skysenshi.com

Haha. Been meaning to do a blog post on something still related to my P100-A-Day Challenge and I thought about skin care. A few women asked me how I’m surviving in the skin care / grooming part when I was on a poverty diet, so here it is.

I’m no longer on the P100/day challenge because I’ve been eating more often now (so it’s now up to about P150-P200/day) but my standard of living has changed so drastically that I thought I should share it with other women who are also on a budget. In addition, I happened to unearth some old photos (old, like 11 years ago) of myself and realized that I must be doing something right today because I seem to look older THEN. I’m posting the comparison photos at the very end.

Anyway…on to my blog entry.

Well first of all, I am lazy with lotions. I wish I could muster the diligence it takes to apply body lotion every day but I only remember to do this perhaps once a month or once a week. So I heavily rely on a good moisturizing bath soap like Dove:

I usually buy those “Save P15” packs of three. I forgot how much these cost but I doubt each bar would go over P40. It just became a habit to get these off the grocery shelves.

Next: Moisturizers. Sometimes I use Human Nature balancing toner at night before I moisturize. I don’t do this during the day. I just go ahead and moisturize with:

Uh, yeah…hope this wasn’t shocking but Prosource Virgin Coconut Oil (VCO) is now my night moisturizer while Human Nature’s Sunflower Beauty Oil serves as my morning moisturizer. Both are a little over P200. The VCO can be bought at Mercury Drug while the sunflower oil can be bought online. I use them both for taming my wild hair, too.

Incidentally, I also use VCO for my legs and it made my skin really soft. They would usually feel bristly after shaving but I don’t have that problem anymore since this became a habit. For my face, I might opt for something stronger when I finally have the budget again. In the meantime, it seems to do the job well so far. (Note: some women might experience clogging because VCO is very thick. That’s why I use it at night.)

Next: No matter how poor I get, I will never go out of the house without sunblock.

This is my brand. I discovered it when make-up artist Nayna Katigbak did my hair and make-up during my brother’s wedding and she told me that this was the perfect make-up base. This costs about P388. I’ve tried other, more expensive sunblocks before (will write a review/comparison someday), but I’m loving this the most.

I am happy enough with just this and I usually don’t need foundation anymore. I’ve come to terms with my moles and dark spots. During my teaching days, however, it’s a totally different matter and I’d like a more mature, polished look. On those days, I would opt to wear foundation:

This is Human Nature’s Perfect Coverage Mineral Foundation in Caramel. It’s supposed to be medium coverage but I like that it’s lightweight, much similar to putting on face powder.

Of course, when you put on make-up, there will be times when your face gets a bit oily. I don’t add more make-up to stop the oil. That would just make me feel yucky. Instead, I use this:

Mary Kay oil mattifier. I just dab some of this on the oily areas of my face and I’m good to go. It costs approximately P600 but it goes a long long long long looooooooong way. It’s been almost a year and a half since I first bought this for my brother’s wedding and I still haven’t finished it off. If I compute for the number of months this has been useful to me, I’d say it costs about P40/month.

And here is the most important(!!!):

3.5-4 liters of water daily. I was never a fan of water, until my doctor (internal medicine) forced me to make peace with it. Apparently, there’s also a science to this. For you to be able to absorb all that, you should drink it deliberately. If you chug all of it in one go, you will just end up peeing most of it.

By the way, I note my liquid intake like this:

Some older people, who saw me doing this at parties, were shocked. But you see, if I don’t do this, I would completely forget to drink water. Water is cheap. My condo purified water is P40/5 gallons and no office should exist without a water station. Drinking it is a small price to pay for avoiding hospital visits driven by dehydration, digestion problems and possibly UTI.

The biggest plus for all you kikays out there? Well, when I went home to my parents’ place some time ago, my sister exclaimed that my skin looked better now than it did 5-10 years back. And heck, 5 years ago, I used to spend most of my salary on expensive department store moisturizers and make-up. Sheesh. If I had known water would have this effect on my skin, I’d have saved hundreds and thousands of pesos. I am not kidding.

Let me give you a comparison: I managed to dig up a few photos while I was cleaning my laptop and I found some old ones from 11 years ago. Check it out:

The photos on the top row were of me in heavy make-up. I had to cover my bad skin with a lot of make-up back then.

The recent photos on the bottom row were of me without foundation. The bottom left one was almost completely devoid of make-up, while the bottom right one only had me putting on some eyeliner and mascara.

I was actually quite surprised when I unearthed these photos and realized that I look much younger now than I did 10 years ago. Water gave me something that no expensive moisturizer could give.

That’s about it. Whew! That was a long post. Hope I did not bore you. Thanks for reading! =^.^=