It's the long awaited and anticipated second part of the ulzzang series. First up was Cleansing and now we're onto the Hydration and Dieting side of things. (I've also made a couple of tutorials to work towards completing an ulzzang look.)
Dieting was a hard subject for me to approach. Anyone who knows me personally will know that my knowledge on dieting is somewhat limited and I actually decided to tackle this post in order to get over this misconception I have of myself that I'm unable to live healthily. Sure I exercise and eat my five-a-day like I'm supposed to...but that's as far as it used to go! The reason for the gap between cleansing and this is entirely down to the fact that I've been learning!
Now this is not going to be one of the typical "lets all go out for a run" or "lets all eat perfectly and healthy forever"...Hopefully I'll be able to help just give practical advice. As an 18 year old girl I'm not really expected to eat perfectly. I'll admit to the occasional skipping of breakfast because I spent too long looking at pictures of SNSD and Rainbow the night before and I'm feeling bad about myself....then hoarding food at lunch because I'm so hungry!
In some ways this will also be a follow up from my post years back in 2011 after I lost over 20lb in 2 weeks...and teaching you how not to follow that advice.
So without further delays, let me teach you how to keep your skin healthy and milky through dieting, hydration and exercise!
Drinking
We're constantly told that we need to drink enough water to replenish our water contents...now I'm not going to bore you with all of the science behind it. But let's face it, water is boring. Drinking 2 litres of water is dull and therefore we need to spice it up a little! Let's get our fluids but in a more interesting way.
Green Tea
I've even done an "Exploring Green Tea" post that's how much of the stuff I drink. My favourite brand is Double Dragon but honestly I mainly just buy whatever I can get my hands on. As you can see from the photo below, I store my teas in jars and then put all of the excess supplies in the cupboard. I separate them into 3 categories at the moment. Plain green tea, fruit tea which is currently just strawberry tea and assorted flavours (which I think have orange, cherry blossom, peach and other fruit flavoured green teas) and then the mint ones stay in the cupboard now because I've only got 3 jars! xD
The important point is that green tea is not only extremely hydrating it's also amazing for your skin. I drink this stuff into the double figures daily and I wash my face and occasionally even my hair with it.
It's far more interesting to drink than water and although you may think that you don't want a hot drink in the summer weather. Drinking hot drinks in hot weather can have higher benefits than a cold one. So think about it next time!
Water
Okay, I'm a hypocrite I admit it! Sure I just told you all that water is boring...But look at my water supply. Face it, we can't live without the darling H2O we all love. Put an ice cube in your drink and walk around with your glass of water. Especially if you're exercising. As great as green tea is, you sometimes just need plain water!
It's great for you and the best thing is that it's got no calories. So head away from the cokes and alcohol if you're on a diet. Stick to the water and green tea. Drinking a ton of water is one of the quickest ways to drop a small amount of weight if you're overweight as well.
The most important thing to remember is to stay away from fizzy drinks. Anything that fizzes has more calories. That means bad. There's no need to start counting calories really but just remember that with water you don't have to worry. Have one can of coke and you already have to start calculating your sugar allowance for the day to make sure your teeth don't rot or your face doesn't swell the next day!
Calories
First thing I'm going to say about calories is stay away. Look at the fats and sugars rather than the calories. If you look at the calories you'll always want to be under the allowance. The likelihood is you probably are.
This week I used MyFitnessPal to track my calories and everything for the week. I set myself a calorie goal of 1000 rather than the usual 1200 and didn't change any of my eating habits. (If anything I ate more because I ate out a couple of times this week)
Keeping in mind that I do karate 3 days a week and yoga every day, I managed to burn off about half of what I was eating and was under my calorie goal every day. Now if I was just counting the calories themselves, I probably would have seen that and taken that as a reason to eat more. But then looking deeper into the sugars and vitamins I'd taken in for the day, I'd managed to reach all of the normal GDA's for them. Luckily I had enough self-control to stop myself from eating more after that.
But my point being that if you look at calories alone, it doesn't give you enough information!
Exercise
Take up a sport or regular exercise. I used to do ballet and swim. Now I just stick to karate 3 times a week and I do yoga at home to help my spine recover properly. My point being that if you're doing something official and organised, it's harder to get out of it.
If you run alone then if it rains you'll call it off. If you've got a cold you'll call it off. If you get home from school or work late then you'll call it off. You're able to make up excuses to get out of it. And trust me when I say that I've done more than enough of that!
If you want to run then either join a running club or team up with some friends and set a time and date each week to make it a regular thing. If you want to swim get yourself a membership and set aside enough time before and afterwards. Don't organise your exercise time too close to when you need to eat a meal because you need to make sure you digest your meal properly. Ideally you don't want to be out too late either because it'll be harder to relax to prepare yourself to sleep and your skin will suffer from it!
And for a daily workout lets all get back into Wii Fit together! Today I tried it again...after over 500 days apparently. Oops. I didn't realise it'd been that long! But the exercise there is pretty structured and if you set yourself up a proper routine to do every day then you can't just quit halfway through it. Give yourself a time you can manage though.
If you don't exercise at all at the moment then don't give yourself 1-2 hours a day of work out. Start out at either 1-2 hours a week or 15 minutes a day. Then when you feel ready slowly build yourself up.
The only time when I completely stopped exercising was when I injured my spine. There was genuinely nothing harder than going back into exercise than that. I started with 5 minutes of yoga a day (I wasn't even moving originally for a while so that seemed like a lot at the time xD) then built that up to an hour. Eventually I went back to karate once a week and at the time I was still doing ballet. I quickly realised I'd never be strong enough again for ballet, swimming or anything with that degree of movement any time soon...but karate was fine and I managed to build that up slowly.
Just remember slow is the key. I started back over a year ago now and I'm still going. Go to fast and you'll end up either with an injury or knock your confidence and become put off by it.
Summary
I know. I'm not the best to give diet advice out. But exercise advice I'm alright in that area I suppose. Just remember Tea, GDA and Structure. You can't lose weight or tone up without proper structure, whether that means just a timetable on a wall or an official signing in and signing out of an exercise or weight-loss class depends on how much you procrastinate honestly. If you don't trust yourself to stick with something and see it through then go down the official route. You'll hate the fact you ever thought of exercise for a while but once you get over the obstacle you'll be fine again!
The last thing I want to address is for if you go to a class. It's jealousy. Rather than staring at the girl who has the most stamina, flexibility and never sweats...and becoming jealous and hating her for it. Use her as personal competition. She doesn't need to know it and be nice to her! Don't hate her, love her! Jealous of this sort usually implies that you wish you could do that. Putting her as competition is one of the easiest ways to get yourself to work harder.
The only way I managed to achieve anything exercise-wise was as a result of this method. Maybe that's just because I'm a secretly really competitive person but it does really work!
Any questions feel free to leave them in the comment section below! As with the previous sections I've tried not to put too many details into this post simply because I can't address every one of you which is why I love the comment space so much!
Next up should hopefully be the massage section and I've been learning lots of new facial massage techniques recently so there won't be as large a gap between posts this time!
Have a great day everyone and stay milky!
