by Fiona likes to blog | Aug 9, 2017 | BODY POSITIVITY
Make up free days are essential for self-care
I haven’t always been an advocate of the make up-free life. I remember getting a compliment one day at work when I was in my ‘proper’ job. You know, the type of job that your parents are finally happy about. The kind of job that looks good on your CV. The kind of job that has a title and an office, but bears no resemblance to the dreams you had as a kid.The kind of job that gives you a mental breakdown. Or maybe that’s just me.
I was under a lot of pressure on a daily basis. Something that I now know I can’t cope with. On this particular day – the compliment day – I was constantly being pulled between responsibilities. I managed a big catering outlet so on busy days I had to step away from the computer and instead clear tables, supervise staff and do the dishes.
As soon as the lunchtime rush died down I reluctantly got back to my expanding to-do list which should have been completed before 10am that morning. Oops. Then I got a call from the finance department asking me for the end of month figures.
“End of month?” I thought to myself.
I checked my calendar and saw that it was only April 24th, so how could I possibly give her the end of month figures when the month hadn’t even ended yet? Then I realised that she needed the figures for March, not April. I was a month overdue on my paperwork. Oops again.
I stomped upstairs in my awkwardly tight – but flattering – pencil skirt to hand in the requested stats. I slid the the poly pocket onto Kirsty’s desk and tried to escape without too much small talk. She glanced up briefly and murmured “thanks” before doing a double-take. Her eyes widened and she almost jumped up out of her chair to inspect my face.
“Are those false eyelashes?” she asked, with a curious grin on her face.
I laughed and blushed a little, wondering who on earth would have the time or patience to apply false eyelashes at 5am in the morning. “No, I’m wearing the new Benefit mascara” I said, letting her in on the worst-kept beauty secret of the year.
No acceptance speech required
She congratulated me (as though having lengthy eyelashes warranted some sort of Oscar acceptance speech) and vowed to get the mascara herself in time for the weekend. I was so flattered. Getting that confidence boost from another woman made me feel good. So good in fact, that I continued to wear a full face of make up for the next year as my mental health began to crumble in a monumental fashion.
I awoke every morning filled with dread. Ignoring the symptoms of burnout and mental fatigue I insisted on spending 40 minutes applying layers of foundation, painting on a black liquid eyeliner (an anxiety-inducing task at the best of times) and crafting the perfect set of brows.
As I sobbed in the bathroom at work I made sure to wipe away my mascara-tainted tears carefully and do a quick touch up job to cover any signs of distress.
As I look back now I realise the painful truth. I was pretending to be OK and hoping that if I looked ‘put together’ on the outside then maybe no one would notice that I was cracking under the pressure.
Like most people, I wore make up to feel better about myself. I still do. I wear make up when I want to feel sexy, powerful, confident or to express myself creatively. I wear make up to cheer myself up. I wear lipstick to distract from tired eyes and extra mascara to distract from greasy hair. It’s a wonderful thing!
But for me, nothing feels better than reaching for my cleanser at the end of the day and wiping it all off. Washing away the grime and dirt is so soothing, replenishing and helps me feel like ‘me’ again. It reminds me that although I enjoy wearing make up, it’s important to accept myself barefaced too. I’ve learned to love myself ‘au naturale’ in all my imperfect glory.
But going make up-free really that easy?
I know a lot of women can’t fathom leaving the house without any make up on. The thought of going make up-free in the name of self-care doesn’t make sense to them, and I totally get that.
You think you’re skin is too spotty, blotchy and somehow both dry and oily at the same time. It’s not tanned enough and you hate your freckles. You’re eyebrows aren’t symmetrical and bushy like Cara Delevigne’s and your lips need plumping to mimic Kyle Jenner’s.
I know these thoughts probably go through your head everyday, especially after you’ve just lost an hour of your life to Instagram and are now convinced you need a set of arse implants and a 28 day detox plan to be happy.
