Part 6 -

A Healthy Diet

Hi guys,

Here with the 4th part of my cystic acne cure, and probably the trickiest one of all which is diet. I’ve been thinking quite alot about this section and about what exactly I should recommend you eat and not eat and I have concluded that I can really only provide you with my own personal experience and give you very broad recommendations.

I have realized that people react differently to different foods and that a contributor of acne to one person may be completely fine for another. Also taking into consideration things like allergies and so on, diet becomes a very complicated and personal issue.

Alot of people will tell you not to eat specific foods, E.g don’t eat chocolate, or don’t eat chilli etc. (For me I know that my body doesn’t react well to milk, cream, MSG and overly oily foods) but I believe that different foods are acne contributors to different people and if I start telling you specifically not to eat this or that because it breaks me out I might just end up confusing and frustrating you because it is not at all a contributor to your acne.

You will have noticed that I keep everything very simple, I don’t go too far into the technical or medical side of things because I don’t want to make all of this too confusing and my recommendations for diet to cure cystic acne will also be quite broad. So please also do your own research and experimentation to find out what is best for you.

This section on diet still deals with the task of reducing the amount of toxins (toxins being anything the body must expel as it does not contribute to it’s growth) entering your body. Again alot of this I have learnt from Clear for Life which has more specific, scientific reasons behind my recommendations.

Firstly, lets dispel a huge acne myth: DIET DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE TO ACNE. This is COMPLETELY false. Now you might not see any negative effects on your health by eating 1 bowl of heavily processed and preserved instant noodles, but if you did that every day for 3 months (which I did at one point in time) I can guarantee that you will begin to notice the effects that it has on your health.

Put very basically:

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. EAT WELL AND YOU WILL LIVE WELL.

So firstly, let me tell you about my diet before I decided to start living healthy. This is how NOT to eat =)

A couple of things which you should know that will better help you understand how I allowed my eating habits to get so bad are:

1. I believed that diet had nothing to do with acne

2. I can’t cook =p

3. I have an extremely fast metabolism and I have a very hard time gaining weight (basically I can eat what I want and not gain a single pound)

OK, so this is what I predominantly used to eat on a daily basis, this covers approximately a 2 year period after I overcame cystic acne the first time (after Accutane):

First meal

One of the following:

- A bowl of instant noodles

- A box of microwaveable pasta

- A banana

- A frozen meat pie

Second meal

One of the following:

- A bowl of instant noodles

- A box of microwaveable pasta

- A banana

- A frozen meat pie

(Which ever one I didn’t eat for my first meal)

Inbetween

- Usually some chocolate

- Sometimes a mini-muffin or cake

- Lollies

Third meal

Dinner varied depending on whether my girlfriend at the time cooked or not. If she did, it was usually pretty healthy stuff with a decent amount of veggies in it. If she didn’t, I would usually get take away from somewhere nearby which as usually either:

- Pizza

- Souvlaki

- McDonalds

- Vietnamese food

Beverages

- Tap water (I don’t know how much as I wasn’t very strict with my water intake after Accutane)

- Soft drinks (Usually Coke with every meal)

So as you can see, I wasn’t really eating very well. My vegetable intake was very low and completely at random, only one serve a day max. I would eat 1 piece of fruit (a banana, because its easy and convenient) roughly every second day. The rest of my diet consisted of refined carbs, processed and preserved foods, and food and drinks containing alot of refined sugar.

I thought it was a pretty decent diet because I was always full, I never got any immediate symptoms or signals telling me that my eating habits were unhealthy. No acne, no stomach aches and I wasn’t getting fat.

But one day I woke up with a couple of pimples, and then a week later a couple more, and then a couple of big, ugly ones and slowly but surely I slipped back into my acne hell and had a face covered with cystic acne worse than before.

I also developed what I think was chronic fatigue syndrome, I never went to see a doctor about it but I used to get extremely tired very early in the eveneing (around 8pm) and would be unable to concentrate or really do anything apart from laze around. The color of my face also became a greyish tone and I would often get headaches and the occasional migraine.

So the effects of bad diet creep up on you, which is why I believe people always say that diet has nothing to do with pimples, maybe their experiments consisted of eating some French fries and watching their face for an hour to see if any pimples appeared, and if nothing happened they would conclude ‘Nope! French fries doesn’t give you pimples, so I can eat them every day!’

What was happening to me was I was slowly, day-by-day, bit-by-bit contributing to the toxins I was already accumulating through dirty tap water and bad sleeping habits with extra toxins from unhealthy food (Preservatives, chemicals, food coloring etc.) into my body until it came to a point where the body’s primary excretory organs (liver and kidneys) couldn’t handle them anymore and had to start using my skin (one of the body’s secondary excretory systems) to help expel them.

So after learning about how diet was affecting my health and acne I decided to make a huge change in my diet. It was a little tough at first but as I was also learning about the Laws of Obedience and Sacrifice this new diet was a good chance for me to apply and test the new knowledge I had gained.

