Have you ever heard the saying that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link?
At the Love Vitamin, I’m always going on about how important all the different areas of health are to clear skin. Diet and digestion; exercise; pleasure, stress reduction, & self love; sleep; and gentle, natural skin care.
If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, be sure to check out my ebook, Naturally Clear Skin, to get a complete roadmap to healing the root cause of acne and getting permanently gorgeously clear skin.
Most of us have some of these areas that we’re doing quite well in, and others not so much.
Or another way to look at it is is that when you go to change your lifestyle to a healthier one, there’s a few areas where you focus most of your attention and efforts and neglect others because they don’t seem as important, or they don’t come as easily to you.
Instead Look to Your Weak Areas First
So if you embark on this skin clearing journey and things are going well but not as well as you hoped, instead of trying to strengthen and refine your link that is already strong, look to your weakest link.
No matter how strong the strongest link is, the chain can still break where it’s weak. By strengthening your strong link, it’s likely you will only see small gains.
Focusing on the weakest link will bring you the most rewards and create the strongest – and clearest – skin and health.
For example, Jane Acne, in pursuit of clear skin, threw out her old way of eating and now eats a really healthy whole foods diet. She also started going to the gym three times a week and meditating for ten minutes per day.
However, she has an extremely irregular sleeping pattern due to her very busy schedule, can’t seem to make much time for fun and pleasure, and she has quite a poor relationship with herself. She hates herself for having acne and talks herself down all the time.
She finds these things very difficult to get around and doesn’t see why they’re that important anyway.
So when things with her skin are going only okay, she automatically wants to start going more hardcore with her already strong links. She wonders if she should go raw vegan, work out 6 days a week, and meditate an hour per day.
Instead, Jane should focus on making time for herself and sleep, and work on self love.
This guest post is an awesome example of how powerful this method can be – Samantha finally focused on her weak link after many years of ignoring it and eventually saw the change in her skin that she had always wanted.
The Weak Link Ain’t Easy Though
However – it’s not like focusing on the weak link is easy. In fact, it’s often the one of the hardest things you can do.
As Chris Kresser says in his article on this topic:
Facing our weakest link usually requires us to step out of our concept of self and challenge our very identity. It asks us to grow and evolve and shine the light of awareness into the dark corners of our psyche.
We often can’t see what our weakest links are, because, by definition, those are areas where we lack awareness or insight. The first challenge in addressing them is that you’re probably not even fully aware that these things are problems.
If you need help identifying what it is for you, it’s the area you’re least likely to value as important and the place you feel most uncomfortable or uncertain about yourself.
But even once we become aware of what our weak links are, it’s still difficult to work with them. We’re fighting against a lifetime of conditioned beliefs about who we are and what we’re supposed to do.
Maybe you were raised in a family that didn’t value rest or pleasure, but placed a high premium on success and accomplishment. This makes it hard to carve out time to relax or have fun.
I agree with Chris. So many – especially those with acne – define health only by healthy eating, but true wellness isn’t about about perfection in one area, it’s about balance in all of them. And finding balance can certainly be a challenge because it requires getting out of your comfort zone.
And don’t worry, you’re not alone. I’m not immune to any of this weak link stuff.
Stress reduction is probably my weakest link. If I’m stressed, taking the time to slow down and meditate, breathe, or anything of the like is probably the absolute hardest thing for me to do.
And if I ever do break out, I am very prone to the “strengthen your strongest link” syndrome. I always automatically start thinking about what to change in my diet, and always have to tell myself to chill out.
I’ll work on it 😉
What do you think your weakest link is? Are you prone to the “strongest link” syndrome?
Jeremy says
December 3, 2014 at 4:05 pmHi Tracy, I tried out the fermented liver oil for my hormonal acne as you recommended for about 4 days. I took 1 tsp each day and don’t really know if it was working or not. But after I started taking it, I felt really tired. Like sleeping all day tired. So I stopped it for now. Felt less tired after I stopped but the tiredness and fogginess still lingering. Any thoughts on this?
Tracy Raftl says
December 4, 2014 at 12:24 pmHi Jeremy, if you have a reaction like that to a supplement, it can be a detox reaction (or a ‘healing crisis’ as they call it), so you can either keep going and see if it goes away after a little while, or you can drop down your dose to just a little tiny bit of it and then slowly work your way up to a full dose over a couple of weeks, which should avoid that kind of reaction.
sandy says
December 4, 2014 at 10:02 pmHi! I have also always blamed the diet ans changed it so many times, alltough this was probably one of my strongest part already. And then the hormones…i have eaten all sort of supplements and drinking different teas etc…but all these years I haven’t notice my digestion 🙂 After reading Louise Hays last book about food, I started to analyze my digestion. Now when I start working with my digestion, I have noticed a big improvement, as my acne has always been on my chin and cheeks. I eat fermented foods, low GL diet, doing exercise, taking epsom salt baths etc…and bone broth seems to work well also. Any other good suggestion for digestion?
Tracy Raftl says
December 5, 2014 at 1:32 pmHi Sandy! You might consider a short candida or parasite cleanse (paired with a lot of probiotics and fermented foods).. what else… don’t drink a ton of liquid with meals, maybe just half a glass, otherwise you might dilute your stomach acid. Drink 15 minutes before your meal and an hour or two after. Also, don’t eat when you’re stressed and make sure you chew your food 🙂
erik says
December 8, 2014 at 4:57 amHello tracy. I can’t figure out my weakest link since it feels like im following every rule i can… Maybe because im feeling a little bit down everyday because of my skin and how it looks. But it’s really hard to stay positive.
Either way, I started the caveman regimen 3 weeks ago. Not fully caveman but only washing with water sometimes. The negative experince i had was breakouts after 1 week. I thought it was “detoxing” my skin so no panic there. But I have now passed 3 weeks and the breakouts are stilll there. I think they are a little less in amount compared to when i cleansed my face 3 weeks ago, but not sure. I have also noticed my skin looks more red and inflamed in some areas of the skin, is this normal? I thought the redness would go away, since there is like no irritation… Any thoughts on this?
Tracy Raftl says
December 8, 2014 at 12:36 pmHi Erik, I can’t tell you what it is, but just based on your short comment, maybe it’s self love?
With the caveman, I don’t know, but give it a couple more weeks and see what happens… if not, feel free to modify it, it might work better for you: https://thelovevitamin.com/13795/modified-caveman-regimen/
Casey says
December 9, 2014 at 10:19 pmI can not emphasize strengthening your weakest link enough!! I did everything right, but I had a horrible (horrible!) sleep schedule. As soon as I got my act together, my skin cleared up. Figuring out your weakest link might be easy and it might be incredibly difficult, but its worth it!
agirlgoesprimal.wordpress.com
Celestina says
December 17, 2014 at 12:18 pmHi Tracy! I’m sorry for contacting you this way – I know you probably have loads of work around the site and emails and stuff without me adding to it – I just wanted to know whether you ever found out what was the exact cause of your acne. It seems ironic posting this on a blog post about how many different factors affect the state of your skin,but there should always be a sort of a “main” cause,right?:D.What I noticed is that I have exactly the same acne pattern as you had – mostly on the forehead and chin.Very little on the nose.
Sandy says
January 28, 2015 at 1:01 pmHi Tracy! I eat totally clean, and i have been eating estroblock for over an year. Still have some acne issue on my chin/chawline. 2 weeks ago I stopped estroblock and mu chin worsened a bit. Do you still eat Estroblock? If no, how did you stopped? Should I continue until my face is totally clear and then wean off? thank you for your time 🙂 My weak link is self-love and stress, but Im working with these 🙂