22 Ways To Glow Up In A Week (2024)

Prioritizing and taking care of yourself is the key to true inner happiness. Implementing and practicing the best ways to glow up by working on your physical well-being, uplifting your mental health, and transforming your body into something you’re comfortable in can definitely introduce incredible changes to your life.

Whether your glow-up is to welcome a new season with a new you or bid farewell to a low phase in your life with a fresh start, our list of 22 ways on how to get a glow up in a week will do wonders. Read on to learn more!

What Is A Glow Up?

A glow up is an inside-out transformation to change oneself in a positive way, including how you look physically and how you feel on the inside. It makes you feel better, happier, and stronger, enhances your self-confidence, and helps you develop better habits. It is not restricted to any age, time, or gender.

The best part is, glowing up is much easier (and even more effective) than a makeover! It welcomes a wholesome physical, mental, and emotional change in your body, so you feel like the best version of yourself. Eventually, you will notice a transformation in the way you look, feel, and think about yourself.

From drinking enough water and exercising regularly to improving your skincare and getting quality sleep, there are a plethora of tips and ideas to carry out a successful glow up. So, let’s dive in and learn how all about it, ultimately contributing to a happier, healthier, and glowing life.

The Ultimate Ways To Glow Up

A glow up doesn’t necessarily have to be a complicated process (even if it sounds like it). Adding a few simple steps and making subtle changes to your daily routine is the secret.

But the question is, how do you have a glow up? Where and when do you start? How do you align the process with your lifestyle, especially if you’re busy? Let’s find out!

1. Fill Up Your Water Bottle Regularly (Don’t Let It Empty)

Hydrating yourself is more important than you think. It’s crucial to keep your skin healthy, young, and glowing. Plus, drinking enough water has a multitude of health benefits. For example, it helps remove harmful toxins from your body, maintain a normal body temperature, and protect sensitive tissues.

The recommended amount of water is 8 glasses (around 3.7 liters) every day, but the exact value will vary according to your gender, age, and lifestyle. If you’re running low on motivation, an effective way is buying a motivational water bottle. These keep reminding you to take your water.

2. Glow Up Your Diet With More Fruits & Vegetables

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, fruits and vegetables are packed with various vitamins and minerals, and these, in turn, focus on improving your body's internal and external health. For example, the cartenoids in fruits make your skin naturally glowy, while the vitamin C and folate percentages increase your metabolism and help keep your blood pressure under control. At times, these are believed to reduce the risk of cancer, too!

For this purpose, take a big salad as a side with every meal, making one of your meals plant-based. Plus, whip up a fruit smoothie (like a grapefruit smoothie with banana and strawberries) every day.

3. Enhance Your Sleep Quality (and Quantity)

A healthy body, energetic mind, and good skin are — directly or indirectly — linked to good quality sleep. According to Dr. Kenneth Wright, Jr., a sleep researcher at the University of Colorado, “There are certain repair processes that occur in the body mostly, or most effectively, during sleep,”. These processes include the formation of collagen and increased blood flow to the skin, the repairment of cells and the release of hormones in the body, and the brain being reorganized and recharged. Together, these steps increase energy levels, reduce stress and anxiety, increase immunity, and assist in maintaining a healthy weight.

The average amount of sleep required for an adult is 7 hours per night, paired with a 20-minute nap during the afternoon to boost memory, uplift mood, and ease stress.

4. Practice Some Form of Exercise Daily

Exercise doesn’t necessarily have to be a 2-hour-long cardio workout in the gym. A walk in the fresh air, yoga in the morning, a quick session of pilates, breathing exercises, or biking around the neighborhood are all simple and easy activities to keep you active.

Apart from keeping you fresh and fit, carrying out regular physical activity will make you feel happier, increase your energy levels, regulate your insulin levels, and lessen the risk of heart disease. Not to forget, moderate daily exercise increases the production of natural antioxidants, which protect cells and support better skin health.

5. Improve Your Body Posture To Feel More Confident

Improving your posture can improve your confidence. When you sit and stand taller, your brain gets a signal of feeling more engaged, focused, and confident.

Slouching, hunching, swayback, or any other poor posture brings multiple long-term complications, such as spinal dysfunction, muscle fatigue, curved neck, back pain, or rounded shoulders. It even affects your mental health by promoting feelings of inferiority, pessimism, and depression. To avoid such problems, you can start with little changes like posture-improving exercises and invest further by upgrading major aspects of your lifestyle, like swapping out furniture for more ergonomic options that support good posture.

6. Take Your Vitamins Every Day

A balanced diet that nourishes your body with all the essential nutrients is a significant part of a healthy lifestyle. However, the busy schedules of the current era often rob us of the time to prepare a complete — and fully nourishing — meal.

