Why Healthy Skincare Matters to Overall Health (And a Big Announcement!)

40 Aprons is excited to announce that we now offer Beautycounter’s healthy skincare products: safer, effective skincare for women and their families. Wellness doesn’t stop with how you move, how you care for your mind, and what you put in your body; what you put on your body is important, too! And we don’t think that the thousands of chemicals (or, hey, carcinogens!) that are legal to put in everyday skincare products belong in your total wellness plan.

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The month of July, I’m giving away your choice of a free gift with a purchase of $150 or more. Choose from the Charcoal Cleansing Bar, Protect Stick Suncreen, Lengthening Mascara, or Baby Soothing Oil (amazing for you, too!). Send me a message and tell me what you want and where to send it, and it’ll be on its way.

Yeah, but that’s not even the most exciting part… I’m raffling a tube of Countermatch Adaptive Moisture Lotion. You know, the one that sold out in the first day? Well, I have a tube, and I want you to have it. So one lucky beauty will have their free gift upgraded to a full-size tube of Countermatch. And yes, you have my permission to gloat on Instagram…

All of this to celebrate the 40 Aprons launch of Beautycounter! So make sure you stock up on healthier beauty and skincare products this month and treat your wellness truly holistically.

Buying your Beautycounter through 40 Aprons helps us continue to provide free recipes, resources, books, and challenges! Also, Leo likes to eat. JUST SAYING. ?

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Y’all, I can barely contain my excitement. Today’s such a big day: Whole Body Whole Mind Total Wellness Challenge officially launches and I have a big announcement to go with it! And no, I’m pregnant.

The great part about Whole Body Whole Mind is that you can do it anytime you need to reset and refocus on your own wellness, using a holistic and gentle approach. You set your own goals, tend to every part of your own wellness, including clean eating, mindfulness, physical activity, and relationships. Then, you work up to your long-term, sustainable goals by adding to your frequency each week.

Quick example? If you want to do yoga three times a week, every week on a regular basis, you’ll start with doing yoga one time a week. The next week, say Week 2 of the challenge, you’ll do yoga two times a week. We don’t force extremes on our bodies, nope. Instead, we work with them from a place of care and ambition to set real habits that we can manage for, well, forever.

And so, over the last few months as I worked to develop and design Whole Body Whole Mind, I’ve thought a lot about what total wellness means to me. Does it mean eating a Whole30-inspired or paleo diet 5 times a week? Honestly, no, it doesn’t. To me, it means being smart about the foods I eat and the moderation I cultivate, eating tons of plants, reasonable portions of animal protein, cultured dairy, grass-fed butter, moderate amounts of grains, and high-quality breads with minimal ingredients and processing. Essentially, when I spent the time thinking about how I wanted to eat in the long term, I realized that I had no problem eating foods that other cultures have been thriving on for centuries.

And when I turned my attention to my mind, I realized that there are so many opportunities to cultivate mindfulness and disconnect beyond a regular meditation routine. During the challenge, I’ll begin working on my long-term goals to put the phone down, reconnect with my family, and stop treating my smartphone like an extra appendage.

This inspection of total wellness led me to something I’d previous missed: the health of the products I use on my skin. Using healthy skincare products used to be extremely important to me, you know… before I had Leo. I spent hours poring over studies and product descriptions, trying to figure out what wasn’t safe to put on my skin, which were the healthiest products that I could find, and which ones actually worked. But as I got busier and my attentions turned towards Leo, the attention to my own safe skincare dissipated.

Of course, we’ve only ever used safe products on Leo’s skin! We know how important it is to avoid slathering industrial chemicals on your largest organ (your skin!), and so we’ve prioritized healthy skincare products for Leo since the day he was born. It wasn’t until I spent weeks thinking about my own wellness that I realized ignoring the safety of my skincare left a hole in my holistic health. A missing piece: no matter how well I eat, move, meditate, and care for my relationships, if I’m coating my skin in parabens and carcinogens, I’m not cultivating true, total wellness.

Did you know that there are 1400 chemicals banned for cosmetic use in the European Union? Anyone want to guess how many are banned in the U.S.?

Yeah, 30. Including carcinogens, so, OK.

But what I mean is… not OK.

• Recent studies have found over 200 industrial chemicals in the cord blood of newborns.
• Another study showed that teens who switched to safer beauty products reduced the chemicals in their blood by 20-40%!
• Pregnant women are especially vulnerable; exposure to chemicals during fetal development can affect the child’s health outcomes later in life.
• Another study showed that skincare products you use can affect the amount of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in one’s body. Um, hard pass.
• And this very new study linking heavy metals and autism only motivates me to continue to prioritize the safety of what I put in and on Leo’s body.

Beautycounter’s Never List includes over 1500 harmful or questionable chemicals that they’ll never use in their products, including, you guessed it, the carcinogens (?). I started learning more about Beautycounter, being educated by other real food and wellness bloggers I know and respect. One being a doctor, the other being a neuroscientist, I totally trusted them when it comes to the science behind the chemicals to avoid and the safety of Beautycounter’s products. And considering how gorgeous they are, I trusted the effectiveness of the products!

But, of course, I had to try it for myself. And y’all? In love. Not only did I start feeling better about the safety of what I was putting on my body, but my skin was immediately smoother and more moisturized. I stopped having to exfoliate every other day, which I’ve been doing for nearly 10 years! That outcome alone blew me away, and how rich and moisturizing all of the products I use on my skin and on Leo’s just sold me 100 times over.

So, to avoid putting you through the hours of research and testing and review-reading that I did years ago, I’m making it super easy. Beautycounter doesn’t use anything that’s unsafe or iffy and they run trials on all of their products, validating the effectiveness of everything. Skip the independent research project and skip the crappy but healthy skincare: Beautycounter is where it’s at.

I’m a huge fan of the Baby line, both for me and for Leo, and we use the Kids line on my little man, too. The makeup is so just pretty, and the skincare line feels just so luxurious. I think you’ll love pretty much anything you order with BC, but if you have any questions about what products would work best for you, please reach out to me! I’m more than happy to chat about skincare product safety, makeup tips, or product recommendations.

And, because I love y’all…

The month of July, I’m giving away your choice of a free gift with a purchase of $150 or more. Choose from the Charcoal Cleansing Bar, Protect Stick Suncreen, Lengthening Mascara, or Baby Soothing Oil (amazing for you, too!). Send me a message and tell me what you want and where to send it, and it’ll be on its way.

Yeah, but that’s not the most exciting part… I’m raffling a tube of Countermatch Adaptive Moisture Lotion. You know, the one that sold out in the first day? Well, I have a tube, and I want you to have it. So one lucky beauty will have their free gift upgraded to a full-size tube of Countermatch. And yes, you have my permission to gloat on Instagram…

All of this to celebrate the 40 Aprons launch of Beautycounter! So make sure you stock up on healthier beauty and skincare products this month and treat your wellness truly holistically.