Bobby
This is a guest post by Bobby Thomas, who shares everything that works for him in his goal towards clear skin over at Addicted Skin Care. He also hosts a new healthy habits challenge each month which you can join here.
If you come here often I’m guessing you already know that diet can play a massive part in the health of your skin, but how far should you go for clear skin?
I am going to share my story on how far I went with my diet to try and achieve clear skin and what the results were.
Cutting Out Food
When I decided my diet needed to improve if I wanted to get clear skin, the first thing I did was cut out sweets, ice-cream & chips etc. All the really bad things.
At this point my diet consisted of meat, fish, fruits, everything really, except for sweets etc.
The problem was my skin was still getting worse, so I decided I needed to cut out more foods.
Dairy, Wheat & Gluten
Everywhere I turned for advice online, cutting out dairy, wheat & gluten from my diet is what I would read – so that’s exactly what I did.
While this did improve my skin a little, it was still not where I wanted it to be so I decided to cut out more foods from my diet.
Meat & Fish
I had read on a few forums that meat and fish could cause acne, so I decided they would have to go.
At this point I had already cut out treats, dairy, wheat and gluten plus meat and fish.
You may be thinking – what the heck did you eat then?..
And the answer is not much. At this point I was down to a few cooked items, vegetables, nuts and fruit.
Did My Skin Look Awesome?
Nope!
There was some improvements but nothing special, really. At this point most people would have taken a different approach as this one obviously was not working too well. But me being me, I decided to go down the same path.
No More Cooking
I decided that because cooking food destroys vitamins and minerals etc, that I would no longer eat any food I had to cook.
I was now down to a all raw diet consisting of fruits, vegetables and nuts.
By now my skin surely looked amazing right?
Again nope!
I still had acne and not only that, by this stage it was impossible for me to socialise with my friends as I could not eat or drink anything they did, and you have to remember, I was only 18 at the time.
Not only did I stop seeing my friends, I also caused a lot of stress and arguments in my family.
Back then, I was so caught up in the whole diet and acne thing everything my family would say about how far I was going with my diet and how unhealthy it was went straight over my head.
When they were saying I really needed to start eating more foods because I was losing a lot of weight, I decided to go even further with my diet.
Organic Only Please
Because my skin still did not look how I wanted it to, I put it down to the chemicals that where in my food as it was not all organic, so from this point forward I decided I would only eat organic food.
Even if I could not afford organic food (which I couldn’t), or if it was not available I refused to eat anything else. It was all organic for me or nothing, end of story.
I was now eating an all raw organic diet.
So my skin should be glowing by now, surely?
And the answer is… no!
I was now down to basically nothing and my skin still did not look how I wanted it to. The last step was eating nothing at all, and I seriously did consider it, but thankfully looking back now I did not go that far.
Time For A Change
After a few months of eating a strictly organic raw diet with average results I decided it was time to start making changes to my diet.
By now it was not as easy as just adding things back in as it had gone much further than just improving my diet for clear skin.
Although I only had average results from the diet, I was paranoid that any food I added in would cause my acne to go back to how it was at it’s real worse.
However I slowly but surely added things back in such as cooked vegetables, cooked eggs and wheat free cereal bars. While adding these foods back into my diet may seem like nothing to most people, I felt it was a huge step in the right direction for me.
And while I would like to say that my diet is now in a good place where I can eat what I want, I cannot. The above foods are the only foods I have added back in for now, but I do hope that one day I can get back to where I can eat what I want, when I want.
I would still like to eat a healthy diet, but If I could eat healthy 80% of the time and then what I want 20% that would be awesome.
What About My Friends and Family?
I still do not see my friends but it’s no longer about the diet but because there has been such a gap between now and the last time I went out with them, but hopefully that will change soon.
As for family we still argue as any other family does, but it’s no longer over my diet.
How Is My Skin Looking Now?
It still isn’t clear, but it is much better than it was before when I was stressing over my diet all day long, everyday.
I would say in % terms it is around 80% clear now, with the 20% mainly consisting of acne marks.
