Transcription
Okay, guys, we're at the final stretch of our winter art. So this is the perfect time to think about your iconic summer glow-out, because summer is coming. As for me, summer is actually in two days because I'm actually moving to Miami soon. So I'm going to be in a warmer climate.
And if you're not subscribed to me yet, please follow along so you can see all the routines and all the tips that I'm going to be telling you on this channel, because I'm going to be doing it. I'm going to be showing you my routines, and there's honestly so much that I do and so much to cover, so it's going to become an entire series. But today, we're going to be going over the logistics of the summer glow-up.
And I want you to take from this video tangible steps that you can take to actually achieve a better version of yourself—physically, mentally, and spiritually—and really feeling good in your body this summer; not feeling uncomfortable and anxious. We're not doing that; we're not going to be wasting another summer, you guys. So I want you to be able to achieve that complete glow-up, whether it's doing things like daily walking, doing something physical for yourselves, focusing on your skin care, working out, or even working on beauty treatments, and really just like taking that time to focus on yourself and take care of yourself right now, especially while it's still cold outside, especially while we're still bundled up and cozy.
Seriously, babes, now is the time to treat yourselves right. My first and biggest tip is that all the little things that you're doing to glow up, they all matter, and once you add them all up, they're going to make a huge, major difference. Whether it's figuring out a hair routine for yourself, getting your nails done, getting regular teeth whitening treatments, they will all add up to the final picture. And the best thing to do a bunch of stuff and knock it all out is to just basically find a day of the week to do it and to basically work on your self-care. Typically, I would pick either a Saturday or a Sunday to do that—my hair, my nails, everything.
And as for bigger things, I would recommend trying to basically experiment with more makeup styles, getting a new haircut, maybe even a hair color. And I think that, you know, experimenting with things like getting a signature perfume, all of that will go a long way, but that is up to you to experiment and figure out what works best for you. As for an glow-up diet, it's also super important, but so is mindfulness and your mental health. I always recommend practicing gratitude and journaling your day, even if you only have one minute. If you dedicate yourself to actually focusing on gratitude and focusing on what's going well in your life, you're going to notice a huge shift in just 30 days. Even just journaling for a minute or two before bedtime to kind of go over what went well, what didn't go so well, what you're grateful for for the day. And honestly, it's okay even if the only good thing that happened to you today is that you woke up and you're still breathing—that is great. Really trust and appreciate that fact. Start small if you have to, because beauty is truly all-uncompensated. You cannot feel beautiful outside if you don't feel beautiful on the inside.
And also learning to soften up and relax. And I know this sounds very basic and easy, but honestly, I struggle with this a lot, especially in this day and age where you're not able to find real rest. I know it implies that there's a lot of fake rest out there, but it's true. And that's usually involving, you know, watching Netflix, binging, staring at screens, playing video games, especially video games that drive up your adrenaline levels and make you even more stressed out. So actually finding rest is not the most intuitive thing; we need to actively try and dedicate ourselves to it these days. When you know how to rest, your face also becomes more rested, so you're actually not placing so much tension on your facial muscles. Your body actually learns how to release stress better, which also means that your body will also have an easier time releasing things like bloat, releasing body fat, releasing weight, and releasing toxins. And it also makes you healthier; you don't get stressed as easily, you manage your moods better, your hair starts falling out, and you don't need Botox. I have had family members who never learned about this, and they never taught me about it either, and you can see it like they themselves—like when when someone is stressed out, you can really see it on your face; it really shows up; it really does.
