hello friends!

ever since joining the FitFluential team we have been surrounded by others who share the same passion as we do. everyday we get inspired by our fellow fitness friends. by being an ambassador we get the chance to have amazing opportunities sent our way to pursue. that is what we are doing today. taking a step in pursuing something we would love to be considered for - brand representative for a fitness/ health company or magazine.

today we wanted to share our love of fitness. it is no secret how much we love to SWEAT.

our love of working out has empowered us in so many ways that we never thought were possible.

over the years our focus of fitness and workouts have changed. as we have learned, grown, and pushed ourselves further.  even giving us the self-confidence to show our abs a year ago.

we have overcome our eating disorder, issues with food-calorie counting, learned how to respect thy food, workout to relieve stress. we just love discussing things health and fitness related.  and how getting stronger physically has helped our self-esteem! 

our fitness history:

• as kids we were always active. from working at a horse barn. doing a little gymnastics. doing whatever our older sisters did.
• middle school we got into sports. and played anything we could.
• high school we were still involved in sports, and by our junior and senior year we had a strong focus on volleyball.
• college we played competitive intramural sports, did some weight lifting but really were cardio junkies.
• post-college we were still cardio junkies. got into running. ran a few half and full marathons. then yoga was welcomed into our routine.
• about 2 years ago we came across the site bodyrock tv, and our love of working out changed, goodbye cardio, hello strength!
• we quit the gym and decided to become FIT by working out at home doing high intensity interval training.
• and now we try to find new ways to push ourselves outside our comfort zones during our home workouts.

we love the challenge of trying something new for our workouts. we love mixing things up as well to keeping our body guessing from yoga one day, to jump roping the next to a HIIT workout.

we made a short video describing what fitness means to us, please check it out when you have time and let us know what you think!

and we just want to say thank you for allowing us to come into your lives daily  and allow us to share something that means so much to us. you all keep us motivated!

thank you!

till next time,

love

Lori and Michelle

hello friends

our skin care series continues…in case you missed any topics -

• skin care part 1
• skin care part 2
• skin care part 3

today we are just highlighting a few dietary changes and points that we focus on when dealing with our acne.

through all the research and personal experience from striving to reach that optimal level of health we have learned quite a bit. some things we have done and seen it work. as other things we have tried and never saw any benefits. so even with us it is all about trial and error.

we eat a fairly clean diet. and we still struggle with breakouts so we decided to investigate further. we have taken all the big culprits out of our diet, we have done cleanses, we have had series of colonics done before. pretty much everything people mention for us to try, we have tried. and we still stand here today trying to understand our skin. and for those critics out there that claim we stress, or are obsessed or do too many cleanses, well all we can say is look at this post, and then come back here and say what you want to say. trust us, we do not like always thinking about what could cause our skin breakouts. but this is our life. this is our battle. and we feel it is worth figuring out the cause of our acne and healing it for good.  and show that anyone can get beautiful skin!

okay vent over

things that we pay attention to that could be factors of our skin issues:

• Hormones (here is more info on our hormone testing)
• Sleep
• Unbalanced EFAs, need to balance omegas 3-6-9,  (read our thoughts here)
• Exercise
• Inflammation
• Androgen hormonal – causes oil surplus, which can lead to pimples
• Diet – sugar, cooked oil, grains, protein, etc.
• Weak Liver/toxins
• Poor digestion/elimination

 today we are going to focus on diet related issues.

source

we believe what you eat does matter and can lead to clear skin.

with everything in life we recommend starting small because too much can also be harmful. and talk with your doctor before making any major changes.

now for other general health/food/diet topics. we are just going to quickly cover them. as they are big topics in of themselves.

remember, you need to find what is causing your acne.  below are just some ideas of what could be causing acne.

 Cooked vs Raw Food

this is a big topic! when we first started this blog over two years ago, we were 100% raw vegans. we came to this way of eating due to our health issues and wanted to get clear glowing skin that we read about. plus many say that alkalizing foods can improve skin, which yes this can make a difference, how much will vary in each person.  raw foods for us helped but did not make our acne go away like we thought.

although with that being said cooked foods cause skin issues for us as well. we notice cooked foods prepared in certain ways can cause inflammation in us.

one reason we enjoy both worlds, think it is good balance for us.

