New Year’s Resolution –I Will Eliminate My Skincare Bad Habits.
Okay. You know who you are. You procrastinate, race through the day, and skip ahead to get to the end of the day finish line. Give yourself a break if this is you. In our time-challenged, uber stressful life, it is understandable that you may forget the self-care skincare habits that are always essential – but even more so during the ultra-challenging winter months of predictably cool, dry weather that tends to dehydrate our skin.
So, what can you do? Why not shed some bad habits and adopt some new positive, healthy habits as part of your New Year’s ReSolution – Solution for combating bad habits.
Start here with these 5 bad habits to eliminate and greet the winter months with improved skin that is ready to take on the season!
1. Skipping washing my face
– morning and especially night. Your face is asking you nicely to “please cleanse me” so you can best absorb the skincare ingredients you need to hydrate and nourish your skin. Moreover, when we do not clean our skin thoroughly, dirt, oil, and debris from makeup and environmental triggers can clog pores leading to skin break outs and create enlarged pores that age us. Choose a cleanser that is gentle and draws its efficacy from gentle, nutrient rich ingredients.
2. Forgetting to moisturize.
You cannot skip using a moisturizer after cleansing your skin, especially in winter. Consider the fact that anytime you wash your face (hands, body, too), you strip your skin of natural oils that we rely on to lock in moisture. So, start now by adopting the creed – I will replace vital moisture to my skin after cleansing.
3. Deciding it’s okay – I’ll never understand products and their ingredients.
Stop just throwing on and rubbing in anything that has a label on it that says moisturizer (or other skincare product) and start learning how to read the label, and skincare glossaries so you know the key ingredients you need and want. In other words – stop buying products and instead shop for ingredients contained in the products! Consider your skin’s needs, especially during the winter, instead of the hype from social media influencers who financially benefit from their product endorsements. Learn how to read and decode skincare labels to best understand what your skin needs to develop your winterizing skincare regime.
4. Thinking a little lipstick is sufficient lip care. No. It’s not!
Consider that most of us talk. Our lips are in constant motion, being stretched, and pursed a zillion times a day. Especially during winter when the outside cold, dry air and wind, and the inside dry heated rooms work to deplete your lips of their natural protective moisture barrier. And without their own lip oil glands, hydrating your lips is crucial, cannot miss-step in your skincare routine. Consider rejuvenating and revitalizing dry lips with an intensive overnight lip mask to create a flawless pout by morning.
5. Exfoliating your skin to win a race.
Exfoliating is not a Winter Olympics sport competition that demands a fast-paced winner take all result! So, please, slow down, take your time, use the right products with ingredients your skin needs but exfoliate with kindness! Just as some skincare ingredients may be too harsh for your skin, consider this: are you being too heavy-handed with your technique, harshly exfoliating instead of caring for your skin? Remember that especially in winter when we are dealing with dry, flaky skin, exfoliating is a step in your skincare winterizing program you cannot afford to skin. Look for products uniquely suited for winter skincare needs that help to refresh, rejuvenate, and exfoliate the skin, sloughing away the top layer of dead skin and impurities to help increase cell turnover and unleash a healthy glow to the skin.
Instead of bad habits, let’s embrace more self-care positive habits. Dictionary.com tells us that habits are acquired behavior patterns for us to follow regularly until it becomes almost involuntary – meaning – we just do it out of habit. Letting go of bad habits in lieu of new, better for us skincare practices just make sense as we welcome a New Year with the confidence that we can and we will take better care of ourselves, starting with winterizing our skincare regime.