Personally, I don't think it's worth it. You should never have to develop an unhealthy relationship with food in order to achieve clear skin, biggest reason being that it's not sustainable. Can you imagine yourself eating like this for the rest of your life? But also because it can have a negative effect on your physical and mental well-being in the long run if you are always feeling guilty and stressed about what you're eating.

I have never believed that diet can affect the skin in such a specific way. What I mean by that is that if you are eating healthy most of the time, having some snacks and desserts isn't going to give you cystic acne. If you were just eating crap all day everyday then that's a different story, but our bodies just don't work like that. It doesn't make sense that acne would be the automatic consequence of eating something like a bag of chips. Maybe you won't feel so great, but acne? It just doesn't make sense or sound normal. That's how I see it. It's more likely the stress that is causing you to breakout!

fuck yes it does with my body sad to say LMAO but hell with it man . If I decided to eat pizza, you will be able to see the cyst creep up own my face to bite me in the ass just within a couple of minutes. The only time food does not break me out , is when it's homemade by me. Jen just bake your own cakes n sweets to see if that works. Be creative with foods, you won't regret it just don't go crazy

On 9/22/2016 at 3:15 PM, Jennifer Cheung said:

Hello guys!

For the whole summer I've been trying to be gluten free and to cut out sugar or any junk food. At first it was great, I felt very proud of how clean my diet was. But after a while I started to feel emotionally stressed and deprived.

I love bakery so much but it became off limits for me. Whenever I dined out with my friends or family, I had to pretend to be cool about choosing a salad instead of a pizza or pasta. The problem is that, the idea of these food being BAD for my acne makes it really hard for me to "find a balance" and to allow myself to have cheat meal without being guilty. And whenever I "cheat" and feel guilty, I may even turn the cheat meal into a binge disaster.

I do think that a clean diet did help me to decrease the inflammation of my acne, but at the same time the stress and the depression that come from having to maintain a strict clean diet seems to make my acne worse. There was a time I started eating some chips and I felt so guilty that I ended up eating the whole bag, and then I was so anxious that my acne would flare up and I broke down crying, and several hours later I got two new huge cystic acne. I was so sure that those cysts were not a result of the chips but of my anxiety and stress.

I am really torn between keeping a clean eating diet and having the freedom to eat without guilt. And I would like to know about you guys' experience with diet and the stress that comes along. Do you think it's worth the stress? Or actually since diet (as I believe) cannot prevent acne completely anyway, it is not worth all the stress?

haha I have the same mindset to you. as in haha. yeah I also noticed that having a strict diet makes you feel stressed, no energy and slimmer - this makes me more depressed sometimes. Also my other problem is when I eat inflammatory foods, I'm getting rheumatoid arthritis. I'm thinking if this will be forever? When I get older these sensitivities will go away?