Grains -

we are talking all grains here, even gluten free grains. remember we mentioned healthy foods may not be healthy for you. a hard thing for us sometimes to acknowledge not all foods are healthy for us, even though there are tons of claims out there saying you should be eating this because of x,y, and z. now we are not here proclaiming you should go grain free or anything.  we just noticed our digestion is better with little to no grains, therefore our skin better.

Sugar

how many times have we talked about sugar on our blog. haha. we have done cleanses. battled candida. and played around with our fat intake to help with sugar cravings. did it all help? yes and no. we do feel overall watching our sugar intake is important to overall health, not just for skin. how much sugar can one handle? well that is personal and something everyone will have to figure out on their own. we do feel having a very low sugar diet has helped our skin. this is still hard for us as we love our sweets.

Nuts/seeds/legumes

everyone is pretty aware that certain foods are harder to digest than others, well nuts/seeds/legumes can fall into that category. remember with everything we are mentioning here not everyone will be affected by these. we do notice when we have too many nuts/seeds/legumes intake, our skin shows some signs in forms of breakouts and how we overall feel. so we have learned moderation, again how much will vary per person.

and a reader has mentioned to us Loren Cordain controversy on chia seeds. we are not sure about this, something new to us. still need to look into it more. anyone else have any thoughts on this chia seed controversy?

Digestion

everyone claims if you have bad digestion, have a hard time digesting food, do not eliminate properly then you get acne or have poor skin. well yes and no. there are periods when both of us feel we do great in the bathroom, and still get breakouts.

we do feel poor digestion can cause toxins to build up, so can show on the skin.  currently we have been trying to focus on our liver. healing it so we can detox better because we feel when our liver is healthy our skin is healthy.

Supplements

yes taking supplements can help acne. does it cure it? we do not think so, but still a good idea to find what nutrient you may be low in, as it could help other issues too. we currently take digestive enzymes, probiotics, omega oil, zinc, vitamin D, and green superfood powders (like spirulina). we try our best to take them everyday and lately when we have been doing a great job with keeping up with them we have seen great improvements in skin!

Dairy

do not eat dairy we all know this and yes we know for some people that eating no dairy has helped clear up skin. for us it helped some.  again it did not ‘cure’ our acne. we continued to get it even without having any dairy. we have come to realize that we do okay with goat and non-dairy coconut based yogurts just cannot overdo it. we are learning to rotate things better.

Oils

we do take Udo omega oil and love it! and just started taking cod liver oil which we are excited to try because we have heard great things. we do notice having oils in the raw form, not cooked, we get the best skin results! having cooked oils are something we have noticed for months now, just did not what to admit it as you all know we love our socca (to be honest we rarely have it anymore) and we love to bake, that could be causing our breakouts! therefore we are starting to stop having any cooked oils and see how are skin does.

Food testing

being allergic to foods can cause acne not just hives, breathing problems, etc. one reason we did the diet wise elimination diet. we are still unsure if we have hidden food allergies or not that are causing our skin issues. we are looking into more allergy testing but they are expensive so just not sure.

so what to do?

track you own food. get tested for food allergies (a few of our readers have had success with this) although remember test are not always accurate. having a food journal can be beneficial and seeing how foods react with your skin.  we have tried this and did good for a few days just lost track with it. in a perfect world, if we had no distractions, no temptations, yes maybe we could really find the culprit.

learn about your body. do not be afraid to make mistakes. break rules. find what works for you.  and just you. you can’t always base it off what someone else is doing. try tackling one of the issues we discussed above and see if you get results. keep trying. keep learning. and stay positive!!!

as you can see there are a ton of reasons for acne. the hardest part we feel is finding the main underlying cause of acne. and we still have other non food areas to cover they can effect the skin. crazy. it sucks that so much has to be looked at but the whole body works together, so taking the time to took at it all will help.

we are starting to put all the pieces together for us, hopefully get the answers we need to heal.

again we appreciate all your support, kind words, and advice. we know we are not the only ones who struggle with poor skin and hopefully these posts are helping those individuals out!

and for our readers that do not have skin issues, thank you for putting up these posts. promise we got a great recipe coming tomorrow!

please if you have anything you would like to add or mention, please leave a chime in below as we love hearing from our readers.

till next time,

L &M

hello luvs!

today we are picking back up with more of our findings about what has helped us heal our acne.

if you are just joining our blog today, first hello and welcome, and second please check out our other two acne post on our new face products that we love and then our face routine that has helped clear up our acne.

today we are focusing on Omegas. now remember we are not doctors nor nutritionists. just sharing our own experience and research. we are not claiming this will 100% cure your acne but it COULD HELP! it helped us!  and there are so many great health benefits of Omegas (fatty acids) we are just relating them to skin and acne in terms of the ratio of them all.

