A few days ago, right around the two week mark, I got a pretty bad breakout, still only small whiteheads, but soo many of them!
All over my forehead mostly, and some around my mouth and in the corners of my nose. It hurt to move my face, it was horrible. The breakout only lasted a total of two days, becuase the pimples go away quite quickly with this regimen. But I'm not so sure what to think of it all so far, I have no dry skin anymore, no 'dead skin face mask' as they call it whatsoever. My skin is oily, and that's it. Even the few flakes I had in the beginning went away. Good news in some ways because that face mask sounded pretty icky, but the dry skin is also supposed to serve the purpose of healing the skin underneath it, which I'm wondering if I'm missing out on. My skin that wasn't broken out looked amazing though, not oily, clear, even and wonderful. Like my 12 year old pre-acne skin I've been striving for since I turned 13.
After that breakout subsided a little (I still have some whiteheads on one side of my forehead) My skin did start to look pretty good, no more blotchiness, a lot less bumpy, barely any scars. My dark undereye circles blend in more as well. I look...healthier. Even my eyes somehow seem brighter (without the use of cosmetics)
Last night though I changed up my regimen, I'm not one to stick by strict rules that are supposed to be ideal for everyone. Everybody's different, and my gut feeling throughout the beginning was 'don't wash your face yet.' so I listened and waited. Even when the bad breakout happened, I didn't touch my face. Yesterday my skin was looking the best it had since day 10, and my feeling was that I should exfoliate a little with a wet konjac sponge. Previous to last night, this felt wrong, but last night it felt ok.
There are many different variations of the caveman regimen, no water whatsoever being the most extreme. A lot of people have equal success with exfoliating every 2-3 days in non-abrasive, natural ways (in fact from my research these people have the most success). This regimen follows the rule of 'If you can't eat it, don't put it on your face.'A konjac sponge is in fact the root of a tree, and is consumed regularly in Asian countries. It also makes a great, gentle facial sponge when wet (its hard as a rock when dry) . I wet it a little and gently massaged my face in circular motions with the sponge. I didn't use that much water, and just let my face air dry afterwards. Thats it. My skin didn't dry out, in fact it felt better afterwards, no redness occurred, and the next day my skin was glowing and smooth like I've never seen it before (without makeup that is). No oilyness, my remaining whiteheads have diminished and my tone looks great. So I will continue to exfoliate with the sponge every 2-3 days, or whenever I feel like it, air dry afterwards and no more. Although good news is, I know that if I have to I can go without anything quite successfully, so freeing.
I think this regimen suits me, and my skin seems to like it. So my advice, follow your intuition with the caveman regimen, maybe absolutely no washing will be just perfect for your skin, maybe a bit of water every now and then would make you feel better, or even some gentle, natural exfoliation is right for you. Don't stick to the rules just because they're the rules, do what feels right (and that doesn't mean doing it because you're afraid of the consequences of not doing it). Caveman regimen gets a thumbs up from me, I reccommend it. Please don't fall for the cleanse, tone, moisturize, perfect skin! hype in society today, if you don't want to wash your face, if it really bums you out but you feel like you have to do it because of all your acne, forget about it! Let it go! My acne got wayy better from not using any products, even if I technically broke out more in whiteheads, those little things are barely noticable, go away super fast and don't leave a scar, plus I do think its just my skin healing itself (still not 30 days yet) and will go away. It sucks to know that all those acne-be-gone products I was using before were just irritating and inflaming a pimple that might've just been some innocent little thing otherwise. I now believe minimal, natural care for skin is the best.
I'm still gonna post updates every now and then, tell you if anything radical happens, good or bad.
Long story short, try the caveman regimen!
*Also, just a note on my tap water, it comes from a well and has no chemicals present in it like most tap water. If you plan on washing your face like I did on the caveman regimen I recommend using purified, bottled water and not tap.
