Diet: a special course of food to which a person restricts themselves, either to lose weight or for medical reasons. “I’m going on a diet”
synonyms: dietary regime, dietary regimen, dietary programme, restricted diet, crash diet

I bet I can guess how the majority of your conversations are going this January.

Let me see….

Someone is doing dry January. Someone else has joined weightwatchers. Another friend has given up sugar and a different one is rebelling against it all and scoffing everyone’s left over Christmas chocolate.

Am I right?

And yes, all of these things are well and good, and being healthy should be encouraged, but I am becoming increasingly annoyed by the fact that most people are doing these things because they feel pressured to lose weight. Because they have been conditioned for years and years to believe that if they are not slim then they are not healthy or attractive or good enough. The diet industry and advertising work hard to make us monitor every morsel and scrap of food we put in our mouths and then feel guilty and like failures when we do not achieve ‘slim’ status.

And I for one have HAD ENOUGH.

For starters being slim does not equal being healthy. Many diets encourage you to rob your body of vital nutrients, which then, along with having a 95% failure rate anyway, damage your body even further, and make it highly likely that your metabolism will be permanently screwed and you’ll end up gaining weight in the long term.

And anyway, who decided skinny was the ultimate make of body in the first place?

When I meet with my girlfriends the majority of the conversations we have focus on our bodies, and our self-loathing of them. Someone is always trying to ‘be good.’ Someone else is also always complaining about how fat they feel. No one is ever happy.

But also no one ever seems to address their health, mental or physical, with the same level of importance. When we greet each other we say, ‘Oh you look well,’ or ‘have you lost weight?’ Never ‘Oh you look happy today!’ or ‘have you been inspirational lately?’ We always focus on what we look like on the outside and it is ALL wrong. And it is also an unhealthy way to behave as it perpetuates the belief that unless we are skinny we are not attractive, are lazy and greedy and not good enough.

But we are all good enough. Our bodies are the most magical and amazing things no matter what shape or size we are. OK, yes, being morbidly obese isn’t great and in that case a sensible plan of eating and exercise is without doubt what is needed, but most of the people I know who feel like a fat piece of crap are way below the average size of a woman. And yes, I know it’s also ‘all relative’ and about how that person feels about themselves personally, but again, I reiterate, who the hell decided skinny was the goal we should all strive for? When did curves become a bad thing? Who decided curves needed to be photoshopped out of existence in magazines and posters?

If you are doing dry January or are giving up refined sugar then I applaud you, but please do it for your health, and don’t for one minute think you’ll be happier if and when you are skinny. It doesn’t work like that. We’ve been conditioned to believe it does and that skinny = perfection, but I want to challenge that. Body image at the moment is messed up and we are raising a generation of girls who are becoming anxious about their weight as young as seven.

Stop focusing on weight and focus on health. On feeling energised. On enjoying life for it is often too painfully short.

You’re all blooming gorgeous – believe it!!!

This post also appeared on The Huffington Post – http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/../../jen-faulkner/since-when-did-skinny-equ_b_14101574.html 

At the age of thirty-nine and with a fifteen year old daughter I am very aware of how to take the perfect selfie – how to tilt my head; choose a filter – and my friends often joke about how I Instagram the sh** out of everything. I once even downloaded an app that smoothed away my laughter lines and erased my wrinkles.

I agree with growing old gracefully, of course, but approaching forty I’m not quite ready to let go of my prominent cheekbones and hydrated skin. Photoshopping can only work for so long before you begin to no longer resemble the person in the photo. And so, posh creams and filters aside I wanted something that would have lasting and visible effects.

And that is when I was introduced to Skinade by the amazing Amanda Hawkins at My Face Aesthetic It’s a daily collagen drink, which enables your body to be healthy from the inside out and get beautiful skin from within…

Skinade is a multi-award winning, natural peach and mangosteen flavoured anti-ageing collagen drink containing a patent pending formulation of active ingredients that boosts your body’s natural production of collagen and hyaluronic acid. Skinade improves the way your skin looks and feels in as little as 30 days.
Skinade has been developed by leading UK scientists and is designed to provide a perfect ratio of liquid to active ingredients to create one of the most advanced, effective and bio-available anti-ageing skincare products on the market today. Skinade is an alternative approach to your skincare regime – a drink that works from the inside out.

The ingredients are all natural – vitamins, marine collagen, l-lysine and flax seed oil – and it tastes great. It’s best taken before or with breakfast and an hour before or after caffeine, and it does not take long to see results. These two photos of me were taken ten days apart and I can see the difference.

My skin felt more hydrated and I also had more energy after only ten days, thanks to the B vitamins it contains. After thirty days it has become an essential part of my daily routine and the results have been even more pronounced.

The liquid formula in Skinade offers a huge advantage in terms of absorption rates. Skinade functions isotonically ensuring that our collagen peptides and essential micro-nutrients achieve an absorption rate of 90-95% – a level that can never be matched by tablets, or powders suspended in solution.

Your skin is the largest organ in the human body and deserves to be looked after. It’s not cheap, but if you think of it as the equivalent of buying a latte a day then it’s worth every penny and not outrageously expensive. And once you’ve been drinking it every day for a while you can always start having it 3-5 times a week to maintain its powerful effects.

I am usually sceptical of this kind of thing, but it works! It really works! Try it and see, you will not be disappointed.

I was given 30 days of Skinade for the purpose of this review. I shall now be buying some more 😉