Omega 3 to be specific. how Omega 3 fatty acid is great for clearing up acne.

we have mentioned before that we were going to take a closer look at our Omega intake when we first started seeing our acne come back.

you may not hear to much about what is omega-3. or really worry about Omega-3. mostly you hear more about Omega 6. but we feel everyone needs to be more aware of their Omega-3 intake. to be even more specific their Omega-3 ratio to Omega-6 ratio. majority of people have a TON more Omega-6 then Omega 3, which is not necessarily good.

 we shall explain.

you need both to be healthy. but the best ratio for optimum health is 2:1 or 1:1 of 3 to 6.

there are studies showing that those of us who live in the United States actually have a diet something close to 1:15 to 1:32 ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 when the goal is actually 1:1 to 2:1. pretty scary

here is how Omega-3 awareness changed us?

 Omega-3 we feel really helped with our acne! hands down changed our skin for the better. *we did these changes in our Omega 3 intake back in September time frame.

back in Sept/Oct time our acne had gotten out of control again. we researched and found our plan to get rid of our acne. we were taking control again and not letting our acne control us anymore!

so what happened?

it is something called Omega-3!

slowly Omega 3 is getting more attention. and attention it deserves. Omega 3 is one essential fatty acid that gets overlooked by so many. there is a deficiency of Omega 3 in the world.  you’re probably eating foods all day, every day with various ratios of these essential fatty acids without you even knowing!

think about your diet for a minute. think about everything you eat in a day. how much omega 3 do you really get in a day?

we never really questioned our Omega 3 intake since we ate chia seeds and hemp seeds everyday and fish about once a week and eggs here and there.

so what changed our mind about Omega 3’s?

the more we dug into our diet and researched what foods have Omega 3 in them we were shocked. not as much as we thought.

and on top of that we were not getting the right balance of omega 3 to 6! getting the right balance was something else we learned and that most people probably do not really pay attention too.

if we were to ask you right now how much Omega 3 to Omega 6 do you get in a day, would you be able to answer it?

from our research almost every one is deficient in Omega 3.  the problem with that is, foods that we eat here in the states that are much higher in Omega-6 than Omega-3. most of the foods that a typical Western diet eat are cooked in Omega-6 such as corn oil, soy, sunflower oil, and safflower oil.

wait a minute, I think the foods I eat are ok? can you explain more.

sure, we thought the same thing.

all the foods that we (Michelle and I)  do eat are high in Omega 6 and some are good sources of Omega 3.

but again not everyone thinks about Omega 3 in terms of how much 3 to 6 ratio one is getting. Omega 3 is so important! especially for the skin!!

back to the diet – we researched what amounts of Omega 3 and Omega 6s are in the foods we were eating. we quickly realized our diet did contain Omega 3 but our Omega 6 was TOTALLY out winning. not good. *but it is not good to have too much Omega 3 either, so we just did our increase in Omega 3 temporarily then went back to adding in Omega 6 foods too

it’s the RATIO that will bring you acne free clear skin and stop breakouts. if you have acne, it may be a prime indicator that you do not have the correct ratio of Omega 3, 6, and 9 acids.

our skin was finally having an enough of it and things had to be changed!

we realized that the foods we ate daily like avocados, tahini are all high in Omega 6 and not really Omega 3.

 what foods should I eat then to help increase my Omega 3 and not Omega 6?

flax seeds and flax oil are great. as well as salmon, sardines, scallops, any green leafy vegetable, lettuce, broccoli

 what is the ratio of Omega 3 to 6 should I be having?

that really depends on each person. the ultimate ratio should be 1:1 or 2:1 of Omega 3 to 6. Udo’s oil book, Fats that Heal Fats that Kill, goes into great detail of this information. a book we recommend.

