My experiment with RRARF (rehabilitative rest and aggressive re-feeding) has caused me to find an interesting thing out about myself.
A major principle behind RRARF is to let go of food fears, throw away restrictive diets, eat all food groups as your body desires, and stop worrying so much about food in general. What a breath of fresh air!
I still heartily agree with that principle! And I’d say that for most people, food isn’t a hobby and they don’t have time to care about all the extras and the details – they just want to eat relatively healthy and forget the bells and whistles. RRARF principles of food freedom may be exactly what you need to stay sane!
But – I found something interesting and that was that, in my personal experience, by allowing myself to ‘not care’ about my food and its potential for building my health, I was taking all the fun out of it! I wasn’t expecting that. I was simply expecting to worry a little less.
Instead, I felt like something was missing – I felt a bit like letting go of food took some purpose out of my life. It made me realize that I don’t only eat well out of fear (although I know that’s still a small part of it)- I actually truly enjoy healthy food, and enjoy thinking about it, and enjoy doing kitchen experiments, and enjoy trying to make my diet wholesome, local, and fresh all in the name of health.
Instead of viewing cooking as just something boring that “I have to do” (like I used to), I’ve come to love food as a hobby. It has kept me present and rooted, unlike my usual antsy inclination to be planning my next move, adventure, or getaway, almost as soon as I have settled in a location (maybe because before food, travel and thinking about travel was my main hobby?)
Unfortunately while on RRARF, I felt like I had been taken back to when cooking and eating was nothing more than a chore.
Not what I was expecting – and I didn’t like it!
Find out more of my thoughts on this in my video:
To elaborate on the biking across the world thing that I was talking about in this video:
It would be amazing. I’d honestly LOVE to do that one day. And I know that if I want to, I could make it happen. However, if I were to do that, I’d really have to completely give up the standards of how I eat now. You can’t exactly carry your whole kitchen with you on a bike, or even a cooler.
So, when I suddenly adopted RRARF principles of freedom, I thought … great. I could do that now. I’ve been given permission to be FREE. I could get on that bike and eat way below my usual standards and not worry because that’s what was available to me at that time, and I would do the best I could without stress.
And hey -if I ever do actually embark on biking across the world (or more likely just a country or two!), hopefully I will keep all those RRARF principles in mind and actually not stress about it and have all the fun I can and be totally free. That would definitely be ideal. I think these RRARF things are an exceptionally good lesson for me for those times when food cannot be a main focus (like on holiday).
However, these tantalizing thoughts of being able to not care about my food made me feel like I had no purpose in the present.
Financially there’s no chance of being able to go on a giant bike adventure any time in the next year or so, so I’d rather not be spending my time daydreaming of being off in biking la la land instead of enjoying my present moment – which currently is spending a lot of time at home – cooking, eating, loving, gardening, blogging, spending time with my friends, and hopefully – because I totally know I need to do this much more – focusing on emotional freedom techniques, meditation, yoga, and inner peace.
Ya kno?
If it’s not food, what do you find are things that give your life purpose and keep you sane?
38 Responses
Ok~ I gotta throw this out there. First, I like your blog, and agree with lots of your life choices. I too love cooking, meals, and eating healthy food! I am glad you stopped the GAPS diet. Not so sure that RARRF is/was the answer, seemed more of a rebound thought process that helped you cope with ‘failing’ at the other diet. Which I also want to mention, it was NOT failure. Extremes of anything, be it adkins (which i consider extreme) or other diets are NOT healthy. Your body told you that, and you listened. 🙂
I too suffer/suffered from Acne. So I do understand that desperate feeling that you want to cure it, and live life like so many others who wake up and have flawless skin. I mean, we are in our 20’s…after this its fighting wrinkles and age, this is the time our skin is suppose to look awesome, yet cysts, blotches, and breakouts hinder that and effect self esteem and cause stress.
