Clear for Life

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You can’t get clear until your self-image is clear. Holistic health is the only reliable way to permanently clear skin. Readers love Clear for Life.

Those are just few of the results of a recent customer survey I did. Thanks for everyone who got back to me. Here’s feedback on the feedback, and few golden nuggets that help you get clear. You’ll pick up something useful even if you haven’t read Clear for Life.

You can’t outperform your self-image

Interestingly quite a few people commented that CFL gives them fantastic results when they stick to it. Unfortunately they keep falling off the wagon and in the process making a mess of their skins.

While I agree that staying healthy in today’s world takes some work, I wouldn’t say it’s difficult. The truth is that eating and living healthy is easy - once you get over your own limits.

If you find yourself repeating a pattern where you make progress and then fall back, I believe you need to work on your self-image.

In the personal growth circles it’s well-known that you can’t outperform your self-image.

Deep in your subconscious mind you have an image of yourself; your self-image. That image shows what you really believe and think about yourself. It shows what you can and cannot do. It shows what your life is like.

Your mind’s job is to make sure that your life matches your self-image. Scientists say that 95% or more of our behavior is subconscious. Humans like to believe they behave rationally and logically, but even a cursory look shows this is not true.

Your subconscious mind controls most of your actions and choices. It guides your life to the fulfillment of your self-image. One way this happens is through your thoughts. If you think exercise is boring, you’ll find it hard to motivate yourself to exercise. If you believe eating healthy is difficult, you’ll find that it is. But if you believe exercise is fun and eating healthy is delicious and fulfilling, living a healthy life gets easy.

While it’s true that you are free to choose your thoughts most people don’t exercise that power. Instead the choice happens in the subconscious level. And here’s where your self-image guides your destiny.

In each moment your subconscious feeds your mind with thoughts and images that guide your life towards your self-image. If you haven’t trained your mind your life inevitably slips towards your self-image - even if you fight it.

Acne can be part of your self-image directly or indirectly. You may see yourself as a victim of this horrible curse. Or you may, for example, believe that you don’t deserve love; acne then justifies that belief and gives you something to point your finger at, you can say the reason you haven’t found love is because nobody would date anyone with your skin.

I used to be afraid of success. I has a belief that it’s better to be small and not attract too much attention on myself - thanks to my childhood. This held me back in many ways. For example my mind created food cravings. I used to be able to stick to raw food diet for few days. But regularly also found myself eating pizza, coke or some other junk. I pushed my limits and my mind had to bring me back to my “comfort level”.

Luckily I found that belief and got rid of it. The food cravings disappeared overnight. Now I’m free to choose my meals and eating healthy is easy.

If you keep hitting a wall and can’t get past a certain point, I recommend you work on upgrading your self-image. Awaken The Giant Within by Anthony Robbins shows you how.

Holistic health is the only realizable way to permanently clear skin

Going through the feedback it got painfully obvious that getting clear is a holistic effort. Acne is a complicated problem and I don’t think anyone really knows how it happens. Equally obvious is that there’s no simple solution that would be permanent and would work reliably for many people.

Constantly working to improve your health is the only way to permanently clear skin. Further, you must put in all the pieces of the puzzle. Health is not just about diet or exercise. You have to work on it at many levels. You have to eat healthy, you have to move, you have to sleep well, you have to remain positive, and so on.

The feedback shows that you’ll get the best results if all the elements of health are in balance. Weakness in one area can hold you back from getting 100% clear skin.

Most acne treatments ignore this fundamental truth, so is it any wonder their track record is so miserable?

The biggest problem areas for people were sleep and stress and negative attitude.

Stress and negative attitude are related to your self-esteem and mental image, and I wrote a bit about sleep here:

Feeling tired and can’t figure out why?

6 Months to clear skin

I also have to admit that I may have been too optimistic about the time it takes to get clear. I usually tell 3 to 4 months is a reasonable time frame for big improvements.

While many people get good results within 4 months this may not be enough to get you completely clear.

I’ve gotten quite a few emails from people who tell me that they’ve been following CFL for 3 to 4 months and are still breaking out. Granted, their acne is much better than it was before starting CFL. Cystic acne has faded to whiteheads and breakouts happen less frequently and fade away quicker.

Still, when you expect to be completely clear, it may be hard to appreciate these changes and many people focus on their remaining acne - instead of how much better their skin looks now.

I should have communicated more forcefully that in the 3 month mark people are still going through the detox process and it’s normal to keep breaking out. It doesn’t mean you do something wrong or you couldn’t get clear.

From the feedback I get 6 months seems to be a better timeframe for completely, or nearly, clear skin.

Of course this changes from person to person, and I’m sure some people say they got clear much faster and some say it took longer than 6 months.

