Let Your Beauty Shine!

The ultimate aim of all women is probably to be able to achieve flawless beauty. I can't speak for ALL but at the very least, the 90% of us.

(Photo credit: http://femin3m.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/metallic-smoky-eyes.jpg)

The cosmetics and skincare industry truly only exist with the market boosting by the ladies. The constant R&D by the industry resulted in more and more advanced products being launched with increasing features. Everyone fights to be the World's No. 1.

Looking beyond all the external thing that we ladies try to do to achieve that aim, let's look deeper into the internal aspect. Truth be told, not all of us are born with good genes to be able to enjoy that flawless veil on our face throughout our life. I am one of those who is unfortunately, not a received of the good genes. No, don't misunderstand me. My parents are awesome but somehow, I just didn't get the skin part.

I used to enjoy having perfect skin till I was 20. That was when I started working and I must say, my working environment is pretty harsh. I worked in a manufacturing environment where I have to face many chemicals everyday. God knows what my skin and body are absorbing into them everyday. If you are guessing, I was from the chemical industry. :)

The environment has taken a toll on my skin. Not forgetting that I was doing my undergrads programme at the same time back then. Bad sleep, horrible diet - you have the perfect formula for a outbreak of red and angry bumps on your face. It makes one feel self-conscious of how others look at them and you will be hyper-sensitive as to what you think people are thinking when they just look at you for another second longer. Natural reaction would be to use ways to cover it with layers and layers of paint aka concealer/foundation. Well, that really is a formula to disaster. It leaves the bumps no air to breathe through and if you do not remove them properly, the make-up gets stuck and it just made your acnes go into a wave of anger outbreak.

I was ok with the routine of concealing and washing them away day-in-day-out until I had to face the phase of GETTING MARRIED. Who doesn't want to look their best on the day of their life? That's when I begin to seek medical help. It all got worse (many coined it the healing crisis) before it got better eventually. Ultimately, I had almost no outbreak on my face except a few hormonal ones.

Being a chemical student, I did a research on the medications I was applying everyday and realized they contained steroid. That's when it sort of raise an alarm. If one day I'm gonna have my own baby, steroid is definitely something I do not want to continue using. I started reading more and more information and that's when it dawned upon me that your outer glow depends a lot on your inner health. There must have been something that isn't right inside me that's causing whatever woes I was going through externally. That was when I decided that I want to fix it once and for all by changing my lifestyle and diet.

Let us now zoom in to diet.

I used to love KFC, I eat McDonald's fastfood for its convenience. The everyday continual feeding of myself with nutritional zero food got me from 48 kg to 55kg.

Here's me at 55kg.

Look at those thighs... that round face!! *HORROR*

I didn't take a drastic step towards changing my diet. Instead, I just work with just tweaking around with what I was having each day. First step is just to eliminate junk food once and for all. These guys are really horrible fellows. If you are not looking to sliming down, at least remove them for your diet for the sake of your poor heart working so hard.

Recently, I have started replacing my breakfast with smoothie drinks. Well, I'm not talking about the commercial sugar-loaded type of smoothies but smoothies made from real, whole fruits and vegetables.

To clear some doubts, this is not the fruit juice that you buy in the supermarts. Fruit juices contains sugars from the fruits with fibers all removed. That makes it SUGAR WATER. When you drink smoothies, you blend up the whole fruit together with its fiber. This makes sugar absorption less effective with the existence of fibers. Fibers also helps to promote bowel movement which can definitely reduce any bloatedness that you might be feeling.

Look at one of my concortions:

This comprises of avocado, blueberries, graphes, celery, baby spinach together with almond milk. To give it an extra fiber boost, I too added flaxmeal (Can be bought from major NTUC). You can add chia seeds too! Totally no added sugars. Just blend them together and you just got yourself a healthy and filling breakfast!

To all brides or just ladies in general looking to be in your best shape, I just want to reiterate again that it is not possible to suddenly drop a lot of weight. It is also unhealthy for you to have major weight loss in a short span of time. Contrary to the belief that slimming = dieting = no food = starvation, slimming down is really just about eliminating the junks and adding in the right nutritions that your body needs. It is not necessary a deprieve-of-good-food process. Through choosing the right food for your body, you realize that in general, you will start to feel better inside-out. I still like to snack on a chocolate bar every now and then. I just need to balance my overall diet.

This is me right now, I am still fat, but less fat. *GIGGLES*

.. but I definitely feel fresher inside-out. Most importantly, let us not get obsessed with getting that size zero body but really that inner glow from within that is going to make you look better than just being stick-thin.

This blog post is also simultaneously published on http://www.jollyjweddings.com/#!blog/c254a.

#weddingpreparation #slimming #diet