 Seven mistakes that are aging you much faster than you need to. We're gonna talk about those seven right now. Hello, everyone. I am so glad that you're here with me today. Thank you for joining me. This video was born of me trying to realize what have I changed since I hit about 50 years old and started into menopause and what have I changed that really has made me still feel youthful and those are the things that I was kind of holding on to as a young person. I know that mid-40s to late-40s is really not a young person, but I still felt really young. I still feel really young, but there are certain things that happen to your skin and we really kind of need to change as we go along and so I'm gonna talk about those today. We're gonna start off with one that I think is so important because I just researched this and that is exfoliating your skin. Now this might seem like something that is kind of controversial to people because people feel like you don't want to disrupt our skin's natural barrier, our moisture barrier, or you feel like some can be too harsh, that kind of thing. I'm with you. I know that very recently my skin has gotten very sensitive and I finally figured out what product that was, but while I was going through that, my skin was really looking rough and there were parts of it, even my eyelids that were sloughing and I was like, oh my goodness, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna get that off of my eyelids without really, you know, hurting my eyelids because they were burning and so I researched and I started to find out how important it is to exfoliate. Number one, because they say that 18 to 22 of the top layers of our skin is dead skin. That's a big deal because that means that we have a lot to go through to get to pretty new skin underneath and that's the skin that looks so youthful. Now as we age, our skin turns over much less rapidly, so it hardly turns over by the time you're my age and beyond. It takes like six weeks for our skin to turn over or longer to get rid of all those dead skin cells. So what we need to do as mature women and men is we need to take that off ourselves, give a little boost to nature and try to figure out how the best way to get that off, but we don't want to irritate our skin because then that can lead to other things. So I have a couple of suggestions for you, some things that I've been doing every day and have been really helping me to have a brighter complexion, get rid of that old, dead, yucky skin. This first one I've shown before on my channel, but I have a renewed love for it and it's from Good Molecules and it's the Pineapple Exfoliating Powder. This comes out in a powder. You work it into a paste with some water in your hands and then you rub it in and it takes off the dead skin cells. Now I was using it to where I was leaving it a little bit granular, where it was just a little bit gritty, but I found out through trial and error that it's better to really work it into a paste that's smooth and then go over your face. And the reason is it's because it's much less irritating, but it still does the job fantastically. I just do that and then I will rub it all in. I will go in and I will use a cloth or a washcloth to go in and just, you know, kind of scrub it a little bit. I'm not really aggressive with it, but it just leaves my skin so smooth and I've been using this every single morning. Now, I know that there are so many people that are against exfoliating every single day, but I feel like what it's doing to my skin is really helping and so I am using this every single day. And then at night, I have been using City Beauty's Dermal Reset Exfoliating Concentrate. This is really, really gentle. It has ingredients in it that buffer the exfoliation process too, and I've been using it for several weeks now and have not had any irritation whatsoever, but I have in the morning noticed that I've had extra sloughing, which I think is great. So along with our Retin-A, our vitamin C, and of course our sunscreen, we want to be exfoliating our skin to show the pretty new skin through. Now, along those same lines is that you might not be moisturizing enough. Now, this may seem very counterintuitive if you're somebody that has combination skin or oily skin, and that's because during the day you're still combating those oils. For me, I have really dry skin, and we're headed into the season where we turn on our forced-air heaters. It gets even worse for me. So for me, I have to moisturize extra. I will do double moisture on those times. You have heard me talk over and over again about products that I use that really, really help with that moisture and plump up wrinkles. And that's what I want you to think about more than anything, no matter what skin type you are. This area right here underneath our eyes can show up our wrinkles and it will, no matter what. But we still can plump that area up a ton with moisture. Now, I'm talking about the morning here for extra moisture. And what I will do is I will go in and I will put all of my skincare