This might be pretty obvi­ous from the title of this post, but I’m going to let you in on all my per­sonal secrets for hav­ing clear, healthy skin. (It’s not like I haven’t been telling you my “secrets” for the past 3 years or so anyway…)

I have been receiv­ing more and more requests for all the nitty gritty details: my per­sonal diet, an updated skin care rou­tine, what I take for sup­ple­ments, yadda yadda. While my per­sonal diet and skin care may not suit you, I will still share it because it may be help­ful. Just remem­ber to try things your­self and go with what works best for you.

So with­out fur­ther ado, I give you my entire rou­tine. (This is an arti­cle series, and this is just the overview.)

1. I Keep Stress Lowww.

Stress is gnarly. Pretty plain and sim­ple. I won’t go into the details, because if you’re any­thing like me, you will start to stress out about stress.

I have recently real­ized that for my body, keep­ing my stress super low is even more impor­tant than what I eat. I could be eat­ing my usual awe­some diet but let my stress get out of con­trol and I will get a break­out. I totally sound like a 4-year-old here, but I get crazy excited about ran­dom crap, and my body mis­reads this as stress and acts accord­ingly. It’s ridicu­lous, but it has taught me how to avoid infor­ma­tion over­load and know­ing when enough is enough. More details in Part I here.

2. I Eat Well.

I eat a lot of good, qual­ity fats to keep my skin mois­tur­ized and my hor­mones bal­anced. Fat is key for me. Like many peo­ple, I used to believe it was respon­si­ble for weight gain. The short answer is that fat does not make us fat – it’s the poor com­bi­na­tion of lots of carbs and lots of fat that make us fat. Now I have found my com­fort zone with eat­ing lots of good fats, a good amount of pro­tein, and a good amount of non-grain car­bo­hy­drates. I don’t pay atten­tion to calo­rie counts or macronu­tri­ent ratios. I feel great, I eat what I love, and thus, I don’t stress about it (see #1). For­go­ing grains, refined sugar, and cow dairy is the num­ber one thing (besides, well, num­ber one – stress) that keeps my diges­tion hum­ming along and gives me effort­less clear skin. Every­thing else is sec­ondary. (And if you’ve read my book, you’ll remem­ber that acne does not exist in cul­tures where refined foods are not eaten.) More details in Part II here.

3. I Get My Beauty Sleep.

Thanks to elec­tron­ics and arti­fi­cial lights, we end up push­ing our bed­times to unnat­u­rally late times, thereby sac­ri­fic­ing our opti­mal cel­lu­lar reju­ve­na­tion win­dow. Sci­en­tists are real­iz­ing it’s not so much about how many hours you get, but when you you get them, as well as the qual­ity of those hours (i.e. sleep apnea = not qual­ity sleep). I enjoy get­ting out in the sun­shine every day, which has the ben­e­fit of help­ing to reg­u­late the sleep cycle. I also sleep with black­out cur­tains on the win­dows so I get a rest­ful 8 hours (it’s rare that I need more then that, unless I get to bed really late, in which case I seem to sleep 9–10 hours).

4. I Guz­zle Water.

I drink fil­tered water and only fil­tered water. Water with lemon? Check. Matcha or rooi­bos tea? Check. I don’t like soda or car­bon­ated stuff, so avoid­ing that is not a stretch for me. The water I drink is fil­tered water from my tap so it’s free from junk – pes­ti­cides, obe­so­gens, chlo­rine, pes­ti­cides, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, etc. All of these sub­stances are linked to can­cer and dis­rupt­ing our endocrine sys­tems, and obe­so­gens (com­mon in Amer­i­can tap water) are strongly linked to obe­sity and insulin resis­tance. The tini­est amounts of these con­t­a­m­i­nants can cause a dis­rup­tion in the body, so it is of the utmost impor­tance that the water is filtered.

5. I Move.

When you move, your cir­cu­la­tion improves, hus­tling nutri­ents to your vital organs and your skin. Ever seen the radi­ant skin of a bunch of yoga stu­dents after class? Daily exer­cise keeps your vas­cu­lar sys­tem healthy, and your skin vibrant and clear. Now, I love to move and my body craves it. I get antsy and irri­ta­ble if I skip exer­cise, but that makes sense, since we weren’t meant to be sit­ting on our asses all day, every day.

6. I Fast.

Inter­mit­tent fast­ing (IF) is bril­liant. It low­ers inflam­ma­tion mark­ers across the board, sta­bi­lizes and low­ers blood sugar, and mobi­lizes fat stores from stub­born areas while pre­serv­ing mus­cle and strength. More on that in Part II. Fun­nily enough, it’s also a nat­ural incli­na­tion. Ani­mals do it. Kids do it. Adults do it. It’s just that we’ve been con­di­tioned to force our­selves to do oth­er­wise. You watch par­ents forc­ing their kids to eat when they’re not hun­gry, and you force your­self to eat if you’re not hun­gry in the morn­ing or when you’re sick and don’t want to eat. Well, more and more stud­ies are pop­ping up that show just how mirac­u­lous fast­ing really is for us (there are some excep­tions of course, but more on that later). It’s great that it’s get­ting main­stream atten­tion lately.

Epic Beauty Guide Skin Ritual - Patrick Bateman (American Psycho, the movie)

7. I Have a Great Skin Rit­ual.

I love rit­u­als. They are calm­ing. They are lux­u­ri­ous. They are spe­cial things you do for your­self every day where you can zone out and just enjoy. It’s impor­tant to take that time to nur­ture your­self. After all, if you aren’t tak­ing care of your­self, you are in no fit con­di­tion to take care of others.

Run­ning Epic Beauty Guide means I am often sent prod­ucts to review, so my per­sonal rou­tine is con­stantly shift­ing. The few sta­ples I have are truly amaz­ing prod­ucts that I can rely on to not send my skin into a panic. I detail my full rou­tine here, in Part III (link will be live when arti­cle is up).

 

What about you? What is your for­mula for clear skin?
~Steph  x

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