A New York City Health and Beauty Blog

Beauty Food: Lemon Water for a Post-Thanksgiving Beauty Detox

Lemon Water Detox

Now that we’ve all consumed more calories than we care to remember it’s time to detox. The holiday season is always way too tempting with a myriad of delicious desserts, decadent chocolates and wonderful aromas tempting us every step of the way. I know that sweets are a huge weakness for me and this Thanksgiving, I definitely indulged way too much! So whenever I binge I try to balance that out by detoxing the next day.

Over the past few years I’ve used water – with a little bit of lemon juice to detox. There are many health benefits to drinking lemon water, weight loss is one. When I was overweight I would start my day off with a glass of room temperature water and the juice of half of a lemon. I remember reading that lemon juice helps the body to regulate its metabolism and sugar absorption; and it also helps improve digestion. Lemon water is great for those that are dieting but in fact lemon juice/lemon water has many other beneficial properties.

Benefits of lemon juice:

  • Assists in lowering high blood pressure
  • Reduces the amount of phlegm in the body
  • Lemon water can ease heartburn, bloating and other digestion problems
  • Lemon water cleanses and stimulates the liver and kidneys
  • Lemon water purges toxins from the blood which helps keep skin clear

So needless to say I will be drinking ONLY water to continue my detox and I’ll have a second glass of lemon water before I head to bed for the evening. It feels great to be aware of how what I eat impacts my body and also make conscious choices on improving my health. So if you over-indulged this Thanksgiving don’t beat yourself up, it’s not to late to grab a lemon and some water!

Did you over-indulge this Thanksgiving?

Natural Beauty Tips that you can try at home

natural beauty

I love beauty and self-improvement is every form and I believe that “natural” beauty is just as fun and important as any of my favorite beauty luxuries. Here are a few home beauty tips and treatments that I’ve picked up along the years. I hope that you find them useful.

My Top 10 Natural Beauty Remedies

1. Dark circles under your eyes? Cut a slice of Potato and place under your eye for 10-15 minutes. Potatoes contain an enzyme called Catecholase which naturally lightens skin.

2. Stained nails from using dark polish? Soak your nails in lemon juice. Lemon is an astringent and will remove the stains.

3. Have apple cider vinegar in your home? It can be used to treat dandruff as well as oily skin (50% apple cider vinegar & 50% water)

4. Dry Skin? Take a milk bath; milk contains lactic acid which is an alpha hydroxy acid known to shed dead skin cells. Add 2-4 cups to a warm bath and soak for 20 minutes and rinse.

5. Sometimes you may get a blemish or two and you don’t have any acne treatment on hand, try honey. Honey has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties and it kills the bacterium that causes acne. Dab on a small amount on the affected area and rinse off after 10 minutes.

6. You wanna get your dry winter heels ready for the summer? Mash a ripe banana and spread the pulp on your heels, leave on for 10 minutes and rinse.

7. Dry lips? After brushing your teeth, brush your lips! This will help exfoliate them and wisk away the dry skin, then apply Petroleum Jelly or vitamin E oil or your favorite lip balm.

8. If you use a lot of product on your hair, you may want to add baking soda to your shampoo. This will turn your shampoo into a clarifying shampoo that will help remove the buildup.

9. If your nails are weak and break easily, you may want to soak them in olive oil for 5 minutes every night.

10. If your lips are dry and cracked, try rubbing cucumbers on them, it will help heal your lips.

More of my favorite natural beauty tips to come…

Be Kind and Be Fine to you Face

Cooling Peel off maskOnce  a week I like to treat my skin to facial mask for a little deep cleaning. Be fine makes beauty products that are Paraben free, Allergen Free and made from vegetable protein. The product that I tried was Be fine’s Cooling Peel Off Mask with Apple, Lemon & Green Tea. This mask cools instantly upon contact and felt tingly on my face (it didn’t sting). The apple and lemon have natural occurring alpha hydroxy acids to help remove impurities and support new skin growth. The green tea which nourishes your skin while helping to prevent free radicals which age your skin.

It took about 15 minutes for the mask to dry completely. Even after removing the mask my skin still felt tingly and also incredibly soft and smooth almost like I just exfoliated. My skin didn’t feel tight like I does when I sometimes try new facial cleansers. I also liked that the product contains many natural ingredients and that it’s not tested on animals. One things that I did notice was that my skin my slightly red after I took the mask off but the redness toned down after about 10 minutes – my skin still felt tingly as if I just came from a spa facial. Overall I loved the results and thought that the mask felt great and was very relaxing.

The mask is sold as a kit with a one use cleanser and retails for $20.

*I did not use the cleanser as part of my facial.