on, all my serums, my moisturizer. And then I'm going to go in with this heavy-duty cream that I have talked about forever. This is the Sukoyakasuhara Urea Eye Cream. This is a cream that I have been using probably for four years and I will not be without it. And any of you that have tried this, you have told me time and again how much you love it, how decreased you cannot believe your wrinkles are underneath there and how much better your eyes look. It is fantastic for moisture. It's not a treatment. Your treatment comes from your serums and the other things that you put on. But this is a moisturizer that's going to help plump those up, not only for the first hour or two, but all day long. I will notice that at the end of the day, my eyes still look very moisturized, still very plumped up, and it just helps what my eye makeup looks like all day long. It looks so much better. So I would suggest this is one that I kind of just hammer into everybody all the time. But for me, this has helped keep my eyes looking more youthful, not wearing the right moisturizer on days when I get lazy or I don't feel good and I'm just in bed, not wearing any moisturizer under there. I go past the mirror and I'm like, whoa, you don't look good, girl. And it's just one of those days when you feel like that just is so dried out. And it just looks like paper thin and cakey and creepy. And it's just not a good look. So this has really helped me combat that. This is a lifesaver. If you are using a different eye cream that you love, go for it. Just try using a lot more of it or try using it twice during your routine. One of the things that I think can really age us or make us look not as good as we could, not as youthful as we could, is our teeth yellowing and getting dull through age. It can be a combination of time and, you know, our teeth just getting yellow or it can be what we eat and drink if we like a lot of coffee or we like a lot of things that stain our teeth, it can really be yellowing. And that can make our smile look dull, which can make us look a little older than we are. I get asked all the time how I keep my teeth so white. First of all, I have pretty white teeth to begin with. My mom must have done something really good when she was pregnant with me. I don't know. But somewhere about the age of 32, 33, I discovered Crest White Strips and that is all I've ever used. I've never had my teeth whitened with devices or at the dentist's office or anything like that. I've always used Crest White Strips. You can find the off brand on those, but these ones that they came out with, I don't know, a few years ago, I find have just made my smile even wider than it ever whiter than it ever was before. This is the Crest 3D White Strips and it's brilliant white and it's levels nine times whiter. It takes off every stain that I have on my teeth. I love these things. They're so easy to use. They come individually. So each packet has a top and a bottom that you just put on. And I make sure that I just kind of push them down in between the teeth. So I'm getting all the way in between the teeth. Make sure that I go up above the tooth line and then you just wrap them around your teeth and you let them sit there for 30 minutes, take them off and you can brush your teeth then or you can just rinse your mouth out. These are great. I, like I said, I've been using them for 20 plus years and I think that they have really helped me keep my smile a lot brighter and it can really make a difference in the way you come across and the way you come across a little bit more confident with a brighter smile can make you feel and look more youthful. The next thing that I am a firm believer in more than anything because of what experience has taught me in the past probably six to eight months is having your hair look unhealthy can aid you so much. Now, the reason that I cut so much off of my hair is because it seems like when I hit menopause, I had this big, you know, mane of hair that went down my back. I loved my hair, but my hair fell out in tons also because of my weight loss. But also because when you hit menopause, your hair just thins. So really only the only way to really be able to combat that is to make sure you're getting good nutrition, possibly take a hair skin and nail supplement that can really help you and use a shampoo, which I'll link my shampoo below. It's a DHT blocker, which helps the follicles not lose their hair so rapidly. And I really love all those things. But not getting your hair trimmed. If you like long hair, I'm not saying cut your hair off. I'm not saying that at all because I think long hair is absolutely gorgeous. But I think that keeping it very well maintained is a huge deal. If you have short hair, if you have long hair, you need to have it trimmed on a regular basis. That's between you and your stylist. Me, I'm about every three months. I go quite a ways in between my trims, but I make sure that I do that because it does make my hair look a lot healthier. Now, the other thing is make sure that you're