The 0ni

Starting today, I am going to wash my face with only raw, local honey every morning for the next 14 days.

Granted, I’m about six months late to the Crunchy Betty Honey Challenge, but it’s better late than never my mom always said.

So, here’s how I plan to schedule this in:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I exercise in the morning before work. I get up early and carpool in to the gym with my friend. We arrive and spend a few minutes chatting (man am I gonna miss that when we both move!) and then head our separate ways to start working out. I sit in the sauna for 15-20 minutes to warm up my back and then get down to some sweaty cardio – bike, elliptical, rowing, or walking on the track (this is actually the hardest of the 4) and then spend 10-15 minutes stretching. We head home after about an hour and a half, leaving me over an hour to relax, shower, change, and make it to work a few minutes early. On these days, I will do the honey wash while I’m in the shower, and let it soak in on my face for 3-5 minutes while I scrub the stank off with some Kirk’s and my awesome new supersecret prototype hand-crocheted hemp/cotton mix washcloths. I will share them with you guys when I get a good, consistent pattern worked out. Then I will rinse the honey off my face with the soft cottony part of the cloth.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I don’t exercise, so it will be harder to drag my lazy butt out of bed a few extra minutes early to wash my face. I usually just…don’t. I usually wash my face at night after I get back from work, and usually just with warm water and a washcloth. So, I will have to find some intestinal fortitude and possibly not snooze for the hour I usually allow myself (yes i snooze for an hour…it goes off every 5 minutes. it doesn’t bother me…) and get up and wash my face. with honey.

Saturdays I get up early to volunteer at the local SPCA wildlife center. I usually have trouble getting up early enough and tend to arrive at least a few minutes late. I’ll see if I can hang on to some discipline and actually wake up early/on time.

Sundays are the real kicker – I usually sleep until at least noon. I wonder if “every morning” really means in the morning? or just when you wake up. Do you have to do it first thing when you wake up? Today I woke up, did some baking and juicing, and then washed my face. Does that count?

The other possible hitch I might have is the upcoming 4-day weekend in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. That means friday, saturday, sunday, and monday, I have no reason to drag my butt out of bed before noon. I love these days <3

In any case, I'm going to do my best to commit to this experiment.

Back to the topic – Day 1 of the Honey Challenge, I washed my face about 8 hours ago and the only side-effect I'm fighting is the urge to go cover my face in more honey!

If you are interested in the honey challenge, or more things you can do to your face and body with honey, go and check out Crunchy Betty’s Food on Your Face. She has tons of peeks and previews on the page, and if you like it then splurge on the $8 for the book. (Hint! It is still on sale for just $5.99. It will be the best six bucks you spend in 2012, I promise you. And buying with this link will earn me a small commission.) There are tons of recipes for face washes, scrubs, masks, toners, and moisturizers that cost less to make in your own kitchen than your coffee at starbucks, and many of them with ingredients you already have in your cupboards.

Tomorrow, I will talk about my home-made deodorant experiment (oh joyy!!).

I went and bought some raw, local honey from Whole Foods:

Raw and gritty

I was curious because it’s labeled “Grade B”, so I did some research and read the United States Standards for Grades of Extracted Honey

From what I gather, my honey is rated Grade B because it has those cute grains of pollen etc. floating around in it. Doesn’t bother me.

So, what I did this morning was:

• Got in the shower, a few degrees cooler than I usually like.
• Washed my hair. I have upped the mixture to 2TBS baking soda/2.5C tepid water, because I wasn’t feeling very clean with only 1TBS.
• Conditioned my hair. I reduced the ACV to 2TBS vinegar/2c tepid water, because I think my hair was getting too greasy with a higher vinegar ratio
• Took 1tsp of honey and slathered it on my face, neck, shoulders, chest, and upper back. I left this on to soak up all the crap from my face while I…
• Lathered up with my bar of Kirks and shaved my 1-week hairy legs.
• Rinsed my face off and toweled off with my new favorite wash cloth.

Honey and vinegar and Witches Brew!

presto change-o! my face feels pretty good. perhaps a little bit on the dry side, but not uncomfortably. I put a few drops of jojoba oil on my shorn legs, and headed out.

If you are considering trying this out, you should read this article which i also linked above, and this article about why you should care what type of honey you use. The principles don’t apply just to honey you put on your skin either – tests have been done that show that the ultra-clear, amber honey bear honey you can find everywhere is not actually honey anymore, and thereby when you use it you don’t get any of the awesome health benefits you get by using natural honey. This over-processed honey can also not be traced to its origin, putting you at risk of eating smuggled honey which could contain illegal antibiotics or heavy metals.

Tomorrow, you can look forward to a post about my trial-run of home-made deodorant. for a preview, take a look at Kitchen Stewardship’s baby steps. I’ll tell you the details of my own experiment tomorrow. If I remember D:

Posted on Sunday, January 8th, 2012 at 10:14 pm in Beauty, Food, Health, Home   |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback URL