It’s one of my rare beauty and wellness posts today. You know that beauty isn’t something that I spend a lot of time or money on but it is important to me because as I get older I can see what a difference it makes. Grooming is the thing that sets us apart from the storybook wild woman in the woods with the hairy wart on her nose who scares children. Brush the hair, prep the skin, apply a five minute make-up routine, trim the hair on the wart and suddenly you’re sweet old lady or sexy silver vixen… you choose your vibe! So today I’m going to talk you through some beauty appliances, products and supplements that are working for me and before we start, please bear in mind that I’m not a beauty editor. All I can give you is my real face to illustrate this with its sun damage and pores, so take this as being a chat about beauty with a friend, not a beauty influencer!
(By the way this is another post that will appear on both the blog and Substack so you can choose where to read it. It’s useful for me to watch where everyone goes).
AG1 – nine months on (with a month in a suitcase!)
I’m going to start with prep and the things I do that I believe help my skin to look healthy – as well as my body. Back in July I told you about AG1, the daily health drink I’ve been testing since January and I promised to update you on whether I kept going with it. I’ve taken it every day since the year began, through weeks in Newcastle and a sailing trip in Croatia but the real test came in September when we packed up our lives to go away for a month.
Usually the first thing that drops when I’m away is my healthy routine. To be fair that’s partly the point of going – I don’t want to be thinking about the ‘shoulds’ when I’m away and I’d never have taken the big AG tin that I keep in the fridge because I was already struggling to pack for a month with a 23kg limit.
So AG1 sent me their travel packs, single servings that could I slip into the corners and edges of my suitcase along with the bottle which I used for water in my hand luggage. Each morning in Medellin I filled it from the tap (the water comes straight down from the Andes so it’s delicious), tipped a pack in, gave it a shake and that was it, done before we went off to work. Ahhhh Colombia… where even my kitchen and my outfits matched my AG1!
We had three weeks of eating out every night with cocktails and wine followed by an all-inclusive week in Curaçao – and my digestion isn’t used to that kind of disruption. Mal, who doesn’t take AG1, went down with a bout of travellers’ tummy but I carried on as normal (did I smile? Not I!). It’s hardly a scientific trial and I can’t tell you for certain that it was down to AG1 but the gut side of it is one the most important aspects to me (it includes fibre and bacterial cultures) and it was the one bit of my normal routine that I kept up every single morning.
Now we’re home the mornings are dark and I’m trying to get my eating back on track after a month of letting go. AG1 is the easy bit and I find it helps me to start the day feeling as if I’m on top of my health. I’m back to the old routine of a scoop of powder with a pipette of the vitamin drops while the kettle boils. Thankfully the drops have vitamin D3 in them because the sun won’t shine up here again before May and it makes even more sense to ramp up my nutrition generally during the winter. The clearer head and the extra capacity I told you about in July are still here although after this long, I take them for granted now. I also believe that your health shows in your skin so I like to think that AG1 is helping with that too.
As you know I’ll be 60 in May and I’m trying to get back on track with the ‘gearing up to it’ project that went awry when mum-in-law died. It’ll be January when the serious effort begins but I’m going into the winter with basics like this in place so that I don’t have to start from scratch in the new year.
If any of you began taking AG1 after my July post let me know how you’re getting on – the team there are listening to my progress and I know they’d be really keen to get yours as well. They may be busy working with people like Rangan Chatterjee and Hugh Jackman but they’re keen to get feedback from the ordinary midlife woman on the street too.
If you’d like to try AG1, you can get an autumn starter pack here which includes a 30 day supply of AG1 as well as a free month of Omega3 supplements, D3 and K2 vitamin drops, 5 travel packs, your AG1 bottle, scoop and your tin. All of the details are here.
Energy: Vitamins C, B12 and more contribute to normal energy-yielding metabolism. Digestion: Calcium contributes to the normal function of digestive enzymes.
The one beauty device I’ve found that works (ZIIP Halo on test since January)
Oh my goodness I was cynical back at the beginning of the year when I was invited to test the new ZIIP Halo. I gave them an almost frosty reply because I’ve seen so many influencers raving about it that I just assumed there was some kind of smoke and mirrors trickery going on.
However, they were very patient with me when I insisted on using it for a long time before I’d even think about reviewing it. And I have to admit that it’s become an indispensable tool. I now take it with me whenever I’m away and I have a note on the packing section on my phone that reminds me to pack it with my hair straighteners… that’s how high up the list it is.
So what’s the big deal? Well I think everyone who uses it gets something different from it, it seems to work for women however old they are. For me though the problem it helps with is puffiness. For the last ten years or so I’ve really struggled with a puffy face in the mornings. The only thing that’s made any visible difference until now is an old-fashioned gua sha, a shaped piece of steel that I smoothed along my cheekbones and jaw. For ages I wished somebody would invent a more high-tech version and from my experience that’s what the ZIIP Halo is, although having used both, they’re honestly not in the same league. On the Refresh & Depuff treatment the Halo sends out 23 pulses of current every second, so each swipe is doing 23 times the work of one stroke of my bit of steel, and that’s before you even get to the electrical side of things, which I’ll come to.