People love Clear for Life

I’m especially happy about this - and perhaps even a little proud. I asked those customers who bought Clear for Life at least 6 weeks ago - so that they had enough time putting it into practice - how satisfied they are with it.

A whopping 51% gave the highest rating. Here are the results:

About 10% of the people I send the survey filled it. I realize that there can be a positive bias in the answers - people who are happy with CFL are more likely to respond to the survey. Still, it shows people get results with Clear for Life.

And if you haven’t read Clear for Life the chances are you’ll love it.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Acne may be the greatest gift life has given you so far.

When you are looking at the mirror in anxiety about the big, new pimple you just got and worrying how you are going to get through the day it may not seem like much of a gift. More like a curse.

You may not realize it yet, but in those moments of anxiety and despair lay they keys to happiness and clear skin.

Bad times give us much needed shaking. They lay bare the insane ways we live our lives. This is true in both collective and individual levels. Collective tragedies, such as war and injustice, expose our collective insanity. Similarly your personal tragedies, such as acne, can show your own insanity.

I’m not talking about insanity as mental disorder. I’m talking about insanity as creating unnecessary suffering in your own life. Insanity is living in despair and frustration when you could live in peace and happiness.

Challenges act as stress tests. They show the parts in you that aren’t working. Suffering and negativity is like a friend shaking you and shouting at your face “just look at what you do to yourself!”. If you are willing to listen, you can learn a valuable lesson.

All suffering starts in the mind

Your mind creates all your suffering. External events are simply excuses for your mind to create more suffering. You suffer when you focus on something you don’t want. That’s the only way to feel bad. Try focusing on something you want and feeling bad at the same time - it’s impossible.

Most people don’t exercise much control over their focus. The focusing process is on autopilot, and so are their emotions.

The mind is a bit like a computer; it works by executing installed programs. Your beliefs and ideas about yourself and the world are examples of these programs. The job of your mind is to make those beliefs and ideas come true to you. If you don’t think much of yourself, well… then that’s what you are going to get. If you believe you are sad and lonely, then it’s the job of your mind to make sure that’s true to you. Your wish is your mind’s command.

Your mind scans the environment you are in for information that matches your programming. It then brings that information into your awareness for you to focus on - and to feel bad about.

Your beliefs work a bit like colored glasses. If you look at the world through green glasses everything is tinted with green. The glasses don’t change the world you are looking at, they simple change your perception of it. If you look at the world through glasses of desperation, frustration and low self-esteem that’s what it looks to you.

Changing from green glasses to red ones gives you a new perception. Everything looks red now. Going from sadness and frustration to happiness and hope gives you a whole new perspective on the world.

Can you see yourself with clear skin?

This has a lot to do with getting clear. First, negative emotions are toxic to your health, but that’s not the main reason. Your external life always reflects your internal life. What goes on inside of your head happens outside of your head. If you see yourself as an acne victims who is plagued with this invincible curse, that’s what you get. It cannot be in any other way.

To get over acne you first have to see it as something you can get over with; then you have to see and accept yourself as a person with clear skin. You have to put on new glasses.

This is the missing piece from all acne cures and books. The updated version of Clear for Life talks about this in more detail. Since this is such an important point I’ve made this section available to my customers even before the updated version of Clear for Life is released.

If you are my customer you can get the section here:

http://community.natural-acne-solution.com/forum/topics/emotional-and-spiritual

There’s more to this than simply changing glasses. Most people are totally identified with their mind. They think they are this [insert your name] person, who is so and so many years old, works/does this, and this and that is going on in their life. In other words they are identified with their story, or their ego, as some would call it.

You are not your story

They don’t realize that this story is the glasses they wear, not who they really are.

Once you become aware of the mental processes (glasses) that color your perception you’ll see this clearly. Once you’ve changed these processes few times and seen how that changes your world it’s easy to see they are not you. That you are not your story.

If you are your story then how could you change it? Who would be the one that changes it?

This realization will forever change your world. An irrevocable change process begins. The grip of your mind over your life starts to weaken. And with the mind goes the insanity and suffering it creates. To the extent you can see you are not your mind, not your story, to the extent you experience peace and joy - regardless of what happens to you.

Without the mind playing its dirty tricks on you it’s impossible to suffer.

When you realize that the I, [insert your name] as a desperate acne victim, is just a story you’ve accepted, you can let go of the story. When you let go of the story you create an opening for a different reality to emerge. Perhaps one where you have clear skin?

Clear skin doesn’t happen by some divine magic or any other mystical means. It happens by you taking concrete action to create it. But when you let go of your old story you also let go of the limitations it imposes on you. Remember, your life always matches with your story. When you let go of your old story you open up to new possibilities. Perhaps a book just jumps off the shelve that has the answers to your problem. Perhaps you just stumble on a website that has the answers.

