Hi! My name is Harlowe. I'm 21 years old, gluten-free vegan, and a female. Kind of just a summary of who I am. Anyway, I think I've been using The Regimen for almost a year.
The Regimen has worked well for me. It cleared about 80% of my acne. It gave me my life back and I absolutely love being able to go outside again with confidence. The only problem is.. THE FINE LINES!! I have thin, delicate, sensitive skin and the BP has really taken a toll on my skin. I think I noticed how bad it was when I didn't get IDed at the liquor store, but my boyfriend did who is 3 years older than me. Also, when I smile or look over my shoulder... GOD I hate the feeling of taunt skin.
Sooo, in an effort to change this, I changed moisturizers and cleansers. I started using the Oil Cleansing Method (if you aren't familiar, there are lots of helpful websites on google.com about it) and I switched to First Aid Beauty moisturizer.. Rescue moisturizer or something. Let me just say I love the OCM (oil cleansing method). It has helped any pimples clear faster and is really keeping my face moisturized. But as summers coming along, I'm really finding that I don't want to do this anymore! I don't want to spend an hour doing my regimen in the morning and being unhappy with my make up when it's all said and done.
I want to be free and I want to stop USING CHEMICALS ON MY FACE. My boyfriend had acne when he was a teenager and he tried treating it, then gave up and started just washing his face with a bar of soap once a day. His skin is beautiful and he never gets pimples. And he never washed his face unless its in the shower. Sometimes he won't even wash it. I WANT THAT!!! I think what has really inspired me to do this is that story, and the caveman regimen. Except I honestly can't do the caveman regimen in the summer because summer is the highlight of my life and I want to be able to wear makeup.
SO INSTEAD, i've decided I'm going to wean myself off of benzoyl peroxide. The way I see it.. I'm already 1/2 of the way there. I don't use the AHA that much if at all, I don't use the Cleanser anymore, and I don't use the lotion. The only thing I have left to tackle is the BP, which is probably the most important thing of all.
Now here's the low down, I don't use it on my entire face. The only place I get break outs is my lower cheeks and around my mouth. I only use one pump, or maybe 3/4 of a pump twice a day regularly on those areas, never on my forehead. For some reason I could never fully commit to the 2 pumps.. it was just too much. So now I've created a month and a half plan to wean myself off. It goes as follows:
Today is May 7th/2013
(SInce I've already started before making this topic)
May 3rd - 12th :
- 1/2 a pump day alternating with no BP at all every second day during the day time.
- 1 full or 3/4 a pump every night.
May 13th - 22th:
- 1/2 a pump day alternating with no BP at all every second day during the day time.
- 1/2 a pump every night.
May 23rd - June 1st:
- no BP during the day
- 1/2 a pump at night.
June 2nd - 11th:
- no BP during the day
- 1/2 a pump every second night
Thats all I have so far..
I will be washing with my mixture of jojoba oil and castor oil morning and night, moisturizing my face with jojoba oil during the morning and First Aid Beauty during the night.
I feel really naked without the BP on the alternating day. I have this huge underlying fear.. almost like my face is going to spontaneously combust, but then I get my head out of my butt and stop thinking like such a wussy. This is for the best. I'm sick of relying on stuff to clear my face when my face should just be able to do it by itself.
In the end, I hope to be just washing my face with my oil mixture and not using any moisturizers or treatments.
Oh, and something else people should know if anyone decides to read this, I quit eating gluten and it really helped with my acne.. probably more than the Regimen did.
Anyway, I'm a few days in and I honestly don't expect much of a change because my face looks beautiful right now and healthy so I'm expecting this will go very well for me. High hopes! I'll update. THANKS FOR READING!!
Best of luck.
That's great that you want to get off chemicals. Recently I wanted to do the same...it worked for a week (no breakouts whatsoever) then I used a small bit of cleanser and my skin just got crazy dry and broke out a little. So it proves that using unfiltered water and chemicals isn't beneficial at all.
Once my skin heals again, I'm going to stop using my cleanser/moisturiser and carry on what I was doing. This time I'm also going to be on an improved diet too. I'm just sick of thinking about acne and what products I'm going to use...like your boyfriend, my friend doesn't need to wash his face at all and it's completely clear and he doesn't break out no matter what he eats or does.
I hate that my face is just addicted to what I've covered it in for years on end...
Hey, I'm glad that BP worked for you and I agree about not wanting to put so many chemicals onto your face - it's the reason I quit BP too (not to mention bleaching all my sheets and towels!). I don't mean to put a dampner on it because you seem to be really positive about it, but I just think you need to be prepared for the possible consequences of stopping BP.
My regimen used to be just soap and a tiny bit of BP once a day only on my cheeks and forehead, not exactly a 'regimen' but it pretty much worked for me (minus a few small insignificant ones and a monthly bad boy) since I was about 14 until I decided to quit 7 months ago (7 years in total). I tried to wean off of BP slowly but since I wasn't using much to start with it only took about a month. Your timeline looks pretty good and your last date is almost what I was doing so you may not see any drastic improvements/ issues at that point...
So for me things started getting worse after about a month of no BP and significantly worse after 2 months. Let me just say my acne is by no means severe but I went from light to moderate fairly quickly. I kind of believed I'd outgrown my acne and didn't need BP anymore but apparently I was wrong. I have never really had problems with my forehead before, maybe 1 or 2 clogged pores a month and now it's a minefield (on the plus side my cheeks stayed as clear as they were on BP).
I'm not saying clogged pores and under the skin bumps are a total disaster and I'm sure most people would be happy to just have this kind of acne but I'm personally a picker and clogged pores are a bit like wine for an alcoholic. Just to be fair, I do like the fact that I'm no longer using BP and after about 3 months of breaking out I started using Tea Tree Oil as a toner which has seemed to reduce/ prevent the clogged pores from being inflamed so I'd advise gradually introducing this into your regimen as you wean yourself off to see if it works for you?
Again, I'm sorry to put a dampner on things but I wish someone would have forewarned me before I quit so I could properly weigh up the possible pros and cons. Also just to say my boyfriend is exactly the same, he used to have regular breakouts for years when he was younger, but didn't use any acne treatment whatsoever and just grew out of it...now he doesn't wash his face for days, has beautiful skin and frankly I'm very jealous!!! Luckily they have been through it so they know how we feel!