And I always believe that our physical state is always going to be a reflection of our mental state—the way that we think, the things that we're willing to accept, and the things that we're not willing to accept, for example, with our belief system, right? Like one person thinks, "Well, I need to do all these things so that I can feel better about my life; I need to dedicate myself to maybe an afternoon of self-care," versus a person who thinks, "I'm not going to do any of that; I'm not even going to bother; I don't think I deserve it; I don't think I'm going to be able to feel good about myself even if I did all these stuff anyway; I would rather focus on other people—like my kids, my parents, my family, whatever—rather than focus on me." And I can tell you those two people are going to end up looking very different. This is why people who can't manage their stress properly usually can't look good because they don't know how to manage their appearances either. So the mental is always going to be the first barrier to a glow-up. You need to learn how to manage your stress correctly and learn how to relax so that you can relax your face, so that you can relax your body, so that your body can function better. And this will also make it so you don't need a million beauty treatments and spend thousands of dollars to make up for what you're lacking, which is usually lack of stress management, you know, a hyperactive nervous system. And this will help us save more money, which will help us free out more time and also more energy to focus on other things.
A few easy ways to find more rest is to basically find a restorative yoga class or do Yoga Nidra. And you don't even need to go anywhere or go to a physical class for it; you can just search it up on YouTube and just try and work on it. I myself, I always feel like a new person after doing a restorative yoga class or even meditation, and it's always so easy to forget how much tension you're holding—like a lot of us are constantly, you know, going around looking like like this, and we don't even realize it. I also do this thing where I don't look at my phone at least half an hour to an hour after I wake up and also half an hour to an hour before I go to sleep, and this has helped me reset my nervous system so much. It helps me prepare to get up for the day and also helps me prepare to go to sleep. I realized that so many of us actually experience discomfort and anxiety, and it's because we have a hyperactive nervous system from all that constant stimulation. So actually relearning how to relax and how to to release our stress better, and even doing little things like leaving your phone behind so you can go for a walk without any kind of distractions, or finding a spot, actually dedicating time to find a spot somewhere at the park or somewhere outside where you can read a book, where you can people-watch and relax, and actually focusing on rest itself that's not attached to watching a screen is so important and so underrated.
Another way that I'm learning to manage my stress better is actually going to therapy, so I can manage my emotions and process my trauma and actually learn to let go of that, because that's another thing that shows up on your body, right? Trauma—like literally not just mentally, you know, in your life, in the way you deal with stress, in your relationships, but physically on your body. So that's something you constantly need to work on—on how to let go of it. And then when it comes to summer, you want to find a few new routines to add to your arsenal, because you're more or less probably going to be showing a little bit more skin when it gets hotter outside. So if you want to wear a tank top and you want to manage things like, for example, if body hair is a concern to you, you have a few options, right? You can use razors. I personally use a very good multi-blade razor, and then I use at-home laser treatment. It's basically like a laser device that I use, and it zaps you up a little bit, but that can actually really slow down the growth of your body hair. And honestly, after using it like once a week or twice a week for a month, my body hair like does not grow back anymore; it's like totally smooth now. And you can use this everywhere except for your face. And then for the face, right, you want to use a single blade or even just go to a professional to do if you don't want to, you know, cut your face by accident. And that treatment is called microblading; it gets rid of all the fuzz in your face, while at the same time it helps your face glow a lot better because you're getting rid of, you know, extra texture in your face, which also shaves off the dead skin cells, and makeup foundation especially become so much easier to apply. But yeah, personally, I started using that at-home laser treatment device; it's so much easier than going to a place to get it done, and it's also so much cheaper as well. But of course, you want to do a bit of research to make sure that you're actually a good candidate for doing it, because not everyone is a good candidate for that.
I also bought a Dyson Airwrap lately, and I see this as an investment for my glow-up. I'm not using it today because I already packed all my stuff. I told you guys, right? I'm literally moving in 2 days, and I don't have any furniture with me right now, so I already packed it up. But it's such an amazing and easy way to do blowouts, and I only learned to do that very recently when I got the Dyson Airwrap. You don't need to buy that tool specifically; you can always give yourself a blowout with using a hair brush and also a hair dryer. But this is really just so that you have a couple more tools to add to your repertoire, to your arsenal, so that you can use it for your summer glow-up and really use it as a way to add things to your routine that you believe benefit. Another small glow-up tip that adds up to a lot is hydration, because sometimes I drink a lot of water, and then other times I will forget. I always notice it whenever I forget because I just feel dry everywhere; my lips are chapped, and I just don't feel good at all; I have less energy to do anything. And you can actually see here that when I had a dip in my hydration levels, that was also the same period of time when I didn't feel very good. And even though I learned to manage my stress a lot better, I actually went back to some of my old habits; I ended up gaining about 10 to 12, maybe even 15 lbs, and that's also something I'm going to be working on—is getting back on a good routine so that I can get healthy again. But this is what not drinking water and also stress does to you, by the way.