In such scenarios, consuming multivitamins can make up for that nutrient deficiency gap. By taking your vitamins, you can ensure that your body receives the perfect diet to keep your body glowing on both the inside and outside.

7. Drink Healthy Smoothies Daily

Smoothies are incredibly versatile! They offer a quick way to fulfill your sweet tooth cravings while also supporting digestive and skin health. This is because most if not all smoothies contain antioxidants that fight free radicals to prevent premature aging and skin damage. With a spoon or two of protein powder, they can even be consumed as a pre-workout beverage to boost your energy levels.

Depending on your taste preference, you can try a fruity option like the mango matcha smoothie or something different, like the hydrating blue Majik smoothie.

8. Be More Active (NEAT Exercise)

NEAT refers to non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which includes all the energy exerted apart from eating, sleeping, or doing sports-like exercise. In simple terms, NEAT helps burn extra calories without doing formal exercises.

Activities like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking to work instead of taking a bus, vacuuming your home and mowing the lawn, etc., are all simple ideas that can help you achieve your glow up goals without making too many lifestyle changes.

9. Glow Up Your Skincare Routine

What’s the best way to keep yourself motivated for your glow up challenge? Taking care of your face with the right skincare routine! After all, what you see in the mirror every day greatly impacts how you feel about yourself.

Establishing an effective morning and night routine for your skin is the best way to begin. Here’s a list of the common aspects you can include:

• Cleanse, moisturize, and exfoliate regularly.
• Brighten your skin with hyaluronic acid.
• Make SPF a part of your daily routine.
• Hydrate your skin with a facial mist.
• Use a nourishing mask.

10. Naturally, Whiten Your Teeth

Keeping your pearly whites bright and clean makes you more confident about your smile — and with this extra confidence, you’ll smile more and feel happier!

Brushing and flossing are the basics, but for a more game-changing transformation, you can try practicing more innovative and detailed steps. Oil pulling, for example, can remove the plaque that makes your teeth appear yellow while brushing with baking soda can scrub away visible surface stains from the teeth. Eating fruits and vegetables can do the trick, too, as strawberries and pineapples are known to rub away the stains as you chew them.

11. Remove Negative People From Your Life

Happiness is a contagious emotion. It is important to surround yourself with people who make you happy, so you can “share” and “catch” positive feelings and vibes. In the same vein, it is high time to distance yourself from people who make you feel inferior, pessimistic, and uncomfortable about yourself and your future.

Once you’ve mastered the courage to remove negativity and toxicity — from who you meet and what you eat — you’ll experience significant progress in your glow challenge!

12. Try To Meditate Every Day

Meditation is the secret to building a strong connection with your spiritual self. It reduces stress and anxiety, enhances mood, and improves sleeping patterns. Best of all, it is suitable for every age, including teens, adults, and older people!

Try and practice different techniques to find the one that suits your body best. Make it a part of your morning and see how it will reduce your negative emotions and show you a new and more positive perspective to think about yourself.

13. Do Something For Somebody Else

Driving to work, making a trip to the grocery store, visiting the park with your kids, walking around in the neighborhood — aren’t there endless possibilities where you can simply stop by and make someone’s day with a small gesture? Be it carrying groceries for an elderly person, sharing snacks with someone’s child in the park, delighting your neighbors with your favorite turmeric energy balls, complimenting someone at work, or basically doing anything that uplifts someone’s mood can brighten the world around you.

These kind gestures will not only please the people you’re surrounded with but will also produce endorphins in your brain, which, in turn, make you feel happier and more content.

14. Do Something That Makes You Smile

Smiling is one of the easiest glow tips of this 7-day challenge. Go for a nature walk, read your favorite novel, bake yourself something, write a journal, spend time with loved ones, buy something you’ve been longing for, or do anything that makes you smile.

Remember, the more you smile, the better your physical and emotional health will be. This is because smiling reduces blood pressure, pain, and stress, strengthens the immune system, uplifts moods, and brings a natural glow to your face. So try your best to transform every frown into a smile!

15. Create A Weekly Cleaning Schedule

A clean house means a clear mind and body. It lowers stress, reduces safety hazards, and prevents infestations and allergens. When viewed emotionally, cleaning a home creates a calming effect, helping us manage our emotions and feel more productive and motivated.

As part of the one-week glow tips, your weekly cleaning schedule should revolve around steps like:

• Vacuum and mop the floors
• Dust all hard surfaces and clean all mirrors
• Wipe down appliances and countertops
• Scrub and disinfect the toilet and shower
• Change the bedding
• Discard expired food

With that said, adding extra storage through floating shelves, storage baskets, recessed cabinets, and hooks installed on the inside of cabinet doors can lend a helping hand in decluttering and organizing your home.

