Here is a Method That Helps You to Apply Sunscreen Correctly

photo by beautiful-skies.tumblr.com

It is hot outside. You are bathing in the sun. The sun is burning on streets and on your skin. Everyone knows it: you have to apply sunscreen before ring out in the sun, but hoe does sunscreen really works, which sunscreen should I use and when should I reapply it. If you are interested in this topic then keep on reading. 

How does sunscreen work?
Sunscreen protects your skin from dangerous UV radiation which cause skin cancer, wrinkles and any other skin damages by consisting of different chemical ingredients. As I am not that skilled in answering this question in detail, Everyday Mysteries did a fantastic job in this:

"Sunscreen works by combining organic and inorganic active ingredients. Inorganic ingredients like zinc oxide or titanium oxide reflect or scatter ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Organic ingredients like octyl methoxycinnamate (OMC) or oxybenzone absorb UV radiation, dissipating it as heat. Some sunscreens protect us from the two types of damaging UV radiation: UV-A and UV-B. Both UV-A and UV-B cause sunburns and damaging effects such as skin cancer."
answered by Everyday Mysteries

Which sunscreen should I use?
Recently a serious foundation that is testing product came out that cheap sunscreens from the drugstore do protect the skin best. Expensive luxury brands or even more expensive sunscreens from the drugstore didn't had the right ratio of UVA and UVB factor. Some also claimed to have another SPF than they actually had. So here is cheap better than expensive!

photo by pinterest

Which SPF should I use?
The SPF is in proportion to the intensity of sunrays, so it depends in which region you live. If you live approx. in the 50° latitude then it's fine to use a SPF of 15 in winter and 30 in the summer. Obviously, people in Africa or even in California have to use a higher SPF. However, the choice of SPF also depends on your skin type and your self-protection tim of the sun.

Skin Type 1 (very fair skin, red hair) - 5-10 min
Skin Type 2 (fair skin, blond) - 10-20 min
Skin Type 3 (slightly bronzed skin, dark blonde/brown hair) - 20-30 min
Skin Type 4 (dark, really tanned skin, brown/black hair) - 30-45 min

So this means that when you use a SPF of 30, your personal self-protection time of the sun is multi plicated by 30. So the sunscreen would protect my skin for 5-6 hours (I am skin type 2).

When to reapply sunscreen?
Some sunscreen claim with the banner: "Once a day". Well, totally ignore that because that is definitely not true. Your sunscreen protects your skin for a certain amout of time, as I have mentioned above. Once this time is exceeded, no sunscreen in the world can elongate the time. Thus, after a few hours you just have to go out of the sun, take a break and maybe after a little while you can go back to the sun. But remember, two hours in the sun are definitely enough for everyone.

I hope you found this helpful. Please let me know whether you like bathing in the sun?

Wish you a wonderful day!

Lots of love,

Fitness & Diet Update!

Hello guys!

How are you?
As you might have know from my fitness and recipe posts, I have always been really into this area, however, a lot has changed during the las couple of days. If you want to follow what I am eating, then pleas check out my INSTAGRAM *Link*. I just joined it and post special meals that I do there.

Fitness
So since I moved out into my very first flat, I can't do my indoor home workout from DailyHIIT, Zuzka Light, Blogilates or Jillian Michaels anymore as my neighbours would literally kill me when I do that 5 times a week. Thus, I started to incorporate a lot of jogging in my workout schedule, but firstly, it starts getting really cold and secondly, I always had such a bad feeling while exercising at home.

Therefore, my decision was made: I joined a gym. I recently posted a post in which I tell you the benefits that I detected by joining a gym. Have a look at this post because it explains why I love the gym so much and would take to long to explain it here *Link*

Now I am exercising 4 days a week for about 1-1 1/2 hours. The surprising thing is that it doesn't appear to be so long in the gym. So I am doing a mix of cardio and strength, consisting of 5-10 min warm up on a cardio exercise, then 30-40 min of strength and again 30-45 min of cardio. For my cardio part I usually go running because I burn the most calories there. For the strength part I am currently doing either a full-bdy program or a 3 split program. In a few weeks I am also going to incorporate  a lot of free exercises into my strength program. If I want to try out something new, I just go into one of these courses that the gym provides.

Diet
The focus on my diet is to reduce my body fat, maybe also a tiny bit of weight, but not that much. I just discovered LOOX which provides free nutritional plans. I am going to write a review of this site in a few days, but so far I follow a nutritional plan which is protein based and is designed for 4 weeks. I usually see results pretty fast when I am consequent and so far, I am pretty goof in it, however, I allow myself to have 2-3 cheat meals per week. As I said before, I am going to write a review of this sit, but the plan is a great guideline and help to get your diet in the right direction.

I will let you know how much my body fat percentage has reduced and if I am able to keep this weight. Let me know what do you think about nutritional plans and joining a gym?

I wish you a wonderful day!

Love,

The MOST Effective Weight Loss Recipe!

Hey everybody!

