Hey guys,
I hope that you enjoy these 10 steps towards a fit girl summer glow up. This blog post is going to be dedicated to having the ultimate fit girl glow-up.
This post will include workouts, tips on how to reverse aging, self care hacks/habits, beauty tips and inner game tips about mental health and wellness.
I hope that you enjoy this fit girl glow up!
What is a glow-up?
A glow up is a physical transformation and can include improving areas like finance, wellbeing and confidence.
How to successfully glow up (if that’s what you want!):
Write down your transformation goals whether that be your relationships, fitness, finance, beauty, etc.
Make sure that these goals are SMART (Veldam, 2019):
SMART goals are:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-Bound (Veldam, 2019)
You can also apply these to fitness goals!
Finally, you want to create a routine based on your goals or develop habits around them. Check out this blog post on habits in order to create successful fitness and lifestyle habits!
Step 1: Fitness
The first step towards having a fit girl glow up is making sure that we have our fitness in check! This means that we have to make sure that we are both committed to a strength training program and one that encourages us to move.
A good strength training program for us, as women, is one that prioritizes lower body compound lifts.
These include lower body exercises like squats, deadlifts, lunges, hip thrusts and glutes bridges. Check out this post to choose a lower body fitness program for women! The second step is committing to walking at least 10,000 steps a day.
“Women who always stay fit don’t make a big deal of walking 10,000 steps every day… They simply do this, because it’s the natural thing for them to do. Not because they need to stay lean (Her Highness Hungry Me,2022).”
Being active and moving has several benefits, of which are they allow us to reverse ageing and live longer.
Step 2: Reverse ageing
Check out this post on how exercise reverses ageing for more information on this subject! Another way to turn back that biological clock is to fast!
Fasting provides numerous benefits on the body of which is to increase the amount of mitochondria the body has and can similarly increase the amount of myokines.
Over time, the body will be cleansed of any internal debris or protein responsible for weighing our bodies down. This, in turn, increases our bodies’ ability to be strong and effective.
The third step towards our summer fit girl glow up is to prioritize self care.
This can be done in numerous ways, one of which is sleep! Sleep is an underrated component of both our fitness and beauty regimens. Aim to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night.
Step 3: Grooming and beauty procedures
This will allow our bodies to be optimal in every single way and give us the much needed effects onto our skin health, hair and bodies. The next step is grooming!
With the ever increasing affordability and prevalence of beauty treatments and procedures, it has become more convenient to get beauty treatments like brow shaping, eyelash lifts, tints, facials and manicures at your disposal.
Brow Game
Trim your eyebrows at least once a week, always have some color on your nails and take advantage of beauty procedures to enhance your aesthetic!
Make sure that you keep your Instagram or other social media platform following a space where you are seeing beauty that is both realistic and honest.
Make beauty about enhancing your own appearance instead of imitating somebody’s “safe look” or “safe aesthetic”.
I love this quote by George Lois on not following trends: “Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people’s mediocrities. That’s precisely what ‘trends’ are – a search for something ‘safe’ – and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion.” –Georges Lois
Step 4: Step into your own definition of beauty and enhance it!
When it comes to beauty, there is no size one fits all approach and there certainly shouldn’t be a loss of self in order to fit into beauty trends. Maintaining one’s appearance through beauty procedures should only enhance our own aesthetic and style, make sure you find your true essence!
What I love about social media is that it actually gives us a space to explore and find our identity. Make sure your feed encourages your own authentic improvement!
“Individual style is the correct balance of knowing who you are, what works for you, and how to develop your own personality.” – Giorgio Armani
Every fit woman deep into her fitness journey will have more moments alone than she would have choosing any other path. This gives her a strong self concept, a deep knowing of herself and from that place comes her inner glow up.
Fitness only starts as a catalyst towards her journey towards self-love and that radiates on the outside.
Step 5: Improve your make-up skills
The next step towards having our fit girl glow up is to step up our make-up game. I really prefer the Asian take on make-up more than the American or Arab style of it. They view the skin as a priority and enhance their youthfulness through playful, light make-up.
