Common isn't the same as normal for you. If your socks leave rings, your shoes get tight by the afternoon, or your legs feel heavy before you've even done anything — that's fluid sitting where it shouldn't. It's common because most people sit for nine hours a day, not because your body is meant to work that way.

Compression stops more fluid gathering while you have them on. It doesn't clear what's already there — which is why your legs still feel heavy the moment you take them off. Suction moves it out instead of holding it in. Plenty of people use both.

If you sit all day again, some of it will. This is a five-minute habit, not a one-time fix. The difference is that you end each day back at zero instead of carrying yesterday's swelling into today, and then the next day on top of that.

One massage moves fluid once. What actually changes things is doing it regularly and in the right direction — always upward, toward the heart. A booked appointment every few weeks was never going to do that. Five minutes at home does.

For the everyday puffiness that comes from sitting, standing, flights, heat or hormones — yes. But if your swelling came on suddenly, sits in only one leg, is painful, or comes with breathlessness, see a doctor before you use anything. That needs diagnosing, not massaging.

Genetics decide how likely you are to get it and where it sits. They don't decide how much of it shows on any given day — that moves with circulation and the fluid held in the tissue. You can't change the first part. You can change the second.

That's exactly the point. Women at 100lbs have it. Marathon runners have it. If losing weight were the answer, they wouldn't. Dimpling comes from the tissue under your skin, not the amount of fat sitting over it — which is why the advice you've been given has never worked.

Strength training changes the shape underneath, and it's worth doing. It doesn't touch the connective bands or the fluid trapped around them, and that's what makes the surface dimple. You were working on the wrong layer.

Getting rid of it isn't the promise. Cellulite has two layers: bands of connective tissue that nothing handheld will change, and fluid held around them that moves easily. Move the fluid and the surface looks smoother. That's the part that's actually available to you, and it's the part every cream you've bought failed to reach.

The surface starts looking smoother in the first week or two. It holds while you keep going and fades if you stop — same as any circulation habit. Five minutes, three or four times a week.

That's where most people use it. Thighs, glutes and stomach — the fleshy areas. Keep it off bony areas, varicose veins, broken skin and recent scars, and never use it on your neck or throat.