But what if you worked on taking care of yourself at a more basic level? Forget all the quick-fixes, add ons and lens blurring filters and instead thought about what’s on the inside? What if you worked on showing your physical self some care and attention before you focused on simply covering up, manipulating or correcting your so-called flaws?
Self-care starts on the inside
You need to set the foundations with positive thoughts about yourself. Surround yourself with people who love themselves the way they are. I know you’re not in that frame of mind yet and you think you never will be, but how do you think you got to where you are now?
You’ve unknowingly surrounded yourself with people who constantly criticise their physical appearance and do anything possible to change it. Whether it’s celebrities getting ridiculous surgeries to change their body shape or the health industry selling you the next fat-burning secret to success. You’ve spent years or possibly even decades thinking that you’re body is somehow WRONG. I’m here to tell you that it’s not.
How you correct that way of thinking is by replacing all those voices with ones who preach how you want to feel. Read articles by body positive women. Follow women on Instagram who understand how you feel.
Maybe it’s a fitness instructor who prioritises strength and performance over aesthetics. Maybe it’s Brummy Mummy of 2 who shows the funny side of parenting. Maybe it’s Kenzie Brenna who swears cellulite is normal and should be on show for the world to see. Find your tribe and listen to what they have to say, talk to them and ask questions. These people have nothing but love for you and your body image struggles.
Still feeling lost? Read this post which details three practical ways to encourage a more positive body image.
But back to the make up-free manifesto I got going on here. Make up-free days are an essential part of my self-care plan. I truly believe that revealing your naked face is a major step in accepting the skin you’re in, and that’s what self-care is all about.
I really started to go make up-free a few years ago and it’s all because I started a new skin care regime. I’ll be honest, I didn’t have ANY skincare routine until I was 25 years old. I used to got to sleep in my make-up and scrub it off with soap the next day. SOAP. Aaargh if only I could turn back the clock and save my poor skin from all that torture!
Let me make one thing crystal clear. I’m not saying that you NEED a skincare routine to feel good about going make up-free. Absolutely not.
But sometimes we need a nudge in the right direction, and a routine which forces us to think introspectively about ourselves is a good start. How often do you actually take the time to massage your face, gently remove make-up and really give your skin what it needs to function at it’s best? Here are a few reasons why I think a good skincare routine will help instil that feeling of self-care in your mind;
- You look at your skin everyday
- Your face expresses how you feel
- A skincare routine is quick and easy to implement
- You’ll literally SEE the benefits (point number 1)
- It can give you the confidence to go make up free
My skincare routine is very simple and it’s all focused around my favourite brand Liz Earle. It’s available online and in most Boots stores, it isn’t ridiculously overpriced and they don’t advocate a zillion different pointless products. My simple routine looks like this:
1.Cleanse & Polish
2.Superskin Eyecream
3.Superskin Face Serum
4.Superskin Moisturiser
Optional extras:
Superskin Concentrate for Night
Brightening Treatment Mask
Superskin Super Lip Balm
AND THAT’S IT.
Liz Earle is my favourite because the ingredients are kind on my sensitive skin but still really powerful. I’ve found the Superskin Face Serum in particular has made a huge difference to the texture of my skin, evened out redness and has minimised breakouts. I feel like my skin is way more predictable now that I’ve got a routine in place and I only use masks or treatments when I need a little boost.
I’m a firm believer in small tasks adding up to a big result and this is definitely the case with my skincare routine. My routine takes 5 minutes – unless I’m doing a face mask – and just spending that small amount of time each day has led me to this newfound confidence in my skin.
I can now go make up-free with out feeling worried or self-conscious and that’s been a huge benefit to my mental health. When I’ve lost a night’s sleep due to anxiety I can take it slow the next morning, avoid putting any make up on my tired eyes and go barefaced without feeling crap about myself.