Your mind finds a way to bring you new internal reality into your external world; just like it did with the old internal reality.

The power of Now

Challenging times and suffering create the opening for that transition to happen. When you suffer you can go inside and see how that happens. When you observe yourself doing suffering, you’ll see that the suffering is not a part of you but rather something you do. This realization spells the end of suffering and feeling bad.

You can only do this when you are present in the moment. Luckily it doesn’t cost you anything and is to do easy with practice.

Learning to be present in the Now is a skill, and like any skill, takes some practice to get good at.

Here are few ways to bring your focus into the present moment.

Observe your breath. Breath is one of the easiest ways to access the present moment. Simply watch as breath flows in and out of your body. Observe how your lungs, abdomen and chest expand when you breathe in and contract as you breathe out.

As you watch your breath notice how thinking stops. Your mind cannot survive in the present moment. It wants you to focus on the future or the past. To your mind present moment is simply means to a better future and thus to be discarded. But if you ignore the present moment you throw away the only way you can make a meaningful change in your life. Better tomorrow never comes as long as you try to escape the horrors of today.

So when you notice yourself thinking about the past or the future bring your focus back to the present moment and notice how the constant stream of thinking stops. That’s when you are in the present moment and free to see the mind for what it is.

Another way to access the present moment is to focus on what you experience in the moment. If you are sitting, feel what it feels like to sit. Focus on how your clothing feels on your skin, and the pressure on your buttocks and the backs of your legs. Feel your feet touching the floor. Again notice how you can’t focus on your experience and think at the same time.

In the Power of Now Eckhart Tolle gives another way to access the present moment. Become aware of your ‘inner’ body. Feel the energy in your body. Initially it may be easier to just focus on one body part, such as your hand, and feel the energy there. You may feel just the light tingle, but that’s it. Just focus on that feeling and it gets stronger. Later on you can feel the same energy in and surrounding your whole body.

I highly recommend you pick up Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now and read it. He talks about the power of the present moment and how to access it in much more detail. His other book The New Earth also helped me a lot. I got the inspiration to write this as I finished it earlier today.

Please try these exercises today. See which you like and make them a part of your daily life. Use any idle moment you have to practice. That way you’ll never be bored and always have something ‘to do’.

At first you may be able to access the present moment only for few seconds before your mind takes over again. But that’s enough. It’s enough to create an opening and with practice the gaps in thinking get longer and longer.

Accepting what is ends suffering

When you are at the present moment your next job is to accept it as it is. What is, is, and nothing you can do about it. So if at the moment you experience any negative emotions simply accept them. Resistance is the domain of the mind and only perpetuates the negative emotions.

Simply acknowledge how you feel and that is it. Accepting doesn’t mean resigning to your fate and thinking you can’t change anything. Accepting means seeing your reality as it is in the moment. It’s the only sane thing to do.

If it helps you can try seeing the negative emotion as some external object and resistance as pushing it away. When you stop resisting you stop pushing.

The negative emotion probably weakens significantly as you accept it, it may even go away completely and you’ll notice you are at peace.

If the negative emotion didn’t go away completely just observe it with curiosity. Don’t try to change it or push it way. Simply observe it. See what’s behind it. Ask yourself “could I let go of this feeling?”. As you keep doing this you’ll notice that the negative emotion vanishes completely.

Can you accept your acne?

Here’s how to take this a step further. This may be a bit uncomfortable at first, but please try this.

Find a mirror and look at yourself. If you see acne and that makes you feel bad, even better. Then focus on your breath and access the present moment. When you are present work on accepting what you see.

If you have acne, no power in the world is going change it today; probably not even this week. Your skin is what it is. The only sane thing to do is to accept it as it is.

Resisting your skin or wanting it to be something else simply creates more suffering. It’s no different than frustrating over the fact that rocks are hard. You wanting them to be soft won’t change the facts. It only creates suffering for you.

If you can’t let go of resisting your acne, accept that. Acknowledge that you can’t stop resisting it. Stop resisting the resisting. Then simply observe the resistance with curiosity and see what happens.

Then work on accepting your skin as it is. I’m not saying you have to be happy about your skin. You probably won’t be. It also doesn’t mean you resign to it. Acceptance simply means seeing your skin for what it is. Accepting means letting it be what it is, for now. When you accept you stop doing suffering. When you stop suffering you create an opening for a different reality to emerge.

As you work on accepting your acne the story of yourself as helpless acne victim weakens. As your story and external reality always match, along with the story goes the struggle and frustration it brings.

What do you think happens to your acne if your new story is one where you are at peace with your skin? The worst that could happen is that your acne stays the same, but it doesn’t bother you anymore. You simply look at it with no emotion at all.

