Winter Blues Got You Down?
Filed Under Awareness, Bath & Body, Fitness, Home, Makeup, Seasonal, Skin Care | 3 Comments
Every year come December, January, and February we repeat a cycle. It starts with gaining a few pounds during the holidays, followed by making goals for the new year (possibly involving weight loss). These New Year’s Resolutions make us feel clean and fresh and give us hope that whatever was left undone last year will be fulfilled in the blank slate that lies ahead. We then forget about our list of ambitions as we bask in the river of chocolate at Valentine’s Day. Heart Day is then over and we find ourselves in a lull, it is cold and dreary and we are waiting for Spring to lift our spirits.
How about lifting those winter blues by putting a new charge into your intentions for this year? Recommit to your New Year’s Resolutions or make up different ones that inspire you. No matter what you want for this year the beauty world has a solution that is sure to put a smile on your face!
Have Beautiful Skin All Year Long: Save time and get gorgeous skin with PCA Skin’s Purifying Mask. Quickly becoming one of my all time favorites, this mask detoxifies and exfoliates in one step! Bits of micro pumice buff your skin to a healthy glow while algae from the Red Sea, French Red Clay and Red Wine draw out impurities. You will see your skin brighten the first time you use it. Best Benefit: This mask does incredible work at clearing up breakouts.
Go To The Spa More Often: Keep this resolution by bring the spa to you with Liz Earle’s Energizing Body Scrub. Made with ground olive stones, this scrub smells and feels fantastic. What else would you expect from the woman who brought you the cleanser British Vogue calls one of the, “top must-have products of the last Millennium?”
Lose Weight: If your need for sweets is constantly getting in the way of your desire to shed pounds, try steering your sweet tooth in a new direction with Jaqua’s treats for the body. Whatever your craving this fantastic company has something for you: Cocoa Buttercream Frosting, Pina Colada, Peach Parfait, or their original scrumptious Buttercream Frosting.
Go Green: You already recycle and are loving your hybrid car, but you’d like to take it a step further. Smashbox and Pangea Organics are here to transform you into a eco-contributing beauty goddess. With every purchase from the new Green Room collection from Smashbox a tree will be planted in a developing country. Not only that, but all the packaging is either biodegradable or recyclable and you will love the collection. Taking biodegradable to a new level, the boxes used to package Pangea Organics can be planted in the ground to spout in your garden! Soak the boxes for one minute and nestle in the soil for plants of sweet basil and flowering Amaranth. The best in these two collections include Smashbox Bamboo Shadow Quad and Pangea’s Egyptian Basil and Mint collection.
Get Organized: If you love makeup as much as I do then I’m betting you need a place to store all those eyeshadows. What could be better than a train case as beautiful and fun as your most colorful shadow quad? Fluff has just what you are looking for and tons of choices, I personally couldn’t resist the Chelsea Girls Train Case.
Finally Get The Guest Room in Order: Every guest loves to be pampered. Make them feel special with the new creamy Jaqua hand soaps in Pink Buttercream Frosting and Pink Champagne (they look especially pretty too). Surround your visitors with yummy scents, the candles from Beyond The Basket do just the trick, try the Apricot & Honey!
Use My Gym Membership: Make your workout twice as effective with FitFlops, the flip flop that builds muscle while you walk. These shoes are so comfortable and they work your muscles no matter where you go.
(Images Courtesy Keith Levit Photography, Liz Earle, Pangea Organics)
Building Muscle While You Walk
Filed Under Fitness | 1 Comment
My first pair of FitFlops are on their way to me! If you haven’t heard of this phenomenon, FitFlops
The claim of these sporty sandals is that they “challenge hard to reach muscles more” and that “every step you take in your FitFlops helps tone and trim your legs”.
You can wear FitFlops while you walk around, doing your everyday things or, like me, you can use them to step thing up a notch in your daily walking routine.
I have, since August 6th, incorporated a morning walk into my daily routine. I have noticed two primary benefits during this time, my endurance is much longer in my other workouts (and in my day) and I have reduced the size of my thighs (yay)!
After noticing the later of these benefits I decided to take my walk to the next level and FitFlops appears to offer a perfect way of doing this. Not to mention they are rumored to be very comfortable.
FitFlops are available in red, blue and black. I am expecting my color of choice, red, sometime in the next week and will be excited to share with you my experience of them.
