, and other nutritious options are all great vehicles for the healthful fatty acids your body needs to keep your cheeks looking full and beautiful.
Supplementing your diet with the precursors to collagen production such as the amino acids glycine, and proline[6], can also help stimulate collagen production in the face. This is one of the big secrets for anybody hoping to attain fuller lips, cheeks, and cheekbones.
Egg whites, dairy, asparagus, and seaweed are all rich sources of proline. Glycine can be found in any type of animal gelatin—bone broth, bone marrow, and other foods that include animal bones or skin. Eating plenty of foods that make your face fat gives your collagen production system a helpful boost, giving you a healthy look by preventing weight loss of your facial muscles.
How to Get Chubby Cheeks With Facial Yoga
It’s crazy, but it’s true: as little as 30 minutes[7] of facial exercise a day has been shown to tone the cheek muscles greatly. This trial indicates that facial exercises, over the course of 20 weeks, improve how your facial features look, giving the appearance of fuller cheeks and extra facial fat without gaining weight through caloric intake alone.
How do you do facial yoga? Breathing exercises to start off your facial exercises are a great place to begin, inhaling and exhaling deeply. The Face Yoga Expert on our favorite workout platform recommends continuing with a gentle finger-tap massage all over the face and the neck, followed by kneading with the knuckles. These simple moves increase circulation in the face, making it one of the best natural methods for glowing skin.
To tone your cheeks further, puff them up with air and use your hands to smooth your mouth lines, and tap gently on the skin’s surface. After, try tucking your lips in, smoothing any lines you feel with your fingers. Do each of the facial exercises in these videos for 30 to 60 seconds daily and feel the results in the form of what looks like a chubby face without gaining weight.
How to Gain Face Fat With Retinoids
Retinoids and retinol are more than just trendy skincare supplements—using either is one of the most direct routes to chubby cheeks and dewy skin.
What makes retinol and retinoids so special? When applied topically, these compounds stimulate cellular turnover[8] and optimize your skin’s collagen production. They’re extremely effective against the impact of both photoaging, sun damage, and simple aging as all people experience it.
Using Other Natural Home Remedies to Gain Weight on Face
There are a ton of awesome, easy-to-make home remedies you can try in order to enhance the appearance of your cheeks. Aloe vera [9] is one of the most beneficial ingredients you can use—the enzymes it contains can help your body kickstart its production of collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid, resulting in a fuller face and a complexion that’s youthful, dewy, and gorgeous.
An aloe vera face mask isn’t your only option in this area, though. Using face masks made with other all-natural ingredients like rose water, honey, papaya, egg whites, raw milk, and shea butter can all plump your cheeks, mimicking the appearance of a rounded, fuller face. Try any of the above in combination with one another. Aloe vera and rose water face masks? Sign us up.
Other Medical Options for Gaining Weight in Face
Cosmetic surgery for chubby cheeks isn’t always an invasive procedure, but we advise you to avoid it if you can. Many prefer this avenue because it delivers instantly tangible results without weight gain elsewhere in the body and because it can be used to improve the appearance of one’s face after losing a lot of weight.
Surgery like cheek augmentation can be very costly[10], involving a fat graft transfer or even solid, artificial cheek implants. It’s a big to-do, and you can achieve similarly satisfactory results without going under the knife.
Dermal fillers[11] are, of course, one non-surgical option at your disposal. These fillers dissipate slowly over time as your body metabolizes them, however, which means that they’ll be something you need to maintain periodically with a return visit. Usually, they’ll last with efficacy for anywhere from 6 to 18 months after being administered.
The Takeaway: How to Gain Weight on Face in 7 Days
You don’t need to gain fat on your face to improve your skin health—these simple home remedies for fuller cheeks can all make it look like you’ve got more fat cells in your face, all while remaining exactly where you are on the body mass index.
Is a fuller face as simple as moisturizing with retinoids using an aloe vera mask, and pledging to eat fresh fruit instead of granulated sugar? It’s completely possible to reveal a fuller, more youthful face without actual weight gain. Try any of these home remedies to gain face fat today.
+ 11 sources
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- Nguyen HP;Katta R (2015). Sugar Sag: Glycation and the Role of Diet in Aging Skin. Skin therapy letter, [online] 20(6). Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27224842/.
- Liu, S.W., Lien, M.H. and Fenske, N.A. (2010). The effects of alcohol and drug abuse on the skin. Clinics in Dermatology, [online] 28(4), pp.391–399. doi:10.1016/j.clindermatol.2010.03.024.
- Knuutinen, A., Kokkonen, N., Risteli, J., Vahakangas, K., Kallioinen, M., Salo, T., Sorsa, T. and Oikarinen, A. (2002). Smoking affects collagen synthesis and extracellular matrix turnover in human skin. British Journal of Dermatology, [online] 146(4), pp.588–594. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2133.2002.04694.x.
- Oyetakin-White, P., Suggs, A., Koo, B., Matsui, M.S., Yarosh, D., Cooper, K.D. and Baron, E.D. (2014). Does poor sleep quality affect skin aging? Clinical and Experimental Dermatology, [online] 40(1), pp.17–22. doi:10.1111/ced.12455.
- Bosch, R., Philips, N., Suárez-Pérez, J., Juarranz, A., Devmurari, A., Chalensouk-Khaosaat, J. and González, S. (2015). Mechanisms of Photoaging and Cutaneous Photocarcinogenesis, and Photoprotective Strategies with Phytochemicals. Antioxidants, [online] 4(2), pp.248–268. doi:10.3390/antiox4020248.
- Michalak, M., Pierzak, M., Kręcisz, B. and Suliga, E. (2021). Bioactive Compounds for Skin Health: A Review. Nutrients, [online] 13(1), p.203. doi:10.3390/nu13010203.
- Alam, M., Walter, A.J., Geisler, A., Roongpisuthipong, W., Sikorski, G., Tung, R. and Poon, E. (2018). Association of Facial Exercise With the Appearance of Aging. JAMA Dermatology, [online] 154(3), p.365. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2017.5142.
- Mukherjee, S., Date, A., Patravale, V., Korting, H.C., Roeder, A. and Weindl, G. (2006). Retinoids in the treatment of skin aging: an overview of clinical efficacy and safety. Clinical Interventions in Aging, [online] 1(4), pp.327–348. doi:10.2147/ciia.2006.1.4.327.
- Juw.edu.pk. (2022). View of Chemical Characteristics and Therapeutic Potentials of Aloe vera. [online] Available at: https://jbas.juw.edu.pk/index.php/JBAS/article/view/279/204.
- American Society of Plastic Surgeons. (2022). American Society of Plastic Surgeons. [online] Available at: https://www.plasticsurgery.org/cosmetic-procedures/cheek-augmentation.
- American Society of Plastic Surgeons. (2022). American Society of Plastic Surgeons. [online] Available at: https://www.plasticsurgery.org/cosmetic-procedures/dermal-fillers.