Hey Tracy,
I hope all is well. Your blog has helped me so much with the mental emotional aspect of this crazy thing called our body, but I’ve had a dilemma on my mind…
Yesterday was Mother’s Day and I realized I have developed a really unhealthy restricted mindset for food.
I felt like it was a sin to even think about having some of yesterdays “treats” at our family feast. I know people say avoid sugar and gluten at all costs! Even though there is value to that, I hate that fear! and it is not practical.
I see many of my family members and friends who are strong and healthy who don’t live in fear of foods that can cause issues. I guess what I’m asking is if I’m doing my best on a regular basis to keep good digestion and real foods in my body, is it okay to indulge in whatever food you want once in a while?
I had the thought of being at my future wedding and denying my own wedding cake because of all this fear, that is not cool.
I’d appreciate your opinion Tracy, do you allow yourself to “indulge” once in a while?
I feel like god made us to be strong and there is a lot of people who in their life right now have to survive on subpar food. Rather than be neurotic about being organic every damn meal all my life, I feel like a burger and fries can be so empowering when the time calls for it.
The Answer is YES!
HECK YES! I do indulge.
I used to not because of the exact same guilt and fear that you feel right now.
But yesterday at Mother’s Day, I had a pretty big slice of cheesecake. And every time I go and visit my parents now, we have dessert. And I eat it. And I like it. And I enjoy it without guilt or fear.
And you’re right, it’s way more practical that way, because I don’t have to spend my time thinking up ways that I can avoid taking part in the fun. I can just relax and enjoy my family.
Sometimes I have moral dilemmas in my heart about what I say here at the Love Vitamin. I say “Yes. Eat healthy so you can clear your skin”. And well, I do believe nourishing food is very important to healthy clear skin.
But then, of course, with acne victims, it’s like… there’s this humongous dose of fear involved, which makes it complicated. And no matter what I say, it’s not going to stop people from being afraid about it.
As you say, regular people just go around eating healthy, and it’s no big f’n deal. And they’re happy and strong and don’t live in fear. They just eat food, they don’t agonize about it, and when they indulge, it’s like…. whatever.
But Then There’s Acne, and All That Fear…
But then when you’re eating healthy because of fear, there’s a whole ‘nother level there. And it gets super neurotic. And then truthfully I feel really guilty about that because I in no way want to contribute to this neuroticism where people are stressed out about having a single piece of cake at their own damn wedding.
So I’m in a bit of a bind with this. Healthy food truly helps people with their skin, so I don’t want to just go “Yeah go ahead and eat McDonald’s every meal and who cares”…
But no matter how much I say “Yeah eat healthy but seriously relax a little about it”, people aren’t really going to do it. Sure they might indulge, but they’re going to feel guilty about it.
The only true way to get over this is to work on your emotional healing, and release that fear – because, really, as much as you may want to deny it, unhealthy food isn’t the problem. Fear is.
I feel like I’ve finally healed emotionally from this whole acne thing, which is the reason that I can now break the “rules” and indulge regularly – without getting scared about it. Emotional healing is a personal journey, with no one path to success so I can’t tell you exactly how to do this, but next post I’ll give you some ideas.
Find That Balance
At the same time, you need to dance your way into your own little balance that works for you. Find that place where you are eating healthy food most of the time, but that you are not feeling deprived or jealous of “normal” people …
You have to find that sweet spot where you can go away for a weekend with friends, have a beer with your colleagues, enjoy Christmas dinner at your family’s house, use a processed condiment with your dinner, or heck, just have a chocolate bar one night because you damn well felt like it ….and feel totally cool about it.
Seriously… it’s gonna be okay. You have every permission to enjoy life to its fullest. When you get nervous, harness the spirit of the “normal” healthy person who eats healthy without making it into a big deal. Remember that that’s a thing that exists. That can be you.
Your skin is likely to be every bit as good if you generally eat well but relax about food than if you stress about every little morsel. The stress cancels out that extra effort.
Health is an accumulation of all kinds of little actions over time – it’s not about being perfect, it’s not just about food, and it’s not going to all unravel at a moment’s notice because of one thing you ate. I completely agree that a burger and fries can be so empowering when the time calls for it. Absolutely.
I’M TELLING YOU *me shaking you vigorously* the joy and happiness that you get from eating with friends and family gives you 10 health points, where as that one slice of cheesecake you had maybe minuses you a measly two.