The sense that I get from watching countless Asian make-up tutorials is that their make-up is an extension of their natural beauty, not a mask or something that covers it.
The soft aesthetic that is predominantly called the ‘natural look’ in American or European videos is a nice go to daily look. Aiming to enhance the skin and creating a soft glow instead of the American contour or Arab heavy make-up look is a visual that complements our fit physiques.
How can we prioritize our skincare?
Step 6: Skincare
We don’t have to follow a typical Korean 10 step routine to have this look. Simply respecting our own skin-type and using ingredients like Vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, moisturizer, retinol and sunscreen can create a healthy looking glow. Check out my post on fit girl’s skincare for my korean product recommendations.
Make sure to also stay hydrated for a maximum glow! “For example, regardless of their race, a healthy person’s skin looks a little more attractive (Duquette, 2021).”
Post-Exercise Glow
“A higher intake of vitamins and minerals (good nutritional habits), higher levels of oxygenated blood (good exercise habits) and a healthy amount of melanin (exercise, nutrition, and sunlight) will turn your skin redder and yellower, giving you a healthier “glow.” It will probably go a long way to clearing up acne and improving your complexion, too (Duquette, 2021). “
“But even just that ever-so-slightly different colouring can make you look more attractive to others (study) (Duquette, 2021).” Other skincare tips and hacks that we can follow are doing weekly body exfoliation, massages and lymphatic drainages. These types of holistic grooming methods provide us with numerous health and aesthetic benefits.
Exfoliation
Exfoliating our skin with a dry brush in circular motion provides benefits to our cardio-respiratory system by increasing the amount of blood flow. If done on the face, it can decrease acne, increase the efficiency of product absorption (like Vitamin C and your favorite serums) as well as unclogging our pores and evening our skin tones.
“Exfoliation unclogs the pores, leading to fewer blackheads, evens out the skin’s texture by scraping off dead skin cells, and it encourages cell turnover, which also contributes to vibrant skin,” Dr. Gonzalez says. The number one rule of proper skincare is using ingredients/routines that match our skin type. This applies to exfoliation as well. If you have dry/sensitive or combination skin you can exfoliate twice a week.
If you have normal or oily skin, you can exfoliate up to three times a week. If you, on the other hand, have mature skin, once a week is enough to reap these benefits.
Lymphatic Drainage
The next step towards increasing our fit girl glow is making use of lymphatic drainage. Firstly, what is lymphatic drainage? Lymphatic drainage is a massage that encourages movement of our lymph around the body. It reduces swelling and drains excess fluids.
For lymphatic drainage, you can use a gua sha or simply your hands. You can find tutorials on Youtube for both methods.
Lifestyle Habits for Great Skin
Lifestyle factors into how our skin looks externally so make sure to quit habits like smoking and start incorporating more water and hydration for that supple and natural glow. “No cigarettes! Smoking is a killer for your fertility. Women who smoke lose their eggs faster than women who don’t.” —Ob-gyn Carolyn Westhoff, M.D. (Kovacs,2009)
A diet high in vegetables, legumes, fruits and protein can give us a beautiful interior and hair as well. “Everything you eat should make you stronger, like whole grains for your heart or veggies for immunity. Make 85 percent of your choices this way and you’ll be healthier and thinner.” —Steven Lamm, M.D., author of Stronger. I found that eating a high-protein diet alone helped me grow my hair by a few inches.
Step 7: Hair Growth
On top of the foods I ate, I gave myself a 5 minute scalp massage every night using oils like castor and argan oil. Adding oils to the bottom of my hair helped it look shiny and voluminous. A final tip for hair growth is to limit the amount of washes you do per week. Try to use a dry shampoo on your hair a few times a week in order to keep it clean between washes.
By minimizing both the amount of heat and chemicals in your hair, you will have the length you desire.
My hair before (2019/2020):
My hair now (2022):
The next step to our fit girl glow up is to make sure that our mental health and hormones are regulated and in check. This is part of the internal glow up! Once again, the whole point of this is for you to choose your own goals and work according to them!