I love the caveman. I first learned about it from you and your blog. It is a theory that not many of us acne sufferers have considered. And it was a huge eye opening moment when I thought about it. My husband has perfect skin. (He gets a zit 1 or 2 times a year if he is stressed out. That is it.) His family has always teased him for his ‘showering’ habits growing up, and now, however he does shower daily now to avoid all the jest. lol. Why is this important??? He never washes his face. Never has. He may or may not let water on it in the shower, but does not wash it. His skin is perfect, and something I never considered. After years and years of peroxide, and other treatments my skin was for a while a different shade on my face than the rest of my body. From all the scrubbing and treating. It never occurred to me I was causing the break outs to be worse. So I slowly weaned myself off my medicine. I started skipping treatments and with that began to stop thinking and worrying about my skin. Eventually I started skipping days of washing. Now I am at about 2 weeks of nothing touching my skin. And it is 100% clear. I did have one breakout, and it was linked to stress. I was stressed out for a few days, once the stress passed and the breakout cleared, nothing else. I didn’t pick or touch it and it healed very VERY fast.
Where is this going?
Healthy diet, and fun cooking is an AWESOME hobby. Continue to cook, forrage, and learn. Just please…I want you to find some way to relieve the stress you seem to suffer in regards to food. It seems to ALWAYS be on your mind, thinking about, trying to fix, and find ways to eat and heal yourself. The caveman works SO awesome because not stressing/thinking about your skin regimen as well as not putting ‘silly’ new things on your face all the time allow your body to heal and stay healthy. And all of a sudden you realize its been days or weeks since you stressed about our face/skin. Diet is the same. Think about food the way you do the caveman, and let yourself heal and stop stressing. I think many of your ‘gut’ issues would heal like your face did if you slowly de-stress and not worry as much. Not like RARRF, that also caused you stress and to think way too much about it. But let your body guide you, and find something that helps calm you…
This may or may not have helped. But I wanted to comment, because I follow and read your blog updates every time now and have learned a lot from you.
When I am stressed I drink a cup of green tea. The health benefits far outweigh the caffeine for me. And its good for your skin too.
Hi Janel – thanks for that 🙂 I definitely, whole heartedly agree. I have always known that stress is a big factor in acne and my acne, but sometimes (probably because food is my hobby and I’m always reading about it) I tend to forget that and want to try this, and try that. That’s where GAPS came in, and yes, RRARF…. I got carried away! But I’ve learned so much from it!~ 😀
The truth is, I’m just a worrier, I guess. I worry about money a lot too. Food and skin is just another thing that I can worry about. I know there’s a deeper problem. I am now just going to eat a regular diet, however I want to in that moment, and focus more on meditation and getting to the root of my emotional problems, instead of trying to filter them into controlling, and worrying about whatever I can.
I love having all you Love Vitamin readers to chat to about this and get your feedback 🙂
Hi Janel-
My story sounds a bit similar to yours. My husband has clear skin and never washes his face either. He has always told me to do the same. I am feeling a bit desperate and hopeless. I tried to wean off proactiv and onto some natural stuff and still broke out horribly. I haven’t tried the caveman. I want to so bad though! It is my ultimate goal to declare cosmetic freedom. Can I ask you some questions? Were you on benzoyl peroxide before? How slowly did you wean off your medication? Did it take you 2 months, 6 months, a year? I’m glad this is going great for you!
Hey Tiffany!
Sure no problem, I am happy to answer questions.
Yes I was on benzoyl peroxide before, specifically proactiv. I would do the system 2x a day, as well as the refining mask each night. I felt that it did ‘clear’ up most of my acne. However, I had red, dry, irritated skin, and STILL got 4-7 breakouts consistently with hyperpigmentation. I knew something had to change, because I was terrified to miss my routine, as well as wearing make-up to cover up the problems I did have.
I do eat a healthy diet, lots of organic veggies, lots or green tea, and meat 1 time a day.
