Beauty 101 – What Season Are You?

  Have you ever heard someone say "I am an autumn" or "I am a spring", after which you think – did they actually just refer to themselves as a season??? In case you were wondering… No, they’re not crazy! It’s just their way of explaining that they look best in the colors associated with a given season.

For the most part, regardless of your race, nationality, or age, people generally have skin complexions that fall into one of these two categories – cool or warm. So how do you figure out which season you are? And why is it beneficial to know in the first place?
There is no doubt we all want to dress, feel, and look our best, so by knowing what colors look best with your coloring will enhance your features in a big way. By the same token, wearing colors that don’t suit you can actually make you appear sick, even if you’re perfectly healthy. So, it’s important to take some caution when defining your style, whether it is in the color of shirt you wear down to the eye shadow that you use.
  As a first step in helping you decide which colors agree best with your cool or warm complexion, try the following tests in natural light (i.e., not under fluorescent lights):

a) Vein test: If the veins in your arm appear blue, you’re probably cool toned. On the other hand, if they appear more green/olive in color, then you’re probably warm toned.

b) Towel test: First, wash off your makeup. Wrap up your hair in a pure white towel, and then again in a yellow towel. Which one looked best next to your skin? It is usually the case that one of the two towels will enhance your features while the other … not so much. If the white towel looked better, you’re probably cool toned. Likewise, if the yellow towel looked better, you’re probably warm toned.

Cool toned? Warm toned? Still not sure?  Try comparing your skin coloring to the charts below, using your natural hair and eye colors.

   Cool Toned
"Winter & Spring”

--> Skin Color
- Very dark brown or black
- Brown with pink undertones
- Reddish or blue undertones
- Pale with no color or with faint pink undertones
- Brown or bronze when you tan
Hair Color
Hair color is often; ash blonde, light brown, dark brown, or black. If you dye your hair, maybe consider a rich shade of brown, you can even pull off reds! Think cool reds like burgundy or bordeaux. For highlighting, wheat, honey, taupe or ash blondes tones often look best. Generally it's best to avoid gold, yellow, copper red, and bronze tones.
Eye Color
Eye colors ranging from light blue, grey, dark brown, to almost black are generally found on people with cool tones
What looks best?

Your foundation should have blue or rosy undertones. Clothes in jewel tones like blues, violets, and emerald green probably look amazing on you as well as pastel colors

     Warm Toned
"Summer & Fall"
Skin Tone

Very dark brown with golden undertones
Medium with golden undertones
Pale with peach or gold undertones
Golden Brown when tanned

Hair Color Often is golden or reddish brown (think chestnut), golden, honey blonde, red, strawberry blonde. If you dye your hair, try rich hair colors like dark golden brown, chestnut, mahogany, or auburn. For highlighting, red, cinnamon, or copper tones look best. Most warm complexions should avoid platinum, and jet black hair (anything with blue or silver undertones). If your skin has any red tones in it, you should try more neutral tones like beige, honey brown, and coffee colors.
Eye Color
Eyes are usually amber, golden brown, hazel, or green color black are generally found on people with cool tones.
What Looks Best?
Your foundation should have yellow or gold undertones, along with peach colored blushes. Earth tones in olive greens, dark browns, and rust colors probably look amazing on you.
        Neutral Complexion  
   Some people are blessed to have a neutral skin tone. This person can change their hair color from copper red to platinum blonde and have both look great. They can get away with wearing cool colors such as blue, purple and cotton candy pink as well warm colors like brown, green and gold. An example of someone with a neutral complexion would be  blue eyes and red hair, or black hair and hazel eyes.

Keep in mind that your you're own person and not a chart, so if you like a shirt that's not technically your coloring then screw the rules and wear it! What matters most is that you wear what makes you feel the most comfortable and confident, these guidelines can most definitely help in that category but they are by no means rules set in stone :) 

Review, Revise, & Reach Your Goals

  
Seeing as we’re already several weeks into the New Year and its ‘resolutions’, I decided to blog about goals and why people fail to accomplish them.
 
   How many times have you (or someone you know) said that you are going to lose 50 or more pounds, exercise for an hour everyday, or cut out all processed foods and sugar, only to give up a few weeks, or even a few days later? I know these goals are made with the best intentions (the motivation to go out and do something grand), but they lack planning, i.e., a sequence of steps necessary to reach the goal. Without a plan, it is inevitable that you will stumble and fail.
To be honest, I don’t like the idea of making a New Year’s resolution. Many of us see the New Year as an opportunity to begin with a clean slate. I’ve come to see it as a day people use to prolong living a life that they deep down want to change. 
 
