A Guide To Body Care

Looking after the skin on your body is just as important as your face and like skincare routines, it’s important to implement a daily and weekly bodycare routine to ensure skin remains smooth, supple, hydrated and healthy. Quite often, taking care of the skin on our body isn’t deemed to be as an essential step but for me, there is no better feeling than smooth, hydrated and radiant looking skin all over.

There is more to looking after the skin on your body than applying a cream every other day. Think about how many products and ingredients we use on our faces - acids, masks, actives, preventatives, treatments, the list goes on and this too, can be applied to body-care. There are many different steps to a full bodycare routine that I love to carry out, starting with body brushing and ending with a rich oil.

Body Brushing

If you want to help reduce the appearance of dimples or cellulite then avoid all ‘cellulite reducing’ creams and introduce a body brush into your routine. Designed to boost circulation and get the blood flowing around the body, using a dry brush two to three times a week not only eliminates dead skin cells but improves skin tone, reducing the look of cellulite and makes skin appear smoother.

Physical Scrub

One of my personal favourite bodycare steps and one that I deem to be the most important. Exfoliation is key to maintaining baby soft skin that is free of dryness and dead skin cells. Regular exfoliation helps to maintain a smooth skin texture, radiant limbs and will allow your creams and oils to be far more effective as they aren’t being blocked by a build up of dead skin cells. I use a physical scrub 2-3 times a week and dip between oil based scrubs that leave no need for a cream to be applied on top and creamy, balm-like scrubs that gently buff away at the skins surface.

Chemical Exfoliating

Like AHA’s in our skincare, they are a great ingredient to include in our bodycare as they will help break down the bonds holding dead skin cells together, keeping skin radiant, even and smooth. Typically, these are found in body milk/lotion form so can be used as your daily body cream.

Lotions/Creams

A bodycare essential that should be visible in all skincare routines. Body lotions, butters, creams or milks are a great way to boost skins texture and help keep dryness away. There are so many to choose from today, depending on your texture or scent preference and whether you want to soothe extreme dryness (stick to a fragrance free cream), heal or just have something that is pleasant to use and will act as a daily body moisturiser.

Oils

There is no better feeling than stepping out of a shower or bath and massaging in a rich, nourishing oil that is going to lock in skins moisture, heal and protect. Oils tend to be far richer than creams as they consist only of oil (creams are often mixed with water) and actives tend to be far higher in concentration. Although oils are very nourishing, they don’t hydrate alone due to not containing any water, so I love to apply one on top of a thin lotion to lock in the moisture.