A Lesson Learnt
What I learnt from my own story is everything is healthy in moderation. If you decide you want to clear up your diet to try and clear your skin give yourself a few days off where you can enjoy anything you want.
If you can see yourself going down the path I went down I highly recommend you take a step back and decide whether at this time in your life if what you are doing is for the right reasons and you are doing it correctly with the support of your family behind you.
I did not, and ended up in a really lonely place that I have still not fully found my way out of, put am getting there slowly.
Before I end this I just want to clarify that I am not against having a healthy diet to achieve clear skin, I actually think it’s extremely important, but just make sure it’s a “healthy diet” and not a diet that you hate but feel you have to do.
Have you taken your dieting too far, or in danger of going down the same path as Bobby?
I once gave up milk, hardly ate cheese and stuck to raw vegetables in an attempt to clear my skin, but none of those things worked for me. I think stress plays the biggest factor. I was stressing about what I ate, stressing about classes and stressing about the long-distance relationship I was in,trying to please my then-boyfriend so that he wouldn’t leave me.
My skin cleared significantly after: I saw a dermatologist, my then-boyfriend and I broke up and I cared less about the whole no-dairy-only-raw-vegetables thing. The face wash cream I was prescribed definitely helped (benzaclin), but even after I ran out of it, my skin didn’t go back to its pimply ways (of course I get the occasional pimple, but not nearly as bad as before).
For me, the lesson learned was to eliminate the things in your life that make you unhappy as much as possible. Be healthy, but don’t fret. BE HAPPY! Happiness shines through everything.
That is great advice.
I personally think anything that does not make you happy is unhealthy for you long term.
Thanks for sharing.
This is such a great post, thank you so much for sharing.
I couldn’t agree with you more when you say: “If you can see yourself going down the path I went down I highly recommend you take a step back and decide whether at this time in your life if what you are doing is for the right reasons and you are doing it correctly with the support of your family behind you.”
This is sound advice.
I have mild acne and I had a really bad experience with similar emotions as you did. I was also 18 at the time my skin was worst and I felt like I had to punish myself for having bad skin…lost all my school friends and although I’m in a better place with my skin and mentality now (I’m 21), I still haven’t got those friends,and I do feel like I lost about 2 years of my life because of the side-effects of low self-esteem.
Acne can be so isolating for so many reasons, but personally I’ve found the “I’m the one to blame” versus “Why doesn’t anyone understand?” conflict really hard to deal with.
I’ve never gone to such a drastic measure as you did for a long time. I did a week of eating only those 10 calorie shiritaki noodles, but nothing like that can ever last. I also cannot eat what I want – for weight and skin issues. I suppose the worst element of this for me is that I don’t drink alcohol. I say ‘worst element’ because it pretty much makes socialising at university impossible. I know this sounds like an excuse, and it is to a certain extent (I’m aware I make excuses to not socialise, I’m still working on this), but if you didn’t go out drinking in the first week, you didn’t make friends.
I don’t drink alcohol for several reasons, one of which is the detrimental effect it has on skin (as Tracy points out) and weight. It’s another part of the isolation; I hated not being invited out to clubs or pubs when I was 18 because all my friends knew I wouldn’t drink.
But I also have started to get over this negative attitude slowly but surely. If acne affects you as deeply as it does us, then you aren’t like other people – that’s a really good thing though, in my opinion. It shows how much respect you have for your body and your life that you’d go to great lengths to heal it.
Learning from going too far is more admirable than not doing enough.
P.S – You look great in your photo, I hope you get a lot of sincere compliments on here and you take a well-deserved boost to your confidence.
That’s exactly what’s happening to me as well. I just don’t socialise with people. I only speak when spoken to and I see all my friends chatting away happily and i’m the one left out.
It feels very degrading ): especially when your friends invite you somewhere and you make up an excuse and the thing is I don’t wanna let them down but because of acne I sadly do…
Hey Sufyan
I know exactly how you feel and it’s so frustrating right.
You sit there wanting to participate and either nothing comes to mind or when it does you do not want to say it because it pulls attention towards you.