So, in your head you have your little Aladdin’s Lamp. Your wish is its command. If you choose to see acne and a harbinger of misery and suffering, that’s what you experience. You can have this experience as long as you want. And you can end it anytime you want. Simply choose again. Choose to see acne as a gateway to happiness and overcoming your limitations and that’s what you get.

It’s your choice.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Your friends see your new diet as an open seasons for nasty jokes? Perhaps you could have written this email.

Just as a side note, when you do decide to go out with friends, do you find it easier to cheat / enjoy your food (and not invoke cognitive dissonance) or do you have to explain your life philosophy of being a raw vegan? Personally, my friends do not want to hear such nonsense and I get so much crap everyday for how I eat but oh well!

I don’t have any rules regarding my diet, so the concept of cheating on my diet doesn’t make any sense in my case.

Instead of rules I have preferences. Those preferences change depending on the situation I’m in and what I want to achieve (my goals). Often they are related to health, but not always. When I go out with my friends I tend to focus more on just having a good time.

So I try to use diet to my benefit without letting it rule my life.

Perhaps as a consequence my friends never give me grief about my diet. They know that I eat in a week more fruits than they probably eat in a year, but they hardly ever mention it. Sometimes they are a bit curious and ask question (usually arising out of dietary ignorance), but they do so out of curiosity.

I also never bring up my diet. Sometimes they want to eat in a place I just don’t want to eat (such as McDonald’s). In those cases I tell them ‘I can’t eat that crap, let’s go somewhere else’. I just tell them it’s bad for my skin/health and makes me feel terrible afterwards without going into ‘I’m a raw vegan and can’t eat that’ nonsense.

I don’t think your friends intentionally want to see you fail in your diet. At least if you don’t make an issue out of it. They probably do give you grief about it if you let your diet come in between you and your friends. If they notice that it stops you from going out and having fun with them.

So don’t let your diet rule over your entire life. Remember that being happy is at least as important as eating healthy. In most cases you can still make reasonable food choices even when eating out with your buddies. As a guy, just don’t order a salad if your buddies have big burgers. That’s just asking for trouble

Finally talk to your friends. I’m sure they understand you don’t want to eat at McDonald’s because of your skin.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Lot of people email and ask what I eat normally.

I decided to come clean and unloaded everything from my fridge and cupboards on my bed. Here’s what it looks like:

So let’s see what we have:

• Tons of bananas
• Mangoes
• Oranges
• Pineapple
• Watermelon
• Peaches, Asian variety
• A dragon fruit
• Few bags of greens
• Tomatoes, cucumbers and few other vegetables

At any given day those make up for the majority of my diet; though the selection of fruits changes depending on availability, season and whatever I happen to fancy.

Most of that will be gone in the next two to three days.

What’s missing from the picture are the few kilos of frozen berries occupying my freezer.

Let’s move to the stuff I eat less frequently:

• Some dried fruits, occasionally snack with these
• Tuna, sometimes add it to salads
• Olives, again for salads
• Mix of sesame seeds and seaweed, excellent stuff to sprinkle on salads
• Salad dressing
• Bottle of lemon juice

Finally we have the rest

• Instant coffee, I know it tastes horrible and is very bad for your health, but what can I say I’m hooked on coffee and have no plans to quit it.
• Green tea and herbal teas
• Natural and unsweetened cocoa, sometimes drink this in the evenings
• Salt, baking soda and honey, bought them to try some homemade skin care recipes but don’t eat them
• Instant oats, unopened for the last few months and I doubt I’ll ever open it

That’s about. When I’m at home that’s what I eat.

I have to say that when I’m out I eat more ‘normal’ food, i.e. cooked food. I usually eat one cooked meal a day, usually Thai food since I’m in Thailand. Some days I’m 100% raw, aside from two cups of coffee.

If eating like this scares your socks off, don’t worry, you don’t have to go this far just to get clear. 50% raw and the rest from natural, whole foods should do the trick.

Just so you know, I just didn’t one day decide to eat like this. It has been a gradual transition to me. Now eating mostly raw is very natural for me. It makes me feel fantastic and I wouldn’t want to eat any other way.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Good steak or a juice mango? That’s the question many acne victims face.

For clear skin and good health should you go low-carb or low-fat? Some people get clear with low-carb diets, some with low-fat diets. How is this possible, and why does it have to be so darn confusing?

Just few questions on Chris’s mind when he emailed me. You can get clear on either diet, and in this post I explain why. I also explain a serious short coming with low-carb diets; something you should keep in mind before trying them.

Let’s start with the original question from Chris.

This high fruit/carb/sugar (from fruit and veggies) especially in those green smoothies then, in regards to the high protein/fat argument, is a death drink.

