17 years old
11/06/12 - 196lb
What is your acne telling you?
1 & 2: Digestive System — Eat less processed or junk food, reduce the amount of fat in your diet, step up water intake and opt for cooling things like cucumbers.
3: Liver — Cut out the alcohol, greasy food and dairy. This is the zone where food allergies also show up first, so take a look at your ingredients. Besides all this, do 30 minutes of light exercise every day and get adequate sleep so your liver can rest.
4 & 5: Kidneys — Anything around the eyes (including dark circles) point to dehydration. Drink up!
6: Heart — Check your blood pressure (mine was slightly high) and Vitamin B levels. Decrease the intake of spicy or pungent food, cut down on meat and get more fresh air. Besides this, look into ways to lower cholesterol, like replacing “bad fats” with “good fats” such as Omegas 3 and 6 found in nuts, avocados, fish and flax seed. Also, since this area is chock-full of dilated pores, check that your makeup is not past its expiry date or is skin-clogging.
7 & 8: Kidneys — Again, drink up! And cut down on aerated drinks, coffee and alcohol as these will cause further dehydration.
Zone 9 & 10: Respiratory system — Do you smoke? Have allergies? This is your problem area for both. If neither of these is the issue, don’t let your body overheat, eat more cooling foods, cut down on sugar and get more fresh air. Also keep the body more alkaline by avoiding foods that make the body acidic (meat, dairy, alcohol, caffeine, sugar) and adding more alkalizing foods like green veggies and wheatgrass juice. Another thing that most of forget – dirty cell phones and pillow cases are two of the top acne culprits and this area is what they affect the most!
Zone 11 & 12: Hormones — This is the signature zone for stress and hormonal changes. And while both are sometimes unavoidable, you can decrease their effect by getting adequate sleep, drinking enough water, eating leafy veggies and keeping skin scrupulously clean. Another interesting point: breakouts in this area indicate when you are ovulating (and on which side).
Zone 13: Stomach — Step up the fibre intake, reduce the toxin overload and drink herbal teas to help with digestion.
14: Illness — Zits here can be a sign that your body is fighting bacteria to avoid illness. Give it a break, take a yoga class, take a nap, take time to breathe deeply, drink plenty of water and know that everything always works out!
So the next time you break out or notice dark under-eye circles, look to your face map: your skin is probably trying to communicate on behalf of the internal organs. However, do remember that, as with all medical issues, it is always best to see your doctor or dermotologist for a proper prognosis. This is just a general guide to head you off in the right investigative direction – just because you break out between the brows doesn’t always mean you have a bad liver!
Stop giving up so easily.
1. Most races and fun runs are full of hot bodies in very little clothing. Let me repeat that: HOT PEOPLE. WEARING PRACTICALLY NOTHING. Wear sunglasses, and ogle with reckless abandon.2. You can lose weight by drinking nothing but hot water with lemon. Or you can run for an hour, treat yourself to a cookie and still fit into your skinny jeans. One of these options makes you bitchy; the other makes you rad.
3. Take your iPod with you, and your runs suddenly become a safe place to indulge your love of boy-band music. With enough practice, you can even blend in a couple dance moves from ‘Bye Bye Bye’. Don’t lie: You’ve still got that routine memorized.
4. When your boss, your melodramatic friend and your nagging to-do list won’t leave you alone, calmly put on your running shoes and head out the door. They won’t follow you. It’s a safer alternative to storming out with both middle fingers in the air (though you can -and should- still do this in your head, just for spectacular effect).
5. You’ll discover lululemon pants are good for more than just buying tampons and Cheez-its at Target (I know, ladies. My world was rocked with that discovery, too.).
6. Running is the last place you have to “be a lady.” Sweat, snot and sneaking behind a bush to pee is not only liberating it’s fun, in that giggly-childish-naughty kind of way.
7. Getting a run in before happy hour means you get tipsy on half a glass of wine instead of your usual two. That’s not being a lush, that’s just sound economic planning.
8. Studies have shown that runners have better sex. Sex counts as a cross-training workout, which in turn makes you a better runner, which – hello! – leads to even better sex. Really, the whole thing is full of win-wins.
9. Girls are lucky; there’s an entire industry committed to making us look awesome while getting our sweat on. Workout clothes come in all sorts of cool colors and designs. Jockstraps, on the other hand, will always be ugly with questionable stains.
10. Non-runners will sit on the couch and call you crazy. Those folks, sadly, will never learn what their bodies are capable of. You, on the other hand, will die knowing you completely, totally, unabashedly used up the body that was loaned to you. That’s not crazy. That’s freakin’ awesome.
AMEN.
My body seems to be progressing on it’s own now. It’s really odd, i know i’m working fairly hard but i’d been off track for a while yet i seem to have just dropped body fat faster than ever before. I can’t ever believe i thought I wasn’t capable or that my body was too fucked up that i couldn’t…
Favorite foods.
Isn’t it crazy how once you cut the junk, you don’t crave it anymore? I love that my cravings right now include grapefruits, apples, and oatmeal. Yum!
Also, did I mention…
I’ve never felt so fat on holiday. Oh I could cry.
I’ve literally never felt so low, I can’t go into it because the last 3 weeks have all accumulated to it. Going on holiday with my ex was unexplainable, the biggest mixture of emotions I’ve ever felt and now coming home and knowing I’ll never see him again. I don’t know how to feel motivated. I haven’t eaten well since the start of the holiday (the 5th) or done a tiny bit of exercise. I haven’t even unpacked my suitcase. My room is such a tip I can’t open the door. I haven’t done any of the things I need to this summer. I pretty much cry everytime I look at our tagged facebook photos on my wall. So currently, I’m getting drunk most nights and waking up 12ish, watching shit films with my best friend and eating the biggest pile of crap, then the cycle repeats itself. I’m finally back on here and going to try and motivate myself, I want to better myself over the next few days not just with health but with all the schoolwork and stuff I need to do.
