Why To Eat Your Facial

Let me state for the record that I am not a foofy girl. I don't do my nails, get perms, go to the mall, obsess over shoes (well, unless running shoes count), or know how to tell a Coach handbag from any other purse. So when my daughter said we were doing a Spa party for her birthday, and I would be doing facials and "mani pedi's" (whatever that is) and henna tattoos for a gaggle of girls, I was, let's just say, a little trepidatious.

However, she found some good natural recipes for facials, and I actually do have an Art Degree so I figured I could probably handle the henna designs, so away we went. We mashed up a bunch of avocados and bananas, added some almond oil and honey, and smeared it on all the girls' faces with the requisite cucumbers on the eyelids. The trouble was, she misread the recipe by about a factor of ten and we had gallons of the stuff left over.

So I did what any self-respecting smoothie-chugging athlete would do: I froze the rest for my smoothies. I'd heard that avocado was great in smoothies but never bothered to give it a try until now.

They say that beauty comes from within. As long as "they" are not a cosmetics company, that is. Or a "women's magazine", or an advertising firm. All of those theys are dependent on making sure we think beauty is a thing that we apply to our face in order to firm/shape/diminish/accentuate/hide some feature or another.

But there's another kind of "within" that's important, and that's what we put into our bodies in the form of fuel. And that's exactly why a facial is better off being something you eat than something you smear on your skin. Ingredients like avocado, coconut and almond might show up on a beauty product label, but when you put them in your smoothie or salad, they do a lot more good.



So here's my recipe for a Smoothie Facial:


2 bananas
1/2 avocado
1 tsp honey
2 Tbs almond oil
2 raw eggs
1 Cup coconut milk or almond milk
1 tsp vanilla bean extract
10 ice cubes

Blend it all up and drink it instead of applying it to your face. If you really do feel like gooping your face up, omit the ice cubes and bring out the cucumber slices.