For Lo Bosworth, Self-Care Is Steam Showers, Baking Soda Baths, and a $9 Dry Brush
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It’s hard to put on real pants in 2020, let alone run a company remotely. But that’s exactly what Lo Bosworth, founder of clean supplement and personal care brand Love Wellness, has been doing (mostly) calmly in quarantine. “I really struggled for many, many years being a content creator and not having a set schedule—it’s hard to work from home,” the 34-year-old entrepreneur says.
Thank the quarantine gods for a solid morning routine. Every morning for the past 30-something weeks, Bosworth has gotten out of bed, answered emails, done a Taryn Toomey workout, made a protein shake, and taken a steam shower. “We have a saying at Love Wellness: It takes 21 days to build your routine, and 90 days to make it stick,” she says. “It's October now, and I'm still doing it, and I feel pretty good, you know?”
Self-care, in its various forms, has gone from something that carried the slight stigma of feeling a little woo-woo or superficial, to something that we’re all finally acknowledging as a priority. “I think that the conversations around mental health have progressed significantly in the past few months. And because of what we're all collectively dealing with, many more people are willing to have open and honest conversations about how they're actually feeling and the things that we all need to do to try to mitigate some of that,” she says. “So as much as this year is awful and terrifying, I think it has given us a moment as a culture to reevaluate who we are as Americans and how we want to live every single day.”
We asked Bosworth about how her self-care has changed, the bath products getting her through quarantine, and how she’s continuing to take on taboos in women’s health.
Glamour: What has self-care looked like for you in 2020?
Lo Bosworth: A lot of self-care is about food for me. I love to eat. I went to culinary school years ago, so I'm really big on nutrition and how food can heal the body and make you feel really, really great. Of course I still eat a slice from Joe's Pizza, like, once a week because I love cheese pizza. Everything is about balance, right? It's about treats and indulgence and then it's about coming back to the other end of the spectrum to make sure that your brain is functioning well and your body feels great.
This past year I have really keyed into raw vegetables and how incredible they make me feel. So I have a raw vegetable chop salad almost every single day for lunch. But don't get me wrong—I add cheddar cheese, I add ranch dressing, I add a little bit of fried chicken. It is delicious. But the difference eating raw vegetables has made on my body is remarkable: My bloating is so reduced, my digestion is on point because I’m putting so much fiber into my body, and my skin looks amazing.
I hear you have a very good bath game.
Hydrotherapy is one of the biggest things that I'm into. I am really lucky—I have a steam shower in my apartment and a bathtub. So I take a bath and a steam almost every single day. And I normally sort of bookend my day with these things, like, one in the morning after my workout and one at night before I go to bed. And truly, I don't know if doing this is actually getting toxins out of my body or whatever, but gosh darn it, it makes me feel good.
You see that hashtag on Instagram, #seriousbathersclub, that's me. It's real.
What’s your current favorite bath potion?
Dr. Singha's Mustard Bath is one that I consistently love. It makes the tub kind of dirty, but it's really nice. It's super therapeutic, it smells amazing, it just kind of goes above and beyond traditional Epsom salt.
Dr. Singha’s Mustard Bath
$18.00, Amazon
I also like to throw a bunch of baking soda into my bathtub. It makes your skin really, really soft. And if you dunk your hair in the water, it cleans your hair really well. I know this sounds crazy but it’s like when you wash your jewelry with baking soda. I also like to throw jojoba oil in there—that always makes your skin really soft.
USDA Certified Organic Jojoba Oil
$10.00, Amazon
Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda, 16 Ounce
$15.00, Amazon
And then I love to do dry brushing before I get into the bath. You don't need an expensive dry brush—just go on Amazon. I have one with a long handle. My hydrotherapy, I think, is really about lymphatic drainage more than anything else. I also have a lymphatic drainage paddle that was recommended to me by [wellness guru] Melissa Wood. I think you can find them on Amazon and Etsy now too, but this one is amazing; it works really well.
Vextronic Shower Brush
$9.00, Amazon
Lymphatic Drainage Kit
$45.00, Amazon
What about after the bath?
I'm pretty focused on skin care right now. I’m a huge fan of Dr. Lara Devgan’s skin-care line. She has this vitamin C serum that has really helped with my discoloration and hyperpigmentation. I also love her hyaluronic serum. I've tried a lot of hyaluronic serums, like, all kinds of price points, and hers is just absolutely the best. I think it's because she's using really high-quality ingredients. I also use the Shiseido eye and lip cream, which is amazing.
Dr. Lara Devgan Scientific Beauty Vitamin C+B+E Ferulic Serum
$145.00, Dr. Lara Devgan Scientific Beauty
Dr. Lara Devgan Scientific Beauty Hyaluronic Serum
$245.00, Dr. Lara Devgan Scientific Beauty
Future Solution LX Eye and Lip Contour Regenerating Cream
$153.00, Shiseido
Anything else that’s been transformative for you this year?
I had a summer house that I shared with friends, and I will say that there's a lot to be said for communal living as an adult. I'm a New Yorker who has lived in a small apartment for the past almost nine years, and even though you go out of New York and you have a lot of meals with friends and you go to museums and you walk around, there's a feeling of isolation that happens when you live in a city. Spending some quality time with my quarantine crew over the summer was really fulfilling in so many ways that I never really realized or expected. Everybody needs that community.
During this very upside-down year, you’ve actually launched three new categories at Love Wellness: a daily multivitamin, a prenatal vitamin, and a 50+ vitamin that treats symptoms of menopause. Can you tell me about that?
I think I'm personally most excited about the menopause vitamin Whole Love because, through an incredible array of ingredients, it helps to maintain bone density. When your hormones change and your estrogen levels drop, you go into perimenopause and eventually menopause, and that can really affect your bone density and lead to osteoporosis. There’s also ingredients including black cohosh that help relieve six symptoms of menopause, including hot flashes. This is the first multivitamin for women 50 and over that also helps relieve menopause symptoms. My mom's so excited.
Whole Love 50+ Multivitamin + XOmegas
$55.00, Love Wellness
Menopause is one of the last great taboos in women’s health. What made you want to tackle it?
We typically get a lot of insight from our wellness advisers, one of whom is Gabrielle Francis, an incredible naturopath on our board. I was talking to her about her practice and asked, “What are the things that [the wellness industry] is missing.” And she said, “Lauren, it's menopause.”
I think women as they get older feel unseen and ignored. We are trying to change that conversation, because whether we've experienced menopause yet or not, our lives will change and our needs will change—but that doesn’t mean you’re any less of a woman. So it's high time we focused on that.
Macaela MacKenzie is a senior editor at Glamour.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
