For roughly the past five to six years, I’ve been suffering from acne and tried just about everything: pills, potions, peelings. I even did something called “Green Peel”, where a mix of herbs and acids is scrubbed onto your skin which then begins to peel after a few days. I can’t even begin to tell you how terrible I felt physically and emotionally. I felt ugly, not good enough and I eventually ended up having very low self-esteem, as I was literally “ashamed” of how I looked.
Nothing really changed much when I went vegan in October 2011, initially for ethical reasons only. I still remember the first time that I heard about an oil-free vegan diet. A vegan teacher at my school and I were chit-chatting when he told me about delicious “Chocolate Zucchini Muffins” by the “Happy Herbivore”. I was intrigued (and not only because chocolate and zucchini sounded so… weird) and spent some hours researching this whole WFPB-thing online.
I cannot tell you how much sense it all made, especially the aspect about avoiding free oils. But initially I found it very hard to do that- I had always cooked with oil, all the processed vegan junk food I consumed contained oil, so what was I going to eat? But as time went on, I began incorporating more and more unprocessed food into my diet and I felt terrific. And now for about seven months, I’ve been 99% oil-free (the 1% being times when eating out etc.).
And here’s what the diet did to my acne:
It’s still not gone completely, but every single time I eat high fat foods, I’ve got at least five new pimples the next day. And when I switch back to a low fat diet, they’re gone within less than a week. I cannot say that my acne has gone completely, but it’s so much better that it’s a victory for me already!
