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Here are the top ten absolute no-no's if you want to look your best:

1. Smoking. Exposure to cigarette smoke starves your skin of oxygen, making it wrinkled, dull and gray. It also uses up Vitamin C which is essential for the formation of collagen which gives young skin its firm, springy texture. Oh, and you'll stink and have yellow teeth too.

2. Too much sun exposure. However good it makes you look and feel in the short term, too much sun will give you blotchy, dehydrated skin that sags and wrinkles sooner than you'd expect. The fairer your skin, the more pronounced the effects of sun damage will be. Use fake tan or be pale and interesting, but use sunscreen.

3. Over-enthusiastic dieting. Losing weight too fast, especially if you're using silly strategies like diet pills or laxatives, can make your face look gaunt and your neck look scrawny because the skin needs time to contract to fit when you lose weight. A very restricted diet can mean missing out on nutrients which contribute to the health of your skin, like vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids.

4. Too much alcohol. It's very easy to drink more than the recommended amount, especially for women whose smaller frames and higher body fat percentage means alcohol has an even greater physiological impact than for men. Too much alcohol dehydrates you and your skin is one of the first places this will show. The sugar in alcohol can aggravate acne and alcohol inhibits absorption of nutrients, which will also show in your skin.

5. Sleeping in your makeup. By the end of a typical day your skin has turned into a compost heap of dead skin cells, sebum (the oily substance that keeps skin supple), sweat and bacteria, and that's before you start counting all the products you've been putting on your face. If you sleep in it, your pores will get blocked up and your skin will look rough and dull. Use cleansing wipes if you're really too tired to wash your face.

6. Not enough sleep. Often combined with too much alcohol, a lack of sleep can make you look pale, puffy and red around the eyes. Your skin needs time to repair itself and the best time for that is when you're asleep.

7. Too much exfoliation. Exfoliating with chemicals like hydroxyl acids or physical methods like scrubs is a great way to make skin look softer and fresher, but keep it to once or twice a week. Too much exfoliation can lead to skin thinning or cause sensitivity and actually accelerate skin aging, especially if you don't wear a high sun protection factor.

8. Picking at spots and blackheads. It's very satisfying to squeeze blemishes and there's nothing worse to look at than a spot that needs' squeezing but try to restrain yourself. Squeezing spots can push infected material further into the skin causing more and more blemishes. Squeezing can also lead to scarring in the deeper layers of the skin, which looks bad in the short term but can also make your skin age more quickly because the structure of the skin has been weakened.

9. False nails. A bit controversial this one and more of a personal opinion except that false nails tend to harbor bacteria where the nail extension is bonded on to your real nail, and the process of attaching the extension can weaken your own nails. I also think they just look horrible.

10. Too much filler injected into lips. Any sort of aesthetic procedure carries the risk of looking overdone or unnatural. A really good alternative for plumping up lips is facial exercise. Form an O' shape with your lips and press your finger vertically against your lips then use the muscles in your lips to bounce' your finger up and down. It looks stupid, so do it when you're alone, but if you do 50 of these a day you will have plumped, more pouty lips in a week.

Learn more about this author, Daisy Taunton.
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