I began to wean off the proactive step by step. The first thing I did was ‘skip’ the tonor step 2 at night. After a few days, I skipped it in the morning. My face had no change, still redness, breakouts, and dry, but not any worse. Next I changed the peroxide cleanser at night from the proactiv one to cetifil gentle skin cleanser, and kept what was left of their system the same. (What I was doing was morning step 1 cleanser, then the reparing step 3 lotion. Night gentle skin cleanser applied softly, then mask, then reparing lotion.) After a few days of this, I swapped the morning cleanser to the gentle skin cleanser as well, and stopped the mask. At this point I was ready to drop the morning routine. After about a week or so, I started to lessen the amount of the benzyol peroxide. I did this because I have heard horrible stories when people quit it cold turkey and I knew it took my skin months to get use to this harsh system, it would take a while to get use to not having it. When I had myself using only a drop of lotion, I stopped that as well. Then I began to lengthen the time between using the gentle skin cleanser. ***I will also note, I no longer condition my hair. I believe that was a source for oils and chemicals touching my skin as well, because any place my hair touched my face, I broke out.***
Now I have weaned off the medicine and proactiv. I did not use any make up during this time. It is hard, but worth it. It has been a few weeks of no washing and my skin is great. My redness is 100% gone. The few pimples I have had pop up, clear up in a day. My scars are healing too. And I don’t need make up to go out.
Hopefully this helps. The whole process took about 2 months. And I am so happy that I realized that all that stuff was making it worse. Ever since I was about 12 years old I have scrubbed, and picked, and punished my skin. My acne probably subsided like everyone else after the teenage years, but I had no clue because I was causing breakouts.
Thanks Janel!
I’m encouraged by your story. I’m 30 and have battled this since I was 14. I started today only using proactiv once. I have used it on and off for 8 years. Every time I try and get off it, I break out terrible and go back on it in desperation. I know it is best to be done with it as soon as I can be. I have been eating really healthy for over a year now and I just started to rid our house of other chemicals. I use an organic shampoo bar (I tried “no poo” but I can’t get the hang of it) and I don’t use conditioner any more either. Again, thank you for answering my questions! I hope this works for me!
I want to try this so bad, but I just can NOT not wear makeup! My skin is too severely broken out. I tried it last week and the boys I watch kept asking about it. And I caught a few people staring, ugh just gave me so much stress!!
Don’t do it if it’s going to cause you too much stress, because it’ll be counterproductive
I discovered this recently about myself too. I LOVE preparing traditional meals that nourish me inside and out.
I don’t really mind all the extra “effort” (I don’t view it as effort, I view it as part of the process the same way that a recipe calls for a greased pan or beaten eggs or whatever) to prepare my food.
I find fermenting especially fun. It’s beautiful seeing these seemingly insignificant little kefir grains spring forth LIFE into my food. I’m convinced my kefir grains have their own personality and, like people, they have their own favorite foods and tastes. Sometimes it would be nice to just pop something in the microwave and nuke it and be done. But if I do that, there’s no love and life to my food.
We don’t just ingest nutrition from food – we also ingest the “spiritual” life energy from that food and I’m pretty sure microwaves and less-effort-required methods of cooking can zap that energy away too. I don’t miss those old foods, but even if I did I can still eat them. If i really wanted to, I could say “screw it!” and completely ignore my diet and stuff my face with soybean oil slathered white bread. I still have that choice, I choose not to because it wouldn’t make me happy and it certainly wouldn’t fill any void in my life like healthy living does.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that I honestly don’t MIND eating healthy and having a “strict” diet. Some people like collecting stamps, I like living healthy.
Yes 😀 Exactly this!
I totally agree about it being much more fun preparing healthy meals from scratch, rather than throwing things in the microwave.
I never really liked cooking before, but since I started preparing proper meals I actually find it much more enjoyable now.
As far as my diet goes for right now, it’s not exactly where I want it to be, but it’s much better than it was.
Thanks for sharing such great posts Tracy.
Bobby
I’ve been following your eating adventures with interest. My thoughts on eating is it should be a kind of self love affair. A really good, healthy, supportive (and sometimes forgiving) kind of love where you’re just really happy about what you’re putting in your body, what it’s doing for you, and how it makes you feel. From hearing about your recent adventures with RRARF and GAPS I wasn’t really getting the sense that it was making you feel those happy light feelings. You seemed pretty happy with the Paleo diet and lifestyle–just listen to the way you talk about your passion for preparing your meals!!-so I vote for sticking with what works.
As to the acne–I find any time I suddenly start eating a lot of one type of food I don’t eat often I tend to have a kind of initial breakout (and some “healthy” foods I just can’t eat in large quantities without breakouts: nuts and seeds). So maybe that’s all it is? Plus the stress of switching from one way of eating to another is significant I think. It requires too much thought and not enough enjoyment, you know?