Below is the diet I took on to get clear:

First thing after I wake up:

- A cup of green tea

First meal

- A fruit salad (Apple, kiwi fruit, grapefruit, orange)

Second meal

- A banana

Third meal

- Salad with a simple dressing (usually spinach or baby rocket)

Fourth meal

- Toasted wholemeal bread X 2 slices

Fifth meal

- Avocado sliced with soy sauce and wasabi

Sixth meal

- Bacon and eggs

Seventh meal

- Whatever was on for dinner

Beverages

- Clean filtered water X 6 glasses

- Various teas (Green tea, barley tea, Puaru tea, black tea)

Supplements

Before starting my new diet I was experimenting with various supplements such as: Liver care Complex,  Zinc tablets, Acidophilus, Garlic, Vitamin B and Cod Liver Oil which I continued to use for a while but then slowly stopped using. These supplements were probably good for me but, they didn’t do anything on their own and I don’t feel any different after discontinuing their use. I occasionally still take the Liver care Complex tablets if I’ve had a lot to drink, and I take Vitamin C every now and then to support my immune system.

One supplement which I do believe had an impact on my acne and helped accelerate my healing process is a supplement called DIM.

It is labelled as an ‘Estrogen Metabolism Formula’ which initially worried me a little as I thought I would start growing breasts if I started taking it, but it is completely fine for both men and women.

Diindolymethane is an anti-andgrogen extracted from cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and brussels sprouts and concentrated into convenient little pills. Apparently taking a couple of pills of DIM is equal to eating a couple of POUNDS of cruciferous vegetables.

DIM was the last of the supplements that I added to my ‘pill collection’ so I was able to acutely feel the difference in my skin as I started taking it. DIM would make my skin slightly less oily and my lips a little dry, it felt similar to being on Accutane but much, much milder. It also made my existing acne feel much less inflamed, and it seemed that alot of my acne was ‘peaking’ faster. (I don’t know what the correct term is but by ‘peaking’ I mean when the yellow head of the pimple appears on the surface of the skin).

Side effects: DIM would make me feel quite relaxed and kind of dreamy sometimes, a bit like a cold and flu tablet but again, much milder. I would also have very vivid dreams if I took it after a late dinner. It did sometimes affect my sleep however and I would sometimes be up all night with vivid daydreams throughout the night but not actually falling asleep.

I followed this EXACT diet for about 1/2 a year and within that time-frame along with my other lifestyle changes such as meditation, yoga, exercise and learning about and applying the laws of life, my skin improved dramatically. After seeing such drastic changes I slowly started loosening up with this particular diet and being less strict with it, today I only retain the following steps:

First thing after I wake up:

- A cup of green tea

First meal

- A fruit salad (Apple, kiwi fruit, grapefruit, orange)

Second meal

- A banana

Third meal

- Salad with a simple dressing (usually spinach or baby rocket)

Beverages

- Clean filtered water X 6 glasses

- Various teas (Green tea, barley tea, Puaru tea, black tea)

I still do not drink any soft drinks but I do eat dessert after dinner, and sometimes in the afternoon as well (I have a bit of a sweet tooth)

After my salad I eat pretty much anything I feel like though by habit I do eat quite healthily, I rarely eat fast-food or processed or preserved foods.

So now I have clean, clear skin and I pretty much eat whatever I like as long as I keep to the ‘easier’ version of my diet =)

So based on my experience here are my basic recommendations for you:

1. Cut down on sugar

2. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables

3. Don’t eat anything but fruit and veggies before noon

3. Try to eat as little processed food as possible

And here are my reasons for each recommendation:

Cut down on sugar:

I’m sure if you have searched for your own cystic acne cure you will have come across several sources which talk about sugar levels in the blood and insulin resistance being a cause of acne. To be honest I don’t know the exact mechanics of how all of this works and I remember becoming extremely confused and kind of stressed out trying to learn about what I should and shouldn’t be eating and also when I should be eating what etc. etc. It all became a bit too much for me so in the end I just followed my intuition, took the advice and drastically cut down my sugar intake, and it worked.

As I mentioned previously, nowadays I do eat sweets (mostly ice-cream and cake) but I don’t drink soft drinks which used to be the main source of sugar in my previous diet. Today as a sweetener in my teas I use Manuka Honey.

Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables:

They’re good for you =)

Don’t eat anything but fruit and veggies before noon:

In Clear for Life the author talks a fair bit about food combining. I don’t follow it all that strictly (though I did at the very beginning) but I believe that there is alot of truth to it. Basically it says that certain types of foods are broken down by the body with acids (proteins – meat, fish) , and others are broken down with alkalis (carbs – rice, bread, pasta etc.) So if you eat meat and rice, the stomach releases acids and alkalis to break down the foods for digestion. But of course if you mix and acid with an alkali, they cancel each other out and the chemical solution created by the stomach to break down the foods becomes neutral. This means the food isn’t broken down properly which causes problems for the digestive system.

You can read more into this by typing ‘food combining’ into Google. Personally I don’t go too far with it, the main thing I do is to eat only fruits and veggies in the morning and I make sure to eat the right combination of fruits and veggies and wait the required time for them to be completely digested before going onto the next meal.

The reason why I don’t eat anything other than fruit and veggies in the morning is because fruit & veg are very easy to digest and are a good warm up for your digestive system. Since it has been resting throughout the night you want to give it something nice and easy to work on first.

I guess it’s like stretching and warming up before you play sports. If you go straight into the match without warming up and stretching your muscles, there is more chance of injury and your body probably wont perform as well. This is the same with your digestive system.

Try to eat as little processed food as possible:

Again all of the food-coloring, preservatives and chemicals found in highly processed foods are toxic materials which need to be released by the body. Reduce the amount of toxins going in and your body wont need to take so much of it out.

And thats all! I hope this post was helpful and I will be back with the final 3 steps as soon as possible!

Peace,

The Anonymous Guru

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