Skin care and hygiene tips I wish I had known before I started training...
In general, I am not much of a girly girl, but as I have gotten older, I have found there are a few things I do to be girly. These are my mistakes!
On Aikido class nights, I tend to have 3 showers a day, once in the morning, because I can NOT leave the house without a shower, even if I showered the night before, once right before class, and again after class. This has wreaked havoc with my skin, causing breakouts and problems with dry and itchy scalp. These are some of the changes I have made with my skin care routine that have helped a lot.
No matter how much you want to, especially after class, do NOT wash your hair again. I use shampoo and conditioner every morning, and about destroyed my scalp and caused some awful build up in my hair as well. Just wash it once a day, and if you have the money to spend, buy a shampoo with no sodium lauryl sulfates. I use the Redken Refreshing Detox shampoo and conditioner. It fixed my scalp and build up problems in less than a week. There are a lot of different brands available, but for the price, this seemed the best bet for me.
I know a lot of us like to layer on scents so perfume doesn't smell so strong, matching body wash, lotion, and perfume seems like a good idea, but I've yet to find a soap that doesn't dry my skin out after regular use. I switched to the oil of olay body wash with body butter ribbons. It doesn't feel too heavy after I rinse it off, but my skin doesn't have the tight/itchy feeling afterwards. I also tried the in shower lotion, but it was entirely too heavy for my skin. Additionally, most lotions tend to either be too heavy and feel greasy, or not heavy enough to be useful. I use the Cetaphil fragrance free lotion. It doesn't have a lanolin base, so it's not greasy, but it works well on just about any skin type because it's mostly chemical free. (This is what I used on my new tattoos to help the healing process as well.)
My face cleanser and moisturizer used to work well, but after a few weeks, I started getting some bad break outs. I have oily skin, so I generally used lighter products, but I found that keeping it too dry caused just as many issues after work outs. I switched to the Body Shop Vitamin E skin care line, and using it at first felt super heavy and unnatural, but I found that it has completely cleared my skin problems up. Most of the vitamin E products seem too heavy for me, but with the constant cleaning, it really helps to restore balance. Also, the makeup cleaning wipes in the same line are fabulous for getting the sweat off of your neck and face after a good workout, and fit perfectly into your bag.
I've probably spent over 300 dollars at Ulta over the last six months trying various options on how to fix my skin issues, and so far these are the solutions that work best for me. Hopefully someone else will find these useful!
|