Hi Kate 🙂
Yes, i’m going back to my paleo-ish/WAPF thing with more starch (for my tummy)…. I realize now that I really liked that and I felt pretty good too! I like the way you say food and eating should be a self love affair.
Hi Tracy,
Hearing what you had to say in the video helped me understand how I too use food in order to ground myself and realise my ‘purpose’. For instance, since Easter time really, I haven’t been doing half as much as the healthy food ‘activities’ that I wanted to and I felt that I was just wasting my time really. Like today, I skipped breakfast and have done for days now because I’ve been eating junk and don’t really feel hungry until dinner time. I use to take pride and satisfaction in cooking and preparing every meal from scratch, but after eating so much junk, I just don’t have the energy to cooks 3 wholesome meals a day.
Anyway, I feel that the paleo with some ‘extras’ from WAPF or candida could be a very stable and successful lifestyle choice. Lifestyle because it’s more about the associated procedures of preparing and appreciating good food, than a ‘diet’ that sound restrictive and a chore. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend a book full of paleo meals.
http://www.amazon.com/Make-Paleo-Grain-Recipes-Occasion/dp/1936608863/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338027204&sr=8-1
Primal blueprint is also very good!
Thank you for your blog, it’s very helpful and unique and I value your experiments as I don’t really have the time to do them myself!
Thank YOU for being such an awesome reader/visitor/whatever, Nathan. I really appreciate having you here!
Hello Tracy,
I like your blog and it is actually the only blog I like to read 🙂
Tell me what you think about this website: amazinghealth.org
They also have on this website a very interesting gardening section. Hope you will enjoy it 🙂
Regarding insecurities I had A LOT of them and inner peace was gone…I was always looking for something, traveling a lot to try to find THAT particular thing that would help me feel less empty. Guess what? I had to go to China and come to live in Canada to find that thing. Which is God. I grew up in a religious home but …you know…you have been told that God exists but you don’t know really who God is for yourself . So I fought against God for a good part of my teenage years because I didn’t like the idea of having someone above you wanting to tell you what to do and what is evil or good. I wanted to live !!!! But I was so wrong I actually waste so much time. My idea of God was wrong. God wants us to live and to live happy.
Here what He says about peace:
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
”
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:25-34
It is long but lovely,
Nathalie
Beautiful passage Nathalie! The Word breaths life. I also like 1 Peter 5:7 “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” I have to “cast my anxiety” several times a day. The days I don’t are bad days. God is LOVE!
@Tiffany
Yes I should have thought about this verse 🙂 🙂 It is a good one. You are right 😉 the nature of God is to be love.
@Tracy 🙂 Continue to be interested in health. So many young people do not do that when they should. It seems that you are a very unique.
“I sought the Lord, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.” Psalms 34:4 (King David talking)
Yes that was beautiful. Thank you Nathalie 🙂
hi tracy!!
I love you and I love your site, you give me so much hope. I ordered your book about a week ago, am I suppose to download it or will I recieve it in the mail?
Downlaod it – I’ll email you Marcie 🙂
Tracy,
Great that you are keeping us up to date with your food adventure. I think many of us go through this same roller coaster where we think of one food plan as a potential savior, throw ourselves at it for a couple of weeks, then crash and burn to varying degrees! I think you are on the money going back to Paleo-ish/WAPF. I’ve been doing the same for ten days and find myself far less anxious about what I’m eating each meal! My acne is really stubborn so I’m going for heavy doses of probiotics AND anti-candid supplements, but I don’t think its practical to try an extreme diet plan like GAPS while living a normal 9-5 life. With this stuff, it’s almost too easy to let a new diet adventure turn into a negative experience because of the anxiety it causes. In terms of acne…at the risk of sounding like an armchair doctor, I think it’d be great to see you turn your focus away from food, maybe back towards meditation? Perhaps I missed the posts but I don’t feel like we’ve seen much about that in a while and it’s an interesting topic! With acne and with health in general, it seems like (not just here, but in general) the topics are Food, Exercise, and Supplementation. I think that breathing and meditation are probably the missing/ignored elements and I’d be very interested to see you look into those a bit more! Anyways that’s enough from me. Keep up the great work, I always enjoy your posts!
