If you read part 1 of my story you know that I spent my college years involved in 3 very negative relationships - a toxic relationship with a boyfriend, an unhealthy relationship with food, and an unhealthy relationship with myself. All of these relationships fueled each other and contributed to the downward spiral of my worsening health. By the end of college I was struggling with chronic cystic acne, fatigue, depression, and my weight had fluctuated up and down and up and down. I had taken some steps to try to eat better. I had dabbled a little bit in different exercise regimens. I had eaten salad during the week and then splurged on pizza on the weekends (which Carmen Electra had advised in a women's magazine that I read - if super hot Carmen Electra ate that way then it must be healthy, right?). I certainly knew something was wrong, but I didn't exactly know how to fix it or which way to turn.
Just as a combination of factors drove my body to feel its worst, it took a combination of factors to turn my health around, and the path did not go in a straight line.
After I graduated I took a year off. I ended my toxic relationship and began a new one with someone who made me feel loved and appreciated. I found a musical environment that was more nurturing for me and helped me to explore new ways of thinking about playing the violin and reevaluate how I was using my body to make music. I took an acting class. I started to experiment with cooking, with different exercise programs, with different types of healers and therapists. I started to read books about diet and followed nutrition blogs, and I gradually made the connection between my skin, my weight, my diet, and my overall health.
In many ways I started to feel better. I started to feel that I was worthy of health. I even lost weight and was able to sustain the weight loss at a place where I felt more comfortable in my skin. However, my skin was still waving a red flag at me that something was wrong. Though I had tried all kinds of creams and face washes, all sorts of antibiotics (cycling on and off different strains for almost a full year!), tried taking the birth control pill, tried going off the birth control pill, tried having steroids injected into my face, tried taking cycles of steroids, tried getting chemical peels and facials and masks of all varieties, and NOTHING WORKED! The cystic acne continued to persist.
At one point during a facial an esthetician told me "You don't have bad skin. I've seen this before, and this is happening because of something you're eating." I wish I could tell you that from that point on I learned exactly how to eat healthy, and everything got better. Unfortunately that's not what happened. The truth is the more this idea manifested, the more I started to view food as the enemy. Food was the thing causing me pain and making me unattractive. For a woman walking through a culture that makes us believe our beauty is inextricably linked to our lovability, this idea quickly translated into "food is making me unloveable." Deep within me there was still the voice of my ex-boyfriend saying "you know you would look much better if your skin cleared up and you lost a few pounds." Suddenly that was translating in my mind to "You will only be beautiful and lovable if you eat the right foods."
I want to make sure I am careful to say that all of this is not meant to say that my esthetician who alerted me that food might be causing a problem was wrong. Food was influencing my skin and still does to this day. In fact, therein lies the crucial complication that has made my story so challenging. Eventually I would learn which foods made matters worse and which made matters better. But viewing all foods as potential enemies was just as bad for me as eating the "bad" foods!
In fact, it might have even been worse.
Step by step I became obsessed with those potential enemy foods. I started cutting foods out of my diet. I tried starting every single morning with a bowl of oatmeal mixed with spinach and blueberries. Three really healthy foods mixed together should be an automatic win, right?! I tried only eating salad all the time every day. I tried going gluten free, going dairy free, going vegetarian (without gluten and dairy), followed by vegan, followed by raw vegan, followed by a green smoothie phase, followed by a juice cleanse phase. I gulped down Chinese herbal remedies that tasted DISGUSTING! I spent way too much money on Kombucha. I ate things like wheatgrass and spirulina because a book told me they were "superfoods" (never mind that they tasted gross to me, and my stomach made strange noises, and I felt nauseous after I consumed them). I juiced raw garlic to the point I constantly had garlic scent radiating from my hands (that was a relatively short-lived phase). And of course there was the kale. So. much. kale.
No matter what I did my skin still did not improve. In fact, some even weirder things started happening, and some of the digestive symptoms that I had always had trouble with actually started to get worse. Or were they just getting more noticeable because I was paying more attention? It was hard to tell, but the point is not only was I driving myself crazy but my health problems were worsening.
By the end of graduate school I was at a point of desperation. I had found an Integrative Dermatologist whose approach was more holistically oriented, but nothing we were trying was working. One day I sat in her office almost in tears, hopeless and desperate. If you know me you know that it's pretty rare for me to cry in front of other people. Actually I tend to stifle my tears even when alone (a story for another time!). But I was at a breaking point, and the tears started coming. I knew that I couldn't do it. I couldn't obsess over my food anymore. It wasn't helping anything, and it was making me crazy and unhappy. It seemed like I was just doomed to be unloveable or unhappy no matter what I tried. I didn't know what else to do or where else to turn.
And just when I was at my lowest point, I finally found the help I needed...
Learn what happened next and where I am now in Part 3!