Alice Hart-Davis
Anti-Ageing Specialist
Alice Hart-Davis is the founder of The Tweakments Guide, a content platform that provides independent information about non-surgical cosmetic procedures and effective skincare, and lists highly rated practitioners. As an award-winning beauty journalist, Alice has been reporting on and reviewing non-surgical procedures and skincare for over 20 years. Her latest books are The Tweakments Guide: Fresher Face and The Tweakments Guide: Start with Skincare.
Q&A's
One bit of advice you want to give to all Healthista readers?
Just one? Look after your mind first, and then the rest of you. You can eat all the vegetables, and do all the exercise, and use all the best skincare, but if you’re not happy in your mind it makes every aspect of life so much harder – and makes it harder to look after those around you.
So, you first, and your mind first of all. If you’re struggling, get help. The stigma around discussing mental health issues is fading fast, thank goodness and there’s a lot of help available if you look for it.
One thing you do daily that you wouldn't be well without?
Meditate. It just helps with everything and makes me a nicer person to be around. I’ve been writing about wellness for decades, and had heard so much about the benefits of meditation was, but I couldn’t get into it. I tried tapes and courses, I’d tried staring into a candle-flame…
Then Andy Puddicombe launched Headspace in 2010 and I took to it like the proverbial duck to water. He makes it very, very simple. All you need to do is sit down and do it. It took a while for the penny to drop, that the point of meditation is that it is a practice.
Something you do for the sake of doing the practice, rather than, say, trying to learn to be ‘good’ at it. Now, I know that my mind, and my life, are a bit easier and less frantic if I just sit down and do it every morning. Preferably while wearing an LED red-light mask, to give my skin a boost and give me an extra reason for taking the time to sit still.
What will you be bringing to the Healthista Collective?
An honest and open approach to the topic of tweakments, aka cosmetic procedures like Botox and fillers. I know they’re not for everyone but for those who are curious, it isn’t helpful that so much shame and fear still hangs around these treatments.
Why is that a problem? Because it stops general discussion of medical aesthetics, and consequently people don’t realise how vital it is to educate themselves about procedures, and what they are and how they work, and to seek out a really good, experienced, medically trained aesthetic practitioner.
Unfortunately there is so little regulation of the whole tweakments area that it is perfectly legal for you or I or your next door neighbour to buy fillers and needles and set up shop injecting people, and that is causing a lot of problems. I’ll be helping you understand which procedures and products are good and worthwhile, and how to find great practitioners who do excellent work.
Advice to my 20-year old self?
Don’t sit around wait to be asked. Be brave and find your voice. Learn to ask for help. Get better at saying no and setting boundaries. Find mentors. Don’t keep things for best.
Stay kind, and be kinder to yourself. Start meditating. Stop worrying about how you look, and what other people think. People-pleasing is a waste of energy, as is constant dieting. Dance more. If you hate a job, quit it.
Read How to Make Friends and Influence People (I still haven’t, but…) Know that you are enough, as you are. You don’t have to be good at stuff to be loved.
Wear sunscreen.
Find ways to give back. Accept that you are never going to feel like a real grown-up, even when you’re nearly 60… And don’t worry if this sounds like gibberish to you now, just mull it over from time to time…
Alice Hart-Davis - Recent Articles:
Lip fillers fixed my smoker’s lines without giving me the dreaded trout pout
I tried a new flat stomach fix that claims to be as good as doing 20,000 sit ups and this is what happened
How this beauty expert looks better today, at 56, than she did in her late 30s
Achieving your goals blog: in her final week, journalist Alice Hart-Davis reflects on what she’s learned about getting what you want
Achieving your goals blog: Week 7 and journalist Alice Hart-Davis learns to bypass negativity
Achieving your goals blog: Week 6 and journalist Alice Hart-Davis learns to fight ‘I can’t do it!’ thoughts
8 weeks to achieving your goals blog: Week 5 and journalist Alice Hart-Davis is taking steps towards her book project
8 weeks to achieving your goals: Week 3 Journalist Alice Hart-Davis wonders why she’s signed up to do the course at all
8 weeks to achieving ANY goal: Week 2 – journalist Alice Hart-Davis learns about limiting negative beliefs and ‘What ifs?’
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