By Julianna Lovik
You may have noticed a little hiatus lately from the Neighborhood Paleo posts, but not to worry! I’ve been brewing up some little projects that I am just bursting to tell you all about!
What have we been up to?? Keep reading to find out!
Here we are in the midst of a beautiful summer and I have recently started undertaking some pretty drastic measures to paleo-ify my whole life, in particular my outer body. While I would argue that food is the foundation of what makes paleo so effective at promoting overall health, I began to consider recently that maybe I could improve the quality of my skin and hair through paleo-approved products as well. Thus, I recently began transitioning all of my beauty and body care products to paleo!
This all started innocently enough; I was perusing my normal paleo blogs one morning and stumbled across Haley Mason’s article, Bye Bye Rosacea, Glowing Skin for the Bride to be from her blog she co-authors with her husband, called Primal Palate. Skin problems have been something I’ve dealt with for years, ever since puberty. I was in many ways a very awkward teenager and young twenty-something, a time which was quite turbulent for me, both emotionally and physically. Amongst a host of other body dysmorphia-related self esteem issues, emotional roller coasters I didn’t know how to deal with, and social development and self-identity crises that I struggled with, I had acne and other skin irritations – dry skin, eczema, strange rashes without much explanation, etc. etc.
Exhibit A: Teen ANGST!!!
Exhibit B: Cut off all my hair and pierce a barbell through my ear? Nailed it. Identity found. At 18.
I know, “woe is me!!”, right? The teens and early twenties are tough for everyone, of course, and I mention these experiences because they all came full circle and made sense in the greater context of my life as I matured. And even more so when I went paleo. Paleo started a significant paradigm shift in my self esteem development, forcing me to go back to those awkward years through a paleo lens and work through the issues I didn’t know how to deal with then, using the paleo tools I have now, all resulting in the betterment of me today. I now appreciate all of these experiences and am starting to see their ultimate value in shaping my beautiful life – and that includes the skin problems!
So when I saw Haley’s article mentioning “glowing skin” I almost wrote it off as not applicable for me, because I’d never really believed that perfect glowing skin was ever going to be attainable. This assumption was so ingrained in me from my “teen angst” years, feeling I didn’t “deserve” beautiful skin was just a reality I’d established years ago. But, didn’t I deserve to feel beauty on the outside to match what paleo made me feel on the inside? Wasn’t the empowerment I felt from paleo applicable to ALL aspects of my life? If I believed so steadfastly in paleo, couldn’t I test one of the most sensitive issues I’d had with my body and prove yet again just how healing paleo can be?? Suddenly I was inspired to try.
Before reclaiming my health and happiness with paleo, I believed I’d never be able to find peace with my body image, overcome my fear and hatred of exercise, find self-sustenance and empowerment through food and farming, or defeat my propensity for mood swings. So, too, was my self-defeating attitude towards eliminating my acne and skin problems, that it was part of me and would forever remain an unresolvable nuisance. Not to mention that ten years of hormone pills had convinced me I’d solved the acne problem, when really I’d just masked it.
Recently however, I eventually resolved to face the music, decided that hormone pills weren’t entirely paleo, and quit taking them. And now the acne has returned, the dry skin is back, and strange rashes appear on my face. I even have to admit in these last few weeks I’ve been reliving the emotional trauma I had in my teens when I first got acne. It has been a very testing time readdressing those feelings and I really struggled with whether or not I wanted to share this experience on the internet. But with my paleo tools and greater sense of empowerment, and when I realized that Haley’s article had come at just the right time for me, I decided that maybe sharing my journey with you was the best way to really put paleo to the test. So, I’ve decided to completely paleo-ify my skin and hair care products! And you have no idea the doors this has started to open up for me!
That brings me to the picture at the beginning of the blog post. What are Sean and I doing?? Believe it or not, we are making a home-made skin care product! In my search for products I’ve realized that the market is somewhat limited, so I’ve started MAKING my own!
I’ll be posting periodically from now on about many such experiments. Along the way I’m reading Liz Wolfe’s, Skintervention Guide (Liz Wolfe also wrote another book I absolutely LOVE, called Eat the Yolks, is a contributing writer to Paleo Magazine, runs a blog called Real Food Liz and cohosts a podcast with Diane Sanfilippo called Balanced Bites. In my opinion anything either of these women touches is GOLD. And I even got to meet Liz Wolfe at Paleo f(x) and have her sign her newest book!!).
With Liz Wolfe at Paleo f(x) 2014, having her sign her newest book, Eat the Yolks. My copy of the Skintervention Guide is an E-book so I opted not to have her sign my Kindle.
So stay tuned and on the lookout for some upcoming posts about body care. And until then,
be well and be paleo!
Julianna