For me, using it first thing in the morning helps my face to look vaguely acceptable if I’m away at something like a reader retreat where I feel embarrassed that my eyes are so puffy that you can hardly see them until lunchtime. I also use it if we’re going out because I find it sculpts my cheekbones and jawline so that they look sharper in my relatively round face.
So what is it and how does it do this magic?
A ZIIP Halo is a small rounded device with two metal contact points underneath. It uses currents which work on the muscles beneath the skin making them tighten and let go, over and over again. There’s also a much gentler current set to work on the skin itself. ZIIP’s independent trials found 97% of people saw immediate lifting and firming and having seen it happen to my own face I have to agree.
It’s important to use the conductive gel that comes with it. I learned this the hard way the day before mum-in-law’s funeral when we were waiting at the station for the boys to arrive. I had the Halo in my bag so I thought I’d just whizz it over my face which understandably at that time was especially puffy. I didn’t have the gel with me and my goodness it stung – it was like being snapped hard with elastic bands!
So use one of the gels – they’re great and they have their own skincare ingredients in them too which ZIIP say the currents help your skin absorb. There are four different treatment gels to choose from, and I’ve been using the new Refresh Gel, which has hyaluronic acid in it.
Left: before. Right: straight after the six-minute Instant Lift treatment.
How to use the ZIIP Halo
You can start using the ZIIP Halo straight away by just pressing the on button because it’s programmed with a standard four-minute facial and being a bit lazy with these things, that’s what I did at first. The best thing to do though is download the app that comes with it. You can then choose the specific area that you want to work on that day. Using Bluetooth, the app then programmes the device with a particular intensity for each one and in the accompanying video, the founder, Melanie, walks through it with you showing you how to angle it on each part of the face and for how long.
The two programmes that I use most are Refresh & Depuff and Jowls and she explains while she’s doing it why puffy faces can be such a problem at this stage of life. It’s mostly down to our lymphatic system which, unlike our blood, doesn’t have a heart to pump it out and so it pools as we’re lying down at night. It relies mostly on gravity and movement for drainage which is why our faces look better by midday but even then, not all of it drains away. As we age the skin and supporting tissues change and so lymphatic fluid can just sit there, taking away the definition in the face.
This is where the Halo really helps, by supporting lymphatic drainage. The water in our skin contains salt and electrolytes, which carry the currents from the device, and ZIIP describe it as working a bit like a magnet, encouraging the excess fluid to move away from your face and towards your lymph nodes. My face definitely looks less puffy and a bit more sculpted afterwards, and I can see my eyes again well before lunchtime.
It doesn’t hurt. There’s a tingle, and your muscles give a little flicker as the current passes through which feels a bit odd for the first session or two but I found I started to like that bit because I can feel when it’s hitting the right spot. Both metal points need to stay on your skin because the current runs between them and if it starts to sting, it usually means the gel has worn thin on that spot. Once you’ve finished you just wipe the gel off and carry on with your normal skincare routine. The suggestion is to use it three to five times a week which I don’t find difficult because I crave the quick fix.
So I’ve done a before and after for you, taken ten minutes apart. I did the Instant Lift treatment on the app which is the most powerful and it’s six minutes long. This shows you how quickly it can work if you do it before a night out – even Mal was convinced that it was worth it when he took these photos. If you have a big event coming up you can use one of the treatment plans such as the seven-day ‘event countdown’ to look really good.
The differences I can see here are to the jawline, underneath the eyes and perhaps most dramatically, the lift to the brows. When I put bronzer on my cheeks with highlighter above I can really see it there too.
Does it improve your skin on an ongoing basis? There’s wider research conducted in 2020 that suggests that the stimulation triggers the release of TGF-β1, a growth factor that stimulates collagen production and a 2018 study on human skin cells found increases in collagen and elastin gene expression and a reduction in an enzyme that breaks collagen down. My life recently has involved too many time zones and travelling to be able to say for sure but I am happy to support the instant results claims.
The before photos were taken three weeks ago in Curaçao and the afters this week, so I’m going to let you decide whether there’s been any longer-term improvement.
I’ve certainly used it every week since January which is more than I can say for any other device that’s come through the front door. You can get 10% off anything on the ZIIP site if you use code MIDLIFE at checkout.
New make-up tried and tested
Right, let’s move on to make-up. Here’s a round-up of some of the products I’ve been sent that I deem worthy of a review. I’m starting with the new Trinny Fearless Skin Tint Drops. This sits in the foundation section of their website but I wouldn’t quite call it a foundation. Instead it’s like a luminous veil that adds a little tint to your skin and makes it look as if it’s glowing. It’s a very light formula, almost like water, so it just glides onto your face.
