Hello, I hope you are well and in good spirits!

Well, first off, congratulations for getting rid of all that crap. I'll choose not going to tackle your antidepressants right now because there's too much about diet that I want to say to you. But I will say that in the beginning I use to feel a lot like you when I was eliminating practically everything from what use to be my diet and what was once a huge and normal part of my life. I eliminated dairy and breads for sure was a challenge, and I found myself basically eating only about 20 or more different items, lol! Potatoes, onions, cucumbers, apples, bananas, peanut butter, lettuce's, oranges, celery, carrots... even vegetables that I never had before like parsnips, turnips, leeks, kale... the limitations seemed extreme and long lasting.

The truth about my diet change in the beginning is that I saved up money to buy a juicer, which I understand is an average $100 investment, but it took a while and a lot of not buying any coffee, movie tickets, chips or other snacks, etc... and consumed 1-2 servings of homemade fresh vegetable juice almost everyday, which I believed really kicked my skin into recovery mode. After I stopped juicing for a while, I started focusing on recipes I could make, with a very tight and limited budget too. I also admit that it was a bit of a waiting game as well to see myself be 100 percent clear... lying in bed most nights just staring at myself in the mirror... but over time you WILL gradually see your skin getting better and better and better. Three months I was at 80 percent, eight months I was 90, and the rest of the year I slowly became 100 percent.

After a couple of years on such a limited way of eating, I realized that I never really gave cooking and all kinds of vegetables and fruits the chances they deserved. I haven't had anything processed/boxed, meat, eggs, dairy, wheat, etc. in so long that it's almost hard to believe that I thought there was nothing to eat before. It seems like a totally different life now, and now I had no idea how I ever thought I was limited or unlucky! The possibilities with food are endless, so I recommend looking up recipes and researching surrounding farms and grocery stores in order to understand what food you have access to. Make friends with your farmers, go to community colleges and ask the cooks in training for advice, or network and explore groups and clubs at your local libraries. FLAVOR your salads and stir fries with things like Organic Molasses, Honey, Mustard's, Vinegar's, Herbs and Spices... etc, all which play a super important role with not only overall flavor but is generally what ANYONE flavors their food with, even unhealthy people.

Over time, I made a budget and organized my finances, no matter how small they were, and bought things slowly and steadily, storing them to where I had a decent collection of goodies. I recommend reorganizing a lot of avenues in your life. I also networked to find other people with great diet ideas and others who just want to hang out with normal people, not at bars or crazy night clubs or anything, lol! I traded things like spices and herbs for chores such as cleaning homes and mowing lawns. I got to know my neighbors and even people who just wanted to get rid of things they weren't using altogether. In college especially, I traded kitchen-time and cooking times with others so that we could all share our resources, meals and especially stories together :). Don't be afraid to reach out is all I'm saying, and eventually you'll realize that a lot of people you come across will never judge you for your skin! In fact, teach others about yourself! They may have awesome insights for you! And sometimes a better diet means giving up on on other things you don't need to pay for, like games, movies, subscriptions to online accounts... even medications which may or may not doing much for you anyway. If I may be so bold as to say, they are probably not helping, and to me personally was a totally unnecessary investment that I was more than happy to move on from.

Is there anything you can add about your situation? Or do you just believe that really good tasting and filling food will make your life a lot better at this point? Let me know and if you care to you can shoot a message to me anytime.

Thank you so much for all this advice!

I don't have a juicer but I have a smoothie maker which should be alright? I can try and make more healthy smoothies/juices but they taste horrible to me when there's not enough sugar in them which is not good lol.

How do you deal with hunger and fatigue throughout the day? Is it mainly just fruit and nut snacks? I'm trying to do that but find I scoff the nuts too quickly rather than saving them for snacks. How do you make sure you're getting enough carbohydrates, protein, calcium and iron?

I am re-attending University in September after a break due to mental health problems. Hopefully, I'll make friends who are knowledgeable about cooking and nutrition and I will try and get more into cooking myself as my skills in that department are pretty lacklustre. My current friends mostly love meat and junk food and consider my diet to be super healthy lmao!

