SKIN UPDATE – 3 Months NO Dairy, Grain or Sugar

Hello there!

It’s so lovely to meet you, I’m Cindy – Mom of 3, Wife and Business Woman (or that’s how they described me on The Weekend Edition anyway).

That might be a bit of a random way to start a post on a blog that I have been writing on for 6 years, but here’s what’s up.  I feel the need to re-introduce myself to you again because that chick up there ^, she’s a totally different person to the one I was just a few months ago.  (From the outside anyway.)

That’s what my face looks like now guys.  No make up, unfiltered and do you see that slight turn up on the side of the mouth there?  I might even call that a smile!

But how exactly did it get there when it used to look like this?

Well, it’s been a long, long process.

I guess the real starting point was feeling completely and utterly hopeless.  I was at rock bottom.  So I tried all the “conventional” skin treatment routes.  Antibiotics for a month, two rounds of Roaccutane and so much more that I have blocked out of my memory.  But every time I found myself back at the beginning again – staring in the mirror at my bright red face.

So I got in touch with Skin Renewal.  They do a million different things that can fix your skin, but a game changing option for me is the Health Renewal.  Dr Fred chats to you about all the various aspects of your health and then tailor makes a blood test request just for you.  Once you get those results, you can directly stop what’s causing your issues.  Now, for me, I’d just turned 30 and I knew my 30th party would be the last time I was going to “live it up” – you know what I mean?  Just eating, drinking and being merry without a care in the world about what was going into my body.  I just knew that the test results were going to stop me from eating things, I just didn’t realise how many things…

I was right.  I had to give up all the good (that’s actually bad) stuff.  Goodbye dairy, grain and sugar.  It’s been real. Which (if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time) you will know is freaking hard for me.  I love all the cheesy, chocolatey things.  So cutting it out of my diet like it ain’t no thing, really is a thing.  A big thing.

10 days into this new life, I had dropped about 3kgs, I was never bloated and my face was still red, but I was getting into not eating all my old comfort foods and that kind of thing.  By the time we got to around 3 weeks in, reality had hit and it suddenly occurred to me that this might be me for the rest of my life.  It wasn’t pretty.  I cried.  It didn’t make it easier that my skin went absolutely cray cray with the “detox” – you know that old phrase of getting worse before it gets better?  I believe it now.  I really wasn’t feeling too chuffed until we got a month in when I could actually see the difference.  It’s totally possible to eat well and still have fun.

But if you’ve been following along with me on this journey, then you know all of that.  I just thought I’d summarise for all the new folk that might stumble upon this slice of the internet pie.

3 Months No Grain, Dairy and Sugar

It’s been three months now and although I fell of the wagon for a whole week around New Years, my skin is still looking better than it ever has!  AND I’m the lightest I’ve ever been and just feeling so much better about myself and my body!  Check out the side by side progress…

Pretty cool huh?

Yeah, I thought so too.

Anyway, this hasn’t come easy.  It’s been a lot of hard work not sneaking that cupcake at a birthday party or not opening a bag of Nik Naks at the end of a long hard day.  Oh and if cutting out all grain, sugar and dairy wasn’t bad enough, let me just tell you that I have had to cut out alcohol too.

I know, I know.  I’m no alcoholic or anything, but when you’ve already given up so much in life, what’s left to enjoy?!  But that aside, I’ve had to realise that drinking alcohol (I don’t even know if there’s a specific one) causes the tops of my cheeks and under my eyes to itch for a couple of days and then swell.  It’s not fun.  It’s not even something that I can just ignore, so I’ve had to just cut it out.  Which I do even though it’s not ever a consistent result – like sometimes I have a glass of wine and NOTHING happens, then other times I have a glass of wine and my face explodes.  It’s weird and annoying, but I’m seeing Dr Fred again next week to see if there’s something specific I should steer clear of of if I should just cut it altogether!?

It’s more than the diet

And all of that aside, I have also realised that trying to get a healthy skin situation going, is so much more than just what I eat.  I talk about that a lot because obviously it affects almost everything I do every day (anyone else think about supper when they wake up? NO? Really?!)  But the other really important thing is skin care.

I have always neglected using face creams because whenever I did, there’d be a serious reaction and I just found that using nothing was better than spending millions and having negative reactions to whatever I had just bought.  But a large part of my problem is that the skin on my face was broken.  Like aside from just the pimples and things, the actual skin was broken.  It needed serious attention.  I started using the Serra Restore Cream and cleansing gel in combination to the sun block and changing my make up.

The Lycogel is my foundation and it’s incredible.  Totally covers everything and it’s kind of sticky – that’s not a great word to describe it, but what I mean is that it stays on.  The other Mac stuff that I was using had to be reapplied halfway during the day even though the only thing I do is sit at my desk.  Like how does that even work?!  I’d highly recommend it, also because if you happen to fall asleep with it on, it’s OK.  It’s totally breathable.  You can buy it off the Skin Renewal website, but you’d obvs have to try and see which option is the best for your skin tone.

Look, I know it’s on the expensive side, but it’s lasted almost two months and that’s with rigorous use on my side (I never leave the house without a full face of make up).  And it’s not causing you more harm than good – I’m certain that my old make up was helping to make my skin worse than it would have been had I not been using it.  So it saves you from spending more money on treatments to fix your face afterwards.

And there you have it.

That’s where I’m at right now.

xox