Step 8: Self-love
Make sure to find a few moments to destress during the day, moments to meditate and be guided by our hearts and inner compasses are important. Affirmations are an important part of having an attractive vibe to us and can manifest as healthy relationships! A caveat to this is that we should also let go of toxic relationships which quite literally can rob us of our inner light and peace.
Step 9: Supplements
Drink green tea and make sure that you take a supplement called Reservatrol for its wonderful anti-ageing benefits. Supplements like creatine, caffeine and whey protein are great for building muscle and losing fat. Multivitamin, Vitamin D and Omega 3 are also great for both fitness and general health.
Step 10: Balance Hormones and Feminine Energy
The final step of this glow up is checking hormones and making sure that we, as women, are balanced in every part of our lives. This includes getting our thyroid checked and seeing a gynecologist.
Here are a few ways that we can naturally balance our hormones: This tip will make sure that our cortisol levels are balanced. Think outside of yourself a few times a day. Literally make sure your mind is focussed outside of your own body and mental frame. Cortisol will naturally dissipate.
As for estrogen and testosterone, make sure that you are visiting a specialist if these become an issue. Meditation also helps keep us grounded. Yoga and stretching are also effective methods of staying in our feminine.
Getting centered through deep breathing works to the same effect. “Tapping into your feminine energy is important because it allows you to just be. Remember, we’re here as human beings, not human doings (Lorenz, 2021).”
Why is the feminine energy important in our glow up? A lot of the doing force that we channel in our training is masculine energy. This energy does not stop until it is depleted, it keeps on going.
As women, we need to be aware of how this energy makes us feel and how it affects our relationships with others and ourselves. “The consequences of not being in our feminine enough are burn out and physical ailments (Lorenz, 2021).”
“Your feminine energy is what allows you to relax, recharge and come at things as your best self. Your feminine energy is what allows you to connect with yourself, to trust yourself and to love yourself. Without feminine energy your focus becomes very masculine, as what our society sees mostly as do, do, do (Lorenz, 2021).”
Taking a moment to just be instead of doing through activities like journaling, stretching and the activities above recenters us. Being in nature also works the same way.
Beauty rituals are moments of being, it will feel very natural once you’re in them. Only out of alignment do we need to remember how good it feels to just be.
“The more you allow yourself to just be as you are with no judgment, just acceptance, the more you’re connecting with your feminine energy and that’s damn powerful (Lorenz, 2021).”
In conclusion, the best way to have our fitness girl glow up is to have all bases covered. This includes choosing a strength training program with an emphasis on lower body training, getting our 10,000 steps in and making sure to eat a healthy protein-based diet full of whole foods.
Additionally, we want to work on our inner worlds and focus on having a good mindset, finding an aesthetic that works for us as well as investing in good skincare and taking care of our hair/grooming.
Remembering to stay in our feminine energy is also important, it allows us to glow on the inside as well.
I hope that you enjoyed this 10 step guide towards a fit girl summer glow up, make sure to leave me a comment below to let me know what you thought about it!
Sources:
https://andme-in.medium.com/best-healthy-lifestyle-and-nutrition-tips-for-women-bbff088e5856
https://www.glamour.com/gallery/50-little-health-tips-every-woman-should-know
https://hh-hm.com/habits-of-fit-women/
https://manuluize.com/en/beauty-tips-every-woman-should-hear/
https://bonytobombshell.com/bombshell-aesthetics-building-attractive-female-body-imaginable/
https://societe.me/habits-of-healthy-women/
https://www.thehealthy.com/beauty/face-body-care/how-often-you-should-exfoliate-your-face/
https://www.webmd.com/beauty/features/5-beauty-tips-secrets-women
Comments (2)
[…] Glutes are highly feminine and aesthetic when they are fully developed. They signify strength, fertility and are sexy! We should develop them for functional reasons as well as they help us run faster, jump higher and lift more weights. These benefits transfer to other sports, increase mobility and flexibility and can increase our sense of confidence and self-concept. […]
[…] with the discourse and rise in consciousness on feminine energy, does being a strong and empowered woman have any more […]