Going make up-free is a statement about my strength. It says I’m happy with my flaws. In fact, I barely even see any flaws when I look in the mirror. I just see me. Going make up-free is the ultimate badge of confidence which is almost as comfortable as wearing your pyjamas to the supermarket. Why wouldn’t you do it?
Thanks to all my barefaced beauties who came calling when I asked them to share a make up-free selfie in honour of this post. Go and check their blogs out below!
by Fiona likes to blog | Jan 10, 2017 | BODY POSITIVITY
Since ditching the dieting lifestyle that gave me the ‘perfect’ body and a twisted mindset, I’ve made a conscious effort to redefine what beautiful means to me. I’ve retrained my brain to realise that not everyone can or should look the same.
We can’t all have a tiny waist, a big perky butt, a generous bosom and golden, cellulite-free skin. The constant quest to be a bit skinnier, more toned and overall more aesthetically pleasing to others is exhausting. I wondered if maybe I could use that energy trying to love myself the way I am, instead of picking apart every flaw I saw in the mirror.
So decided to take action and unfollow any accounts on Instagram that made me feel bad about myself. It’ll come as no surprise to you that Instagram is a big player in how I construct my idea of beauty in the modern world. I’m sure it is for you too, even if you don’t realise it.
I thought following fitspo accounts (FYI I am an avid gym-goer) were good motivation for me. I thought looking at their chiselled abs and jiggle-free triceps everyday would make me workout harder and stick to my low-calorie diet with ease. I thought I was tapping into an endless source of will power; just what I needed if I was going to succeed at creating my dream body. Unfortunately, all it was really doing was convincing me that my body would never be good enough.
It’s not that slim, toned, Caucasian female bodies shouldn’t be inspirational. Every body needs representation. It’s that they shouldn’t be the only type of body we see in mainstream media. It might be inspirational to someone else, but to me it was an unattainable goal that was damaging my self-esteem and mental health. We all need people to look up to, but the pool available to us has become rather exclusive in my opinion. You only have to look at a magazine stand to see that there is a certain type of ‘look’ that gets to bask in the glory of front-page status.
I choose to follow women who are fuller-figured, because that’s similar to my own body shape. When I’m feeling crap about myself I want to scroll through my Instagram feed and see Megan belly-dancing in her underwear and Grace talking about her lopsided boobs, because that shit gives me life. It’s relatable. It makes me feel worthy.
So I’ve surrounded myself with women who don’t normally get media attention, but I forget that the rest of the world hasn’t caught up yet. Every now and again I catch sight of a new celebrity promoting laxatives to teenage girls, or hear that the latest Kardashian show is grotesquely named ‘Revenge Body’, and my heart breaks for the pain and torment our young women are forced to go through as the result of what is forced down their throats.
The good thing with social media is that if we want to, we can control what we see. Don’t like it? Unfollow. Easy. Unfortunately it works both ways and we only see what our Instagram idols want us to see.
The fit-chicks show you their bulging biceps and monstrous pancake towers stuffed with Oreos and Reese’s Pieces. They don’t show you the 5am starts, sleep deprivation, endless cardio and egg-white-only omelettes they endure 90% of the time to achieve their look. I adore images of real women sat in their underwear exposing their tummy rolls. It’s not until I spot the caption underneath – explaining how they felt fat, ugly and reluctant to even share the picture with their fans – that I realise even Instagram-famous girls have insecurities.
The truth is that neither of these images is better than the other. There are the preened models like Ashley Graham who show us that plus-size women can wear designer clothes and walk on catwalks. Then there are the ladies like Melissa who show themselves rocking mini-skirts in the bacon isle . Both are equally important. They are showing the world that we can be whoever we want to be.
The power of what Instagram can do is down it it’s users. We can continue to filter the shit out of everything or we can start posting real images like Kenzie Brenna. She started a campaign called Cellulite Saturday and it’s one of the most fantastic acts of positivity I’ve seen. She actively encourages others to share pictures of their own cellulite and they did.
