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The Photos You Keep Untagging Yourself From (And What a Lymph Therapist Noticed in the Time Stamps)

If the photos you can't stand were mostly taken before lunch, the problem may not be your face at all.

Renee is 57. She's a florist in Greenwood, Indiana, and she has done the flowers for hundreds of weddings.

She's in almost none of the photos.

Thirty years of weddings taught her where a photographer stands and how to stay just outside the frame.

When she was 54, her husband left her for a woman he met at work. After that, she stayed out of every frame.

Last year her son got engaged, and the bride's family tagged Renee in six photos from the engagement brunch. She untagged all six before bed.

Then he asked her to do the flowers for his December wedding. Her ex-husband would be there with the woman he left her for. So would a photographer paid to catch every face.

"I've spent two years untagging myself," she told me at our first session. "I can't untag myself from my son's wedding album."

Her doctor said it was stress. The divorce had been final for months, and her face still looked like it was in the middle of it.

So I asked to see the photos she'd untagged. She knew exactly where to find every one.

Almost all of them were taken before 11 in the morning. Sunday brunch. Christmas morning. Breakfast at her sister's after Thanksgiving. The engagement brunch.

Her son's ceremony was at 10 a.m.

Renee didn't hate her face. She hated her face before 11 a.m.

It wasn't her age or the face she was born with. I see the same thing every week, and I'd bet some of it is happening to you.

Check the ones that sound like you:

Tap the ones that sound like you.

Renee checked all six.

If you checked two or more, much of what you see in those photos may not be fat.

Fat doesn't show up for brunch and leave by dinner. Fluid does.

Check the time stamps on the photos you untagged. Then take a selfie tomorrow when you wake up and another at 3 p.m. Whatever changed between them isn't fat.

Your face doesn't have a drain of its own

Almost nobody is taught this.

The extra fluid in your eyelids, cheeks and jaw leaves through your neck. About a third of the lymph nodes in your whole body, roughly 300 of them, sit in your head and neck, and that's the route out.

Lymph has no pump. Your heart pushes your blood, but lymph mostly moves when you move, breathe and turn your head.

So the hours you spend lying flat are the hours your face fills up. That's why it's puffiest at 7 a.m., and why breakfast photos catch it at its worst.

Add a neck that's tight from stress, clenching or bad sleep, and the route out gets narrow.

Renee had two years of all three. She cried most nights, ground her teeth and slept five hours on a good night. All of it sat in her neck.

Nothing hurts, so most people never connect it. A slow drain just looks like your face in someone else's photos.

And that's why none of this is your fault. You've been blaming your face, and nobody told you to look at your neck.

Why the usual fixes fade

It also explains why nothing you've tried has stuck:

• Untagging and deleting hide the last photo. They don't change the next one.
• Filters and face-slimming apps fix one picture at a time.
• Contour and concealer work on the skin. The fluid sits underneath it.
• Ice tightens your face for about half an hour. Then the fluid is still there.
• Rollers and gua sha push fluid around your face, toward an exit that's still tight.
• Dieting before the big day works on fat. It can't move water that's sitting still.

None of them work on the place your face drains through.

Renee had tried all of them. She'd also lost 22 pounds since the divorce, everywhere but her face.

What lymph therapists do first

In my training, the first rule of lymphatic work was simple: clear the neck before you touch the face. If the exit is narrow, pushing on the face just moves fluid in circles.

Hospitals teach patients the same order. Self-drainage handouts start at the neck and collarbone, not the cheeks.

Studies after jaw and wisdom-tooth surgery found that drainage which started at the neck brought facial swelling down faster.^{1, 2}

That's why I have never started a session on a client's face. Not once.

I see the same pattern in women after a divorce, in mothers of the bride or groom, and in anyone photographed at breakfast all holiday season.

The trouble is that a session with me costs about what a nice dinner out costs, and the fluid comes back every night you lie down.

Renee had nine weeks and a florist's December ahead. She couldn't see me every week.

What she needed was the neck step, at home, every night, without having to learn my technique.

The two-step routine

Ten minutes a night before bed beats a facial the day before, because the fluid comes back every night. And the morning of the big day is the worst time to start.

"I tried the strokes for a week," Renee told me. "By 11 at night I'd been on my feet since five. I couldn't lift my arms one more time."

That's the usual story. Doing it by hand takes technique, two free hands and energy you don't have at 11 p.m. Most people stop within two weeks.

Why I started Hizoo

That's the reason I started Hizoo. It's what I sent Renee home with.

It's a heated neck pillow. You lie back on it for ten minutes, and it works the back and sides of your neck on the gentle setting. Nothing touches your face, and there's nothing to learn.

Renee had one question: "Do I have to look in a mirror to do it?"

My answer: no. You lie back and close your eyes. It works on your neck. Your face is what changes.

• It does the neck step for you, every night, in ten minutes lying down.
• It's built for the back and sides of the neck, where the tension sits.
• More than 3,000 people have reviewed it, at 4.9 stars. Here's what a few of them said about their faces.

What reviewers describe, week by week

• Nights 1 to 3Your neck feels looser. Your face may look the same.
• Weeks 1 to 2Your morning photos start to look more like your evening ones, eyes first.
• Weeks 3 to 4The face at breakfast and the face at dinner get closer to being the same face.

It won't remove real fat, change your bone structure or fix a chin you were born with. It works on the part that comes and goes.

Renee started on a Monday, nine weeks before the wedding.

In week three her sister posted a photo from Sunday breakfast and tagged her. Renee sent me a screenshot with one line: "I didn't untag this one."

At 10 a.m. on the wedding day, she stood next to her son for every photo.

She's 57 and looks it, and she says she earned every line. What's gone is the face that showed up at breakfast and left by dinner.

In January she posted one of the wedding photos herself, the two of them laughing on the church steps. She tagged herself.

P.S. If there's a wedding, a reunion or a holiday on your calendar, start this week, so you have a few weeks of nights behind you before someone says, "Everybody squeeze in."