I am probably not the best person to give advice on this, but have you tried talking to some of your friends 1 on 1 to explain to them how you feel?
Yeah thanks for that mate. I could ask someone I know who i’m familiar with and wouldn’t mind.
I can sympathize with you on the alcohol thing – funnily enough, it’s actually one thing I feel pretty bad about encouraging people to refrain from. I guess it’s because in my younger days, I had some very fun times getting drunk like everyone else did and would have been pretty sad to feel “forced” to give it up… I mean, I backpacked Australia and Europe alone… and honestly am not sure if I would have had nearly as much fun or met as many people, or felt as social, if I hadn’t drank often. I mean, sure … it is physically unhealthy. But … on the other hand….. that cognitive dissonance (a fancy term for holding two opposing beliefs – in this case, wanting to drink and be normal and have fun, but also wanting to be healthy and have clear skin), is pretty unhealthy itself.
I guess in a way, for me, my severe breakout was “well timed” because I had naturally gotten to the point where I was getting tired of drinking and being hungover, so making the switch over to being a ‘non-drinker’ was much easier than it would have been if I was still into partying like I was when I was younger. The main reason I refrain from drinking now is simply because I genuinely can’t stand being hungover anymore. If that wasn’t the case, I may very well get a little boozy every once in a while, simply because it can be fun, and fun is good for you.
Hey Tracy
Thanks for sharing this, really appreciate it.
I totally agree with you on the alcohol issue. Everyone know it’s not good for them, but should you really completely cut it out if it means having no social life? I would say no.
Wow! I really do not think I could backpack Australia and Europe alone, that must have been one massive journey in all ways.
Again, thanks.
Hey LJ
Your story sounds almost exactly the same as mine.
I think that is one of the worst things about acne, it lowers your self-esteem so much that you feel awkward and isolated when you do go out, so it’s easier or “safer” to stay in.
I definitely feel you on the alcohol. All my friends would ask me to go out drinking with them, and my answer would always be no, so they stopped asking in the end.
True that.
Thanks for the compliment, not to sure about it myself though ha. You are to kind.
Bobby
I cut out lots of foods as well, but my skin did not start to clear up until I did two detoxes: 1 for candida and another to cleanse my liver. I went to a holistic doctor and took some very specific herbs and an anti-fungal to starve out the candida – the doctor told me no matter how healthy I was eating, the anti fungal was needed to give my body that extra push. Maybe you needed something extra as well!
Hey Elizabeth
I think you may be right, and it’s definitely something I will look into.
Thanks
When I was 14, I suffered from a bad bout of mononucleosis – I wasn’t able to eat anything for about two months and in between everything else I remember fearing that my skin would get bad because I was so sick (looking back, it wasn’t even that bad anyway, compared to how it got).
To my amazement, my skin was completely clear of acne and eczema after that and remained clear for a number of months. And surprisingly, my periods came on time, whereas before they could be quite irregular. But of course this all started to go downhill again after a while (probably because I was still eating lots of sugar).
My skin continued to have its ups and downs until at age 18 it became severe and then I went down the diet route, remembering how my skin had cleared up when I had eaten nothing; and similar to your story it didn’t seem to help much. In time things actually got worse. Looking back I see how depressed and stressed I was over it, and that definitely made it worse.
So I tried accupuncture and colonics and apple fasts and cutting out this, that and the other and taking numerous supplements. The lot. some things seemed to help, others didn’t; and I was never clear. It was very frustrating. eventually, I was put on anti-depressents, which despite being conventional and a possibly toxic medicine, did help take my mind off of it more which meant I was less stressed. The accupuncture didn’t work, and they made me drink these absolutely vile concoctions of herbs in between visits. It did nothing.
So I went on the pill for the last few years, and that cleared me up completely, although I suspect it exacerbated my dry skin problems. I continued to eat as well as I possibly could through out the 6 years I was on it though.
I went off the pill 4 months ago now, and while I may get some spots here and there things have been pretty good with my skin so far. I plan to do another candida cleanse in the future, find out what my allergies are, a hormone test or two, and hopefully get my gut in good enough working condition to do a few liver, gallbladder and maybe kidney cleanses.
