Include these tips in your diet for glowing wedding day ready skin!

Many brides these days are opting for a fresher, more natural style of makeup and to really nail this look, it’s so important to get your inner health right if you want to truly glow on the outside.

Recently I had the pleasure of working on gorgeous bride Jess as her hair and makeup artist for wedding day at the beautiful Ravensthorpe just south of Wollongong. Jess is a practicing dietitian so I thought that she could offer great insight on preparing my future brides with better skin from within from a nutrition point of view.

Jess on her wedding day looking all fabulous! 

While I’ve worked in the beauty industry for 16 years and have a pretty good understanding of  healthy lifestyle practices, Jess, being a qualified and trusted dietitian has some practical advice and changes you can make immediately to help you find your inner glow!

For those of you that are time poor here is a quick summary;

1. Drink more water- 3 litres over the course of a day. Not all at once otherwise you’ll need to pee every 5 minutes!
2. Include healthy fats in your diet (hello avocado!!)
3. If you don’t want dark circles under your eyes, don’t cut out the carbs! ( all explained below!)
4. Vitamin A will help skin clarity and even the tone ( think bright coloured veggies!)
5. Say goodbye to ice cream and cow’s milk if you want to put yourself under the ultimate test for glowing skin! ( ok, so this one killed me to cut out ice cream, but hey, it’s for a good cause right?!!)

Increasing Vitamin A, Found in bright coloured fruits and veggies will help brighten your skin!

For those that want to know why the above may be beneficial, read on for Jess’s tips…

When wanting to make your skin glow it’s important to be able to start with a flawless base, and as most of us would know, it can be challenging to cover up a blemish, dry patch or dark circles under our eyes without caking on the products. 

Michelle can offer you some tips to start getting your skin wedding ready; which products to use that best suit your skin type and one that she also swears by; making sure you drink enough water! 

I may not be able to offer any additional advice on skincare; however, I do know a thing or two about diet and its impact on skin, having trained and worked as an Accredited Practising Dietitian.

Below I share with you some advice to bring out your own natural glow and have your skin looking fab in time for your very own wedding day.

• Keep Hydrated! The average person requires 3L of water per day. For some, this may seem like quite a challenge, but when spaced across the day, more water is absorbed, as opposed to downing a litre at time and running off to the ladies every half hour! The skin is composed of 65% water, drinking enough water helps to hydrate the deep and superficial skin layers, keeping your external skin appearance plump. Unfortunately, once the damage (often from over exposure to sun and smoking) is done, water cannot reverse the effects and instead temporarily hides the wrinkles by ‘filling the gaps’, a further encouragement to ensure good hydration day to day!
• Eat healthy fats! In the lead up to a wedding, many women feel obliged to lose weight and often following very low-calorie diets, often restricting intake of fat. Essential fatty acids (those that cannot be produced by our bodies) such as omega 3, help to keep the skin glowing. Omega 3 fats have been shown to reduce inflammation (redness), dryness and flaking of skin. Omega 3 fats can be found in foods such as oily fish (tuna, salmon, sardines and mackerel), walnuts, tahini, chia seeds, canola oil, eggs, flaxseed and soy products. Try to include multiple serves of omega 3 fats daily!
• Don’t cut out carbs! Carbohydrates are forever being given a bad wrap. And its true, some carbohydrates aren’t great for you, especially when they have been refined, nutrients and fibre removed, and sugar and saturated fats added in. Eating the right TYPE (Low Glycaemic Index or Low GI) of carbs helps keep your energy levels stable, reducing the likeliness of becoming exhausted and tired (cue circles under eyes) and reaching for those refined sugary treats which are well known to cause acne breakouts. Choose carbs that are high in fibre, minimally processed and made from wholegrains (oats, quinoa, barley, multigrain breads) and fibrous root vegetables and fresh fruit and keep sweets treats as ‘treats’ only, your skin will thank you for it.
• Vitamin A deficiency can cause discolouring and blotchiness of skin, dry skin and hair and broken finger nails. Eating a wide variety of fruit and vegetables can ensure you get an adequate intake of Vitamin A. Vitamin A is found in most brightly coloured foods including pumpkin, mangoes, capsicum, paw paw and tomatoes, carrots just to name a few. And, as vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin, it is best absorbed when eaten with healthy fats!
• A word on dairy. There is currently no concrete evidence on the association between dairy consumption and acne, however some small-scale studies have displayed a relationship between dairy milk and ice cream consumption and an increase in adult acne. Yoghurt and cheese don’t appear to have the same effect. If you are considering trialling a reduction in dairy milk to see if it improves your skin, ensure you choose a high protein, calcium fortified alternative like soy milk (unfortunately both almond and rice milk are very low in calcium and offer little to no protein, they are also often packed full of thickeners and sweeteners to enhance taste and mouth feel). For more information, see an Accredited Practising Dietitian (www.daa.com.au)

By keeping your body AND your mind healthy; and yes I know this can be hard when you’ve got game changing decisions to make like trying to choosing between Peonies and David Austin roses or finding the ‘perfect’ shade of winey-burgundy-plumy coloured ribbon to tie napkins with (yes I was that crazy; ask the fabulous florist Leah Mitchell and staff at Ravensthorpe Guest House!), you will shine on your wedding day like the true beauty that your husband- to-be fell in love with!

-Jess Nicholas-

To view the full image Gallery of Jess’s gorgeous wedding captured by Gavin Cato Photography, click here!

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Thanks so much Jess for your professional insight! Even though my wedding day was 6 years ago there is some really practical advice here that anyone can use, and I know I’ll be certainly taking on board point 3! Don’t cut out carbs. It makes SO MUCH SENSE now that I read it, but yes, I too have been on a low carb bandwagon on and off for many years. And for what? To feel tired and hungry by 3pm which makes me reach for that afternoon treat. Tired = looking and feeling pretty useless, and now that I’m a busy working mum, that point resinates all too much for me. Quite simply, to have the energy to get through the day equates to me not looking and feeling like crap! Who would have thought?! 🙂 That’s the perfect incentive right there to reach for that additional banana!

Get in touch and let me know what changes you are going to make in the lead up to your day! 

Michelle.x