Les CocoNuts: Delectable Body Products for the Discerning Diva

I received these items at no cost to facilitate this review and generally make me smell better. All opinions and brutal honesty remain, as always, my own.

For a short time, I was privileged to be managing social media for Les CocoNuts. Owner, Sarah, is committed to presenting her products in a way that emphasizes not only their natural ingredients, but also gives her customers a sense of glamour that at times is absent from brands that one might term as “crunchy.” Natural beauty products don’t have to compromise on effectiveness nor luxury, and Les CocoNuts’ products are proof of that. (And, FYI, she didn’t fire me, I had to quit because two kids is a surprisingly huge time commitment.)

That being said, I’m about to launch into a description of body odor that is anything but glamorous. But I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t tell you my honest opinion of their flagship product: a natural deodorant. So, hold your nose… here we go!

Les CocoNuts Natural Deodorant

On any given day, I may smell like poop (not normally mine), urine (now that I’m not pregnant, also not mine), sour milk (of the human variety), spit up or peanut butter. The one thing I don’t smell like, however, is sweat. It’s the little victories, truly, when you’re at home with young kids. I might not know without sniffing it if the brown stain on my pants is Nutella or turd, but I do know my pits don’t stink. (Assuming I remembered to apply my deodorant.) I can lift my arms with confidence in front of… the UPS guy?

To be clear, I still sweat. I sweat copiously, for example, when our new and pregnant-for-the-first time neighbour came over so I could show her how awesome motherhood is and Cub decided to go totally bat sh*t (pardon my language but I would be doing a disservice to parents everywhere if I didn’t describe it properly). He threw things at her and screamed at her like a banshee! So ya, I definitely sweat. But I wasn’t smelly at the end of the day (just frazzled).

Les CocoNuts isn’t antiperspirant: it’s deodorant. I’ve been trying to avoid antiperspirant, despite a profound dislike of perspiring, because I’m convinced it just ain’t good for my body. It’s been at least a year since I’ve used antiperspirant, and the interesting thing is that I find I sweat less now than I used to. {Check out this Antiperspirant Detox Guide from Elodie Beauty.} Another advantage has been the improvement in the skin under my arms. Ever since puberty, in other words, ever since I started shaving my armpits and applying anti-antiperspirant, the skin under my arms has been the bane of my existence. The skin becomes extremely irritated and inflamed, and I used to experience severe ingrown hairs. You know what chicken skin looks like? That’s what my thoughtful and painfully honest husband calls my armpit skin. Several rounds of laser hair removal have helped with the thickness of the hair, and I no longer have three or four hairs coming out of a single follicle, but it wasn’t until I finally cut out antiperspirant and shaving that the skin itself truly improved and became less dark and bumpy.

What’s particularly awesome, and, as far as I know, unique about Les CocoNuts Deodorant is that it’s refillable. Buy one roll-up container and just keep fillin’, just keep fillin’!

You liquefy the deodorant with some warm water:

Pour it in:

… then let it solidify in the fridge. Now, the container does suggest always keeping it in the fridge. Presently, in Calgary it is not so warm. (My coconut oil, for example, is solid.) I have been totally fine keeping my deodorant up in my bedroom. Come spring/summer, however, it will need to go in the fridge, and I will need to remember to put it on.

I’ve had some readers ask if Les CocoNuts has any scent: it smells like coconut oil, and that smell fades quickly after application. Another question is whether it stains clothing. I tend to put it on after my shower, which is before bedtime. If I do put it on in the morning, I let it absorb fully before putting on a shirt, and have had no issues with either oily stains or white stains!

Les CocoNuts Sugar & Salt Scrub

In the summer I do still use wax to remove armpit hair, and I noticed a huge difference in my skin texture when regularly using my Les CocoNuts scrub. In fact, I could see the difference in colour in my armpits if I skipped a few days of scrubbing. I seem to build up a lot of dead skin under there… it’s gross.

Speaking of gross: my feet. My feet get so dry and cracked and rough that I can feel them catching on the fibres of my clothes and bed sheets.

My Les CocoNuts scrub, besides smelling good enough to eat (and technically it is safe enough to eat) really helped with keeping my feet smoother than usual. I definitely used it all over my body, but it was on my heels and armpits that I noticed a marked improvement.

Les CocoNuts Soap

Damn you, Les CocoNuts Soap! You’ve ruined me for all other soaps! We went through this bar way too quickly. I’m confident my husband enjoyed it just as much as I did. I mean, sure, what can you say about soap? It got me clean—yes. It smelled AH-MAY-Zing—indeed. It has no sketchy ingredients—definitely. You know those annoying commercials for some big brand soap that contains “1/4 moisturizers” and you come out of the shower feeling all soft? Les CocoNuts soap made it possible for me to skip the moisturizer when feeling lazy or unable to reach my legs (I was using this soap at nine months pregnant). I’ve never had a soap that left my skin not feeling at least a tad parched.

Les CocoNuts Lip Balm

Let’s face it: you basically end up eating at least some of your lipbalm. Oh, I just had a nasty flashback to when my cousin actually DID take bites out of my food-flavoured LipSmackers…

Les CocoNuts lip balm moisturizes and protects, and since it’s all made with edible ingredients, you can lick that cappuccino froth seductively off your lips any time! My Vanilla tube lives in my car and I apply it as soon as I get in (since the kids are both strapped down, and I have free hands).

Bottom Line

When you read the ingredients in Les Coconuts products, particularly their scrub and deodorant, you might be inclined to say: “Well I could make that myself, in my kitchen!” And I would say that that’s exactly the point. If you can identify and possibly even find in your pantry all the ingredients in a given beauty product, then chances are it’s super safe for your body. If you already make deodorant yourself, you aren’t the target demographic for Les Coconuts, any way. In fact, I wasn’t even the target market until I had two Cubs instead of just one, and ceased to have time to make a bunch of my own beauty products! Hey—I used to buy heads of lettuce and wash and cut it up myself, but now I’m buying salad in a box, too.

Les CocoNuts products are so safe you could eat them (but save them for your body), they’re as effective (or moreso) than what you’ll find on most drugstore shelves, they’re made in Canada, organic, environmentally friendly and they let you be crunchy but still glamorous. (Oh, and the woman behind the brand is pretty splendid, too.)

Shop & Connect

Les CocoNuts products can be purchased via their online store.

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