giving your hair moisture. Our hair is basically dead cells. It's the same thing as our fingernails, and it really is dead cells that needs a lot of moisture. You cannot drink, you cannot take a supplement, anything like that, that's going to nourish this this hair because it's dead once it comes out of that follicle. So if you're moisturizing it from the outside, that's a huge deal about two times a week, sometimes three. I'll use the L'Oreal L-Vive Total Repair. This is a 17 percent concentrate with protein and almond oil. I really like this. It's super thick, so kind of concentrate on your ends. Don't you don't necessarily need to get it down in the roots. That's going to probably make your hair feel oily. And if you have oily scalp already, you're not going to like that. But I concentrate on the ends. I will just clip it up in one of those lobster clips or whatever they're called, and I will just leave it on the top of my head while I'm doing other things in the shower, shaving, whatever. And I really enjoy this a lot. You don't necessarily need this one, but I suggest that you get a really good thick one that has some good ingredients in it that's going to nourish your hair from the outside in because it needs that moisture, just like our skin needs the moisture put on, it really does need extra. And then the other thing that I discovered that I've talked about a couple of times on my channel is the John Frieda Luminous Glaze for All Shades Clear Shine Gloss. This is just a treatment that you put on. You can do it in the shower. Personally, what I do is about every two weeks, I will wash my hair in the sink and then I will go ahead and condition it. And after I'm done rinsing that out, I'll towel dry my hair really well. And then I will go ahead and I will put this on my hair and I will just leave it on for 30 minutes, approximately, and just pile my hair on top of my head. Again, clip it and, you know, just go about doing housework or whatever. And then after the 30 minutes, I'll go in and I will rinse it off and then style my hair as normal. And it just really has really helped with the shine of my hair. My hair was looking so dull and so dingy. It just looked like it just didn't have any life to it because of everything that it had been going through. So I decided that I was going to pick this up because I think I saw it in a lure magazine, you know, I get the feed in my email and it was touting how great this is and it really is good. Well, that's one thing that I think can really age you is when we don't take care of our hair, when it looks tired, when it looks dull, when it looks unhealthy, that can kind of age us a little bit more. But it's a really easy fix to make us look a little bit younger. OK, back to a couple of things about our makeup. One of the things that I think is so important is getting your foundation right. And I did just do a foundation tutorial, which I will link for you that has all the steps. But I'm sure you would probably agree that if a person gets too much foundation on or if they get foundation that's patchy or if they get foundation that's too orange, all of those things can contribute to them looking older. Too much foundation is going to settle into those fine lines and wrinkles, the stuff around our nose, it's going to look cakey. And every time we smile, every time we have a facial expression, it's going to make us look older. Those things can all be avoided by doing just a simple few things after you're done putting on your makeup. And the biggest thing for me that I learned is just using a dampened beauty sponge to go over that makeup, no matter how you put it on. If you put it on with your fingers, with the brush, with the beauty sponge, go and turn it on a side that's clean and just dot over your makeup or press over your makeup everywhere with that dampened beauty sponge. You do not want it to be wet. You don't want it to be damp to the point that you even feel it. What you're wanting is for that to pick up any excess off of your face so that your makeup won't look cakey. It won't look like it's gathering in any places. It will just look like your skin because you've taken the time to really press it in with that beauty sponge, pressing it into the pores, pressing it wherever it needs to be kind of evened out a little bit and picking up the excess. I find that that is a huge, huge deal for me lately. And if there's one thing that I could talk about, it would be that. The other thing that I really feel strongly about and I will link this video as well as is concealer. I don't wear concealer anymore. The reason being is because I am too old and it gets too much, too cakey around there. If you love the concealer that you use, go for it. Keep using it. I am not telling you not to do something that you love because I truly believe that makeup is individual and we can do whatever we want to at the end of the day. Another thing as far as what I have learned recently is I was still stuck in the 90s with my pencil thin eyebrows. I was painting them in and