Anyway, if you're wondering, "May, why and how do you want to keep track of things like this?" Well, it's because I stay accountable to myself, and I stay accountable to my body. I will never turn a blind eye to my body, what I'm putting in it, and how I'm doing health-wise, especially if you've been through the health care system and you've met providers who didn't really care about you, because they honestly, they don't really care about you. But you will learn that nobody else is a better advocate for you except for yourself; nobody is going to defend you better than yourself, especially your health, and nobody is also going to track any of the stuff for you except for yourself. And the only way to really be sure of how much water levels you have in your body, how much fat you have, how much muscle you have, all these other things, how your heart health is looking, especially if you're trying to get fitter and healthier, is by getting an accurate body analyzer like this one that I have, which is called the BodyPod by Humm Health, and they're also the sponsor of today's video. So the BodyPod provides a well-rounded picture of your body composition—not just your fat and muscles and your hydration levels, but also the levels of different muscle and fat percentages in different areas of your body. And this is the only scale I know of that can actually show you all of these things. And I'm literally taken out by the different colors of my legs here; it's so funny to me. But they have advanced sensors in the handles that actually scans your torso, your arms, and even your heart and your legs at an accuracy of 98% compared to medical-grade health scans. And that's just something that other regular smart scales just can't do, because they only measure your lower body and it don't even give you a correct or accurate body fat percentage, for example. And I've been using the scale for about 7 months now, and it's been a huge game changer for me, because not only is it so similar to the medical-grade body analyzers, like the $20,000 machines, like I mentioned—first of all, you have to actually go somewhere and get someone to get it done for you, whereas this is way cheaper and way more portable and lightweight too. I can literally check this in my luggage when I travel. The BodyPod uses eight frequency sensors to measure over 40 health metrics, which gives you an overall idea of not just your weight, but also your full body composition and your heart health. This is super helpful if you're doing any kind of body recomposition and you're not seeing your weight move, but you can definitely see other things like gaining muscles and actual fat loss. It has a free app that lets you track your progress over time that uses AI technology to analyze your sleep, your nutrition, your activity, and connecting all of that with your existing body data to give you personalized recommendations, and it can tell you all the different specific areas that you need to work on.
If you're interested in trying out the BodyPod, Humm Health has a sale going on on their website right now, or you can use my code MayAlice to stack on top of that sale and save up to 50%, but this code is only valid for 7 days, so you guys better get on it. But you can also find the link in my video description; it's also HSA and FSA eligible, so if you're based in the US, you can maybe even get it for free from your health insurance. And thank you to Humm Health for sponsoring this video.
Hey guys, so I've teleported into nighttime. I had to go do my therapy and come back and keep filming. Going back to where I was before, speaking of fitness, I think the reason why my skin gets so glowy like this is because of a few things—I think three main things actually: tretinoin, diet, and exercise. I don't even use tretinoin anymore, and I used that to clear out my acne, and I will probably use even less when I move to Miami because of all of the sun and also because vitamin A and retinoids actually make your skin more sun-sensitive. So I would avoid using so much as much as I am doing it now—like maybe once a week, but maybe even less than that. But yeah, I mostly stopped using tretinoin as much as I used to back when I was trying to clear my acne, and yet I have still been able to maintain good skin. So it's not just the tretinoin, you guys. However, when I don't eat well, and especially if I don't exercise, my skin is going to break out, and it will look dull, and I start to see more texture on my skin. I don't have any lines or wrinkles yet, but I do see texture, right? And exercise is so underrated for so many things: better skin, better energy, releasing stress, and even later on in life, it's going to keep your body from breaking down faster due to aging; it's going to slow down the biological clock a lot, so to speak.