Don’t worry, you’re in the clear.
Do you think you have an unhealthy relationship with food because of acne? I want to say I’m sincerely sorry if I’ve played any part in this.
42 Responses
AMAZING articulate post tracy, Resonates with me one hundred percent 😉
Wow, I needed to hear this. Thank you!
Good article, it is much more healthy being happy than obsessing over food all the time and you prove that it is possible to do both. Also that photo of you and your mom is great, you look so pretty and that dress is gorgeous!
Thanks Gemma 🙂 Yes it is definitely possible to have that balance, but it took me quite a while to get here! I used to be way too bogged down in the fear!
Thank you for this post! I was struggling on Mother’s Day myself! I am really trying to figure out my balance, while also being dedicated to the my acne free diet!! I agree that the stress over it does more damage than indulging! It’s that cup of coffee w/ cream or glass of wine at dinner that tempts me right now, and while I don’t need to do those things habitually, I from time to time want to indulge!
GO FOR IT! 🙂
Thanks, Tracy, for this post! I feel like it is a very important topic, and I totally sympathize with the letter writer. When you are heading down the path of trying to cure your skin the natural route and through whole foods, it a challenging journey that is prone to developing unhealthy behaviour to food (how ironic!). I definitely experienced this while I tried to heal my skin from severe acne. My first ‘healthy skin diet’ left me frustrated and extremely neurotic about what I was eating (is it pork? Beef? Dairy?! Eggs?! I’ve sure been eating a lot of eggs. . . . . I know, I know, I need to drink more chlorophyll water!!) However, with perseverance I’ve now found what works (the Candida cleanse!), I have mostly clear, glowing skin and I was able to go to the Dominican Republic for a week, eat and drink everything ‘wrong’ and not get a single pimple! My gut is healthy now, and I can indulge.
Hey Meagan, that’s awesome 🙂 So stoked you found what worked for you and can relax a little!
Tracy, in response to your question, yes. Six months ago, I found your website and was in a very scared place with my acne. When all else failed, I needed to be able to turn to you and believe that my diet really could make a difference in my skin. I cut out dairy and gluten and sugar. It was miserable and I found myself bingeing, overexercising and generally feeling miserable about myself. And through all this fear and hurt and shame, I started taking antibiotics and using a topical for my acne.
I still eat a well balanced diet and it includes fruits and veggies along with plenty of dairy and gluten and the occasional sweet. And the antibiotics and the topical have helped my skin more than any candida cleanse ever would.
I regret the months I lost to being sucked into this website and falsely believing that if my diet was perfect, my skin would be perfect to.
I’m sorry to hear this Carly. Really I am. Sometimes I truly despise myself when I hear stuff like this. I hate the thought that I’ve ever played a role in someone feeling this way. But then I get so many people telling me how much I’ve helped them, so I don’t know what to do. I do believe and stand by what I say, but in the end it is used differently, interpreted differently, and the results ultimately differ for each person …. that being due to everyone having a different body chemistry, different lives, emotional issues, stress levels, health circumstances, etc. It’s extremely unfortunate when the information I share translates into a situation like that you’ve experienced. I’m truly sorry things didn’t work out for you the way you wanted Carly. I really, really am. Please know I mean that.
I feel like I need to comment on this thread – I don’t mean to butt in (but I guess I am!). Tracy – it saddens me to hear you use language like ‘despise myself’. That’s the opposite of everything to do with the Love Vitamin! 🙂 Everyone is different and acne is a very complex disease that is hard to treat – which is why wipe-out antibiotics and topicals do the trick, but only for so long. Unfortunately, they are a bandaid fix that often comes back to bite you in the a$$ (and face) down the road. There are so many variables and I feel like your site does a good job outlining the different paths to take and the different acne types, causes and treatment options. And, Carly – that’s awesome that you’ve figured out the balance between diet and meds to get you clear.
