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