About 5 years ago, my diet looked my the ‘typical’ American diet. Fast food, lots of snacks with sugar and refined carbs, soda, alcohol. Well, my skin was also the worst it has ever been at that time. I was desperate for a cure and I stumbled upon some forum posts on the internet that talked about how diet could affect acne. I read some success stories of people who had changed their diet and their face cleared up…so I thought what the heck, I’ll try it. This post will chronicle my journey and I’ll share what I’ve learned and what helped me the most. I believe my diet helped improve both my acne and seborrheic dermatitis.
What My Diet Used to Look Like
I used to have a horrible diet…but because my dermatologist seemed to think there was no connection between diet/acne/seborrheic dermatitis I didn’t think anything of it. Here’s a quick snapshot of what I used to eat.
Breakfast
- Cereal + milk (usually Reese’s Puffs or something similar)
- Pop tarts
Lunch
- Grilled cheese (usually 2-3, with lots of cheese)
- Pizza
- Sub sandwich loaded with mayo
- Chips/Pretzels
- Snicker’s
- Pasta
Dinner
- Pasta with alfredo sauce
- Fried chicken fingers
- Pizza
- Mac ‘n Cheese
- Qdoba
- Noodles Co.
- Chinese
Snacks
- Chocolate Milk
- Chex Mix
- Chips
- Cheese
- Lots of fruit
- Candy
That’s basically what I ate every day. I remember days at college where I’d have pasta with marinara sauce for lunch and then make pasta with alfredo sauce at night. Just a ton of processed food and refined carbs. In my mind, my diet definitely had an impact on my skin…and my skin was horrible. The more frustrated I got, the more I read about other people’s success stories on forums across the internet. After seeing quite a few talking about how cutting out dairy/gluten helped immensely. I decided to try it.
Also – if you check out my previous post, you’ll see why my diet was causing me to have bad skin problems.
Okay, so I knew I needed to change my diet. But, look at what I was eating…it wasn’t going to be an easy overnight switch. So, I started slow.
Diet Changes
My first big change was cutting out milk completely. It was HARD. I started by replacing cereal in the morning with eggs. I stopped using it in cooking and I stopped drinking protein shakes mixed with milk.
From there, I decided to incorporate a salad as my main meal for lunch a few times a week. I would eat a salad on the weekends when I had time…I was still eating bread and pasta though. Once I had some more vegetables filtering in through the salad and other sides, I decided it was time to call it quits on breads. So, I stopped eating bread completely. That lead to me cutting out all gluten eventually. I also looked for healthier snacks…a banana instead of a pop tart, a fiber bar instead of a candy bar, a green smoothie instead of chips…and so on.
Over time, I completely transformed my diet. It was a slow process though and I didn’t see improvements in my skin until 6 months-1 year into my diet. Granted, it took me a long time to cut some foods out and find my triggers. When I thought about what I would eat this is what I kept in mind:
- Increase protein consumption
- Lower carbohydrate consumption
- Increase fiber
- Moderate to high fat consumption (healthy unsaturated fats)
- Decrease sodium consumption
- Increase nutrient dense foods
What My Diet Looks Like Now
I would categorize my diet now as paleo for the most part. I don’t eat any dairy or gluten. I also eliminated all sugar for the most part…I eat fruit, but try to limit my intake. I eat a lot of raw vegetables. I incorporate these into a salad that I eat every day for lunch. It’s a gigantic salad (see pics below of fridge). I make my own balsamic vinaigrette for it so I can control the ingredients (and it tastes better).
I eat a lot of chicken breasts, chicken thighs, salmon, and ground turkey. I eat red meat probably once every 6 months. My snacks consist of almonds, apples, a banana smoothie, and a low glycemic bar. Again, I’m huge on veggies…with my meals I usually eat sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, zucchini, leeks, kale. I use a lot of quinoa…that’s kind of my gluten replacement. I use it in salads and use it as a side in place of rice. I don’t drink any alcohol as well…I think alcohol is one of the worst things you can put in your body so I cut it out and have been much happier
I also switched from using olive oil/vegetable oil to using coconut oil and avocado oil for cooking/dressings. My favorite being avocado oil, it has an excellent fatty acid makeup and a ton of other anti-oxidants. I snack a lot on almonds and RxBars as well.
Here’s a quick snapshot of what a day might look like
Breakfast
- 3-4 egg whites, 2 yolks
Lunch
- Large salad with some type of homemade vinaigrette
- OR chicken breast with veggie
Dinner
- Chicken breast/thigh, fish, or ground turkey
- Nutrient dense veggie: sweet potato, brussel sprouts, etc.
- Quinoa
Snacks
Again, my diet is similar to a paleo diet – see here for great info on what a paleo diet is.
Check out this really cool infographic overview on eating paleo. A good starting point would be paleo cookbook, it will help you create great food that’s healthy for you – like this. For me, I’m boring and I’m pretty much happy with throwing some plain chicken breast in a pan or eating a sweet potato plain. I also try to drink a lot of water during the day (usually 3 liters or more). I can tell when I’m dehydrated and so can my skin. I drink a lot of stress-relieving and digestive tea too – like chamomile and ginger.
Here’s what my fridge looks like…
Probiotics
My early journey with skin care involved a lot of antibiotics. In fact, I was on an antibiotic for about 1.5 years straight…thanks to an ‘awesome’ dermatologist. I think most of my skin issues stemmed from my excessive antibiotic use. So, when I revamped my diet I was also thinking of how I could try and reverse some of the effects of antibiotics. Antibiotics kill all the bacteria in your gut – good and bad. I wanted to find a way to increase some of the good that had been killed off. I started researching probiotics and I took an oral probiotic supplement for about a year. I grew weary that there weren’t actually any live strains in my supplement so I went to the next step – fermented foods.
I know I talked about how bad milk is…and I think it is, but I NEEDED some beneficial bacteria back in my gut. I turned to milk kefir. I made it myself and drank it every morning for 2 years. In short, milk kefir is a fermented milk drink with loads of good, beneficial bacteria. I’m going to dedicate a post to it later on, but if you’re interested…you can buy kefir grains HERE to get you started. Just follow the directions provided.
Summary
Diet plays a huge role in skin conditions – see gut-skin axis. For me, changing my diet was life changing. It was not an overnight cure, but a clean, paleo diet cleared up almost all of my acne and help tempers my seborrheic dermatitis. Fixing my diet did not cure my seborrheic dermatitis, but it got me very close. And combined with some other methods I discuss on other pages, my SD is pretty much non-existent.
I think the best thing you can do is improve your diet and combine it with a topical solution that works, kind of a multi-faceted treatment approach. For me, that topical was raw honey and something new that I discovered, which I’ll talk about on my next post.
Here are some key points from my experience with diet
- Skin conditions (like seborrheic dermatitis and acne) are linked with the foods you eat and your digestive health
- The Paleo Diet is a very effective diet for improving your skin conditions
- Changing your diet is not an overnight fix, it takes time. Take one step at a time
- If you took antibiotics, you should incorporate a probiotic to help your gut recover
- Hydrate!
Let me know about your experience with diet.