Meghan Markle might be all over the news headlines these days ever since she got engaged to Prince Harry, but long before that the American actress had already to captivate hearts and souls with her brains, talent, and most astonishing beauty. We have all admired her performance in the USA legal drama Suits, where Meghan plays Rachel Zane, a fascinating woman that is not only beautiful and sexy but also boasts wit and intelligence. Although not everyone has been graced by genres the way Meghan has, she has kindly shared some of her favourite beauty products, you can also look like a princess-to-be.

Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution Lipstick in Very Victoria

This is Meghan's favourite lipstick. Inspired by Victoria Beckham, the lipstick was devised by British beauty guru Charlotte Tilbury. After wearing this lipstick for the royal engagement photocall, this matte, dusty rose-tinted nue became increasingly popular. This lipstick is the perfect balance of a pink tone and brown nude, while the matte finish gives it a modern touch.

Fresh Sugar Advanced Therapy Lip Treatment with SPF 15

She told Beauty Banter that the Fresh Sugar Advanced Therapy Lip Treatment with SPF 15 is one of the products she can't live without. “I have searched high and low and tried every kind of lip balm but this is the very best. Soft, kissable, buttery lips. I swear by it.”

Laura Mercier Illuminating Foundation Primer

Even with the pressure of marrying into royalty and her strenuous work, Meghan Markle manages to keep her skin radiant and glowing. She was that illuminating tone about her that defines her. Despite working hard, she always looks fresh and here is how she manages that look.

“I don't wear foundation unless I'm filming so this is what I put on every day after moisturiser to give my skin a dewy glow. It's not sparkly, it's try to its name… ‘Illuminating,'” Meghan Markle told Beauty Banter. You can find the primer in two shades, either bronze to get a tanning look or a pinkish pearlescent.

Laura Mercier's Radiance Foundation Primer is a lightweight creamy gel that reduces the look of imperfections and freshens up the makeup.

Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundations

Meghan Markle has confessed she is a fan of this luminous, silky fluid foundation, and she has one specific foundation rule she is loyal to. “Every time I'd do her make-up, she'd say ‘Can we just make sure my freckles are peeking through? I don't want a ton of foundation,'” her former MUA Lydia Sellers told Refinery 29.

Actually, Meghan has commented on how magazines always airbrush out her freckles and whiten her skin tone. She has commented that she'd rather they didn't because “a face without freckles is a night without stars.”

Fitted with micro fil technology, this oil-free foundation captures the glow of perfect looking skin. Its lightweight and smooth texture softly smoothes out the face tones all day and it gives the skin a healthy glow. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Cate Blanchett and Rashida Jones have admitted they wear this foundation.

Nivea Skin Firming Hydration Body Lotion

This cream is proven to tighten and soften the surface of skin and you can see the results in only two weeks. Hydra IQ technology hydrates the skin for more than 24 hours.

Meghan Markle told Beauty Banter: “I use this religiously. It's honestly my favourite lotion on the market, it's so affordable, and makes my skin look and feel amazing. I would buy a case of this at a time if I could find it.”

Hair product

“There are two lines I use religiously,” she told Beauty Banter. “Kerastase (masquintense & the oleo relax line) and Wella, which has a hair oil that I am obsessed with. It smells like vacation and makes your hair slippery and touchable. I love this stuff! It also doubles as a pretty amazing body oil post bath.”

Beauty Secret

Meghan Markle also shared her beauty secret with Beauty Banter. “Drink lots of water, as we all know. But I also learned to add the smallest touch of shimmer to the inner corner of the eye after they're lined. I use Chanel Cassis Eyeliner on my upper lash line and water line, and the touch of shimmer powder adds a brightness and sparkle. Even if I have no makeup on, I am likely to apply concealer and a bit of shimmer in the corners of my eye,” she said.

Bangkok boasts a large range of affordable makeup and skincare brands that are also high quality. There are many places where you can find quality makeup in Bangkok. Here are some of the places where you can buy affordable and good makeup and skincare brands in Bangkok.

Gino McCray

Popularly known as the MAC of Thailand, this Thai beauty brand offers professional makeup at a great price. They are found in Beauty Buffet retails outlet around Bangkok. This brand is particularly famous for their blushers, which are of really high quality. Their eyeshadow palette - that is conveniently customised -, lipsticks and foundations are also particularly good.

The Gino McCray professional makeup 24 eyeshadow palette boasts a range of warm and cool colours, including blues and greys. Their shadows are pigmented, too. The palette includes a nourishing extract of vitamin E which revitalises the skin. This incredible palette is currently priced at THB 590.00.

Gino McCray's professional makeup lipstick offers a number of shades to suit everyone. The lipstick is moisturising yet adds a semi-matte finish since the formula includes peptide and Vitamin E.