Guess what? No one dropped down dead at the site of dimpled legs and bums on their screens! Women can be real and authentic and beautiful and empowered all at the same time!
Without Instagram that may not have been possible, so we should be grateful for that. With more women using social media to make their voices heard and their supposedly imperfect bodies represented, who knows where we’ll end up? I know for one I’ll be using it as a tool to spread the word that we all deserve to love our bodies, no matter what.
by Fiona likes to blog | Jan 4, 2017 | BODY POSITIVITY, FOOD, LIFE
A few years ago I would’ve planned a fresh new blog post ready to go live featuring my favourite fat-loss tips for January, or how to ‘get back on track’ after Christmas. Now, I can’t be f*@ked with all that.
I still love eating healthily because it gives me the energy to do the things I enjoy, but apart from that I’ve kind of given up on weight-loss. I’ve been there, living the ‘fitspo’ life, and I’m done with it. Here’s why…
I’ve been thin and it wasn’t all that
A lot of people look back on pictures of themselves when they looked different and have distorted memories about how they really felt at the time. When I look back on pictures of myself aged 18 and weighing approximately 200lbs, I was overweight but having the time of my life. I had just moved away from home, started university, was meeting new people everyday and learning who I really was. I was socialising like mad and I was incredibly happy. When I was at my leanest – aged 27 – I was battling depression, anxiety, obsessively over-exercising and following a very low calorie diet. I was still happy but I was very tightly wound and had strict rules about what I ate and was constantly hungry, leading to poor brain function and irritability. I’m not saying that you can’t be thin and happy; but don’t put all your eggs in one basket thinking that it’s the answer to all of life’s problems. You’ll still have problems no matter what weight you are.
Restriction isn’t sustainable
It took me years to understand that pretty much every diet is destined to fail. It’s not your lack of will power that lets you down; it’s the fact that you’re restricting yourself so much for so long that your mind and body inevitably cannot do it any more. The penny started to drop when I read a book called Intuitive Eating, although I still did a few years of crash-dieting before what I read began to make sense in my head. I’ve tried to explain to people that a)learning to love your body as it is will stand you in better stead than trying to change it and b)dieting is almost 100% guaranteed to fail in the long term. The truth is, I didn’t believe it myself until I’d dieted for 12 years, lost approximately 60lbs and gained it all back in the end. Sometimes you have to live through that to see that you’re not the one person that’s going to ‘stick to the plan’ and prove everyone wrong. I get it. Just take it from someone who has restricted food groups for most of my adult life; IT DOESN’T WORK.
You’re not defined by your aesthetic
I’ve written before about how when I feel really low about my body image, I like to remember how I look at other people. I very rarely look at someone and think much about what they look like in a typical sense. I’ll perhaps notice a nice necklace they’re wearing, the smell of their perfume, how friendly they were, if they smiled or held eye contact with me. When I look at my friends and family I see their personality traits; I genuinely don’t think about what they look like in a negative way whatsoever, so the chances are no one else is giving a crap about what I look like either. No one is noticing my double chin, my muffin top and my hairy legs and if they ARE then frankly, they need to get a life. I know that what I bring to the table is more important that a thin body, so why fixate on that small, insignificant part of me?
Your brain can do so much more than just count calories
When I was fixated on counting calories it honestly didn’t leave time for much else. I was always on my phone figuring out what I could eat that day and scrutinizing food labels to see which had the fewest calories. I was always trimming calories at every opportunity, but never eating a proper meal to compensate. I ‘had to’ exercise for a minimum of 60 minutes per day (ideally double that) so my mind and body were both exhausted. I didn’t realise the perpetual use of will power combined with a low calorie diet was draining away all my brain power. Since I’ve stopped fixating on food and exercise I’ve had the energy to socialise and write everyday, which are two things I don’t want to give up.
