As you prepare to transition your wardrobe for Fall and Winter – your clothes, shoes, hair and accessories – you don’t want to forget about one of your most important features: your skin!

Skin care expert and founder of the natural skincare company, Skin Authority, Celeste Hilling offers the below five tips for maintaining radiant skin even through the dull winter months.

She says that just as we all know it’s important to exercise our bodies every day to stay healthy, it’s also critical to give ourselves a “five-minute beauty workout” each day to protect and maintain healthy skin.”

1. Hydrate Your Skin through Exfoliation: Old skin care myths led people to believe that exfoliation can dry or thin the skin. Modern research shows that regular exfoliation speeds up the cell turnover process allowing the body to produce much needed moisture-bearing properties like hyaluronic acid and helps to plump the skin by churning up elastin and collagen production. That’s why Hilling recommends using a resurfacing agent like glycolic acid. Commonly derived from sugar cane, glycolic acid gently dissolves dead surface skin cells signaling the body to replace those skin cells with new, plump cells. With nightly use, moisture can be increased by 33 percent over eight weeks.
2. Become a Mask Maven: Masks play an important role in calming inflammation or combating dehydration that can result from overexposure to summer heat or cold, dry winter air. For extremely irritated skin, Hilling recommends applying a mask of eucalyptus and sulpher once a week, in addition to your daily skin care regime, which puts nutrients and moisture back into your skin while fighting inflammation.
3. Love ALL of the Skin You’re In: Our face is the most visible portion of our skin, but it’s important to resurface the entire body, including those summer- and winter-time problem areas such as knees, elbows, hands and feet. Hilling recommends resurfacing each night by using an external exfoliator, such as a shower scrub, followed by a moisturizer with 20 percent glycolic acid.
4. Don’t Put the Sunscreen Away with the Pool Bag: Sunscreen helps prevent signs of aging as well as immune disorders, such as skin cancer, so it’s important to protect your skin throughout the year. To ensure your sunscreen works for you this winter apply to all exposed skin (which in the winter months often includes our faces, neck, ears, décolletage, hands, forearms, feet and ankles) and use a sunscreen that gives you full-spectrum protection (those with SPF 15 or greater yield the best results).
5. Sun-kissed Recipe for Beautiful Winter Skin: To recreate a healthy summer glow, use bronzing powders and tinted moisturizers. These products give you a safe, sun-kissed look without going in the sun. Quick, money-saving tip: take a moisturizing sunscreen and add two drops of foundation. Mixing the two together gives you a more natural look for winter, saves you money and gives you healthier skin.

Committed to a sustainable future, Skin Authority uses natural ingredients in their products, recycled and recyclable materials in the packaging, renewable energy in the production, and never adds dyes, synthetic fragrances, or parabens.  And, of course, no testing on animals.

This November Skin Authority is hosting Beauty Workout Holiday Boot Camps at stunning spa locations from Key West to San Diego to take everyday people through a Boot Camp circuit and send them home with glowing skin, a personal coach and pages of tips to shape a healthier life.  Find Boot Camp locations and dates on www.skinauthority.com/holiday-boot-camp.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Perfect Organics: their Shea Butter Lip Balm, the Vegan Lip and Cheek Shimmer, and of course their 100% Shea Butter.  But, stop the presses, because I just tried a new flavor of their Shea Butter lotion and I almost ate my hand off.

It’s their Mint Chocolate Shea Butter

Shea Butter, extracted from the nut of the karite tree, is one of the most healing, nourishing, soothing, and protective emollients available. Perfect Organics’ all-natural Mint Chocolate Shea Butter is blended with the refreshing and softening benefits of organic mint essential oil and organic cocoa butter.

Yesterday this little tub o’ butter saved my hands!  After washing my hands for the umpteenth time (I was traveling) I started digging in my purse for something to relieve the dryness.  The Mint Chocolate Shea Butter did the trick without leaving my hands greasy.  I even rubbed a bit on the apples of my cheeks which were feeling a little dehydrated from the airplane as well.

The only downside:  After applying, I could hear a low grumble from the stomach of the guy sitting next to me on the plane.   I think he was dreaming about a Peppermint Patty.

Today I started out with a Vinyasa Flow yoga class.  I felt like I was glowing when I walked out of there (ok, it was mostly sweat, but it looked kind of glowy/dewy).  Step one to restoring my “youthful radiance.”

After that I drank a big glass of water with one of my favorite electrolyte tabs.

Then I sat for too long in front of my computer, scarfed down my lunch during a conference call (my end was muted of course), and then decided I better take another drastic measure if I’m really going to  restore that radiance.

And so I’m off to bed to give my face a good washing and lie for a bit with a face mask on before turning out the lights and getting my zzzz’s.  Of course, I’ll be choosing an organic skin care line.  I think I’ll reach for Pangea tonight.  They have a special gift set that is supposed to give me all that I’m looking for.

Pangea Radiance Gift Set

Aaaah, youthful radiance, here I come!