Cathy Doll

From primers to eyeliners and serum masks, the Korean brand offers affordable and good quality products to make girls beautiful. This beauty brand was developed and refined by South Korea's leading lab with the purpose of treating all beauty issues, understand women's aesthetic challenges and overcome those difficulties in order to enhance their attractiveness. Cathy Doll wants to make the ordinary woman stand out.

Cathy Doll is famous for its blackheads masks that can be found everywhere in Bangkok and really clean your pores thoroughly.

Harnn

This Thai brand blends traditional herbal medicine with scientific research to bring a large range of quality skincare and body care products. Using the finest natural ingredients to craft results-driven products, Harnn takes a holistic approach to wellness and and focuses on restoring balance to your body and mind.

One of the most popular products of the brand is its White Mulberry Skin Perfector collection which infuses Asian herbs and white mulberry root bark extract to brighten the skin by slowin down melanin synthesis.

Lansley

Also found in Beauty Buffet, Lansley offers a large range of beauty products that go from stretch marks cream to eye creams, eye and face serums, body whitening and masks. This brand is particularly popular amongst beauty bloggers in Thailand.

One of their outstanding products is the gold perfect anti-wrinkle eye cream, which is even recommended on the Beauty Buffet site. This eye cream contains 99.99% pure gold, which is meant to be good to keep the skin around the eyes fresh. This cream is designed to prevent wrinkles as it is packed with collagen and elastin. It can be bought for TBH505.00.

Lansley miracle beauty brightening supreme serum is also recommended on the Beauty Buffet site. By brightening and evening out skin tone, this serum delivers radiant-looking skin. The serum is also good to combat blemishes. Although this precious serum is made out of Gigawhite - an extract from 7 Alpine plants developed in Switzerland and Tahitian Black Pearl - it only costs THB490.

Lansley anti acne advanced solution purifying gel cleanser is formulated with an emollient plant extract which is blended with glycolic acid and triclosan, making it an ideal cleanser for those who suffer from acne. Although it is gentle on the skin, it is good at unclogging pores to prevent further breakouts. It costs THB170.00.

In2it boasts one of the best affordable brow-liners you'll find in Bangkok. This Thai brand offers mascaras and browliners, but the latter are the most popular ones for looking natural and being precise.

The brand also boasts a liquid matte lipstick that has been compared to Kylie Jenner's line of liquid matte lipsticks.

Scentio

This brand can also be found in the Beauty Buffet group all over Bangkok. It is famous for its potions for your skin in heavenly scents.

One of its most popular products is the Milk Plus Whitening Q10 facial scrub which is dotted with a nice milky scent. The scrub contains co-enzyme Q10 which has powerful skin cells that nourish and regenerate your skin. The retail price is THB205.00.

Red wine isn’t only great paired with cheese and red meat, but it can also help you achieve your weight loss goals. It’s not every day that wine lovers hear such gratifying news. After all the caution we hear from authorities and all the negative effects medical authorities tell us, the wine lover community is finally getting some good news. However, those headlines advising “two glasses of wine a day can help you keep the fat away” are not entirely accurate. Just before you fetch the corkscrew and cancel your gym membership, you might want to read the fine print.

Recent research shows that an ingredient in grapes, berries and, yes indeed, red wine can turn excess flab into calorie-burning “brown” fat. Accordingly, a diet that contains the substance resveratrol may help keep the fat away.

Researchers gave mice amounts of resveratrol equivalent to humans consuming 12 ounces of fruit per day. The study found that despite a high fat diet, the mice gained 40% less weight than animals not fed the compound. Researchers believe that the mice changed their excess white fat to active “brown” or “beige” fat which reduces weight gain by burning up calories. A similar effect might be caused by other “polyphenol” chemicals in fruit.

“Polyphenols in fruit, including resveratrol, increase gene expression that enhances the oxidation of dietary fats so the body won’t be overloaded,” said lead researcher professor Min Du, from Washington State University, US. “They convert white fat into beige fat which burns lipids (fats) off as head, helping to keep the body in balance and prevent obesity and metabolic dysfunction. We are using resveratrol as a representative for all the polyphenols.”

According to professor Min Du, fruits like blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, grapes and apples are particularly rich in polyphenol.

Although red wines contain resveratrol, they only feature a fraction of the levels found in grapes, said professor Min Du. “Many of the beneficial polyphenos are insoluble and get filtered out during the wine production process,” he explained.

Unfortunately, there’s not enough research to prove that red wine can actually help you lose weight. First of all, the study was carried out on mice not humans, and it did not actually involve red wine.

The study was focused on how resveratrol can stimulate the development of brown fat deposits within white fat tissue. Unlike mice and babies, human adults have very little brown fat. It is the accumulation of white fat what eventually leads to obesity, so the study was looking for a way to turn it into calorie-burning brown fat to tackle the problem.

Since researchers found that higher doses of resveratrol fostered the development of brown-fat-like cells within the white fat tissue of mice, they hoped that something similar could take place in humans. As the study was focused on mice, however, we can’t know for sure if resveratrol will have the same effect in people.