Hi Meagan, thanks. I know it probably wasn’t the right word to use – I’m not sure if hating myself is even really the emotion I feel when I get comments like this, but it’s something strong and despise was a strong word that just came out there. When someone tells you your advice made their acne worse, or what Carly described above.. because I know how fucking awful it feels to be in that place… it’s just hard not to take it very seriously and feel personally responsible, and question everything I’m doing here 🙁 Logically I know it’s not right, since I am helping many people and I know it, but we humans aren’t very logical creatures :/
Can I add something? I know you don’t want to be responsible for someone having such a hard time with their diet, but I don’t think you are. One of my favorite things about this site is your “take what works for you and leave the rest” approach. Yes, I got obsessive about my diet, but that was 100% me. Your blog is a motherload of information, and you come at the acne monster from all possible angles – which is awesome. I’ve scoured the internet for health information and never seen anything like it. You don’t shame or put down people or imply that they’re misguided for resorting to topicals or meds if it helps them, and correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t you always emphasized minimizing stress and living freely and joyfully – for both clear skin AND just a healthy, happy life? So when I got sucked into obsessing over my diet, I can’t and wouldn’t blame this website, even though it was one of my primary sources for research. I can only blame me. I had a much harder time listening to your advice about emotional health, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Thank you Kit. That does make me feel better, I’m glad that its recognized that I do try to be balanced in my recommendations, and never a dictator 🙂
Although I have always had the same problem – for myself, I’ve always tended to emotionally put more emphasis on food than on the emotional health, despite my own insistence and knowing how important it is… it’s just a mental game that it seems like many of us are going through together, including me. It’s hard not to do this when you read around the internet and so much emphasis is put on food for healing…. plus of course, emotional health is so much less tangible and measurable, that it makes it far more difficult to grasp for most of us.
I guess when I have encouraged everyone to not forget about their mental and emotional health, it’s as much for me as it is for everyone else. And now I’m actually living it, so I guess it finally worked for me. So I hope that if I beat it over people’s heads enough, they will pay enough attention to it that eventually they too will work their way out of this food obsessed state and actually live a happy balanced life.
“…emotional health is so much less tangible and measurable…”
Yes. This was exactly why I wrestled with it. It is so much easier to control your food than your feelings. Ultimately, we have power over whether or not we consume a single crumb of gluten/dairy/sugar/whatever. We know whether we’ve succeeded or failed in what we set out to do. That level of control just isn’t there with emotions. (“Was I happy enough today?”) It’s frustrating and scary to try to have that same iron grip on your emotions, because it will never really work. Emotional health isn’t ABOUT that firm iron grip. You know?
haha yeah it’s about letting go of the iron grip … it’s like to succeed you can’t control it… well there are certainly plenty of concrete things you can do in regard to stress, but a huge part of it is just letting go of the control and letting life flow and not pushing back against all the bad things that we don’t like. Which is classicly difficult, especially if you’re actively trying to control every bit of your diet with an iron grip.
Yeah, I totally agree with you Meagan. Those bandaid fixes definitely hurt me. Personally, I feel a little similar to Carly but about dermatologists. I’ve taken the whole line of quick fixes: different types of antibiotics for years, differin, retin-A, accutane, benzyl peroxide, salicylic acid, other topical acids and antibacterials etc. The only thing I never took was birth control pills which was the last things prescribed to me at he drs office before I just gave up on modern medicine in regards to acne. I honestly wish that back in 6th grade when I got very mild acne that I never went to that first dermatologist meeting. My acne just got worst and worst and worst over the years. Meanwhile in between I had boughts of breathers when one of those bandaids would help a little temporarily. I finally started going towards the natural route after being inspired by people like Tracy. like Carly, I spent a while shunning certain foods (and falling off the bandwagon quite often) and obsessing about diet but my acne was still horrendous. It wasn’t until after a few years later of keeping on the healthy route (I gave conventional medicine more than a decade of chances so why not), that I started to see significant progress. I think I just needed time for my body to change and heal and get healthier. I’m still not 100% clear but I’m million miles away from where I was. Just wanted to say thank you Tracy for this website and being such an inspiration.
Hello Hello 😉 .. I am sorry to hear about all the wasted years of conventional medicine, but stoked to hear you finally are making progress.
That’s actually really helpful to hear that for you it took longer before the healthy stuff started working. I realize that may be the case that for some people it just simply takes way longer for their bodies to start healing (well it’s healing, but I mean way longer for it to start showing on the outside) ….. but it’s hard to get people on board if you say ‘Yeah it’ll take years!’. For most people it is legitimately quick (a few months), but it must be ridiculously frustrating and disheartening when it doesn’t happen that quickly.