Thanks Jake 🙂 I agree, it’s an area of health and it’s implications for acne I have known since the beginning of this website and I’ve dabbled with them plenty, but I guess for me personally, I find it easier to be disciplined and think about food a lot instead of staying committed to meditation and emotional techniques. Maybe because they don’t seem quite as “tangible”. After this though, I think I have learned a lot about how easy it is to get carried away with our “saviour diet” without considering the emotional toll it may take. I’m sure I will be writing more about the emotional/meditation stuff as I revisit it. So far I’ve been doing a little bit of EFT (emotional freedom technique) lately, and maybe it’s just a placebo, but I do seem to feel better emotionally.
Anyway…. thanks 🙂
I would love to read more about meditation/EFT etc. Its something that I have been wanting to dive more into. I find it funny that every time Im thinking of some sort of health related topic, I come here and you have just mentioned it…Thanks for all your information Tracy. I find it soo very motivating. I first found you when you made your post on menstrual cups. ( Been using one since and I absolutely LOVE it. Just started on the no poo regime..(so far so good) and now just trying to get back into a more WAPF lifestyle. Like Nathan, I have sort of fallen off the wagon since Easter…had some stressful situations come up and I’m such an emotional eater…so now I’m trying to get involved in EFT to help with my eating habits and would love to learn more about meditation but feel like I dont have enough time to fully research it at the moment…Thanks again Tracy for all that you do.. Peace..
Thanks for your resposne Tracy! 🙂 You hit the nail on the head by saying that its far more difficult to be disciplined about emotional and meditation techniques and that they seem less ‘tangible’. We can’t see more oxygen going to our brain from our lungs but we can see the food we put on our plates! And man is it hard to focus on breathing. The human attention span is a funny thing! Could you or someone please Post a link to EFT? Sounds interesting!
Lol, I know. I can barely count ten breaths before my mind wanders off. Anyway, this is the site that I learned tapping from: http://www.tapping.com/
Cool! Right on Tracy!
Things that give my life purpose… to learn and to love, I guess. 🙂 To me they are equally important. Reflecting on my past, learning from my experiences, discovering more about my inner strength and growing as a person do bring meaning to my life. But so does learning about anything else, really. We live in a beautiful world, and sometimes I wish I were a sponge absorbing all information, from computers to Eastern philosophy to amateur astronomy to gardening!
As for love, I really feel I have an infinity to give. Since I haven’t found my soulmate yet, I try to channel that love into making a positive difference, however small. I can totally relate to what you said about the feeling of something missing in your life, which prompted you to travel. To me it was volunteering work for mental health charities, as it happened to fit with my educational background. Once I started volunteering every week, I felt like a void in my life had been filled, and that what I was doing was meaningful and worthwhile. Highly recommend volunteering to anyone who has a bit of time to spare, there are so many areas to choose from!
Tracy, I think you are definitely spreading the love with your blog (hence the title)! You are encouraging so many people to change their lives for the better, and that is admirable as well as full of purpose!
Wow, your comment really resonated with me, thank you first of all. I am home for the summer and currently nursing a shoulder injury (had surgery a month ago) and I am not currently in school, playing hockey, or have a job. I have been feeling really unproductive, lazy and worthless lately because I feel like I am not going anywhere in life at the moment. I don’t think getting a job for 2 months before I head off to college is really worth it, but something you said makes me think of something that is worth it. Instead of spending my time worrying about myself trying to make a quick buck, why don’t I spend it helping someone else? “Highly recommend volunteering to anyone who has a bit of time to spare, there are so many areas to choose from!” That is the void I can fill, I have the time, no excuses, I just need to decide where. Does anyone have any ideas for community service I can do?
Hi Tyler!
That is fantastic that you are considering volunteering! Yes, there are countless areas to choose from. What I do is I’m a listening volunteer for a suicide hotline and I also do befriending for a mental health charity. But there are so many other opportunities. For instance, if you want to make a difference to the environment, you can volunteer for an environmental charity and participate in regular group cleaning of local forests or beaches. Also, if you care a lot about animals, you can help at a local animal shelter. If you’re more into human rights, you can do advocacy for Amnesty International. If you like helping old people, you can volunteer in a day centre. You can work with the homeless in a soup kitchen. You can befriend cancer patients. You can do anything!