So before add red wine to your diet, just beware that a standard bottle of 750cl bottle of red wine contains around 570 calories. That is equivalent to two McDonald’s burgers.

Adults have little brown fat and it has been recently discovered that white fat contains brown-fat-like cells called “beige” fat cells. Thus, stimulating the development of these beige cells - so called “browning” - could reverse the harmful effects of excess white fat and improve health. The goal of the study was how to stimulate the browning.

On an analysis by Bazian, published on the NHS website, it claimed: “Mouse studies can give an indication of biological processes that may also work in humans, but we are not identical. We don’t know that if we were to be given daily resveratrol we would also start developing more brown-fat-like cells in our fat tissue. Even if we did, we don’t know whether this would cause weight loss, or reverse obesity.”

The analysis also pointed out that the study didn’t use wine specifically: “The mice were not drinking red wine on a daily basis. As one of the lead researchers is quoted in the media, the amount of resveratrol found in wine is a fraction of that present in grapes and berries, as much of the chemical is filtered out during the wine production process. You would gain more resveratrol from eating the grapes and berries themselves than drinking wine - but that makes a much less exciting headline.”

The analysis also pointed out the risks of drinking too much wine. “Wine is also high in calories, which may cancel out any slight theoretical benefit you may gain from trying to convert white fat to brown. A high alcohol intake is also known to be associated with many health risks both in the immediate and long term. The proven risks of drinking too much red wine probably outweigh any possible benefits from trying to convert white fat to brown fat.”

The analysis edited by NHS Choices concluded that the study provides no evidence that drinking red wine will help you lose weight.”

With so many new episodes on Netflix, it’s hard stray away from the screen when you are eating. This day and age, we all need that sense of connectedness with the rest of the world that technology gives us. Instead of taking off the world and savouring our dinner at the kitchen table, we eat while we do something else. What used to be a ritual that gathered the family around the kitchen table has been replaced by technology.

The problem for weight loss is that our eating habits have changed. Instead of being mindful of what we are eating, savouring every bite, we overeat while watching TV. If you don’t focus on your food, it’s easy to lose track of the quantity we’ve eaten and eat even after being satisfied.

Recent studies found that participants who were mindful about what they were eating lost more weight than others who didn’t and they even to continued to lose weight afterwards, as they had acquired a habit.

That is why mindful eating is so important to keep the weight off. You might start a diet and exercise for a while to lose weight, but most people who follow a regime gain the weight back when they quit the healthy eating plan.

A programme in the US tells people that they eat what they want and still lose weight if they eat mindfully - this entails thinking only about the enjoyment of their food, away from the distractions of computers, smartphones and televisions.

The programme is called Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less, and it consisted in enrolling 80 people, 42 of whom went immediately on to the programme, while the remaining 38 became the control group. The group on the mindfulness programme lost a mean of 1.9 kg over the 15 weeks, while the others lost an average of 300 grams.

“We instruct people to eat the foods that they love, and not give them up, but to eat them in a mindful way,” said Dr Carolyn Dunn from North Carolina State University in the US, one of the authors of the study introduced at the European Congress on Obesity in Porto, Portugal.

The study came up with Mindful Eating Strategies to help people lose weight:

Fill your plate with plant-based proteins, like beans - they are very filling, which will help you avoid overeating.

Try to make meals last at least 20 minutes. Eating slowly helps you be aware of how hungry you are and stop when you are satisfied. It takes a bit of time for your brain to know that your stomach is full. You can have fun out of this by putting down your fork between bites and have smaller servings than you normally would. You can always get more food later if you are really hungry.

Try to find out why you want to eat. Is it because you are hungry or because you are stressed. We tend to opt for fatty food when we are stressed. If that is the case, try to find an alternative to cope with stress like exercising or taking a few deep breaths, or drinking water. Just tell yourself that food is not the answer.

If you really need that treat, then choose something that you will really enjoy and you eat it, savour each bite and stop when you are not enjoying it anymore. “If one of us was going to eat a food that has very high calories, we would tell them to eat on or two bites, but to eat those one or two bites with awareness, so they are getting the most pleasure out of those one to two bites,” Dunn said.

“Other research has shown that those first two bites are associated with the most enjoyment - eating more will certainly give you more calories not not more enjoyment.” She added: “So a chocolate mousse, for example… we would advise them to eat it with mindfulness and with purpose and to enjoy those first few bites.” It’s not necessary to waste food, she explained. “We instruct them to share it or take it home for another day or buy it in smaller amounts.”

Don’t eat when you are working, reading or watching TV. “Mindfulness is paying attention to your surroundings, being in the present moment,” said Dunn. “Mindful eating is eating with purpose, eating on purpose, eating with awareness, eating without distraction, when eating only eating, not watching television or playing computer games or having any other distractions, not eating at our desks.”