I have read all your articles and blog entries, I get a good understanding on where you are coming from, but then again I see their point and am trying to link both arguments together, like an argumentative paper, to see why one side says “this” and the other says “that.” I’m trying to see which side is missing something, if they think they are. I know this is hard due to food being a “religion”, like you said, and what not. But I feel you have a good head on your shoulders and are honest.

Let’s see if we can’t clarify things a bit.

Diet wars: fat vs. carbs

In case you are not familiar with what I call the “diet wars” let me explain them briefly. Basically we have ‘carbs’ people fighting ‘fat’ people. People on the carb camp say eating too much fat causes insulin resistance, which that leads to all kinds of problems. People on the other side of the fence claim carbs spike blood sugar and levels, and that leads to insulin resistance.

So both sides agree that insulin resistance is the main problem and the solution is to keep blood sugar levels stable. Just the methods differ; low-fat diet vs. low-carb diet.

Let’s also acknowledge that people have gotten clear with low-carb diets and with low-fat diets. People on low-carb diets can have stable blood sugar levels, and the same can be said about low-fat diets.

So what gives? Does it even matter whether you eat low-carb or low-fat?

Understanding blood sugar controls unravels the mystery

Understanding how your body controls blood sugar levels unravels the confusion. The process works a bit differently for both diets.

In the case of low-fat (high-carb by definition) diets your body turns carbs into glucose and absorbs it directly from the digestive track. Glucose goes to bloodstream and from there insulin takes it to your cells. This is the most efficient route and the way your body was designed to work.

In a healthy individual eating a healthy diet this process works perfectly. Blood sugar levels remain stable. But insulin resistance changes things dramatically. Glucose cannot get from the bloodstream into the cells and blood sugar levels increase. This leads to high insulin levels and all sorts of problems low-carb books warn you about.

So carbs + insulin resistance = problem; carbs + no insulin resistance = no problem.

Now let’s look at low-carb diets and how they affect blood sugar levels.

Your body runs on sugar. That’s the fuel it prefers and, as a general rule, everything you eat gets converted to sugar, even the fats and the protein you eat. Since protein rarely makes up a significant portion of calories I’ll focus on fat here.

When you eat fat the body picks it up from the digestive track and the circulatory system (your blood and lymph) takes it to fat storages.

Think of those storages as a warehouse. As needed the liver converts fats into glucose, dumps it into the bloodstream and from there to your cells.

Your body actively manages this process. It monitors blood sugar levels and instructs the liver to convert just the right amount of fat into glucose. Going back to the warehouse analogy. As orders come in the warehouse manager ships just the right amount of material out, and at the right time.

Because your body manages this process you’ll get a steady drip of glucose into the bloodstream and your blood sugar levels remain stable.

Too much fat still leads to insulin resistance

At the first glance that looks like a great approach, but it has one major setback.

It does nothing to the root cause of the problem: insulin resistance.

While your blood sugar levels may remain steady on a low-carb diet you are still cannot handle carbs. I touched on this in an earlier blog post: Acne victims: To fruit or not to fruit?.

The concentration of glucose in the blood was consistently 1mmol/l higher in the mice maintained on the high-fat diet than in those on the normal diet throughout the 1 year study period. However, insulin levels continued to rise in the mice maintained on the high-fat diet. This suggests that insulin resistance progressively increased but there were compensatory mechanisms which kept the hyperglycaemia stable at 1mmol/l. When challenged with an intravenous glucose tolerance test, there was no compensation for the insulin resistance and there was a marked deterioration of glucose elimination.

Winzell MS & Ahren B (2004)
The High-Fat Diet-Fed Mouse: A Model for Studying Mechanisms and Treatment of Impaired Glucose Tolerance and Type 2 Diabetes. (PDF)
Diabetes 53 (3) S215-9

OK, this is research done with mice. But does it apply to humans in real life. Take a look at these comments at a low-carb forum:

“when i sit down and have a nice two lb steak, and measure my blood sugar 2 hours later… since i am diabetic.. i notice that the number is around 85..if i eat any carbs my blood sugars go as high as 500.. steak.. its whats for dinner!!”

“I have severe reactive hypoglycemia. With protein and fat throughout the day, my blood sugars are nice and steady. I never spike and crash. If I ate too many carbs, however, I’d be having some severe episodes.”

“My mom’s diabetic, so she’s testing all the time… When she LC’s [low-carbs] all her numbers are under control… when she goes off plan, her numbers are haywire!

Likewise, just in my own personal experience… I have low blood sugar… if I eat a steak, I have even sustained energy and clear mental function… if I eat comparable carbs, it’s like I’m DRUNK I’m so lethargic and stupid!”