And my biggest tip for getting fit is to find something you like and stick to it, even if it's just walking, even if it's just stretching. You don't have to follow some crazy exercise program or do HIIT, or bulk up on protein and drink pre-workouts and all of that. You can start as simple as you can, even if it's with the Yoga Nidra, right? With restorative yoga, if you don't have much experience of working out, if you don't know where to start with exercising, get your foot in the door first, then you can worry about tweaking stuff later on, right? And I've actually fallen off the exercise bandwagon lately because it's been so cold lately, and it's hard to walk outside when it's just like freezing and there's ice everywhere. But when I'm active, my body feels amazing, especially as it gets warmer. I try to walk everywhere whenever I can and avoid any kind of transportation if possible. So one thing that you can do to prepare for summer is to try to go from sitting down all day to reaching 10K steps a day and make that your goal so that you can really get into walking more as the weather gets warmer. And this is also why I'm moving to a warmer climate, so I get to live more of my life outdoors and get more sun. And walking is also super good for stress release, so like you can add another thing to that stress release list, right?
Also, this is the perfect time right now to do some spring cleaning. Not only is it a workout, it's also going to clean up your energy; your space reflects who you are as a person. I truly believe this, and it also reveals to you what you're still holding on to—memories that you're still literally grabbing onto from like 10, 15, 20 years ago, or however old you are. I had to deep clean my entire place and all of my belongings because, you know, I'm moving out, and I'm moving like eight states down, so I had to donate so many clothes and so much jewelry that I don't wear anymore, because yeah, what's the use of bringing that down, right? And also just stuff that I don't use anymore—just getting rid of all of that stuff, it really helps clear out more room for more clothes, more things that feels more like you; it will bring in new energy, which will also bring in new opportunities to buy more stuff, I guess—stuff that you actually like rather than stuff that you feel like you have to use up because it's still there. And it's also yet another thing for stress relief, because clutter can really slow you down; it can really stress you out and also make you feel like you don't even have enough room to actually grow, even as a person. Objects can really hold you back.
I also want to talk about body posture because it's just so crucial and so important. Whether you're slouching or rounding your shoulders or like pushing your head forward, you're not just affecting your back and your neck, but you're also creating more tension on your face, and over time, like it really pulls down your skin and really starts to like pull everything down—starts sagging and creating more deeper lines and more finer lines around your eyes, around your mouth, and it just like leads to a lot of poor circulation and poor lymphatic drainage, and it's stagnating, which will make your skin honestly, will get puffy over time—more puffier, less vibrant, and look more dull—not only to the face, but also pressure to your jaw as well as your muscles; it really adds to like signs of aging—basically wrinkles, sagging, and all that. But you can fix this; you can reverse this with just a few minutes of doing exercises, stretching, posture exercises each day, and it's simple exercises; it's not difficult or anything. And doing this can actually reverse many of those effects, especially if you look at your phone a lot, if you like, if you're sitting down at a desk all the time. And also, not to mention, cultivating a good posture will not only give you more confidence, it will also make you feel more beautiful, more glowed up, and it's just super elegant to look like a swan rather than a hunchback, right? And really, when you start working on your posture and really properly aligning the head or the rest of your body and your neck and your shoulders and all of that, you're also allowing in more circulation; you're allowing better lymphatic drainage, which will help you get more of a lift on your face, make your face look more snatched and toned, and reduce the bloatedness, honestly. And this is a minor adjustment; okay, this is the smallest adjustment for you to get huge results.