Super glad you kept up with it and are now seeing success 🙂
This website isn’t exactly based on science, however it is still informative and holds more merit beyond any health food chain bombarding you with labels and claims to cure diseases. Herbal remedies have been used for thousands of years with success of many ailments. The way I interpret this website, kind of like a memoir of her past and present dealings with skin. If one wanted to experiment, one could do so with trial and error. Information is spread in many different ways and forms, and unfortunately, in the age of the internet, false advertisements and information is available for everyone to be mislead, but it ultimately is your job to research and sift through to find what you need. Diet is closely connected to a healthy lifestyle that can positively impact your skin, and anti biotics are shown to temporarily solve some of your skin ailments, but note that it is just a temporary fix, and some incompetent doctors will advocate a pill over a real solution, that so much has been proven.
And let me add, Tracy, I am personally happy this website exists and have been for many years, I have passed it on to others who have told me of their ailments. I really don’t think that lately acne micro managing helps me, fully, (but that is another story) but covering an emotional side to skin healing and reading more personal, vulnerable commentary really helps me believe in human beings.
Thank you so much Marissa – what’s actually what I love most about my site too, is not really sharing the hard “facts” about clearing acne (which you are incredibly right about people being led astray by the ol internet, including me) but discussing all the emotional things and little nuances that go along with an acne journey is very satisfying
…Well, I just ate pizza. It was gluten-free. But it was pizza. And the beer I had after work with colleagues today was NOT gluten-free.
That’s HUGE for me. A year ago, that would have been unthinkable. I lived in fear of what I ate because of my skin. Honestly, it was well-founded in my case – my gut was SEVERELY leaky, and many, many foods triggered cystic acne in less than 24 hours. It was easy for me to trace what set me off, so even as the list of foods I couldn’t tolerate got bigger and bigger, I knew I was right…my gut needed a break from that stuff, and a strict paleo/gut-healing period was in order.
But man. The fear. I’m already tiny, and I got REALLY thin. I lost hair at one point. My pants no longer stayed up around my hips. I perfected the art form of not consuming anything at gatherings. I skipped multiple meals because with my demanding schedule and demanding diet, I was often just too tired to figure out anything harder than an apple.
I was correct about not being able to tolerate all those foods. But I also know that the way I was living was unnatural and wrong and obsessive. I once burst into tears and sobbed in a bathroom stall at an evening work function because I’d been out all day, hadn’t had a chance to eat anything since breakfast, and knew – correctly – that if I ate anything at the buffet, my face would be swollen for four days, and I just couldn’t TAKE it anymore.
I don’t know what the answer is. Being obsessive got me to work hard to heal my gut, and now that it’s better, I indulge with much more ease…I’m finally past the crippling fear. But I would never tell anyone to live like I did during that time. It was truly awful. Yet I wonder if I would have still healed had I not been so strict…I was pretty sick.
Thanks for reading that thought-word-vomit if you did. This topic always triggers me emotionally, and I still don’t feel like I’ve reached closure on the “right” answer.
Hi Kit,
It is a bit of a conundrum, because I too wonder if having that strict period in the beginning (which may have only been possible with that huge dose of fear which motivated me), was what healed my gut and body enough to the point where now it doesn’t make a difference to my skin if I indulge or don’t. That seems to be the case with you, I don’t know for sure if that is the case for me.
But it does make the advice to “just relax a little” contradictory if you first have to go through a strict not-relaxed / possibly-very-stressful phase to heal your gut before you can get to the indulge freely phase (which means that many people who can’t take the strictness may feel like they can never heal their acne…)… so I don’t know :/ It really is a bind of a topic.
Also, with your severely leaky gut, out of curiosity – what were the symptoms you experienced, and did you get some kind of test that confirmed your condition?
Yeah, I had a test done when I started seeing my naturopath. I’m blanking on the name of it, but it involved getting a finger prick/filling a few vials with blood and sending them off for testing. Results took about three weeks.
Symptoms of my leaky gut started off small. I was clear from a course of Accutane about a year before, and noticed that whenever I ate certain things, I would get a big, fat, PAINFUL and obvious spot or three – which was weird because my skin otherwise was totally perfect. At first it was just soy. Then I noticed it happening with dairy. And anything made with cheap vegetable oil. Then corn. Then fish (weird, right?) And eggs…At first I thought I had to just be going crazy/paranoid, but my symptoms got more and more intense.
It felt like my insides were falling apart. I had severe diarrhea, which started off occasional and worked its way up to a daily occurrence. I got intense, random, non-menstrual cramps and splitting headaches that knocked me on my back for hours. If I ate something “wrong,” I felt like I was in a fog for the next day or two – like my brain slowed down and I felt confused. My seasonal allergies were almost unbearable, and I became estrogen dominant – I later had to quit the pill and do a detox to get the extra hormonal crud out of my system.
