A couple of months ago I stumbled across a YouTube video of a girl raving about the Oil Cleansing Method (OCM) and how it has revolutionized her ideas about skin care. As most OCM advocates will tell you, it seems really counter intuitive, especially for people who battle acne; Why would I put oil on my already oily face?! I'm not going to go into all the mechanics of how it works and why, but if you are curious here is a good starting point for more information:
http://www.theoilcleansingmethod.com/ I understand the basic mechanics of 'you take moisture out, you must put it back in' for clear skin approach so I guess I'm a step ahead.
A little background on my skin: In high school it was awful. Awful waffle awful. Looking back now I am really lucky that I didn't end up with terrible acne scars. I didn't do much in terms of skin care. No matter how much my mom told me not to, I slept in my make-up every night. I splashed my face with water in the morning (maybe) before I put more make up on. I tried ProActive but couldn't get into it. I tried Clinique and never kept up with the routine. I hated the greasy feeling of moisturizer or sun screen so I never wore it. My skin care plan was simple: Dry it out as much as you can so it won't be oily.
But that's not the craziest part....Wanna hear the craziest part? I know you do. I PURPOSEFULLY SUN BURNED MY FREAKING FACE (Tiffany, my most favoritest (former) Clinique person evar...I am so sorry) BECAUSE THE PINK/REDNESS EVENED OUT MY SKIN TONE. I'll give you moment to let that sink in....
Eeeeyah. So sometime around my senior year of high school I ended up with a pretty long term boyfriend and wanted to be safe and responsible (and without child...) and all that jazz so I got 'the pill'. Hallelujah it wiped out most of my acne in just a couple of months. Finally I was on the path to clearer skin, but still no real skin care routine. Since high school I have probably used every drug store brand out there, along with brands like LUSH and Philosophy all with mediocre results. I'd even been prescribed pills from the dermatologist in combination with the BP cream. Nope.
Fast forward 10 years and I still battle acne but most of the time its just hormonal/stress related stuff. I have been using Cliniques 3 step system - Foaming Acne Wash, #2 Clarifying lotion, and the DD Gel - for close to 3 years and while I'm overall pretty happy with it, its killing my wallet. Side bonus: since I am just about out of all of my 3 Step system, I figured now was a good time to pursue other avenues. Enter...the Oil Cleansing Method.
I did a bit of research on different oils and combinations (
Crunchy Betty is a great site to help choose your oils), but essentially decided to just use what I had around the house before I started looking into additional oil blends and stuff. My skin is Normal to Dry (I think) so I went with
1 part Castor Oil to 3 parts EVOO since Castor oil is the drying part of this combination. I tried it out for a few nights on my hands to get a feel for how oily it might be, and to see if I would have any negative reaction to the blend. So far so good. I was pleased that I didn't smell like an Italian restaurant when I was done.
Now seriously, before I post these next pictures I have to stress that this is not an easy thing for me to do. I am not 'proud of my skin', and I am aware of the copious amounts of damage that I've done to it. But this is a necessary evil, and will hopefully kick start some really awesome before/after shots later down the road. (Can you tell I'm psyching myself up to actually post these...*sigh* I'm such a chump)
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| Left Jaw/Cheek - Day 1 |
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| Right Jaw/Cheek - Day 1 |
Over all first impression - Not as awful as I anticipated it would be, not as great as I'd hoped for. So it gets a 6 out of 10 for now.
I washed my face with oil last night - massaged in a quarter sized amount for about a minute and then put a hot, hot, HOT wash cloth over my face and let it steam until it cooled. Rinsed the wash cloth out and gently rubbed my face to remove the excess oil, and examined my results. My face was definitely soft. It felt a little dry around my chin area but not nearly close to the dryness and tightness that I get with my Clinique system before moisturizing. I skipped moisturizer and went to bed. When I woke up I had 2 teeeeeny tiny little pimples (like..the kind that aren't even worth mentioning but for the sake of the blog topic I figured I should include any and every little weirdness thing). It was extremely difficult to pass up my desire to wash my face this morning (most people recommend only using OCM a couple times a week to start with), and I didn't want to splash it with water and then have to cheat and use some oil free moisturizer so I left it alone. When I got home from work though I really needed to wash it. It just felt...unwashed! LOL! So I did. Again, a little drier than I prefer it to feel but not dry like its going to flake up and fall off. I put just a tiny tiny bit of my DDMGel around my nose (I'm sick so I'm blowing it a lot and it hurts), and on my chin where it felt dry last night. Still, its soft and it looks okay. There is no oily sheen on my face. Meh. I'll keep it up. It should take about 2 weeks for my skin to get totally adjusted to it since I have been using Clinique for so long so we'll take some more pictures later in the week and see how it goes.
If you use the OCM, or used it and went back to store bought skin care, then I wanna know! Leave me a message beloooow! <3
TL;DR
- Oil on mah face! But not an oily face.
- Miss J nails it
- Self conscious skin pics!
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