 According to studies, more than 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions give them up by Jan 20^th. Maybe some of you reading this now are part of that 80% and have already fallen back into your old habits. If so, I want you to do the following before you read on:
  1) Take a deep breathe, exhale slowly.
  2) Accept that shit happens.
  3) Tell yourself you will try again today.
   No one ever said that achieving goals is easy. That being said, if you have the right mindset and determination, any goal is attainable. Simply saying that you will change your ways isn’t enough; you need a well thought out plan. The following tips can help you get started:

Don’t Procrastinate: When you decide that you want to make a change in your life, you have to commit yourself to it immediately. Not tomorrow, not next week, right now. Putting off your goal just sets you up for failure. It’s like putting off household chores; the longer you leave it, the more you’ll dread doing it.

Make Short Term Goals:  Imagine that your goal is to lose 50 pounds. The best way to reach this goal is to setup a series of milestones. For instance, maybe you could lose 5 pounds a month for 10 months. This approach can help you attain your ultimate goal because you’ve given yourself short-term objectives. Losing 5 pounds over a month not only provides a realistic time frame for your ultimate goal, but also makes it seem more possible (and a whole lot less stressful).

Be Specific: When setting a goal, don’t be vague with the details. Consider asking yourself the following questions: What do I really want to achieve?  Why do I want to accomplish this goal in the first place?  Given my other life circumstances, how can I accommodate my daily routine to achieve this goal?  The more detailed your goals are, the easier it will be to achieve them.

See Your Success: Create a chart that outlines your short-term goals. Use this to track your progress. As you reach certain milestones, check them off as having been completed. Not only will you feel good crossing out each goal as you complete it, but you’ll become more motivated as you approach your ultimate goal.

Accepting Fall Backs:  There will always be bumps along the way, so you might as well learn to embrace them and find a way to use them to your advantage. Setbacks can fuel your motivation just as much as success can. Try to view them as a learning experience, and if you can, take comfort in the determination that you won’t let them happen again.

Reward Yourself: Setting goals to improve your life is important, but don’t forget to reward yourself once you’ve attained them. Remember that there are no small accomplishments, just accomplishments. Reaching a milestone that you have set for yourself is an achievement, and achievements deserve rewards. However, the reward you give yourself should never be something that sets you back. For example, if you are trying to lose weight, don’t reward yourself with unhealthy food!

"A goal without a plan is just a wish" - Antoine de Saint-Exuperys

 

 Manage Stress the Healthy Way

We all deal with stress - the unrelenting circus of ups and downs throughout our lives. And whether your stress stems from bill payments that almost put you into cardiac arrest, the deadline due tomorrow that you won’t finish unless you discover time travel, or a fight you had with your significant other (whom you’re currently giving the silent treatment to) - We all have stress, and we all have different ways of coping with it.

Some people max out credit cards, some drink well before five o’clock, some eat anything and everything, and then there are the scary ones who bottle it in (tic, toc, tic, toc). But you can only buy so many things; drink so many cocktails, eat so many chips, and bottle in so much. Those methods will only create more stress in the long run. If you're reading this thinking "This is how I handle stress" - Then maybe the next time you are stressed out, try one of the following methods instead, because not only are they proven to help alleviate stress, but they also won’t come back to bite you in the ass.

Get Some Fresh Air

I find it amazing how much sitting down for several hours can negatively effect my mind. Not only will my focus and drive dwindle to nothing, but I also start feeling anxious and irritable. I know myself well enough to know that when I start feeling antsy I need to get up and move around, or else I’ll slowly become a stressed out you know what. Giving your eyes a break from those florescent lights and your blood circulating properly by going for even just a 15-20 minute walk can do wonders for your mood and clarity.


Work Out
When you’re stressed, working up a sweat is probably the last thing you want to do.  I know when I’m stressed it feels like I have to literally drag my feet along with the rest of my body to go workout, but I do it because I know I’ll feel a million times better when I’m done. Exercise is a known stress reliever because it helps lower stress hormones like cortisol, while boosting the body's ‘feel-good’ chemicals like endorphins. Try to find it in you to lace up those sneakers and force yourself to workout because the feeling you’ll have when your finished is worth the mental battle to start.

Write About It
Before some of you knock this idea - Studies show that writing out your thoughts is very therapeutic. It’s been proven to help slow down your mind and give you some clarity. And even if you’re not the type to sit down and write your feelings and the very thought of it makes you feel awkward, I still say it’s worth a shot. Feeling mildly uncomfortable for five minutes to gain some insight is better then enduring a sleepless night followed by a side of anxiety with your morning coffee.

                                                                            Get More Sleep
 Sleep is one of the most effective ways to ward off stress, and ironically enough - lack of sleep is also one of the biggest causes in creating stress - It can be quite a vicious circle! To help the sleeping process along, try and do things like cutting off your caffeine intake no later then 5pm, put your phone on silent, or unplug your alarm clock and use your cell phone alarm instead, that way you can't be distracted watching the time. Another option is doing breathing exercises to calm your mind. One common breathing exercise is: for about 5 minutes try to imagine a stress ball in front of you and continue staring at “it” as you breathe in and breathe out. Try not to let your mind wander anywhere else, just concentrate on the ball. Seems silly, but it’s known to be highly effective and let’s face it, if you’re already low on Zzz’s, what have you got to lose?