Just…everything was out of whack. I constantly felt broken, and the more I tried to eat “healthy,” the more it degraded until everything but rice, vegetables, and some meats made me ill. Understandably, I constantly got accused of hiding an eating disorder…
Thanks for explaining that Kit! So what actually turned it around for you then? You say it degraded the more you tried to eat healthy, but you previously said a strict gut healing / paleo diet was what fixed it. So are you saying that eating healthy in a general misdirected way made it worse? But focusing on an actual gut healing protocol type of diet worked?
Right. Sorry, I can see how that’s confusing. Yes, my idea of eating “healthy” was misguided for awhile. I bounced back and forth from vegetarian to vegan (staying vegan when my tolerance for dairy and eggs diminished). I mean, I guess I did a lot of things right. I literally never ate processed food (couldn’t) and I ate tons and tons of fruits and vegetables.
However, I ate a lot of (whole-grain, unprocessed) gluten. I never had notable reactions to (it was the first thing my naturopath had me cut), and being a soy-free, unprocessed vegan isn’t easy. I got some fat from olive and coconut oil, but my omega-3 intake was nearly nonexistent. When I finally got my vitamin levels tested, I was extremely low in vitamins B12 and D.
When I got the list of my food sensitivities, I agreed to eat meat again. I didn’t see a way around it. By cutting all the foods to which I was allergic (well over twenty), I ended up basically on a strict paleo diet with the exclusion of eggs, nuts, and a few kinds of fruits and vegetables. This was difficult for me, and a big switch, but ultimately it did work. I found I was much more sated with healthy, grass-fed meat in my diet, and by adding in glutamine, glucosamine, and therapy-grade probiotics, my gut was able to heal itself. It took about nine months. With the fermented cod liver oil/butter oil blend in my diet, I can eat most foods without reactions now.
So yeah, a strict diet made a world of difference. It just had to be the right strict diet. I hope I explained it better this time!
Okay awesome, thank you for the clarification!
Thank you so much Kit for sharing your story! (I hope that Tracy will feature it in her blog). And it really shows me that I did the right thing in not taking accutane. I actually was wondering did your naturopath doctor subscribe any natural medicine besides a diet change?
Yes, Kit is such a wonderful commenter, I think if she were willing to organize this into an article detailing what she’s gone through and her successes, her story would make a great guest post (hint hint Kit 😉 only if you want to of course, just send me an email if you do! And you can stay annoymous / without a photo in it if you’d prefer)
I would love to do that! I’ve been wanting to organize my thoughts and experiences on the subject in writing anyway. And yeah, due to my job I’m not too keen to have a web presence with a photo, so you read my mind there 🙂 Expect an email sometime in the not-far future!
Okay awesome. Looking forward to it. Also if that is the case because of work, if you do want to share a photo so people can connect a face with your story, you could always go with an alias name. Whatever you’re comfortable with 🙂
Hey Chrystia 🙂 Yes, I took a few gut-healing supplements – I still take them from time to time for maintenance purposes. I finished a couple small tubs of n-acetyl glucosamine, and a couple big bulk tubs of l-glutamine. They were both powders and I either mixed them into water and took them like shots, or hid them in green smoothies. I also took therapy grade probiotics, ate fermented foods (sauerkraut and kombucha, mostly), and made and drank homemade bone broth/soups for the gelatin. I saw the biggest leap in improvement when I got on the probiotics, a few months into the healing regimen!
This is exactly what I have been going through the past year. I started researching any and all nutrition advice I could get my hands on, with honest intention, but it took a turn for the worse. I became SO scared of food, I would have panic attacks and cry because of it. If I couldn’t find an appropriate meal, I would skip it, only to find myself binging later on whatever I could get my hands on. I knew the entire time that it was completely irrational and neurotic behavior, but it still didn’t stop the fear. I feared everything would give me pimples and make bloated and disgusted with myself… and it seemed to, because I put so much energy into it.