Protein and Insulin Levels

You can find several people at acne.org forums who have gotten clear with low-carb diets. The message from the is very clear. As long as they stay away from carbs they remain clear, but when they eat too many carbs they breakout.

Here’s an email I got from a customer. Before trying Clear for Life he had been on a low-carb diet.

Just got to say, you da man! I’m into my 4th week post paleo and my skin is doing very well. I haven’t kept to your diet and detox plan stringently, but am eating an abundance of organic fruits, greens, grains, tubers, and legumes while being very careful about my fat intake. Also maintaining a regular exercise and meditation routine while getting as much sunlight as I can manage working an office job during the rainy season in Seattle.

The first week on my diet I was quite amazed to eat levels of carbs that would have caused a carpet bombing of my face while on paleo. No such result.

Can you see a common pattern here? None of these people can eat carbs without severe blood sugar problems. Meaning they still have severe insulin resistance - just like the research done on mice said they would.

And what causes their insulin resistance? All the fat in their blood.

So while they may have their blood sugar levels and skin under control they’ve done nothing to the root cause. They simply manage symptoms and have pretty much doomed themselves into never eating carbs.

Low-carb agruments don’t square with reality

OK, I get that, but what about the arguments low-carb people say? That eating carbohydrates leads to spiking blood sugar levels and insulin resistance, and that the only way to avoid that is to avoid carbs.

One good thing that has come out of low-carb diets is that people are more conscious of eating refined sugar and carbs. Because those are bad for you, can spike your blood sugar levels, and lead to acne and other health problems.

But the argument fails miserably when applied to unrefined carbs; the things you find from whole foods. And I have to admire the low-carb people for persisting on their argument even though it flies on the face of reality.

Riddle me this. Most people outside the Western world eat a diet that’s high in carbs (Asians with their rice and South Americans with their corn). How is it there are very few fat people in these places and diabetes is almost unheard of, except in people who eat a more Western diet? According to the low-carb arguments these people should be obese, diabetic and pretty much dead by now.

The longest-lived people fill their plates with unrefined carbs

And if low-carb diet was the key to optimal health how is it possible that the people in the longest-lived cultures eat a high-carb diet?

Costa Rica’s longevity capital

A lot of physical labor still goes into food production there, from clearing fields to raise crops to picking fruit and grinding corn for tortillas, which is a great upper-body workout. In fact, people who live in this region have some of the best physical stamina in the world because they’re always on the move. People eat lots of corn, beans and squash, and there’s fresh fruit almost year-round.

Live longer with advice from the “Blue zones”

The island of Okinawa in Japan is the home to the longest-lived people in the world. They eat plenty of rice, tofu and seafood. The longest-lived Americans are the Seventh-Day Adventists, many of which are vegetarians and have cut out most of the foods available on a low-carb diet.

These people wouldn’t live so long with raging blood sugar and insulin levels.

Then we have people who eat raw foods, the low-fat version. Most of them report dramatic improvements in health, energy levels and athletic performance. I’m one of them, and Clear for Life customers email me with similar stories every day.

I could go on and quote studies showing how low-fat, high-carb, high-fiber diet reverses insulin resistance, but I don’t think we need to go there.

In the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence I can’t put much weight on the low-carb arguments.

Let me say I’m not making a value judgment here, and at the same time wrap this up.

Whether you choose a low-card or a low-fat approach it’s possible to cure acne and live a healthy life. It’s just that the low-carb approach still leaves you with insulin resistance, and that’s a risk I’m not willing to take. Especially since you can get the same results with healthier diet that’s supported by both science and real life experience.

You are free to choose differently, but at least now you understand the whole story and can make a conscious choice.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Not sure how you to cure your acne?

You are certainly not the only one. Most acne victims waste huge amounts of time and money because of wrong ideas on how to cure acne.

In this post I correct some misconceptions about how to cure acne many acne victims have. I got inspiration for this post from an email a reader sent me. I’m confident you share many of her concerns. Here are few excerpts from her email.

I’ve read a lot of what you say causes acne, and that a lot of the things I’ve been doing aren’t the answer. But i’m confused because you have other acne reviews on your site, so how do i know which i should try?

I don’t want to be “wasting” my time… because it seems like that’s what i’ve been doing in the past years with no results!

I just want your imput. I’m willing to do ANYTHING that will give me back my self-confidence, my life, and ability to enjoy so many more things!

I’m a very busy person, so I don’t have time to do some crazy diet thing, where I have to make all these concoctions and cook a lot…i’m always on the go. I’m always very low with money, so I can’t spend outrageously…

so, that’s why i’m so skeptical about paying to try new things, but I’ll give anything for something that really works!

Is your book give easy & simple to do (like DO this, DON’T do this etc…?) or is it all holistic stuff like “you gotta breathe right” sleep 10 hrs., meditate everyday, and think positive type thing? or is it so complicated that if you miss 1 thing you’re screwed? or “try this, it MIGHT help you?”