I really don't know about medications. While I disagree with putting loads of chemicals in the body some of the ones I take are essential for my mental and physical wellbeing, and my mental health is suffering now I am no longer taking antidepressants (which I'm trying to remedy with diet and exercise- I'm tiredof seeing therapists). I definitely think stopping the acne pills which had all these health warnings and didn't seem to help my skin was a good decision.

Again thank you so much for this advice, hopefully I'll be able to get my acne under control in the future!

The thing about a juicer is that it gives your body all the nutrients it needs immediately, where as your digestive system takes time to absorb the fiber in the whole foods you blended up. Whole foods are fine and always preferred, but a juicer cuts strait through the extra work, giving your body the break it deserves, and also encourages your body to immediately absorb nutrients that no vitamin, boxed food, or old-cut up salads will ever give you. Honestly said, you can easily get rid of your acne without the luxury of a juicer, but a blender/smoothie maker may take longer if you are looking for fast skin results. My oil production on my face completely disappeared in just one month of juicing, and most of the acne I had left after several months were just the red-spots healing. Some small spots came and went, but at the same time I was adjusting my diet and making a ton of mistakes, and the skin detoxes even if you do everything right anyway, which is perfectly normal. I decided to do this because I knew I was far behind on my nutrition. I did it carefully and slowly, and it worked beautifully. I dont advocate juicing forever, and some even argue that its unhealthy. It all depends on what you choose to do with it I suppose.

Wanting to sweeten your smoothies is not a bad thing. Like I said before, bananas, apples, honey, and molasses are great ways to make it sweeter, but please keep in mind that food should never always be sweet. You can use Organic Cane Sugar if you're so bold enough, but I cut out sugar from my diet completely in the beginning. I took no chances, and my juices/smoothies/foods tasted totally fine. I honestly didn't know what a lot of people were talking about. We make something at our house called The Shamrock Shake, and its basically Spinach with frozen bananas, fresh peppermint and water. Simple, but so damn good.

I was never attached to the way food tasted; I just didn't know anything about health. Sure, I missed the chemicals and additives for a while because thats what we were raised to eat, lol! I suppose I can sum it all up to peanut butter... I was having the typical JIF and other cheap store bought brands for 20 years, and I honestly thought that that WAS peanuts. During my diet change, however, I got rid of it because it had sugar, which confused the hell out of me because it didn't taste 'sweet', and I bought traditional peanut butter instead, like Adam's or Laura Scudder's (which should be at all the major grocery stores or at least they are in my area). When I first had that stuff, I almost laughed at how thick and 'chalky' it seemed, but smothered it on granny smith green apples anyway, which personally made for an awesome snack in my opinion. I would sometimes have three or more apples if I were hungry enough. A couple of months later, I ran out of my peanut butter, but my father still had some of the JIF left. When I tasted it, I almost spat it out. I couldn't believe the difference! I started at it wide eyed for a long time, and realized that by soberly avoiding so many things for just a few short months, my taste buds changed entirely, and I no longer thought it tasted good, but was in fact like garbage. I kid you not on that, and havent touched the stuff since. Take baby steps, and be in love with exploring every avenue of life, including whatever diet you think will work for you.

Snack wise... well, I don't think of the work 'snacks' anymore. Like I said, I eat vegetables and fruit and if that sometimes means a mango with a few slices of apple and cup of hot tea, before or after regular eating 'times', then yes, that's a snack. I honestly just eat when I'm hungry, and prep and prepare all my meals the same day or a day ahead of time. Do I eat snack like food like chips? Yeah, sometimes, but I buy brands that have no preservatives and colorings and flavorings except maybe an oil, salt, what the chip is made from, and vinegar or whatever. I never worry about carbs because my diet is extremely rich in carbs, and vitamins like calcium and iron I get from mostly raw foods like broccoli, spinach and kale (most leafy vegetables have both these ingredients), bananas, I make my own homemade hot chocolate which is both fair trade and organic, and if I have nuts then I only have like 10 or 12 pieces at a time. I also make my own homemade soups, like my Turnip-Parsnip-Radish root soup, or my Vegan Gumbo. Spices and Herbs also are rich in certain nutrients! I ate way too many nuts in the beginning and if I eat like 50 almonds now, then I might have a cyst in a day or two. The Gut and Acne are very closely related, and almonds are difficult for the gut, so if the gut has a hard time then you most definitely will break out. Or at least I do, which is all I ever really wanted to share with everyone.

