The last thing I did before drifting off to the land of nod last night was watch a YouTube video from one of my favourite YouTubers and also one of my biggest inspirations in becoming vegan and starting this blog in the first place: Essena O'Neill. In her video, "Get Healthy With Me (Episode 1)", it is clear Essena hates to upload something on a topic that many would label ‘superficial’ in contrast to the strong messages she would usually give out (though I, personally, think the way she handles the subject is extremely insightful and brave). She discusses how, instead of sitting around, feeling sorry for herself, moaning about her body and bad skin and hiding from the world, she will do something about it. She has decided to heal her body from the inside by eating healthily and working out and is going to use YouTube to document her progress.
Since I’m
going through a similar phase in my life, I’ve decided to follow her lead and
start my own series of blog posts documenting my progress in clearing my skin:
enter “Bye Bye Bad Skin”. This series will (hopefully) be comprised of monthly
blog posts in which I will (hopefully) detail the steps I have been taking to
clear up my skin and how effective they have been. For example, any new
skincare products I am using, how often I have exercised and how my healthy
eating has been going. To accompany this information, I will also include some
photographs of my face to illustrate how much better or worse my skin has
gotten after implementing these steps. Including these photographs will take a
lot of courage as I hate the idea of anyone hiding behind their computer screen
and talking about how disgusting my face is, etc. But I think it is a key
component of this series and, if nothing else, may help me to feel more
comfortable in my own skin and care less for the opinions of others.
To get
you up to speed with where I am in my acne journey at the moment, you should
probably be aware of a couple of things. I’ve had acne my entire teenage life.
Though it has varied in severity (and never gotten as bad as many teenagers) it
has always affected my emotional state, leaving me extremely self-conscious,
upset and frustrated. After becoming vegan three months ago, my skin began to
clear up a little, the redness evened out and I became hopeful that veganism
would be the answer to healing my acne. At the beginning of July, I went on
holiday with my family for two weeks to the Greek island of Crete and by the
time I came back, my skin had improved drastically – to the point where it was
almost completely clear. However, after being back for a few weeks now, my skin
is getting worse each day, my confidence is deteriorating and my mood is
affected once more. Have a see for yourself…
From this
rollercoaster of events, I have concluded that the mix of a healthy diet and
regular exercises should help to improve my skin. I ate extremely well before and
during my holiday but latched straight onto a heap of vegan junk food as soon
as I returned. Furthermore, the heat in Crete meant I was sweating pretty much
all day everyday and I honestly believe this helped to clear out the nasty gunk
filling my pores and creating spots (as long as I continued to implement good
skincare). Leading me to the belief that I need to get a good sweaty workout in
as many days a week as my body feels able, while maintaining my skincare
routine.
So that’s
the plan for now, come back and see me in September to see how I’m getting on!
And feel free to leave any tips/links to your own blog posts on this subject below.
No comments:
Post a Comment