Friday, August 8, 2014

My Skin Care Routine (Organic)


During pregnancy I switched over to a completely natural and organic skin care routine.  I am now 4 months Post Partum and I would never go back to what I was doing before! 



During my first and second trimesters (yes, my crazy acne lasted through my second trimester! Ugh!) my skin was breaking out like I was going through puberty! I had acne, cystic acne and redness everywhere.  This was soooo frustrating because I couldn't do anything about it, or so I thought.  During this time, the acne was being caused by hormones so I obviously wasn't going to take anything to mess with my hormones.  So I started doing some research as to why my skin could be breaking out.  Besides the hormones, my skin was overcompensating by producing more oil then it needed to.  It was overcompensating for all the make up I was using to cover it up, all the face washes , masks, and moisturizers I was using to attempt to control my acne.  I then decided to try something 100% organic because not only was it the best option for my baby but because maybe my skin is healthy in a more natural state and is simply reacting to everything I put on it. 


I then first began by using 100% shea butter as my moisturizer.  This stuff alone worked like a miracle (this stuff moisturized for 24 hours!).  I would literally see acne disappear overnight.  The vitamins in the shea butter are so good for your skin that it destroys all that bacteria and helps to regulate the oil production.  The huge, painful cystic acne would be so swollen by the end of the day and in the morning after sleeping with the shea on my face it would be diminished to a small red dot.  This really helped maintain my acne (it didn't make my acne go away because it was hormonal acne, but it did maintain it and make it pretty much invisible under makeup).  

I was so satisfied with this result I decided to continue down the natural path.  I then began using African Black Soap as my face wash.

 This again was another miracle worker.  It gets rid of every drop of makeup and dirt on your face giving you the deepest clean possible.  This also has lots of healthy vitamins such as shea, palm oil, tamarind, vitamin E and oats.  These all work together to help balance the skin and even promote new cell growth.  

Lastly, the only problem I had with the black soap was that it would burn my eyes when I would try to use it when removing my eye makeup.  I didn't have any makeup remover at the time so I had heard coconut oil is a good cleanser and decided to use this.  This worked amazing.  Coconut Oil is by far the best makeup remover you can find.  It's cheap, it won't leave an oily residue on your skin, it won't break you out, it doesn't burn your eyes at all, and it can be used for so many other things (hair mask, moisturizer, cooking etc).  

Not only does this remove makeup but it can be used as a facial cleanser by itself.  If you do an oil wash on your skin with coconut oil it's supposed to help regulate oil production and moisturize at the same time.  I haven't tried that out yet but I've heard great reviews about it.  

Oh, and if I needed some extra exfoliation, I used baking soda! This works great by making your skin soft and removing that layer or dead skin (even though the black soap does a great job at that already).  

Surprisingly most of the products I'm using (shea butter and coconut oil) are extremely moisturizing and I would've thought they would've made my already oily skin even oilier! This couldn't be far from true! My oil production has been more under control after switching to this routine.  

As a tip if you have dry skin and need to moisturize in the morning use the shea butter over the coconut oil because the coconut oil will mix weird with your makeup.  Also try to apply the shea butter a little bit before you apply your makeup so that it has time to absorb into your skin and then just dab off any extra before your application and you'll be good to go for the whole day! 

One great thing I forgot to mention, all of these products are super affordable! all under $15 and the African Black Soap can be found for under $5!

These products can all be found online at The Vitamin Shoppe, in bulk on the Coastal Scents Website, or at your local health food/organic store!




TruOrganic.com Free Gift with purchase of $40+

*Post Contains affiliate links

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