Beauty Is a Lifestyle, Not a Mask—Plan Your Natural Beauty Routine

Once you start to take care of your body from the inside, with diet, a natural beauty routine usually feels like the next step. After all, your skin’s your largest organ, and if you’re being careful about what you’re putting into your body, you’ll probably find yourself more concerned than ever about what’s being absorbed into it from the outside. Suddenly, those scented lotions and layers of drugstore and department store makeup products seem a little less appealing.

Why To Use Natural Products on Your Body

We talked about hair care earlier on the blog, and some of the dangers of using the ingredients commonly found in shampoos and conditioners. Skin care’s no different. The whole purpose of many of these products is to be absorbed by the skin. Some of the ingredients include:

• Parabens
• Silicones
• Propylene glycol
• Fragrance
• Phthalates
• Sodium lauryl sulfate/ammonium lauryl sulfate/sodium laureth sulfate

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to know that you were only putting products on your body that you could safely eat (even though you might not actually want to taste them)? A natural beauty routine can help with that.

What to Do First Thing in the Morning

The last thing you want to do first thing in the morning is get into a complicated beauty routine. Luckily, as long as you whip up your natural, homemade products ahead of time, a natural routine is easy to follow. After taking a few minutes to meditate first thing in the morning, you can jump right in.

Brush with Natural Toothpaste

It’s best to avoid some of the ingredients found in commercial toothpastes, like sodium lauryl sulfate, fluoride (yep, the one that’s supposed to prevent cavities!), and artificial sweeteners. Some studies say fluoride doesn’t really prevent tooth decay, but it is linked to the destruction of collagen, cancer, seizures, weakened immune system, and neurotoxicity. Artificial sweeteners, well…we know how bad those are for us.

Though not a perfect solution, Tom’s of Maine’s Fluoride-Free Natural Toothpaste is a little better than the typical toothpaste. It’s really easy to make your own, though. DIY Natural has a recipe with baking soda, sea salt, and some essential oil, and Family Sponge’s toothpaste recipe calls for coconut oil, baking soda, essential oil, and stevia.

Dry Brush Your Body

We’ve talked about dry brushing before, but it’s worth another mention. If you have a few extra minutes in the morning, use a soft, natural-bristled brush to go over your skin. Work your way from your feet up toward your heart in short strokes. This improves circulation, promotes lymph node draining, and gets rid of dead skin cells. This alone will make your skin glow!

Shower

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap (you can find it anywhere from Whole Foods to Target) comes in a few different scents and is great for cleaning the body without exposing it to any chemicals. Try the peppermint one if you shower in the morning and want an energizing scent and the lavender one if you shower at night. Or you could grab the unscented one and make your own custom blend with oils of your choice.

Be sure to take a look at our post on natural hair care, too.

Slather on a Moisturizer

For a beautiful scent, a delicate sheen on your skin, and incredible moisturizing effects, just use unrefined coconut oil all over your body after you step out of the shower. If you want a more interesting fragrance, you can add a few drops of your favorite essential oils to the coconut oil and mix it up before applying it to your skin (do a test patch first, since not everyone’s skin likes the same essential oils).

Apply Deodorant

We recently shared a video that showed you how to make your own deodorant from natural ingredients. Commercial drugstore deodorants and antiperspirants pose health risks thanks to ingredients like parabens, fragrance, aluminum, and propylene glycol (to name a few).

Antiperspirants prevent some of the natural detoxing process from occurring, so you never want to use those. If you don’t want to make your own, there are other natural deodorants on the market, like Thai Crystal, which uses crystallized mineral salts to kill bacteria and prevent odor.

Natural Makeup Products

Even natural makeup can give you a beautiful, glowing complexion without the chemicals. Our favorite natural, organic makeup line is Vapour Beauty, which has something for almost every makeup need except mascara. There are foundations, primers, eye shadows, blushes, bronzers, and lip products to choose from. For mascara, we recommend Physician’s Formula Organic Wear.

Simple Life Mom even suggests a recipe for making your own foundation.

You can also make your own lip and cheek stain by mixing up equal parts of:

• Your favorite light oil (sweet almond, argan, jojoba)
• Raw shea butter
• Beet root powder (dehydrate beet slices and grind them up)

Melt the oil and shea butter together over low heat, stir in the beet powder, and then strain the mixture. Pour it into a glass container, and voila! You can add instant life to your face.

Breakfast for Natural Beauties

Start your day with a cup of hot water with lemon and the Glowing Green Smoothie. What you put into your body is just as important, if not more so, than what you put on the outside.

Taking It All Off: Nighttime Routine

Cleansing

Oils are an amazing makeup remover. You can experiment to see which ones work best for you, but olive, jojoba, sweet almond, and coconut oil all work beautifully. Gently massage them into dry skin, then add water and massage some more to remove your makeup before rinsing it off. There are natural skin care lines with cleaners that work well to remove makeup and smell incredible, too, like:

• Ann Marie Gianni (this line has several, for all skin types and concerns)
• Vapour Beauty Clarity Makeup Removing Cleansing Oil
• Sally B’s Tamanu Luxury Facial Cleanser

If you’re the type of girl who likes to use facial wipes to take off your makeup, I Eat Grass shared a DIY for those.

Toners and Scrubs

Everyone cleanses, but the next steps are personal. You may like to keep it simple with just cleanser and moisturizer, or you may prefer to use a natural toner or serum–and you can still do that. You’ll find that you’re not really forced to give anything up in your natural beauty routine if you don’t want to. If a toner’s been part of your nightly routine since you were 12 and you like using one, there’s no need to abandon it now.

Pink So Foxy has a toner recipe on her site that you can make for yourself from apple cider vinegar, red rooibos tea, and essential oils. Ann Marie Gianni’s line, above, offers a line of them, too.

Most women like to exfoliate at least once a week. A quick, no-brainer DIY scrub is:

• 1 Tbsp of sugar or salt
• ½ tablespoon of sweet almond or coconut oil

This one’s good because you can use whatever you have on hand for an impromptu spa night at home.

Sassybella.com has a few recipes. The Rose Almond Scrub sounds especially interesting!

Moisturizing

For your moisturizer, mix:

• One ounce of your favorite base oil (like argan, avocado, jojoba, olive, etc)
• 5 drops total of essential oils best suited for your skin type (Chamomile is soothing. Peppermint, lavender, and citrus oils should be used with caution at first, especially on sensitive skin. Rose is a good anti-aging option suitable for dry skin.)

There’s Trial and Error, but a Natural Beauty Routine Is Possible

You may have to experiment with brands and ingredients whether you shop for natural products or make your own. Don’t get discouraged! There may be a little trial and error involved before you find the right products and ingredients for your skin (the same as any other type of skin care or makeup line), but take comfort in the fact that you’re never introducing harmful chemicals to your body in the process.