If you happen to live in the UK, there will be a local association of voluntary services which has a database of all the local charities and volunteering opportunities. Usually they have a website so you can search by keyword. If not, you can look in your telephone directory, local paper, or even Google for local charities. Most of them welcome volunteers. If you’re stuck, your local library has a lot of leaflets and they’d be happy to help you search.
I’m sorry to hear about your injury, I hope you get well soon. And you are definitely not worthless, I can tell you’re a very good person! 🙂
hey tracy
One thing i highly recomend for your stress and emotional issues is bach flower remedies. I was seeing a naturopath for months and always refused her giving them to me because i thought they were just placebo or not going to work ect..i mean, its flowers! But after a while i gave in because I was still holding a lot of old beliefs about myself and being impatient with treatment (she gives them out to all her patentients for free anyway)..there are different essences for different emotional problems and blocks. Bach believed that all physical problems in the body stem from repressed or trapped emotion. Through the flower essence it heals the emotional, thus healing the physical. And i can say hand on my heart that they work! I was so shocked! Seriously I used to be such a worrier about loads of little things and pesimistic ect. All you do is take 4 drops 4 times a day in a bit of water…i cant say ALL my physical problems have magically dissapeared but emotionally and mentally i feel like a completely different person.
Also have you ever tried tapping? Its an emotional freedom technique that you can do over the internet for free via a youtube video that demonstrates it. You basically re-train your brain how to not feel a certain way about something by tapping certain points on the body. Its very scientific and works really well. Only takes about 10minutes.
Hi Amy! That’s really interesting about the bach flowers… I will have to look into that. As for EFT, I had some experience with it a long time ago but never kept up with it… i’ve just revisited it and want to just start tapping anything that pops into my head and see what kind of effects it has… so far I think I actually do feel emotionally better. Maybe a placebo, but I don’t know. I will be doing a post about it sometime soon.
My restrictive eating habits have taught me a few lessons about myself and my body that I do think are truly valuable. The newfound freedom to eat foods way below my standards is incredibly freeing to me, as well, like you’ve experienced. I’ve found that I’m totally okay not researching nutrition and health. I only liked researching those things because I was excited about what those things could offer me, which was to eventually be completely acne free. Without acne, I could eat whatever I want, and be…free!
Well, I kind of skipped the middle step now, and I’m just free. However, I’m not eating like I did before my diet experiments. I’m just allowing myself to eat foods (mostly because I think starvation has sent my body into shock, and I just can’t afford to be picky anymore). The freedom to go out and eat is nice, PLUS I get to keep eating the way I’ve been eating during my experiments. Like, I’m not totally gluten-free anymore, I just make sure I’m not having four sandwhiches and a bowl of pasta everyday, haha.
With the experiment, I’ve found that some of the foods I was avoiding “just to be safe” seemed to be the ones that I needed. Though I do have more acne than on a stricter meal plan, my skin is more supple and it glows, ironically.