I have a few go-to moves that I do, like alternating my neck and platysma releasing exercises, so kind of like doing this—alternating it, stretching out your elbows, you know, and like really just like loosening up this area—like your head, your platysma, your chest muscles, your back muscles, and really doing this, like opening up like your chest and just like really feeling a good stretch. I also follow this lady and her exercises for lymphatic facial drainage stuff; I'm going to drop her channel here somewhere, but you can do each exercise just like a few sets of it a day, a couple times. And doing a face massage every morning, it takes about maybe 10 minutes a day max to see results in 2 weeks. And another thing to stop doing, guys, if you want a snatched face is to stop cheek biting. Apparently, biting your cheeks a lot can lead to jowls, which are these lines that you get around the mouth. So if you want to fidget, honestly, just get a stress ball or a fidget toy; don't fidget your face. You know, same goes for other bad habits—like biting nails and picking scabs are all indicators of poor coping skills for dealing with stress. And I can tell you there's nothing like seeing a beautiful, gorgeous woman, and then she starts to pick her pimples on her face, her scabs, and chew her nails and being hunched over—like, "Lord have mercy, save this girl! Have mercy on this poor girl, please!" Cuz yeah, I will never stop reminding my girls to stop doing these bad habits.
Now, if you want to glow up, okay, again, learning proper ways to manage stress and all of these other coping mechanisms will eventually go away. Also, another glow-up tip that I learned where I do not need Botox or whatever is to control your own expression lines. I always notice tension on my face whenever I talk and I eat, and I do do my facial expressions, and I make sure that like whenever I'm not doing anything, my face is totally relaxed, and I don't have any lines, and I look so much younger than my age. And like, honestly, a lot of you guys think that I'm young, but that's only proof that my glow-up tips work, obviously. But seriously though, we can train our face to relax our foreheads and our cheeks more often, and I can tell you through doing all these things, I really do look younger than I did like five, six, seven years ago. We can train our face, our forehead, our cheeks, our jaws to relax, even our mouths. I used to have a super expressive mouth when I talk, and now I can control that a lot more. Don't believe me? You can go back to my older videos and just like watch all the way to now—like it's a big difference. I also heard that wearing frownies are good for forehead expressions. I've never worn it because yeah, I just like never see my forehead. But if you have to deal with very expressive foreheads, wearing that can train your forehead to do less. And also please wear sunglasses when you go out outside, especially in the sun, to avoid squinting and straining your facial muscles, cuz that's not going to look pretty after a while—after a couple of decades, you're going to wish…
You wore sunglasses, and of course, use SPF whenever you go outside, no matter how much or how little sun there is. The sun is always going to be there; it doesn't just disappear. Even though there's a lot of clouds, even though it's raining, it's still there. And just reapply every couple of hours if you're outside continuously, especially if you're in a warm climate, especially if the sun is really out.
Right, and then there's also some other things that you can do for your face, like, for example, along with the daily facial massages like I mentioned, doing that with rose hip oil or jojoba oil. I just started using rose hip oil recently, and it's for hyperpigmentation; it's for, like, you know, fading scars and things like that, and it's been amazing. It's like a centuries-old, you know, remedy that a lot of cultures use. You can also use castor oil as a really good moisturizer, not just for your face but also for your hair, for your nails. It really moisturizes everything so well because it's a very thick and occlusive oil.
And guys, that's a really big key to anti-aging: really keeping moisturized as much as possible, because dryness leads to scars, dryness leads to like more fine lines around your face. So really being able to drain out all the old lymph from your face and really being able to, you know, replenish all the collagen in our bodies and also just like stimulating regrowth in our face—that's really like a huge part of my, even my skincare routine. I also use a Gua Sha in the mornings with these oils. So using that, having your own Gua Sha routine is really helpful.