Don’t forget to appreciate yourself by taking a day off at the end of the week to just simply kick back and relax in your clean home!

16. Read or Listen To Daily Affirmations

Daily affirmations can change a lot in your life, regardless of whether you’re getting them from a close one or a stranger on the internet. Small phrases like “you are successful, powerful, and confident” written on a sticky note pasted over your fridge door will give your self-confidence an instant boost every morning. Similarly, listening to affirmative video clips can redirect negativity into positivity and re-shift your focus on achieving your aims and goals.

17. Learn A New Skill

Utilize your free time to learn a new skill during this one-week glow-up challenge. You can improve your cooking skills, familiarize yourself with professional photography tricks, learn a new language, practice creative gardening ideas, or learn video editing to create fun content. The key is to upskill yourself in any way so that by the end of this week, you feel more capable and active.

18. Buy A New Beauty or Makeup Product

Take this glow up week as an opportunity to enhance your beauty by becoming the best version of yourself. Purchase a new body scent, try a new lip & cheek tint, or treat yourself to a spa with a delicious bath bomb. Whatever you go for, just make sure it’s something that makes you feel better and more confident in your skin!

19. Give Your Hair Some TLC

Be kinder to your hair. Invest in hair products designed specifically for your hair type, apply a deeply nourishing hair mask at least once a week, and schedule a hair salon appointment to trim off the damaged ends. You can get more adventurous by trying a completely new hairstyle and color. Finally, look for a good heat protectant and silk pillowcase to protect your revitalized hair.

20. Glow Up Your Body With A Tan

Love the look of a rich, golden, sun-kissed tan? Spare 20 minutes every day for one week to spend in the Sun. Apart from giving you a natural and gradual tan that makes you feel amazing about yourself, this step will also raise your vitamin D levels to improve your physical health.

However, too much exposure to UV rays can result in pigmentation and the risk of skin cancer. So if a natural Sun-tan feels unsafe, you can always book a professional spray tan appointment or buy a self-tanner to get the perfect skin tone without sunburning yourself

21.Give Yourself A Weekly Full-Body Spa Treatment

Giving yourself a full-body spa treatment is the perfect way to take care of your physical and mental health. It supports smooth skin, combats early aging, and makes skin more radiant. With the high level of dopamine and serotonin it produces, a full-body spa treatment improves confidence, reduces stress, and enhances sleep quality.

While getting it done from a salon is always a great option, treating yourself at home can also be fun if you create an inviting atmosphere and use the right products. Tone down the lighting, position a few scented candles, and sprinkle the bathtub with some lovely rose petals. Set up a bath caddy tray with all the essential products, including masks and sanitary supplies, facial treatment products, body scrubs, etc. Don’t forget to put on some relaxing music to stress away from a hectic week.

22.Switch Up Your Style of Clothes

The finest way to complete your one-week glow up challenge is to clean your wardrobe and add something new and more adventurous to your style. You can pick a color that complements the current season, try something hot in trend, or inspire your outfits from someone you admire. Just make sure that whatever you pick falls in line with your personal preference and style, so anything you wear makes you feel confident and beautiful!

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I glow in 7 days?

One of the best ways to glow up is to stay committed to whichever steps you follow. Whether it’s staying hydrated, following a skincare routine, exercising, or eating healthy, when you’re consistent with something, you will start feeling, experiencing, and relishing the amazing results in 7 days!

How can I get a glow up fast?

While being patient and consistent with the process will give you an incredible transformation, practicing healthy lifestyle tips like cleansing and exfoliating daily, devoting at least 15 minutes every day to meditation, drinking green tea regularly, and focusing on things that make you smile will definitely speed up your glow up.

Do Yourself, Be You!

As with everything, there’s always the option to go above and beyond… But since we didn’t want to make it too overwhelming, we’ve compiled a simple list of how to glow up in a week — with the most important and effective ideas that are sure to give you great results. Some of the steps are already a part of your lifestyle, while the others can be included without much effort. What’s more, you can personalize the plan and stretch the timeline to more than one week. The sole purpose is to get prettier, stronger, and healthier, so there’s nothing wrong if you want to spend a few extra days and put in some additional effort to practice the glow up tips and tricks for more than 7 days.

What you must remember is that until and unless you don’t glow up mentally, sideline the negative opinions of society, and accept and love yourself in every way, it’s difficult for an outer glow up to work on you. So make this week a period of loving, caring, and uplifting yourself internally!