Beautify Me is the name for Inner Me’s course of vitamins designed to put the oomph and ooh-la-la back into your skin, hair and nails.
Regular readers will know that Inner Me founder Nikki Cooper is helping in my quest to make this the year that I stop fretting about the state of my extremely fine hair and do something to improve it. If you are following the on-going saga of my hair, you will remember that I left you having just finished a 2-week supply of Inner Me Lustrous Locks vitamins, which (to my surprise and delight) had made a noticeable difference … You can catch up here, or we can just plunge straight ahead with the lowdown on Beautify Me.
The Beautify Me vitamin complex provides ‘support for healthy skin, hair and nails’.
Beautify Me is taken like Lustrous Locks: 2 capsules per day with or after food, and so one box will last you for two weeks. The active ingredients are Marine Collagen, Marine Chondrotin 90%, Silica, MSM, Vitamin C, Biotin, Zinc, Selenium, Copper and Iodine.
Having seen results with Lustrous Locks, I was very glad to have Beautify Me on hand to soften what I feared might be a massive come-down once my hopeless diet was no longer supplemented by Inner Me’s vitamin and mineral mix. Thankfully, Beautify Me did the trick and the softness and fullness that Lustrous Locks had given my hair didn’t diminish at all. As a consequence my confidence improved, and I grew positively chatty about my thinning concerns. Instead of dishevelling my hair to disguise the thinning (which doesn’t work anyway) I took to wearing it sleek, and caught back at the nape of the neck. It felt very liberating to be unapologetic about exposing the crown of my head.
When I began taking Beautify Me my hair was still my primary concern, and so I rather hoped that my parched little nails (ridged, lacking in moons and prone to breaking) wouldn’t hog ALL the lovely vitamins. I knew my nails had drawn some goodness from the Lustrous Locks as they had stopped their very irritating habit of breaking off in chunks (see photo to the left). I don’t know anyone else whose nails do this, but mine either chip off in perfect right angled squares, (leaving a raw edge that lacerates the unwary) OR break off very low down on the nail bed, and have to be agonisingly torn/cut off. Ow. And eurgh. But,look at the photo below, taken when I was using Beautify Me, and marvel at how even my nails look, and how much white tip can be seen … it might not seem impressive to anyone with healthy nails, but for me this is a very tangible difference.
Having noticed that my nails had strengthened when I was taking the Lustrous Locks, I wasn’t expecting any drastic improvement with the Beautify Me. However … anyone who spends as much time typing as I do knows how their fingers feel and sound upon a keyboard. Although the pads of my fingers do most of the work, the nails also make regular contact with the keyboard. Suddenly, I was aware of a little tapping noise, a tiny clicking, where a click had never sounded before. Enchanted, I realised it was my nails – longer, stronger and beating out a little tattoo upon the keys. I have a real passion for tiny changes. One of the things I love most about being pregnant is that there are roughly ten months of tiny little changes to enjoy, and I love the weeble-wobbliness of pregnancy weight-gain; the way your centre of gravity shifts a little bit and you find yourself squeezing through gaps you previously eased through …
And my skin? When beginning the Beautify Me course I experienced no problems switching from my final drops of Dermaviduals® bespoke moisturiser to a succession of different day creams … by the end of the Beautify Me course, Mr Beheld stopped me as I began the school run to remark that my skin looked lovely and ask which product I was using. “None”, I said, somewhat confused. “I haven’t even put my moisturiser on yet. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even washed my face.” ‘Foolish Mr Beheld’, I thought, as I hoofed it down the road, ‘thinking I was using product when I wasn’t’ … and then I realised, I was using product: just swallowing it, rather then applying it …
In summary: a course of Beautify Me feels like a really good week of being pregnant – with none of the sickness and all of the glow.
Attentive readers will recall that I was trying out a few shampoos at the start of the year … I was happy with the Vichy Dercos Energisant that I’d picked up in Paris, but on finishing it had fallen for the charms of Klorane Shampooing volumateur au lait d’amande. I had intended to finish the remaining third of this, but decided that much as I liked it, this particular shampoo did not return my feelings. I would recommend it to anyone with stronger hair that does not shed as much as mine does: it has a delicious almond scent, a fascinatingly gummy texture, and lovely packaging – but I felt my hair shed at a more fast and furious rate than when using the Vichy Dercos Energisant. Too terrifying. I left the Klorane Shampooing volumateur au lait d’amande unfinished and began using the l’Oreal Elvive Triple Resist x3 Reinforcing Shampoo.
I felt more secure using the l’Oreal Elvive, and the shedding seemed to lessen, BUT was this due to the Lustrous Locks kicking in, with the Beautify Me backing up those good effects? I am un-scientifically minded, and consequentially find it very difficult – impossible, really – to generate Control Conditions when reviewing products. But instinct told me to keep going with the l’Oreal Elvive Triple Resist x3 reinforcing Shampoo. I felt safer in its metaphorically burly grip than I had in the delicate embrace of the Klorane Shampooing volumateur au lait d’amande, and I am a firm believer in going with your instincts.
But it is fair to say that none of these three shampoos I have mentioned were in any way the product of my dreams. I am (to quote Jarvis Cocker) ‘profoundly shallow’ and the design and names of the products I use are very important to me. Gazing at my problems writ large on the labels in my bathroom really brings me down. I’ve never thought it a brilliant notion to harp on one’s weaknesses, so I don’t want a shampoo that reminds me that I am afraid for my hair. However physically concrete the benefits might be, if a product doesn’t soothe my soul and psyche, I just can’t love it.
So, on the subject of shampoo I was ripe for seduction. I needed to be introduced to something new, cool and interesting. Fortunate for me then, that I attended the BeautyMART LFW Sale and got talking about my hair woes to Millie Kendall: go-to person for all that is new, cool and interesting in the world of Beauty …
The shampoo that Millie introduced me to caused this cry to ring out at the House of Beheld: “What have you done to your hair? It looks GREAT!” All will be revealed in an upcoming instalment of New Year, New Riah …
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It strikes me that Beautify Me would be a wonderful boost if you feel in need of any kind of regime improvement (more exercise, giving up smoking: that kind of thing), or if your skin, hair and nails just need a little TLC.
Beautify Me has an RRP of £15.00 for 28 capsules ( a 2 week supply).
You can find a list of stockists for Beautify Me and the other Inner Me supplements (including Lustrous Locks) here or you can buy them online here.
