How I Healed My Cystic Acne by Healing My Relationship With Food
Growing up, my skin was always flawless. I’m not trying to brag, but I’m trying to put things in perspective for when that aaaaall changed. When I began my “wellness” journey, it was harmless. I was simply trying to be the healthiest and best version of myself. However, due to my past with disordered eating, it proved to be a lot more complicated than I was expecting. I remember when my first deep cystic pimple showed up. It was the most throbbing pain I had ever experienced on my face. I wasn’t too worried about it because I have gotten a cystic pimple here and there my whole young adult life, but I had no idea what was coming. A few smaller cystic pimples popped up around my mouth a few days later. I was so embarrassed. I decided that something wasn’t right so I dove into the Google machine. “How to clear up cystic acne.” As I suspected, most people said to cut dairy, gluten, eggs, etc. most of which I already avoided. A lot of the other information pointed to inflammation and indicated that you could fix it through diet! Hooray! A solution! So I looked up anti-inflammatory diets. As you can probably guess, I found contradiction after contradiction.
I’ll save my food-confusion story for another time, but essentially I removed even more foods from my diet. At that point I began developing tons of little invisible bumps on my face. I was hoping I just needed to exfoliate, but one by one those little bumps each individually turned into massive cystic acne all over my forehead, chin, sides of my nose, pretty much everywhere except my cheeks and jawline (important to note). I remember crying almost every day because my face was in so much pain. I didn’t want to go out in public. I couldn’t even put makeup on my skin was so angry. I finally decided to go to the dermatologist.
The dermatologist prescribed me with some topical medication and sent me on my way. Although the topical medication was helping my existing acne clear up, I was still waking up with a new cystic pimple every. day. No exaggeration. I was eating the “cleanest” most anti-inflammatory diet ever, attempting to meditate and reduce general stress, and putting turmeric on literally everything in order to reduce inflammation. Nothing was working. Granted, I was also binge eating during the day and at night even though it was on “healthy” food…
I didn’t start to realize the root of my issue until I got out of my current environment.
I went to visit my best friend in California. Honestly, thank goodness she is a food freedom QUEEN. When we hang out I’m pretty much forced to live in the moment and go with the flow, which was exactly what I didn’t know I needed. I remember one of the first days I was there I ate pizza, cookies, and all sorts of things I would never dream of eating at home. That’s when a miracle happened. The next morning, not only did I not wake up with a new pimple, but my skin overall looked SO much better! I actually almost cried. I had significantly reduced redness, almost no pain, and all my pimples looked so much smaller. I was shocked. When I went back home, I reverted to what I was doing before (pizza couldn’t POSSIBLY be the answer to clear skin… right??) and my acne came back with a vengeance.
Although I didn’t feel stressed day to day, I was subconsciously chronically stressed about what I was putting in my body and that was what was causing my acne.
It also definitely didn’t help that the binges and the particular restrictive way I was eating most likely threw my hormones off, contributing to the dermatologist’s diagnosis. Whatever it was, I literally have pizza to thank for healing my skin. As soon as I embraced intuitive eating and added more and more foods back into my life, the better my skin got. The binges subsided and now I’m pretty much back to only getting a pimple here and there. I have had relapses during my recovery since then and every time I do, my skin reflects it. I am so so glad I listened to my intuition that was telling me there was something deeper going on that was throwing my skin off. I wanted to share this story because so often we are prescribed diets (by the mass media) as the answer to multiple health issues, expecting every diet to work as advertised. I do believe food can be medicine but if you have deeper emotional stressors or a disordered relationship with food, there is no way of eating that is going to fix your problem. Needless to say, the internet was right. It WAS my diet that was the problem – just not in the way I thought!