I was filling them in and it just was. It wasn't a good look. It just made me look like I was dated, like I was older and it just didn't make me look youthful and completely not doing your eyebrows is a mistake, too. You don't do your eyebrows. You look like something's missing. These are the frames of our eyes. And so if you if you haven't done them in the past, if you don't tweeze them, that kind of thing, I suggest you go somewhere, spend a few extra dollars, have them shaped the first time for yourselves so that you know what, where you're going with them, and then you can easily paint them in or pluck any extra hairs out after that. But it's nice to have somebody do that in the beginning so that you have a guide to go by. You can get those stencils that are great on Amazon or whatever. I'll link one or two of those for you, too. And they're super easy to do. You just put that stencil up there and you tap along there. It's all over TikTok and Instagram. So that's easy to do, too. For me, I just use a regular brow pencil. But I make mine thicker and I try to make them look a little bit more fluffy than I ever have in my life. And that reason is because when you look at a young person, especially a teenager, they have thick eyebrows. They have a lot of eyebrows and their eyebrows usually need a little bit of a pluck or whatever, but they look youthful because it's so fluffy and thick. And so that's what I've been trying to do lately is make them a little bit wider, bring them up a little bit, show those arches just a tiny bit, which is hard for me to do. I use an eyebrow pencil and I also use a tamer or a little brush with a gel, clear gel or I've been loving lately the Sephora Collection gel that they have. That's actually a color. It makes everything look really fluffy and it has little fibers in it. So I've been really loving that. And I've noticed that my look really looks a lot better. The last thing that I'm going to talk about is something that, oh, boy, I fought for ever and I wanted to hang on to this because again, I was a 90s girl. This is what we did. We lined our eyes all the way around and in the inner water line with a black liner. I this is the only one I have left, but I really truly believe that that was aging me. It was making my eyes look older. The number one reason is because it makes your eyes look smaller. Anything that you want to reseed, we make it darker, make it a shadow. And black can't get any more of a shadow than black. And I want to show you what I'm talking about. So you put this on in a stark, stark line, right? That's what we did all while we were growing up. We use that stark line. We used it all the way around. What I've been doing is using a brown. This is a brown that I have and you're going to look and you're going to see that at first glance, that doesn't look much different. It's a little bit lighter, but I don't use it like that anymore. So what I do is I just go out here about a quarter of an inch with my liner. So I'll put just a tiny bit on instead of a whole bunch. And then I go in with a brush or a smudger of some sort and I will smudge that out. And I will keep smudging until I get a really soft line. Look how much difference that is. You're going to notice this right away. This is going to be a softer look. Sometimes if I get this even too dark over here, I'll go over it with a lighter eyeshadow just to lighten it up. It really has been helping me and it just has been opening my eyes for one. I'm not bringing anything down here into the center to, you know, distract from pulling my eyes up as I age and wanting to have the focus out here instead of all the way around the eyes. So this is a huge deal for me. I'm not saying that you can't wear a color. This is a bare minerals color and this is the same thing. Put it just a little tiny line out there on the edge of your eye there and then smudge that in and you will be shocked that you can wear whatever color you want to, but it looks so good because it's so soft. And that is really the key to making our eyes look better. OK, so that is the seven tips. I do hope that you enjoyed seeing those for me. I am almost through perimenopause or premenopause and I'm almost to postmenopause and I'm noticing that all of these things really are helping a lot. And I hope that you did enjoy seeing my little tips and tricks to correct the things that we might have been doing that are making us look older and are very easy to correct and change just a little bit of tweaking there and will look younger and more youthful. So please give this video a thumbs up if you did enjoy it on your way out of here and tell me down in the description box if there's anything in particular that you have done that you feel like has really helped you feel more youthful, look more youthful, there we could go on and on all day about this topic. But I'd love to hear your input to love everyone so very much. Please take care of yourselves and stay safe. I appreciate you and I'll catch you all in my next video. Love you much. Bye bye.