So, I woke up this morning and came straight to my computer because I as I lay in bed last night, usually with stress and anxiety about my skin…I should let you know I do not have severe acne, or even close. I do believe I have acne dysmoorphia though so to me it feels jut as real and terrible when I do get a pimple, or three or seven like I have right now, it’s sever to me no matter what, and I’m a picker so thats bad too. two years ago I had a bad breakout all over my forhead, I was going through an extremely stressful time in my life and I was anorexic on top of it, I never ate and when i did I would binge on fast food and then feel guilty about it for days, stressing and excessivly excersising late into the early morning and starving myself. I drank a ton of water so I could not phathom why my skin was doing this, I drink SO much water I though, I’m doing everything right! clearly I wasn’t. I went to the dermotologist, he put me on differen and antibiotics…. I don’t know if either really helped in the end. Then I moved in with my aunt, the stress faded, my diet became more consistent. stil not “healthy” but definitly better then what I was doing and my skin cleared p for the most part, but now, ever since that initial bad breakout and having had next to perfect skin before that and doing hardly anything to care for it, I have developed so much irrational fear. everytime I get more than a couple of pimples at a time, I think oh no! it’s happening again, I go into full I check the mirror every five minutes, I am constantly seeking reasurance from my now boyfriend taht it’s not as bad as I think it is. which does woders for our sex life, me asking about my pimples all time….. geez. I recently decided to oil cleanse, my skin was being great and I thought, this will take it to the next level of greatness! and it was an absolute disaster for me. I guess it was purging. but it was bad. and I lost it. Thats when I stumbled across your site, I bought your book and you have opened up my eyes on so many different levels! I have been eating pretty much, just raw whole foods for the past week, with the except of a few rice cakes when I’m lazy. The texture of my sking is starting to feel smooth again and I think my nreakout from the oil cleanser is healing. the spots that I picked seem to be healing quicker as well. I havn’t stopped wearing makeup bor have I switched to a completely natural skin regimen. but I have switched from harsh acne cleansers containg salaylic acid and abrassive scrubs to somthing much more gentle for my skin and I only wash to take off my makeup at night. I can’t give up my moisturizer! it’s a dermologica one and I love it so much. but maybe I will find a way to part with it in the future. but back to the very begining, last night I was laying there and I had hope. Hope that I can not only heal my body and inturn heal my face but hope that I can heal my mind and rid myself of this all consuming irrational perception I have of myself and my skin, and I have you to thank. So, THANK YOU. P.s. This is maybe TMI, but since I have started eating this way, well just yesterday I pooped FOUR times! not bad or painful or anything. they were actually quite nice, hahaha. I just don’t know how I had so much in me! is this part of the detox?
Yay! Thanks for the comment Marcie 🙂 I understand that fear of acne coming back and that feeling of hopelessness. I’m really happy you’ve gotten some hope back. Good luck with everything!
I wanted to add a note after reading about the ED above. I am a recovering (recovered?) anorexic [I haven’t restricted in almost ten months.] As an anorexic, I clearly identify with the whole hobby-of-food thing; I genuinely had to mourn my incredible “skills” of restricting and obsessing over meals, all skills which my nutritionist and psychologist deemed completely maladaptive.
There are a few things to note about the hobby of restricting (or, in a more healthy light, attending to) food. In terms of anorexia, the truth is that I began restricting in the first place because a random esthetician told me that refined sugar causes acne. [Unfortunately, I received no information about dairy or lack of antioxidants, etc etc…] So I cut out ALL sugar, and eventually more and more things as I became obsessed with my weight [which, by the way, I think is a result of losing muscle mass over time… I think it makes anorexics feel fatter and fatter as they lose muscle.]
Anorexia was miserable, but I really felt I’d lost some essence of connection with my body when I began to eat “like a normal person,” as instructed by my nutritionist… “Like a normal person” really translates to not worrying about what you’re eating, so long as it’s not junk food 100% of the time. Literally, my doctors (plural!) instructed me to consume as much ice cream as I could. And I’m super intolerant to lactose, it turns out, based on my personal experiments with my skin.
My point is that it’s all connected. Because I just knew that food had something to do with what was going on, I felt compelled to continue focusing on my diet. (I could tell, overall, that dietary restriction influenced the severity of my acne much of the time and that was enough to keep me restricting.) Interestingly, as far as I’m aware, incidences of EDs in Asian countries are related to concerns about acne more so than weight.
There is something in my body that wants to consciously attend to its intake. Thank goodness I’ve finally learned that massive, miserable, unhealthy restriction is NOT the only way to exert influence over my body’s expression of well-being. Now, when I’m hungry, I don’t have to decide Food or No Food; I can look into that hunger and ask what it needs: Fat? Water? Protein? Carbohydrates? Is it exercise I really want right now? A little love? Some sunshine? I used to be afraid of what my body wanted, afraid to give in to its demands, because I thought it would inevitably turn against me. To attend to its needs in the paradigm of a paleo lifestyle is so much more enjoyable, incredibly rewarding, and, most of all, life-sustaining. [I guess, for a recovering anorexic, a paleo lifestyle is much like the freedom from restriction we are talking about here. I’m in training to be a psychologist now, and I want SO desperately to start a happy rehab center for anorexics one day!]
Thank you for sharing this Annie!
Hi! (: I am to, are about to start weaning off proactiv. When you weaned off, how much did you breakout?
Ohh, and I’ve only been using proactiv for a little over a month.