 I do not have skin problems do I need to worry?

yes and no. if you do not have bad skin issues or acne then no, you might not need to worry too much about your Omega 3 intake. but we feel it is still worth you consuming more foods that contain the right ratio for better health in the long run.

if you are someone like us who suffers from poor skin and high stress, then yes we feel you should pay more attention to your ratio.

the thing though to remember is that you have to be careful how you go about increasing your Omega 3. you don’t want to just start eating a bunch of walnuts because you have heard they are a great source of Omega 3. which is true they are, but there is a catch!

the catch being that they are also high in Omega 6. they have more Omega 6 then 3…. not the correct ratio needed. so if you kept eating walnuts thinking you are helping your really not. from our research that only increases both your 6 and 3, so again making matters a little worse if you are trying to just increase your Omega 3.

 what DID WE DO to fix our Omega 3 ratio: (here is a quick glance of what we did)

• Took out all foods that contained Omega 6.
• Took out all foods that contained both Omega 3 and Omega 6.
• Just ate foods that contained Omega 3.
• Took Udo Oil 2-3 tablespoons a day.
• Ate salmon or tuna 2-3 times a week.
• Did not eat any nuts nor seeds.
• Did not eat any avocado, tahini, chia nor hemp seeds.
• Did not eat any grains.
• After 2 weeks we added in chia seeds and a little hemp seeds.
• After a 3 weeks added in a little avocado, tahini, nuts and seeds along with a few baked good items.
• Ate mostly fruit, veggies and salmon, eggs or tuna.

*again we did this strict diet eating to increase our Omega 3 for about 2 weeks before we slowly started adding in back other foods.

 what can I do?
well we shared what we did. but again we are not doctors. just sharing our personal experience and our own research. again depending on your situation and health you may need to speak to a doctor about any changes.

we only want to share what we did and how it worked for us in hopes that it can help someone else.  start slowly with the changes. so take it slow, add a little bit at a time and slowly take it up a notch if you don’t see any improvement.

 now back to present:

since we did a hard core Omega 3 push for a few good 2 weeks. after that for about 1 to 2 months we were more aware of what we were eating in terms of our Omegas. we feel currently our levels are back to be good. we still watch our intake but not us strict as we did a few months ago. we do not stress over it as much as we did at the beginning.

we are also realizing that there might be other issues with food that is now causing our acne. we shall expand on that tomorrow. Omega 3 is just part of the puzzle to clear skin. though we do feel the change in our Omega 3 has made tremendous improvement in our skin. and another note we did not really discuss what the Omegas in general can do for skin and health. today we wanted to really point out it is the ratio that people with troubled skin and high stress need to be aware of

 Twins Question: What are your thoughts on Omega 3? Does your diet have a well balanced ratio of 6 to 3?

till next time,

xoxo

L&M

hello luvs!!!

thank you thank you thank you!!! again we are always blown away by the support and kind words about our pictures and skin issues the other day. we appreciate everyone’s tips on what worked for them, we will look into some of your suggestions! thanks again! we will continue our face care posts on Monday, as we did not want to overload too much on face issues all in row.

in the mean time we wanted to share something that we enjoyed earlier this week.  a super easy gluten free hazelnut carob individual cakes. and it is grain free too!

this recipe is a remake recipe that we have made before and loved. though this time we did some hazelnut flour in there. basically we had whole hazelnuts on hand and ground them into flour in vita-mix blender.

these hazelnut carob cakes make two individual cakes. perfect for a little mid-afternoon snack, that is when we enjoyed it but really could be enjoyed anytime of the day! even for breakfast.

       Print This!    

 A warm, yummy, delightful cake made just for you!

Ready to dig in??

we loved the extra crunch the hazelnuts gave the cake too.  any nut could be used in this recipe as well as cocoa instead of carob. for those looking to make it vegan, not really sure what would work the best, maybe flax or chia gel. looks like we will need to experiment too!

we forgot how quick and simple this cake recipe is, which can be a good and bad thing as now we know we can whip up individual cakes for us in no time. haha  but we mostly love that it calls for just 5 ingredients!!!! okay so might not be your average store bought cake, but we will take these grain-free mini cakes anytime.

and we just want to say thanks again for everyone’s comments, emails, tweets, and facebook posts about our acne journey. we still have a lot to share! and appreciate everyone’s advice on what to try. but trust us, we have tried it all.

other news you may have noticed we have re-designed our blog again we just have so much fun with it. we feel we are getting closer to the way we want our blog to look.  please let us know your thoughts – do you like the colors? the layout? is it easy to find things? does it look too much? cluttered? anything you can think of would be great, as much as we write the blog for us to look back on, we also write for you, our readers!!

next,  Jen over at Made By a Girl is a moving and selling some of her things. so check it out, some amazing things.

and one more thing before you go, for those still not sure why you are not getting our blog posts anymore in your google reader, please read our post here about why and how to get it back. thanks and sorry for the trouble.

well we are off to do some shopping today!

