"I’ve always wished I could be one of those women. You know the ones I mean. They float into the room with bouncy hair, perfect nails, glowing skin, and seemingly endless energy.
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But I’ve never been that woman. I am, instead, the woman who threw some concealer on in the car, yanked a brush through her hair five minutes before she left the house, and hoped for the best. The truth is, I don’t have the patience or the funds to purchase expensive beauty products, and I’ve never been someone who can stand to spend hours getting ready in the morning. In my late teens and early twenties, this method worked swimmingly. I had sorority hair, clear skin, and no idea how good I had it. But in the last few years I noticed a major decline in, well, ALL OF IT. My hair started to thin from stress, my skin would regularly break out (shouldn’t that have been a thing when I was like, 16?), and I genuinely started to wonder if the perks of youth were forever behind me (I have a flair for the dramatic).
I really wanted to find a convenient way to improve the quality of my hair, skin, and overall energy from the inside out, without having to spend tons of time slathering on products or dedicating time and money to expensive treatments and products. Enter HUM Nutrition.
I had heard about HUM through the grapevine of social media for a while now, and my curiosity was peaked. Their slogan is “Beauty Starts From Within,” which aligned perfectly with my beauty goals. No more instant gratification or covering up the issues. Their formulas are all non-GMO, gluten free, and made from natural ingredients that are science-based and clinically-backed, so you know what you’re getting is legitimate. When they approached our team about partnering with them, I immediately volunteered to be the team guinea pig.
Getting Started With my Assessment
First things first: Which supplements should I be taking? Going through all of the options on the website was overwhelming at first. There are so many possibilities and truth be told I felt like I could benefit from pretty much ALL of them. Luckily, they’ve got a handy little quiz that you can take online to help you decipher which combination you’d benefit from the most. It only takes about 3 minutes to answer a few questions on lifestyle, diet and beauty concerns, and afterward they’ll send your personalized recommendations from their RD (who is also available for follow up questions!).
My Customized Combination:
Uber Energy – supports consistent energy through adrenal strength
Red Carpet – for glowing skin & shiny fuller hair
Daily Cleanse – helps clear your skin & body from toxins
The quiz was really helpful for me to hone in on the parts that mattered most. The results hit on all of my biggest “problem areas,” and while there are definitely others that I would love to try, narrowing it down to three in the rotation felt the most doable. Now it was time to let these babies work their magic!
Weeks 1 & 2
The hardest part about HUM Nutrition for me (or any kind of vitamin routine) was remembering to take the supplements. I’m a creature of habit in a lot of ways, so introducing new things into my routine can be a bit of an adjustment for me, but after a few days I had a good routine going. I set an alarm on my phone to take them between meals, which I would highly recommend to anyone else who wants to make sure they are consistent and getting the most they can out of the experience.
Real Talk: I’m totally one of those people who eats a healthy salad for lunch and then expects to immediately be 5 lbs. thinner (shouldn’t that be the way it works?), so I knew that being patient while letting my body soak up all of the nutrients that these cute bottles had to offer was going to be tough. Thankfully, it really didn’t take long before I felt a shift internally. Even though my hair and skin hadn’t transformed just yet (which I admit, I was most anxious for), I noticed a significant change in my energy by the end of the second week. I typically have a third cup of coffee in the afternoon to get me through my daily 2PM slump, but when I made it to 5pm on a Thursday afternoon without even thinking of refilling my coffee mug, I knew something was changing.
The best part is that the energy boost from Uber Energy doesn’t come in waves the way it does when you’re injecting your body with a dose of caffeine. It simply stabilized my energy so that I never found myself desperate for a pick-me-up to get me through the work day. The energy showed up in subtle but telling ways… I walked to work several days that second week instead of driving, and I started checking items off of my to-do list in the first hour of being awake (normally a time reserved strictly for coffee drinking and easing into the day).
I kept up with my routine and anxiously awaited the changes I was feeling internally to creep their way into my outward appearance.
Weeks 3 & 4
By the third week, some major magic started happening in my skin. I normally have to put some kind of concealer or foundation on my face before I leave the house just to feel like I don’t resemble a zombie, but by the third week on HUM I traded my foundation for a light tinted moisturizer for the first time in years! It was so exciting to see physical results, since I wasn’t 100% sure if my energy boost from the week prior was a placebo effect or if these vitamins were really doing their thing. I was shocked by how clear my skin became these last two weeks. My makeup went on way smoother and looked 10 times more natural since the texture of my skin felt so much more consistent, and I found that I didn’t have dry patches or redness on my cheeks the way that I usually do.
Without a doubt though, my hair is probably the place I was most surprised and excited to see results these last two weeks. As I mentioned before, it’s gotten significantly thinner over the years, and overall felt lackluster and starved of moisture. I long for the days that I could simply let my hair air dry, but the decline in quality has meant a lot more heat styling in these last couple of years to make it manageable (a vicious cycle, I know). After 3 weeks of these supplements, I couldn’t believe how much softer my hair felt. It’s too soon for me to see significant growth, but if the revived shine and improved texture are any indication, I have faith for the first time in years that my hair quality is on the up and up. If I’m wearing my hair down, it typically takes me a good 45 minutes to an hour to style my hair since it’s so temperamental. I was able to almost cut that time in half just by my hair being much more supple and cooperative. I didn’t have those problem strands that looked lifeless no matter how many times I styled them. It was like my hair had a new lease on life. By the end of the fourth week, the only hair product I found myself using was a heat protectant to style. The extra oils and serums felt unnecessary given how much less brittle my strands felt, which is exactly what I was hoping for in this process. I was finally getting to the real root of my beauty problems (pun intended).
Overall
They say that it typically takes about six weeks to truly reap the benefits from your supplement routine, so while I still have a couple of weeks to go before seeing these babies take their full effect, I can say that I’ll definitely continue taking these and see the process through to the end. I also may or may not already be considering which ones I want to try next… namely, Big Chill (helps you keep calm and cope with stress) and Wing Man (helps with liver detox to reduce dark circles).
I don’t know that I’ll ever get to the place of quitting coffee or being able to air dry my hair again, and I’ll likely never throw out my concealer for good, but it feels SO REFRESHING to know that I’m not just covering up my issues or going for the quick fix. My body feels like it’s finally getting all of those nutrients that it’s been deprived of over the years. No vitamin is a replacement for healthy eating and hydrating (still working on that part…) but if this is any indication of how much the right nutrition can change your body the way you look and feel, sign me up.
I might just have it in me to be one of those women with the bouncy hair and glowing skin after all.
You can take your own wellness assessment here and get 20% off your first HUM purchase by using EVERYGIRL at checkout. Do you take any beauty supplements? Tell me below!
This post was in partnership with HUM, but all of the opinions within are those of The Everygirl editorial board.