The main thing that I think is helping these days is that I’m more confident than I was when I was 18. I’m more likely to think positively and try not to stress too much about the little things. I am worried acne could return like it was, but I feel I’m better prepared and supported to handle it this time around (if it comes!).
Sorry that was such a ramble, but this post resonated with me and how I felt going through all these diet changes. You’re very right about eating a “healthy diet” as opposed to ” a diet you hate, but feel you have to do”. It takes all the joy out of food and puts a lot of stress on you, and that’s never helpful.
Hey Laura
Thanks for sharing your story with me, you seem to have had a difficult time as I did, but have managed to get through them, which is great.
No worries, and that was no ramble.
That is the advice I give to anyone who is trying to clear there acne with diet now. If your diet makes you unhappy then it’s never a healthy diet long term.
Thanks again Laura
Bobby
learned.
wow, the same exact things happened to me last year. Still recovering..now my digestive system is ALL MESSED UP!
so whats your digestion like now bobby?
It’s okay but not perfect.
Yikes. My heart goes out to you, Bobby. I’ve been there. I cut soy…then meat…then dairy and eggs…then anything processed left in my diet (not much)…I tried cutting any form of sugar,inc. fruit…then raw food only…then all grains…etc. I’m a petite person and I ended up losing a TON of weight (as well as a ton of hair. Eep.) I was motivated because my skin would behave for long stretches of time as long as I ate a particular way (soy-free and vegan), but even a bite of something new or foreign would bring up large, painful cysts on my face,no matter how “good” I was the other 99% of the time.
I FINALLY went to a naturopath and got tested for food sensitivities…turns out I had/have LOTS of them…but it’s so good to finally KNOW instead of just guess and shoot around in the dark. I’m approx. halfway through my leaky gut healing period,I’ve gotten some muscle tone back, started eating meat again and finally stopped my hair loss (Thank God. It was terrifying me). I still battle the temptation to try cutting out new food groups, though. I understand how much that approach can beckon, especially once you come to understand what your food can do to your body. I hope people reading this will be warned. I practically ended up with an eating disorder this way.
In the eighth grade I began a change in my diet. I had 99% perfect skin but the few blemishes FREAKED ME OUT!! Slowly I cut out everything until I became a ” skin anorexic.” I would not eat anything at all. I would skip breakfast, drink water for lunch, and for diner I would just not eat. I would just sit while everyone ate. I lost so much weight. Being on the small side I dropped from 85lbs to 50-55lbs. I felt horrible, had constant headaches, my clothes no longer fit, and looked even worse. During this time due to the stress and lack of vitamins my skin became dry and more prone to blemishes. I knew I needed to eat to gain weight but could not force myself to eat because I was terrified of breaking out. Those months were the worst months of my life. I am now grateful I went through it because it helped me grow as a person and learn a lot about myself.
Thanks for sharing that experience with us Kimberly. We get so afraid of food thinking it is the enemy, but we need food… the less food we eat the worse our metabolism becomes, the less nutrients we have to keep our skin lovely…
I am glad I found this. Yesterday I was at the phase of no meat, no fish, no dairy, no sugar, no starchy carbs, and no gluten. I decided to take the gluten back in order to slow down my weight loss, but still was hesitant about it. Now it is easier for me to do so and be cautious about the extremes.
The clear skin diet seems to work like a miracle to everyone on the internet, but I’m on it for a month with little to no result.
This is a great post! I am learning more and more for myself that is not all about what you eat. I have played around with elimination a lot and am leaning more towards the moderation approach as well. Its definitely nice to be able to relax and enjoy yourself when it comes to food occasionally 🙂
Stress causes loss of sleep and digestive issues for me. It doesn’t seem to effect my skin. However. I have found that every time I eat a lot of estrogen containing food my skin breaks out. I avoid soy, eggs and milk and my skin clears. Sometimes it is the food we eat that is causing our outbreaks. Everyone is an individual.