Twins Question: What are you doing today? Do you like shopping? What is your favorite thing to shop for?

Till next time,

L & M

hello friends!

thank you all so much for the sweet comments on our new face skin care products and our issues on getting rid of acne for good. we are always blown away by the support we get from our readers!! THANK YOU!

like we mentioned yesterday we are going to share some pictures of our face (skin) and what we are doing now to help get rid of acne through our face routine.

but before we get into all that we wanted to mention that everyone gets acne for different reasons. that there are different types of acne. so you need to understand your own body and make the call on what type of acne you have. now you might be thinking, ” how do I do that”?

we thought the same thing. there are moments when we think our acne breakouts are just hormonal issues due from us dealing with imbalanced hormones. which we still feel our first MAJOR face breakout over two years ago was due from going off the pill. but now we are getting more deep cystic acne that makes us question everything all over again. we will share more on this topic soon.

like we have said we have read so many articles and books on skin and acne. now we are getting down to a few ideas of what might be causing our acne flare-ups.

*side note – Michelle did not take any pictures of her skin when she was at her worst, as it was too hard for her. Lori is much stronger in sharing in hers! thanks for stepping up sis

also please keep in mind we are human. we have feelings, so please no harsh judgement here. these pictures were extremely hard for us to post. but we wanted to share are struggles with acne and show others you are not alone!!

back in September/October time of last year I, Lori, got a really bad flare up that caused my face to be all red along with cystic acne. as you can see in the pictures below. this was an extremely tough time for me. I got really depressed again and cried every night. thinking to myself why is this happening to me? what am I doing wrong?

again these two pictures were taken back in Oct, around my worst!

it was then that I took a deep look at my diet and lifestyle and made some changes.  will share more on that in another post.

here is a my skin a few weeks after above pictures in early November.

some improvement! but not healed.

here is Michelle

now here are pictures of us that we took yesterday after our video (we do have a little make-up on due to making the video)

going back to face routine that Michelle and I do now for our skin and it has been working!

in the video from yesterday we use the Body Deli products along with jojoba oil. and for me lately these past two weeks I have been using neem oil at night along with my cucumber moisturizer. at first my face broke out a little more when I added the neem oil back into my face routine, but now I can say I just have a few pimples and acne scars left to go away. (remember when you do something new to your face it can cause more breakouts but in a way this is good as it brings out toxins)

small improvements, but feel like I am heading in the right direction.

we know that many people are afraid of using oils on their face. especially when they think they have oily skin. well we have oily skin too! and the oils have been a blessing for our skin!!!  use natural, organic, cold pressed oils on face. play around with what oils you find your face likes the best and keep with it.

we love jojoba oil the best followed by neem oil, coconut oil, and castor oil.

Twins Night Time Face Routine to help get rid of acne:

• make sure have clean hands.
• splash face a few times with luke warm water.
• put about a dime size amount of jojoba oil mixed with two pumps of the ROSE GERANIUM  face cleanser. gently rub face all over in circular motions for almost 2 minutes. splash face again with water to get cleanser off.
• lightly pat face with clean towel.
• *if we had make-up on, we do our apple cider vinegar on face.  then place some aloe vera juice on a cotton pad and rub all over face. (since Michelle is not as inflamed as me she does not do aloe on face)
• put about a nickel size of SEA CUCUMBER GELEE moisturizer. let sit for 2 minutes.
• then put a small amount of more jojoba oil and neem oil. rub again gently over face.
• place a clean towel on pillow and go to sleep.

Upon waking we either rinse face with a few splashes of water or do nothing. then do our aloe vera juice on a cotton pad  and rub all over face. then put the LIGHT FACIAL EMULSION  or put the VITAL-C SERUM on in morning. we are still figuring out which we we like better. there are some mornings where we do nothing!

and that is it.

we try to keep it really simple, gentle, and natural. and we only like to wash our face at night. we feel when we wash it again in the morning it is too much and makes our face worse.

we still have a lot to learn about our face. and we still have a lot to share with all of you about more findings we have learned about other causes and issues with acne.

Twins Question: What do you like to do for your face routine? How many times do you wash your face a day?

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