I’ve always thought my problem was somehow hormone-related…

Seems to me that your view on how to cure acne is a bit off the mark. Seems that you are after simple tips, guidelines and DOs and DON’Ts that get you clear. At least that’s the impression I got from your email.

Allow me to be blunt here and break it for you.

There are no simple tips and guidelines that will help you to cure acne. At least not anything that would work consistently for many people. Some tips and regimens may help individual people to cure acne, but often they don’t work for the next person.

The closest thing to a universal tip I can give is building health leads to clear skin. This is the message in Acne 101. I spent over 100 pages explaining and hammering this point in from various angles. Hoping that through this shock and awe bombardment the message would go through.

Health = clear skin is a radical departure from the way most acne victims try to get over acne. Simply because there’s nothing you can do to target or cure acne. Your skin is not in your control.

Different acne treatment products, regimens and drugs give you the illusion you can control your acne. But as the email pointed out the results are often wasted time and money and mounting frustration.

From my experience in helping people cure acne one thing is clear. And that experience includes being in touch with over 1000 acne victims, many of which have either cured their acne or seen significant improvements, curing my own acne and studying natural health for over seven years. From all this the overriding conclusion is:

Focusing your efforts on curing acne leads to failure.

More than anything the road to clear skin is learning to treat yourself with respect; in all three levels: physical, emotional and spiritual.

That means giving your body everything it needs (nutrients, fresh air, exercise, rest, etc.) and treating yourself with respect mentally.

If you constantly put someone down, make negative comments about them and don’t believe into them, do you treat them with respect? Then, why do you keep doing it to yourself?

Acne is a lesson in self-respect

Those who succeed in curing acne treat it as a lesson in self-respect.

They work not only on their diet but on all the elements of physical health. They weed out negative thoughts and beliefs about themselves. They go from pessimism to optimism. They challenge themselves and grow. They accept responsibility for their lives.

I know this was another high-flying answer wrapped in fancy rhetoric with little substance - or so some people would say. This also happens to be the same bunch of people who just want the quick tips and thus avoid hard work and responsibility.

The point of this post is not to give you a clear road map to clear skin. There’s no such thing. The point of this post is to change the way you approach curing acne. So that you can start looking for answers in places where you find them.

Let’s finish by going through few important points in the email.

Self-respect and happiness lead to clear skin - not the other way around

I’m willing to do ANYTHING that will give me back my self-confidence, my life, and ability to enjoy so many more things!

This is one life’s little lessons. You’ve got the whole thing upside down. You don’t get clear and then get back your self-confidence and start enjoying life. Simply because acne doesn’t hold you back on anything. Your own limiting beliefs and negative thought about yourself do. Acne is simply an excuse you use to justify them. If you get over acne without dealing with the limiting beliefs you simply find another excuse.

You first deal with the limiting beliefs and start respecting yourself. That gives you back your self-confidence and ability to enjoy life. After that most likely your acne goes away on its own.

You probably want to whack me on the head for not understanding your situation, and were I in your shoes I surely would understand that acne is the real problem.

I can just say I’ve wrestled with my own challenges in this field and know this to be true. Plus working with people who test Happy Skin Days and seeing how simply changing beliefs changes your whole outlook on life. So I hope you can take my word on this.

I’m a very busy person, so I don’t have time to do some crazy diet thing, where I have to make all these concoctions and cook a lot

Then you should be glad to hear that I never cook. I don’t even own pots and pans anymore. Not because I can’t cook but because I don’t see a point anymore. When I’m at home I mostly eat fresh and raw fruits and vegetables. When I go out I eat more normal food. I can’t think of a simpler diet.

This is one reason I love Clear Skin Lifestyle so much. It’s so simple and easy.

Is your book give easy & simple to do (like DO this, DON’T do this etc…?) or is it all holistic stuff like “you gotta breathe right” sleep 10 hrs., meditate everyday, and think positive type thing? or is it so complicated that if you miss 1 thing you’re screwed? or “try this, it MIGHT help you?”

It’s a bit all those - except complicated. As I made the point earlier, getting clear means learning to respect yourself. We all face different challenges in that area. For some people those challenges are physical, others may struggle with mental things.

With everybody starting from different points there’s no way for me, or anyone else for that matter, to give a simple one-size-fits-all solution. But I can give you a goal to aim at, and I can give you tools to look at your life and find the areas you need to work on.

For example I can say that it seems that your diet needs a little work, and then give you guidelines for what a healthy diet looks like. Or I can say that you could benefit from exercising more, so why don’t you see if you can think of ways to incorporate more exercise into your days. Or I can say that on the physical front it seems you are doing fine, but you may need to work on accepting yourself and on your negative beliefs.