(Image Courtesy FitFlops)
Reach Your Fitness Goal
Filed Under Blog, Fitness, Health | 2 Comments
What’s your goal for the next month? Loose 8 pounds in four weeks, Walk your way to fitness, Tone up all over, or Run without huffing and puffing? No matter what your goal, Self Magazine has a free online plan to support you!
As I shared with you last month I am creating the body of my dreams. I started with walking a mile every day and eating a healthy diet. What I found is that I have to walk every morning, first thing. If I wait until later in the morning or during the day I will never get to my walk, there are just to many things going on. I also found that walking with a workout partner is key, it holds me accountable and it’s much more fun.
What I started to notice is that watching what I eat in my very hectic day was a little difficult. It takes planning, paying attention and avoiding cravings, all of which was proving difficult to adhere to. So when I ran across Self’s Reach Your Goal Plan my interest was immediately peaked. Best of all it seemed like fun, something that had been previously missing in my plan for my dream body and which I’m finding is pertinent to keeping myself committed to anything.
You start of by picking one of four goals, which you can make a series for achieving the body and level of fitness you want. The goals as I mentioned above are: Drop 8 pounds in one month, Walk your way fit, Tone up all over, or Run without huffing and puffing. Pick the one you want and you’ve just created your own fitness coach and accountability partner!
What I love about this program is that it gives you so many options, it’s easy and it’s free. There are great meal plans to choose from with all the calories already counted for you, just tailor them to your health and diet needs and add them to your grocery list. The workouts section has all the cardio and strength plans planned out for you with several options and you can download the video or the MP3, whatever works for your life.
What I have found most useful with this program are the food diary and the workout log! These tools are really helping me reach my goals. With the workout log you can record a workout from one of the predesignated routines or from a list of general exercises, all with the amount of calories burned already tallied. The food diary works similarly, letting you enter the designed meal plan or your own meals. It even has a search option to find the amount of calories in typical food items!
These logs have been indispensable, I can see my progress and I am thinking about and visualizing my goals every day. Now when I’m in a hurry and I end up in front of a snack machine I think, which would I rather enter into my food diary, the snickers bar or the protein bar?
The most important thing to remember is, if you have a day when you did not eat the way you wanted or you missed your workout, don’t put yourself down for it. Instead just let the program tell you where you are and give yourself credit for what you did accomplish that day. If you don’t know where you are you will never be able to get to where you want to be.
So have fun, pick a goal and make yourself over! Start looking great in all those gorgeous fall styles, four weeks of walking and I guarantee you’ll love the way you look in that Calvin Klein pencil skirt and those leggings tucked into your favorite fall boots!
(Images Courtesy Self Magazine)
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Beautiful Skin While Working Out
Filed Under Blog, Fitness, Skin Care | 1 Comment
A little while back a reader wrote me with a question that I think may pertain to a lot of you that either workout daily or are fitness instructors. Here is her question:
– Luciana
If you are having to wash your face more then twice a day for any reason, it would be best to find a different solution for your skin. Over washing your face can overstimulate your skin causing redness, excess oil, or dryness depending on your skin type. The best solution to this problem is to use a cleanser that leaves your skin nourished and moisturized. Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser is an excellent choice for every skin type and if you have very dry skin Bioelements Moisture Positive Cleanser is wonderful.
When you are finished working out and your skin has been sweating a lot instead of using water to rinse your face, use a toner. The purpose of a toner is to clean off any excess dirt, oil, cleanser, or makeup left behind on your skin. This makes it a perfect solution for taking care of your skin after a workout. Two wonderful toners are Liz Earle Instant Boost Skin Tonic and Bioelements Equalizer, both are great for all skin types.
If you still find that your skin needs more moisture during the day then Caudalie Beauty Elixir is the perfect solution for you! This is a spritz on elixir that both energizes and moisturizes your skin. Made with extracts of grape, essential oils of rosemary, orange blossom and rose extracts, benzoin, myrrh, organic balm mint and mint, you can use this any time of day or night that your skin needs a boost of moisture or radiance. I use it in the morning if I need to give my moisturizer a boost or at night as a light night treatment.
Lastly, if your moisturizer is melting off when you workout then use a good moisturizer at night, instead of in the morning. Nighttime is the time when your skin regenerates itself, so using a moisturizer at night will allow your skin to take full advantage of everything that your moisturizer has to offer. Liz Earle Skin Repair Moisturizer is amazing for this! It truly repairs your skin and is great for neck lines as well. Liz Earle Skin Repair Moisturizer is available for Oily, Normal, or Dry skin.
(Image Courtesy Clinique)
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