dry january: [week 1]

It's been a while since I've written here, and for that... My sincerest apologies. Fashion blogging can be pretty exhausting when all you want to do sometimes is just sit around in your pants and watch Netflix. Despite the fact I have lots of lovely new things sitting around, I never get round to blogging about them and eventually... they simply stop being new. Drat.

But anyway, this is a different kind of blog post! I never thought I'd say it but I've actually decided to make big changes in my life. Since coming to university in 2011, I've loved having a drink. Several drinks. I've loved getting drunk. When the novelty of drinking wore off after the initial 'freshers'

period, I was pretty quick to turn to the vino when I got stressed out, upset or simply bored. Coming to think about it, the amount I actually drink weekly was pretty astounding. It was too much. The result of this was pretty obvious, I went from being around 8st in first year to just under 10st just before Christmas 2014. My mood was crap, I couldn't fit into my favourite clothes and my skin had aged to the point where there was definitely a noticeable difference. Makeup couldn't revive it and my fine, limp hair was lacklustre and rebellious.
To top it all off, I loved a good smoke. It didn't become a serious problem until I met my close group of friends in early 2013 who were all smokers at the time. We would lie around in our bedroom with ash trays rested on our stomaches and smoke because we were bored, and because it had become a problem. Even when I moved into my new house with a bunch of anti-smokers, I still found myself shivering outside in the freezing cold and pouring rain with my Doc Martens pulled over my slippers, a leaky umbrella over my head... simply to have a smoke. My clothes stank, and my skin just continued to get worse.

Enough was enough.

Eventually all it took was a run down immune system and a hefty dose of antibiotics to draw the line. Two weeks ago I became, quite literally, sick of alcohol. Dry January was on the menu!

I wont faff around about how 'difficult' it was to give up alcohol, how it was 'such a strain' to not have a sip of wine in the evenings. It wasn't hard. In the slightest. I just got up on new years day and threw away the empty bottles, laughed at everyones hangovers and that was that.

And I don't look back. It's been over a week off the booze and the fags, and I am feeling better than I've felt in... well, years. I think a few simple bullet points will sum up neatly how I feel now.

• Absolutely brilliant. Literally. My mood has skyrocketed, I don't struggle with getting out of bed anymore in the morning. I've struggled with depression in the past, and often resorted to drinking as an answer for it, and now I just feel a billion times better now it's out of my system. I can actually go to work for three hours and then go straight on to the library without crying for a nap! 
• My skin is radiant- and my boyfriend likes to tell me so! 
• I just managed to squeeze back into my jeans for the first time in months. BRB I'm just gonna go and rub my awesomeness in someones face.  
• My hair is feeling a lot more voluminous and healthier. Sure, it's still full of split ends and broken sections but it's got a bit of shine to it and no longer clings to my skull and makes me look like Kate Moss's cocaine episode.

But.... I'd be lying if I said it was all Dry January no-alc-no-fags that was responsible for this. No, it's not really. I've been attending the gym and going to classes like never before, as well as having a massive cleanse of everything unnecessary in my life.

First alcohol and fags. 

Then... Cutting out excessive use of hair products, reducing them down to just a shampoo and condition in the shower then blow dry. That's it. I don't scrub my face anymore, just wash it with gentle Tea Tree wash, followed by a tone, moisturise and using my new Clinique Serum for pores.

Like drinking, when you line up how much crap you use on your hair and face and see the quantity, it's no surprise that sometimes promises of multiple products improving your ailment will fall short of your expectations. Piling it all on, every cream, potion and lotion will just send you in the opposite direction of what you actually want. 

So that's my extremely positive and over the top week 1 of Tilly's Dry January! 

I will hopefully write back again next week, or failing that, a recap at the end of the month. 

In the meantime, here's a photo of me celebrating my new, clean skin! 

Matilda Jane xx