Whats Holding You Back?

    Several weeks ago I was asked the question “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” And here I am, weeks later, thinking not about what I would do, but how much fear holds us back. When we were young life was all about the pursuit of adventures. Then as we got older experience taught us to proceed with caution, to look before we leap.

In my line of work I’ve had the privilege of seeing the transformations both physically and mentally in my clients. I’ve also worked with clients who had the desire to make a healthy change in their lifestyle but lacked the confidence to fully commit.  One thing I quickly noticed about these types of clients was that they always had an excuse ready.  At first I didn’t think much of it, but after awhile it became obvious to me that they were using excuses as a defense mechanism. They didn’t want to be in a position to fail and lined up excuses to act as their safety net, so that they had something to fall back on, to blame.

To an extent, we all feel fear when starting something new. Even as I write this blog entry, there is a voice in the back of my mind saying is it relatable? Is it thought provoking? Is it relevant to a certain niche/theme/perception… and so on and so on. As humans, we worry about all kinds of things, and even when we acknowledge our fears we still worry. So I guess the real question is: Why are we afraid of starting?

I believe ones past and failures are part of the reason many refrain from starting something new. It’s like those scary movies with the haunted house and the people are tiptoeing throughout it and holding their breath as they go around each corner, fearing they’ll run into something unwelcoming. We are all drawn to experiencing new things, but like in those movies - it’s the fear of not knowing that keeps people from moving forward.

I also believe there is more risk in not taking any risks at all. Our past, with all the good, bad, tragic, embarrassing, amazing, beautiful moments we’ve lived through so far have helped mold us into who we are today. And maybe keeping things as is, living every day the same will protect you from enduring emotional harm - but it will also rob you of unknown talents, and from experiencing some of life’s most profound moments as well.

Maybe we all need to let go of who we are in order to learn who we can be. And by choosing not to take those proverbial leaps, you’re risking becoming frozen in time, never changing, never evolving, never truly knowing yourself.

5 Surprising Beautifying Benefits of Exercise

When we think of how our bodies will benefit from regular exercise, we tend to usually focus on the important things like our overall health, losing unwanted weight, toning our figures, and building lean muscle. However, very few people connect exercise with a clearer complexion, blemish-free skin, fewer wrinkles, and strong, healthy hair. Although exercise is crucial in achieving and maintaining a healthy physique, there are many skin-related health benefits that are less well-known among women of all ages. If you think about it, skin is like a body’s self-portrait in that it represents everything that is happening on the inside. After all, skin is the largest organ, covering almost the entire body with an average area of 20 square feet! So it makes sense that whatever we have going on, on the inside will inevitably show up in some way on the outside. 

It gives you that Glowing Complexion: When you get your heart pumping during aerobic exercise, you are supplying your skin with a good boost of oxygenated blood, giving you that great post-workout glow.

It's an Acne Fighter: Perfect skin exists in the world of Photoshop only – Here in reality, humans actually have pores, and at some point or another, have dealt with annoying breakouts. Pimples happen, occasionally at the most inconvenient times, but exercise can help prevent those occasions from occurring as frequently as they do. The increased blood flow from exercise not only nourishes the skin, but also aids in the removal of free radicals and toxins. You can think of exercise as a way of cleansing the skin from the inside out.

Younger looking skin:  As we get older our collagen production decreases, resulting in wrinkles and less elasticity in our skin. Regular exercise is the only proven method that is effective at slowing down the aging process. Another benefit gained from the boost in oxygen and nutrients received by your skin due to exercise is that it also creates optimal conditions for our bodies collagen production. That being said, it may not be the quick fix that we all desire, but exercise does something for you that no plastic surgeon or beauty product can - it helps to preserve your body from within. 

Reduces Cellulite: Approximately 90% of women have cellulite, and this statistic includes woman of all sizes - big and small. Of that 90%, I think it's a safe to assume that most want nothing to do with it. Cellulite is caused by fat deposits that exist just below the surface of the skin. Although genetics do play a key role in it's development, a combination of strength training and aerobic exercise can burn fat and build muscle, which will not only improve your skin and tone your figure but help reduce the appearance of cellulite as well.

Healthier, Thicker Hair: Did you know that exercise can improve the health of your hair? Exercise is a proven stress reliever because it boosts the brain’s production of feel-good chemicals such as endorphins. Did you know that increased stress levels can trigger hair loss in women! Don't fall under the stressed category? Exercise also aids in healthier hair growth resulting from the availability of nutrients from increased blood flow. Higher levels of nutrients can stimulate the hair follicles, promoting healthier, thicker hair growth.

But most important of all, just a single workout session has been shown to improve one’s overall self-image and self-confidence, whether or not anyone else can notice a difference. So the next time you’re having one of those blah days – try reaching for your sneakers instead of your compact.