Now I just moved to a foreign country with my boyfriend and it’s been even more difficult controlling what goes into my foods. Staying vegan is a bit challenging here, and more than half the time, doing so means I have to eat extra oil or sugar. I’ve slowly started chilling out about what I eat, but the fear is still in the back of my mind every time I have to let go and make a choice to eat out of necessity. All I can do is continue to choose to ignore it, no matter how difficult. I’ve also realized too, that enjoying your life without fear is so worth it, even if you get a pimple or two. But even with that said, getting over that fear still isn’t easy. I’m just grateful for my boyfriend who tells me he doesn’t care about pimples (he gets them too), and half-jokingly tells me that he’ll leave me if I lose weight/my muffin top.
This post came with good timing, to help reinforce what I must do. Thank you Tracy.
Hi Renee,
You sound like the place I was in when I moved to Australia for six months a few years ago. I was mainly cooking for myself, but there were also many times that I wasn’t, and was definitely stressed about it, even though logically I knew I shouldn’t be. I just felt out of control and didn’t like it. Unfortunately, logic alone usually isn’t going to overcome the emotions, especially if they’re really stuck on your soul.
Either way, I’ve moved on quite a lot since then and on my recent trip to India (as I spoke about a post or two ago) I went three months eating quite badly in my opinion, and totally didn’t sweat it. Which was HUGE for me. So anyway. Keep chipping away at the fear thing, and hopefully you’ll get to the place I’m in now. Next post I’m going to go over the major things that helped me stop the fear and heal my relationship with food.
Oh I’m so excited to read that post! 🙂
Hey Tracy,
I just want you to know that I’m a 22 year old girl from a little village in england called barnes, and your videos and blog posts have helped me so much over the years. I had cystic acne from age 11 onwards, and through various lifestyle changes have cured it completely – no meds.
You ARE greatly responsible for that. And I don’t fear indulgence – my indulgences are all healthy now anyway!
I’m sure there are lots of people you’ve touched around the world, too. I wish I could spread the message just like you do! Keep it up 🙂 and thank you.
Hi Emma, nice to meet you! I’m so happy to hear how I’ve helped you, thank you so much for letting me know 🙂 It really means so much!
Hi Tracy,
I think it’s really amazing what you’ve built here. If I hadn’t come across the information here, I might still be scrubbing my skin with a bunch of commercial products that were so harsh for my skin, but honestly, until I came here I saw no other alternative. You have changed everything surrounding my approach to my skin, and while I am definitely not clear, I am a million miles from where I was and am well on my way.
I think this stuff is too valuable to not put out there, but it is important to take it all in with a healthy dose of perspective. I don’t have that perspective right now but I am hoping to get it back slowly. I have someone offering to make me pizza for dinner tonight, and dairy is a huge component of diet that I see blamed over and over again for causing acne. Instead of feeling grateful for the food I find myself stressed and anxious about the dairy. It’s just not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s so hard to find that balance, and must be so hard for you to find it in your writing as well.
Hi Shel, yes it is definitely difficult to find the balance! But it’s possible, you just have to keep chipping away at the root issues behind the fear and eventually you’ll get there. Anyway, thank you so much for your kind words about my site, I’m very happy I’ve helped you get on the right path! 🙂 love x
Wow, this was a great article. Ever since I stopped nursing my second child and got my period back I’ve struggle with bad chin/jawline acne….and that was two years ago!! It’s like I was going on my merry little way life, completely oblivious to how good my skin actually was, sleeping in my makeup and all, when BAM- I got the acne bomb dropped on me! And it hurt! I know that sounds dramatic but it’s so true. I would be lying if I didn’t say that it has really hindered my self confidence. And ever since I’ve been desperately trying to find the magic concoction to end this hellacious nightmare. And even though it’s getting better, everyday I live in this constant fear of, “Can I eat this? What about that? Will it make me break out?!?!” In a recent video you mentioned “being free” from acne, and not just in the literal sense but also in the emotional one as well. That video and this article are helping me to realize that I need to calm down and not be so stressed out about the whole situation because it only makes it worse! I need to stop letting my acne control so much of my happiness. It’s not fair to me, and certainly not fair to my family. Thank you Tracy! I love your website and your videos are awesome too! Thanks again!
Hi Katie, thank you for your kind words, so happy you’ve been getting a lot out of my site! Yeah I totally get it how awful acne can be for your confidence, and it’s really not easy letting go of that fear about it… but it’s true that life, and often paraodixically your skin, tends to get better when you stop trying to control everything and just let things flow a little more. Not easy, but you’ll get there. And I am positive that your family thinks you’re incredibly beautiful, acne or no! 🙂