Between promoting my shows and being featured in magazine stories, I end up doing a lot of photo shoots. Getting ready for them is fun because professional hair and makeup artists are on hand to help me look my best. Sometimes I’m supposed to look glamorous, sometimes casual. But always, without question, I look a whole lot better than I did when I woke up that morning. And I almost always pick up a few tips that I can use every day to look my best, too. Here are some of my big takeaways from a recent photo shoot for Parents magazine.
 
1. Get enough sleep! I talk about this a lot in my book, and believe me, if I didn’t get enough sleep the night before a photo shoot, I hear about it from my makeup artist. Pictured here is Deidre, whom I work with at Days now (she works with us at The Biggest Loser a lot, too). If I’m sleep deprived, she always says, “I’m a make-up artist, not a miracle worker,” (riffing on the “I’m a doctor, not a physicist” line from Star Trek.) Getting enough sleep helps your skin and eyes and pretty much everything else look better.

2. If you have straight hair, give it some volume. Whether you’re blowing it out straight or with some waves or wearing it up, straight hair tends to look better in photos when it has some volume. In this picture Matthew is blow-drying my hair, and as you can see he starts by breaking it into sections and blowing each section out with a big round brush to give it volume and shine.

3. When you’re with your kids, your wardrobe still matters if you want to look good! It’s so easy as a mom to forget about your own needs and concentrate on your kids. I do that even at photo shoots if my kids are going to be there! For the Parents shoot, Ben and Megan were in the photos, and as you can see in this picture I was way more concerned with helping Megan get dressed than getting myself ready. When I do a photo shoot with my children, I couldn’t care less how I look. I’m much more worried about them being in a good mood, being well behaved, being comfortable, being clean, and so on. But guess what? I’m still going to be in the photo (and in everyday life, I still want to feel like I look good!) so it’s okay to spend a few minutes thinking about what YOU are going to wear!

4. Keep the shine in control. I’m not really someone who sweats very much (except when I’m working out, of course) and yet on this shoot I totally started to “shine,” as Deidre calls it, only 10 minutes into the shoot, because I was running around trying to wrangle my kids. This definitely happens in real life, too, to every mom I know! If someone is going to be snapping your photo, try anti-shine powder or gel or keep blotting sheets in your purse—you can eliminate shine without messing up your makeup!
 
5. This isn’t exactly about looking good—well, sort of—but wet wipes really are a mom’s best friend. At the photo shoot I had to get some crumbs off Megan from her snack before we started taking pictures! Glad I caught that. And for every day, you never know when you’re going to have to clean up a spill, on your kids or on you. So be prepared!

What are your best tips for looking good every day—even when you’ve got other things (read: your kids!) on your mind?

xo

Ali