green is universal

Is Your Shampoo Making You Fat?

Posted at 12:41 PM on December 03, 2007 comments (0)

By Heather Stephenson, IdealBite.com

Lately, I've been trying to drink green tea each day. This is a difficult accomplishment for someone who drinks as much coffee as I do. Pots of it. No, seriously. Pots.

A few years back, my voodoo witch doctor (everyone needs one) told me that the antioxidant properties in green tea would make me live a longer, happier, healthier life. Of course, this is not why I started to drink green tea. Oh, no. Longer life? What kind of incentive is that?

Fast forward a year or so. I read an article about how people who drink green tea lose weight more easily than those who don't. Viola! Green tea drinker is born. (Amazing how I won't do something that might keep me from having cancer, but tell me I'll be able to fit back into my leather pants, and I can't sign on fast enough... sad, sad, sad).

The same thing happened with my shampoo. For years, I've read the ingredients labels on shampoo bottles in complete puzzlement. Now, I like SAT words as much as the next person, but if I can't pronounce it, I'm not sure I want it soaking into my largest organ, my skin. And then I learned that parabens (search for the terms methyl-, ethyl-, or butyl-paraben on your beauty product labels) - preservatives found in nearly all beauty products - are estrogen disruptors, meaning they mimic estrogen in your system and may just lead to certain kinds of cancer as well.

Again, didn't change my shampoo. Until I learned that the same estrogen-mimicking might just cause you to retain more weight.

Needless to say, I've been drinking a bunch of green tea and phasing out parabens ever since.

Years later, I still don't fit into the leather pants, but that might be because I learned that dark chocolate and red wine are very good for me, so I make sure to have lots every day.

Heather Stephenson
Co-Founder, Ideal Bite