Today I want to show you how you can do a super delicious Stir Fry with rice. This is not only very easy and fast, but also incredibly healthy and thus, also perfect for everyone who wants to get in shape for summer. This is such a basic recipe that I make almost every evening. I hope you enjoy it as I also lost quite a bit of blood while cutting the sweet onions :) 

Stir Fry with Rice (Vegan)

Ingredients (makes 2 large portions)

• 120g of rice in a cooking bag
• 1 onion
• 1 peperoni 
• handful of various veggies (here I used: sweet onion, sweet corn, broccoli, sugar snaps)
• soy sauce
• coriander
• ginger

Instruction

 1. Boil the water in a small pot with a bit of salt.

2. Once it starts boiling, put in the rice in the cooking bag. Cook it as long as the package tells you (here 10 min).

3. While the rice is cooking, cut all the vegetables.

4. Add a bit of olive oil in a pan and head it up.

5. Add all the veggies and fry them till they are slightly brown.

  

  6. Add the cooked rice. Mix it up and flavour it with salt, pepper, soy sauce, ginger and coriander.

And then you are done in about 15 minutes with an incredible delicious meal! For this recipe you can use so many different vegetables, you can add chicken or shrimps, so that it never gets boring.
It is really satisfying and still healthy. So please give it a try and tell me what you think about it!

Have a delicious food day! :)

Love,

Little Known Ways to Find Your Skin Undertone

Determining your skin undertone can help you to make the most flattering choices in make up, jewellery and fashion. Choosing the right colours for you, can make your skin, hair and eyes appear to be more shiny, radiant and glowing. There are different, easy techniques to find out which skin undertone you have. 

Skin undertones

The first one is the cool undertone where you have got rather blue, pink or red undertones. Celebrities with a cool undertone are Januars Jones, Scarlett Johansson, Lucy Lu, Anne Hathaway.

The second one is the warm undertone where you have a more yellow or orange undertone. Celebrities with a warm undertone are Nicole Kidman, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Aniston.

The last one is the neural undertone where there's a mix of warm and cool undertoneExamples of celebrities with a neutral undertone: Dita Von Teese, Alyssa Milano, Kelly Clarkson, Victoria Beckham.

The Vein Test

The easiest way to find out your skin undertone ist to look at the colour of your veins. Just look at your veins on the inside of your wrist. If they are more blue, you have a cool undertone. If they are more green, then you have a warm undertone. If you can tell probably ore they are a mix of both, you are a neutral undertone.

White Fabric Test

Pull your hair back in a tight ponytail and out a white towel or T-shirt around your neck and shoulders. If your skin's reflection ist more blue, you have a cool undertone. If your skin looks more yellow, you are a warm undertone and when your skin looks more green, then you are neutral.

Silver/Gold Test

Put on silver and gold jewelleries and have a look which flatters you most. If silver look better one you, you have a cool undergone. If gold looks better on you have a warm undertone. If you think both look good on you, then you might be neutral.

There is also the possibility to determine your undertone by looking at your eye and hair colour, however, I am not a fan of this techniques, as there are so many exceptions in this techniques. For example, I have green eyes (cool), but dark blond hair with a red undertone (warm). This technique only works for a few people.

These were the techniques to find your skin undertone that worked for me. I hope this was helpful. Let me know which undertone you are!

All the best,

How BenjimanTV saved my life

Hello everyone!

How are you? This blog post will be different from my other posts. This will be a personal message to Benji, also known as Benjimantv who is Judy's husband and also has his own youtube channel (Link) and uploads great food pictures on his Instagram account (Link). I am not silly, I know that he probably will never read this, but I really have to thank him. If you want to know why, then keep on reading.

Dear Benji,

firstly, congratulations on birth of your lovely girls Keira and Miya. Also with having your sweet daughter Julianna and the wonderful Judy, you are having such a beautiful family!
You are not only a great father and inspiring considering your regular workout routine, but also an amazing cook. And that's actually the point of this post. You are focusing on cooking healthy with lots of vegetables while keeping it tasty. Additionally, you are combining Japanese food with international recipes. I love the excitement that you put into buying groceries and preparing the recipes and in the end, sharing that all with us.

Because of you, I have rediscovered my passion for healthy cooking, enjoying cooking and actually carrying about what I put into my body.
The thing is that I have a rather hard relationship with food. 4 years ago I became anorexic. The cause were personal problems in school including bullying. It took me a long time to find a way out of this illness and only stopped therapy 1 1/2 years ago. Since then my relationship to food stayed pretty difficult as I swapped between an incredible healthy lifestyle to eating total crap.
It was never that bad that I only ate fast food because I always stayed an athletic person and never wanted to ruin my body totally. However, I stopped carrying about food, I didn't enjoy eating and didn't want to eat any veggies explicitly.
You not only pushed myself back into my old fitness level, but also revived the conscience of eating healthy and actually carrying about what I put into my body. I am also not talking about a temporary change as I already changed my whole eating habits for one month now and I am not even thinking about changing this any soon. As everyone says, fitness and health is made in the kitchen and I can totally confirm this.
So thank you so so much, Benji! By sharing your healthy and tasty recipes with the world, you have changed my life completely. You helped me to come back on track and to actually build up a healthy relationship to food.
Thank you very much for this!!!


All the best,

Marie