Last month, I decided my monthly challenge would be all about skin care. While I have been good about taking care of the skin on my face, I knew I could be doing a lot more work with the skin on my body. The idea was to discover some new things that I could do to help my skin, but the main thing I wanted to do was to work on dry brushing.
Well, I totally failed at dry brushing. I did it a few times, but it just didn’t really work for me. So many times when I’m taking a shower it’s right after a workout. My skin is still damp with sweat and I don’t want to have to dry off the sweat before jumping into the shower. I tried to do it the times I shower when it’s not immediately after a workout, but I didn’t see a benefit from it. I’m not giving up on it, but I know that this part of my skincare plan was a total fail.
But I wouldn’t consider this past challenge a fail because I did discover a few amazing things that have been helping me a lot with skincare. And the new things I figured out have been things that I’ve been doing every day.
First, I stopped using a regular loofah. I’ve been using a loofah poof for as long as I can remember for my body wash. I don’t like using a washcloth or my hands for body soap. A loofah was the best option I knew of. But then when I was in Catalina, my aunt was telling me about exfoliating bath sheets. I had never heard of these before but they seemed like a great upgrade. First, they dry so much faster than a loofah poof which helps to make them not as gross. But you can also scrub your back much easier since it’s a long rectangle. As soon as I got home I got one and I’ve been using it ever since! I feel like I’m getting my skin so much cleaner.
Another thing I discovered was wet skin lotion. I’ve tried in-shower lotions before, but I never liked them. You washed them off your skin so I felt like they were just being wasted. And they always made my shower or tub so slippery. But wet skin lotions are different. You do put them on while in the shower, but after the water is turned off. You apply it just like regular lotion but your skin doesn’t have to be dry. I have found this makes my skin feel much more moisturized and I dry off so much faster! I still use my regular lotion other times during the day, but I know putting this one on right after my shower is the best option for keeping my skin feeling soft.
So while I didn’t succeed at what I planned to do with my skincare, I still succeeded. And I want to take the idea into this month’s challenge. This month, I am challenging myself to be much more accurate in tracking various things in my life. And all of those things are things I’ve had as previous monthly challenges.
This is a combination of a few things. As I mentioned recently, I restarted my budget and I’m working on getting everything set up. It’s pretty much there, but I have to get back into my habit of tracking my money the way I used to. I was getting lazy before and I need to be accurate again in order to make budgeting work. I also have been slacking on tracking my weight and food intake. Both of these things can be an act of defiance, but I see them as more avoiding things. And I’m not always avoiding bad things. I wasn’t tracking my weight when I knew it was going down because I was scared how I would react if I lost more or less than I expected. And with food intake, when I have a very low calorie day for whatever reason, I don’t want to see that and get scared that either I need to force myself to eat or that this is going to cause me to binge later.
I’m not as worried about tracking my money because I feel much less emotion with that. But tracking my weight and food intake will be tough challenges for me to do. I already know I failed at being perfect because yesterday I wasn’t accurate (I was having a horrible nausea day and food was more about trying to see what would make me feel better and not thinking about what I’m eating).
But as I learned last month, just because I started as a fail doesn’t mean I can’t end as a success.
You Might Also Like
A New/Old Challenge (or Using An Idea From Therapy This Month)
Not Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge)
Monthly Challenge Check-In (or Doing My Own Version Of An OTF Challenge This Month)
Taking A Month To Reset (or This Doesn’t Really Feel Like A Monthly Challenge)
I Feel Like Every Monthly Challenge Is The Same (or Will This Be The Month I Get Back On Track?)
Time For Some Planning (or Trying A Challenge Again This Month)