So I can’t give you a dumbed down 3-step solution to clear skin, but I can help you to figure out where you are at the moment and how to move forward from there. I can help you figure out your own solution to permanently clear skin.

Clear for Life focuses more on the physical front. It helps you with diet, exercise and other elements of health. Upcoming Happy Skin Days helps you with mental side of things. It shows how to deal with negative beliefs and create a healthier self-image.

I’ve always thought my problem was somehow hormone-related…

Yes, of course it is hormone-related. But hormones are linked to your diet and lifestyle. You can’t separate the two issues. Anything that happens inside of you ultimately comes down to your diet and lifestyle choices.

You are in control of, and only of, your diet and lifestyle choices. Your body adjusts everything that happens inside according to those choices.

So in the end it comes down to respect. Once you start respecting your life it starts respecting you. When that happen you’ll just might notice your acne disappearing and your life getting happier.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

I do have one quick question for you….do you ever eat anything like a chocolate chip cookie, a piece of candy or a small piece of cake? I am not a big dessert eater but it would be nice to know that I can have a small treat once every couple of weeks or something. If you do eat those things ocassionally how often do you allow yourself to have them and do you alter your other eating for that day?

To answer your question, yes I occasionally eat those things. But I think you really want to know if it’s ok to do so.

I can’t give you a simple black and white answer to that. It depends on what you want.

Unlike many others who promote a strict dietary adherence I’m more flexible on this point.

Above all my advice is to make friends with your food. Your diet shouldn’t cause stress and neither should it make you feel deprived. I believe that both of those harm your health and skin more than occasionally treating yourself with ‘bad’ foods.

This means acknowledging that diet change can be a big thing, and that you may need to give yourself time to make the changes. Don’t push too much too quickly.

Your diet needs to be in sync with your life. For example I spend a lot of time at coffee shops, simply because they are convenient places to work. So it’s no surprise that I drink coffee. Quitting coffee and tea at the moment would be very hard. My life is just too structured around coffee shops. And I really don’t want to change this because I enjoy the freedom this gives me. So I think the benefits of coffee and the other things that come along with it outweigh the downsides of drinking coffee.

If you have similar obstacles to healthy eating acknowledge the fact and don’t push too hard against it. Take a look at your situation and figure out what’s the best you can at the moment. Then live by that. Don’t push yourself to go further than that or you’ll end up stressing yourself for no good reason. On the other hand keep it real. Don’t deceive yourself with this.

Making friends with your food also means keeping in mind what you want. Desire to simply remain in good health gives you much more flexibility than training for Olympic does, for example. Diet is a matter of cause and effect. If you are happy with your results then why would you change your diet? If you don’t like your results then consider making changes.

My diet is not optimal. It’s very good, but I still drink coffee and occasionally eat foods that are not good for me. But I’m happy where I’m at the moment and don’t see the need to make big changes.

As you can see it’s hard to give simple and definitive answers to diet questions. Right answer depends on so many things. But getting back to your question I don’t think such small treats hamper your efforts to cure acne too much.

Diet is an important part of healthy and curing acne, but you need to keep it in perspective. It’s just a part of the solution.

As long as you understand the elements of healthy diet and clear skin, such as presented in Clear for Life, and honestly do your best given your situation you should do fine.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

In a study conducted at Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers found that women with the highest levels of insulin had 1.5 to 2.4-fold higher risk of developing breast cancer compared to women with lower levels of insulin. The risk prevailed even after accounting for other risk factors for breast cancer, such as high estrogen levels.

As you know high levels of insulin is also linked to acne. Swinging blood sugar levels lead to increased secretion of insulin, insulin like growth factor 1 (IFG-1) and other hormones. These hormones in turn lead to increased sebum production and more dead skin cells - in other words blocked pores.

It’s no surprise that insulin and IGF-1 are linked to breast, and other types of, cancer. They are powerful growth hormones, as Dr. McDougall explains in this video.

When it comes to acne these hormones stimulate the production of skin cells and sebum. When it comes to cancers they stimulate the growth of cancer cells.

This is one more example of why I keep repeating that building health is the answer to acne. Because pimples aren’t your real problem. They are simply a symptom of the condition your body is in. And acne is but one of the symptoms.

Fighting acne (=repressing symptoms) simply pushes the real cause ‘deeper’ into the body, and later on it may pop out as a far more serious condition, such as cancer.

Finally, please don’t take this as a flimsy scare tactic (i.e. buy Clear for Life or you’ll get a breast cancer). Simply take it as a friendly reminder to focus your efforts on where have the best effect - building health rather than trying to cure acne.

With that may 2009 be your last year with acne!

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin