The Green Monster

A confession - since I was about 15, I have suffered with problem skin. It's not really something I can hide, it's there on my face for all to see, but this feels like a confession nonetheless. It's a funny old thing, something I'm sure is more to do with my tendency to overthink things than anything else, but somehow my skin always feels like the elephant in the room - the one thing everybody notices, but nobody talks about. The 'does she know how red her face looks?' moments and the first thing I'm sure people notice when we're introduced for the first time. Over the years, I've spent more on lotions, potions and supplements than I'd care to add up, all in the quest for perfect, clear skin and a healthy glow which would let me walk out of the house makeup free, not giving a hoot about who I might bump into.

The problem (other than spots!) is that after so long, you kind of have to get on with your life. It's been over 10 years and I still haven't found the miracle cure, although certain products have certainly helped matters. Years of battling blemishes, combined with the palest skin known to man, has left me with reddened patches, scarring and enlarged pores...yet I'm also now starting to see the first signs of aging, as the condition of my skin continues to change. You just can't win! But, whilst wearing makeup always makes me feel so much more confident about my appearance, I also haven't found a perfect cosmetic solution to my problems and years of worrying about letting my skin breathe has led me to hate the way makeup feels on my skin. The result is that I'll go and meet my closest family and friends, the people I love and trust the most, wearing no makeup and then spend my time with them worrying about what they might be thinking. More than anything else, the condition of my skin has had the single biggest influence on my self confidence and I often wonder how different a person I might be if I had grown up with perfect skin.

I might well be my own worst enemy though, for whilst I have brilliant willpower when it comes to my cleansing regime and taking regular excercise, my diet leaves a lot to be desired. We don't eat large amounts of processed food (most of our meals we cook fresh and from scratch), but I have the most terrible of sweet toothes. I can't resist chocolate, cake is practically a dietary staple and I eat Nutella from the pot with a spoon. I'm incredibly lucky that I don't yet struggle with my weight (thank you gym membership and portion size awareness!) but, for the sake of my skin, I've tried eliminating all the usual suspects from my diet in the past and never seen any results where it really matters to me - my face.

I'm coming to realise though that my poor eating habits might not be setting me up properly for the future. To that end, I've been trying to work more fresh fruit and vegetables into my diet and also on finding natural alternatives to help curb my need to snack on unhealthy treats. On one of my recent internet trawls for tips, I came across Sofia's excellent post Skin Care 101 on her blog, Sofia's Journal. Since reading about her experiences, I've added a probiotic to my daily supplements, something I think has had a really positive effect on my poor old bowels! I also came across her recommendation for green smoothies. Mr. O and I have been juicing pretty regularly for the past year, but we've so far shied away from thicker, blended drinks. Reading through the website Green Monster Movement last week though, I became convinced that this was the answer to all of my worries (another bad habit of mine - every next thing is sure to be my miracle cure!).

I decided to start with a Virgin Green Monster, a drink the website said even the biggest sceptic would be sure to love. I followed the recipe to the letter, blending together spinach and flax with banana, almond milk and ice. The smell was delicious and the drink itself didn't look too bad either:

Lovely and green...bottoms up!

Unfortunately, that's where the success ended. I tried my best, I really did, but the lovely bananary smell did not match my Green Monster's taste at all!. I don't know if it was the spinach, the flax or the almond milk, or the fact that I'm not really used to tasting any of these ingredients in such a concentrated form, but my beautiful, natural drink tasted nothing but metallic. It was awful! I forced down a couple of mouthfuls, thinking of increased energy levels and a healthy glow, but I was beaten by the second half of the glass, which I'm ashamed to say remained half full - probably the only time that has counted as a negative!



The Green Monster beat me...

I'm going to try to persevere with this one though. Maybe I need to cut out the flax for now, scale down the spinach and add another fruit, so that the overall flavour isn't quite such a shock to the system. Who knows, one day soon I could be one of the cool kids who regularly downs a green smoothie before breakfast! And as for my skin issues? Well, I'm sure there'll be more posts about my quest for calmer skin to come.

So there you have it, one of my biggest anxieties out there for all to see. Funny how a post about a drink became a pouring out of the heart...!