Fatigue is normal no matter who anyone is or what anyone does. It could be work, it could be stress, it could even be the combination of your foods. It never got more extreme on a better diet, only when I first started the diet, and I just simply started laying down earlier and relaxing with a book, some video games, or even inviting friends over for a movie night. You are going to detox and feel tired, but because I knew what I was doing I wasn't surprised. It went away eventually, and whenever it happens now it's probably due to poor deep sleep or a pretty bad food combination, like spinach and beans. There definitely are countless mistakes someone can make, like too much salad and lentils together, too many nuts, not enough fat in your diet (avocados are good for this), etc. My attitude never attached itself to my fatigue; I still 'pushed' through the day, but always found a way to enjoy myself. I encourage you to try everything and MAKE mistakes! Mentally note them, or at least write them down, and figure out what you like to do in the end!

I wish you good luck in your University then! That sounds super exciting and wonderful!!! As for your friends, don't ever worry about being with them or feeling like you may have to temporarily ditch them, but do realize that if you're trying to eat differently and they give you a hard time about it, then change your relationships with them. My entire family and all my old friends eat that way too, and I don't blink an eye at it anymore. And what they consider healthy is still probably not even healthy, lol. Even most vegans are unhealthy. I personally am not a gluten-free, sugar-free, half raw/half cooked food vegan. I dont call myself anything, but people always want to know, so I do my best to sum up what I can. I am myself and observe myself and the world around me, and eat what makes me feel great.

To be honest with you, I never cared about what I was eating all my life. When I switched my diet, I didn't care that it didn't taste as sugary as before, I was never addicted to that sort of thing. It just tasted like the veggies and fruit I've always had on the side, only this time far more plentiful in them. I had cravings for 'the regular thing', but I ignored them. If I 'cheated', I was lazy, and always took full responsibility for it. Life was too grand and busy to be focusing on what I ate, and in the end I just observed my moods and behavior and learned from them. I started learning to detect the difference between a better tasting apple and an old one, and the best time to buy vegetables throughout the year depending on your location. After a couple of days to a couple of weeks, I began enjoying the taste of real food, and you can feel that weird, slimy phlegm-like stuff leave your tongue and throat go away, and suddenly you start being more sensitive to tastes that you never thought you could have. I'm definitely not one of those people that go running around preaching how tofu tastes like meat, which is completely an utterly ridiculous. But I do stress a whole, real food diets; no bread, no sugar, no processed foods, and predominately vegetables. Fruit is fine but don't go crazy. Try this diet for maybe even one year. If you don't see any changes at that time, then look for something else, but I seriously doubt you wouldn't change from this.

I'm happy to hear you stopped medication, good for you on that :). As for everything I have just said, it all depends on you in the end. Do you want to try this? Do you see the benefit in this, not just because of acne? Do you want sugar too much to care to change, and would rather be on medication? Do you feel that its not fair to change so many parts of your life for trying a new diet? There is nothing wrong with any of these decisions. My brother cleared himself on Accutane, and never looked back. He didnt want too he had too many friends to hang out with, too big an agenda, and a diet change was just too hard and unpleasant for him. All paths of life lead you to your destination. I thoroughly enjoyed mine, and all the benefits that came with it. It wasnt just my skin for me it almost felt like I just simply wanted to grow up.

Thanks again for all the advice, sorry for the late reply.

I think that what I am going to do for now is just cut back on wheat/gluten where I can and eat as much fruit and veg as possible, but not completely cut it out as I find it too difficult to fight fatigue/irritability. I'm going to continue using the benzoyl peroxide because I feel it is working to reduce my acne and will just see where things go from there.