Food is amazing
I’m sure you’re aware of how flippin’ fantastic food is. We can’t survive without it and we are lucky enough to have almost any kind we desire at our fingertips in plentiful amounts. It’s a great way to socialise, show gratitude, celebrate and commiserate. We don’t need to overindulge but sometimes it’s nice. It’s such an important part of our world that it seems wrong to cut it out and stop ourselves from enjoying it. I’m not saying we should eat what we want, when we want all the time; but maybe its time to loosen up and appreciate what we have?
Have you given up on dieting?
by Fiona likes to blog | Aug 30, 2016 | ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, LIFE
by Fiona likes to blog | Mar 6, 2016 | ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, FITNESS
I stared blankly at my to-do list. This list had been growing steadily for many months since my department had lost two members of staff and I had naively offered to pick up the extra work in a bid for praise, more money or a promotion – looking back I can’t remember exactly why I thought it was a good idea.
Working weekdays meant I had every weekend off for the first time since I was a teenager, and I tagged along to a Zumba class one Saturday morning with my mum out of sheer boredom and the hope of losing a few pounds. I had tried running and trained for 23 mile walk previously so I was surprisingly fit. As I bounced around my local sports hall in my mum’s old gym clothes I felt like I was at the weirdest, sweatiest party on a Saturday morning and although it was filled with a variety of ages and abilities I felt completely accepted as part of the team.
I joined my local gym and as the weeks went on I became more and more dependant on exercise as a form of stress-relief as well as a way to lose weight. When I was banging out burpees, grave-vines and planks no one could touch me.
I was pushing my body to do things I never thought I would be able to do – simple things like running for longer than 10 minutes and doing full press ups – and it was all my own doing. The people at work couldn’t take that away from me, it was my space and I was owning it. I looked forward to clocking out at 5.30pm so I could head to the gym and let out all my anger and frustration in a physical way. It was an exhilarating and new form of expression for me.
As I became more proficient at exercise my ability to complete my ‘to-do’ list at work was seriously waning. After some time work became overwhelming for me and I was unable to work for 6 months whilst I got my mental health back on track. I am so thankful that during that time I was still in the early stages of my fitness journey, because my love for exercising undoubtedly minimised some of the damage that could have been done by my mental state.
Exercising got me out of the house when I didn’t want to do anything at all. It made me set an alarm and get up at a certain time, have a shower afterwards and eat something substantial to keep me going until my next session. When you’re depressed these things are a daily accomplishment, and exercise seemed to kick-start that routine for me. Don’t get me wrong; there were many, many days when none of these things were accomplished but sooner or later the gym would reel me back in after a few days of endless sleeping.
It also forced my to interact with other human beings. I know, it sounds icky right, but in local gyms people actually say “Good morning!” and “Have you been to this class before? I’m new”. A lot of the time I stood right up the front of the room (where no one wants to be) because I was so focused on getting the most out of the class.
If this seems like strange behaviour for someone who was depressed and anxious, I completely agree! The only way I can explain it is by saying that I was kind of anonymous in those classes. No one knew anything about my condition, my job or my financial situation so I felt like they couldn’t judge me.
I was just that girl who showed up everyday for a workout and stood up the front like a teacher’s pet. That anonymity made me comfortable enough to make polite chitchat with complete strangers at a time when I struggled to even send a text message to my best friends.
The most rewarding thing about exercise for me has been the feeling of doing something I thought I was previously incapable of doing. I ran a 10k after years of trying to run without any success. I pushed myself further and ran a half marathon, and lets be clear I do NOT have the natural ability for endurance running!
I love lifting weights and seeing the number on the bar steadily creep up over weeks and months, or completing an extra set when you’re sure you can’t do another single rep. I started my first spin class feeling like Bambi on a bike and within 40 mins I was increasing my RPM to a respectable standard and within weeks I felt like a pro.
I don’t feel like a particularly strong-willed person, I get easily stressed and anxious but when I’m tearing it up in the gym I honestly feel like I can take on the world. I am focused, hard-working and excited there and it’s where I feel at home and that’s why I keep going back again and again.