It’s deliberately designed for 40+ skin and it includes a lot of skincare which is why it’s a bit of a hybrid product. I really love it for something like a relaxed Sunday. It doesn’t give quite enough coverage for me for a night out but it’s a beautiful product and the effect lasts all day. You do need a bit of powder on the T-Zone because it makes everything glow but I’d say it’s another Trinny win.
I thought it was better to give you short videos for this part of the post rather than just photos so that you can get a sense of texture and finish – so apologies for the close-up on lumps and bumps and pores but this is real life. You can see the skin drops evening out my skintone and partly covering the sun spots but not completely.
Just to show you the difference in effect between the Fearless drops and a standard foundation, I’m now applying my usual favourite to the other half of my face. This is the one that promises to give you a ‘baby skin’ effect, I don’t quite like the words but the result is superb. It’s the same consistency as most foundations so it rubs in easily and it covers all pigmentation and pores, leaving you with a lower key glow than the Trinny drops.
So here’s the end result and you can see that the Trinny drops on the left as you look at me let more of the natural skintone shine through but with added glow. The foundation on the right gives me a smooth base and softly evens out my skin. Neither is wrong or right, it’s just down the the finish that you prefer.
Ok so this next video is terrifyingly close up but all summer long I’ve had people asking me about hooded eyes and how you can avoid your eyeliner melting off in minutes. It’s all about the application. You don’t draw a line across the top of your lashline – and you don’t draw one in the waterline either (unless you’re looking fora dramatic eye). Instead you need to colour in between your lashes individually, dotting your way along the line and I’d go over it again two or three times. Then repeat along the lower lashes.
This way your lashes anchor the eyeliner all day long until you want to remove it. This particular eyeliner is the best I’ve ever tried. If I put this on at 7am it will still be there at bedtime. Even when we were salsa dancing in the heat it stayed put – and if you use it to tightline your eyes (along the waterline like kohl) it will still stay there until you use a remover to take it off.
Don’t buy it direct from the brand though because they’ll charge you £10 for postage and it’ll take ages. And don’t be tempted by any of their other products – I’ve tried most of them, including the scary lip stain, and they’re awful.
Moving on and I’ve never really got on with Miracle Balm until one of the friends I met on the boat in Thailand told me about this shade – flushed. It’s really lovely on midlife skin, giving you that ‘just come in from a walk’ look. And the finish adds a glossy sheen to exactly the right part of your face – your cheeks which are often drier. It does a good job of adding moisture to your laughter lines while it’s there too. Don’t forget that they’re finally selling these in individual minis if you aren’t sure and just want to give them a try.
And I didn’t know whether to include this ‘lip balm’ or not because it doesn’t quite feel like a balm when it’s going on. It’s quite hard and you can see from the video that you have to apply pressure. However when it’s on it’s such a lovely colour (this is flushed too so it tones perfectly with the cheeks for that professional make-up artist effect) and it stays on longer than balms usually do – so if you can handle feeling as if you’re scribbling onto your lips, then you’ll like it.
I finished everything off with a powder that I’ve been meaning to try for ages. I keep hearing make-up artists raving about it because it has eight different hyaluronic acids worked into it so it doesn’t give you the drying, old-lady powder effect that these things often do. I bought a travel size because I wanted to test it and I’m pleased with it – you need it if you’re smoothing the Trinny drops over your T-Zone.
And so that was a super speedy, less than five minute make-over (you already know which mascara I use). Here’s the finished effect and you can still see the difference between the two foundations, they’re both great, just choose the finish you prefer.
Boden 25% off everything
One quick piece of news – Boden will be running a special 25% off everything sale on Sunday 25th October until Thursday 29th October so get your baskets ready until it goes live here. Use code DUKWD at checkout.
Air & Grace seconds sale
Air & Grace are selling off their seconds. It’s been going on since Tuesday so there isn’t a lot left now but there is still stock in some sizes. It’s worth looking if you’re hoping to find some super-comfortable and yet still stylish shoes at around 75% off. They’re complete bargains but bear in mind they’re non-refundable. I find their shoes come up absolutely true to size. Access is here.
About last weekend
And so that’s everything for today other than saying a huge thank you to the brilliant women who attended last weekend’s Midlifechic Retreat with their open minds and open hearts.
Once again it was an extraordinary experience. I’ve said a few times now that the retreats are the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done professionally. We don’t have any more planned at the moment because I’m not sure whether there’s have enough interest here to run another one.
However if you’d like to come along and be guided through the process that we’ve developed to help you make a robust and fulfilling plan for the next part of your life, then please do just let me know here and I’ll think about organising another.