And then, finally, if you have a budget and if you can work this in, getting some professional skincare tips from someone who actually can provide those targeted treatments to you can actually be very, very beneficial. Like, for example, I had acne, right? So I went to a dermatologist; they gave me targeted treatment for it, and it worked. But then also maintaining your results with monthly or quarterly facials. So I like hydrafacials; it's a very good option to look into. And also look into laser treatments as well, or if that feels too invasive for you, you can also look into anything that can help boost and remodel collagen in your face, like microneedling, PRP, which stands for platelet-rich plasma, or even radio frequency. But because these are more invasive treatments, I would definitely err on the side of caution and definitely go for more conservative options.
Another thing that I heard about for the face, if you want to depuff your face really fast—and this is the biggest beauty hack going around right now, and I've seen it all over the internet—it's to take some rubber bands and wrap that around your ears for 10 minutes to depuff your face. And I personally have not tried this yet; I'm going to need to go find a rubber band to do this right after this, but I'm definitely curious to see if it works. Guys, a ton of people online have sworn by this, which is why I'm including it in this video. But I would love to hear in the comments whether you've tried that, what's been working out for you, and what hasn't.
And then, as for hair, I think that natural always looks really good on everyone. Like, I look really great with my black hair. But a big color hack I heard of lately, which makes total sense to me, is to match your hair color with your skin tone. So that means cooler shades for cooler skin, warmer shades for warm skin, and so on. I taught you guys as well, from like a previous video, how to figure out if you have warm or cool-toned skin: is by using two different shades of blush, or maybe you can even paint it on your face on Photoshop or something—like a very kind of cool rose pink blush versus a peachy warm-toned blush. And you can basically apply that on your face, or like paint over it, and whatever brings out more of your features and looks better on you will be the tone of your skin.
You can also change your face shape with your hair. So I naturally do have a more rounded face, but my bangs and my hairstyle tends to make it look more oval, and that's kind of my personal goal. So you can experiment with things like getting bangs and see what kind of fits your face, or maybe just go with no bangs. But I personally have bangs, honestly, because I have like a weird hairline—like, I don't know if you guys want to see—like, it's, it's like this. So because of that, I can't really put my hair back out, and I have kind of like limited options on how I want to style my hair. A lot of glowing up, you guys, is learning when to camouflage the less desirable things and then learning to kind of like bring out more of the desirable things, like your favorite features, for example. And depending on what shape your face is—and you can typically Google this—best hair for like a diamond-shaped face, for example—and you can always take a quiz to find out what kind of face shape that you have.
But there's also something called hair contouring that you can do at the hair salon. So hair contouring is a technique where a stylist will use highlights and lowlights to create shadows and more depth on your face, and these shadows are basically used to help build the illusion of the face shape that you want to achieve. So when it comes to glowing up, if you have a wide face, you want to elongate your hair, and then vice versa, if you have a long face, you can highlight the sides and really make your hair seem more voluminous. And if you have a square face, you will want to add more roundness to your hairstyle—maybe adding more curls, maybe get a perm or something. And as for a round face, you can get a haircut that frames your face, like me, or get straight hair that will give you a more leaner look, like this.
So all of my suggestions in this glow-up video, I want you to take the time to experiment with what works for you during this 3-month period of time, like between now and summer, and then learn to incorporate some of the tips that resonated with you into a routine. And all of these suggestions of mine will all range from free—most of it is free—to, you know, maybe somewhat expensive, depending on who you choose to go to and what kind of services that you're getting. And this is all based on what kind of resources you have, what you want to treat, what you want to prevent, what you want to camouflage, and what you want to bring out more of, and so on. So in order to get results, obviously, you have to be consistent. None of the stuff is going to work very well for you if you are not being consistent. So pay attention to how your skin, how your body, how your face and hair—how all that is reacting to all these new things that you're introducing to your body—and adjust accordingly based on what makes you feel good, what makes you look good and feel healthy.
All right, guys, I hope this was helpful for you. Thank you to Hume H for sponsoring this video, and I also can't wait to show you my new apartment. If you get to the end of this video, please comment glow-up gang so that I know you made it to the end. And here's a heart; I don't know if I'm doing it right. And I'll see you guys in the next video. [Music]