July Topics

Healing Your Skin with Food — What You Need to Know Before You Start

This blog topic is incredibly close to my heart. In this post, I’ll be sharing my personal journey—how I discovered I had hormonal acne and the steps I took to begin healing it naturally from the inside out.

At Spa del Mar, my mission is to help you feel beautiful in your most natural, God-given skin. I believe in supporting the skin in the most nourishing and natural way possible. Of course, what “natural” means can look different for everyone, and that’s okay. We’re all individuals with unique lifestyles, needs, and beliefs—and that’s something to be honored and respected. It’s through these differences that we have the opportunity to grow, learn, and be inspired by one another.

Even if you don’t struggle with hormonal acne, I still encourage you to keep reading. Many of the practices I’ll share can benefit anyone looking to support their skin and overall well-being through more mindful, nourishing choices.

💡How I Discovered My Acne Was Hormonal💡

(A personal awakening to the root cause behind my skin struggles)

🌱Where I Started My Healing Journey🌱

(The first steps I took when skincare alone wasn’t enough)

🧠The Mind-Body-Skin Connection🧠

(Understanding how your body communicates with you)

COMING SOON (PART 2)

🩸Eating in Sync with My Menstrual Cycle🩸

(How cycle-based nutrition transformed my hormones and my skin)

How I Discovered My Acne Was Hormonal

If story time isn’t your thing and you’d rather jump straight into how I started healing my acne, feel free to skip to the next section. But I truly believe it’s important to share the human side of this journey. We all go through things differently—and sometimes, hearing someone else’s story can be the reminder you need that you’re not alone. Healing, in any form, isn’t a quick fix. It takes time, patience, and a lot of grace. And as you’ll read... I know this from experience.

Sometimes, the choices we make with our bodies don’t show their effects right away—but over time, they catch up to us. Looking back now, I didn’t realize how much damage I was unintentionally doing to my skin and overall health. So maybe, just maybe, this could be a wake-up call for you too.

When I reflect on it, I wasn’t treating my body the way it deserved. It really began in 2020—a tough year for many of us. We were all wearing face masks, trapping hot breath and bacteria against our skin. That was the starting point of my skin suffocating. On top of that, I didn’t have a proper at-home skincare routine. My skin barrier was breaking down, and that was the first step toward my skin's downfall.

Then came a lifestyle change. I wasn’t someone who partied or drank before I turned 21. But I met a friend who introduced me to the club scene, and suddenly going out every weekend, drinking, and staying up late became normal. I still didn’t have a skincare routine—definitely didn’t wash my face properly after wearing makeup all night—and added in greasy hangover meals and poor sleep. Honestly, I was setting myself up for failure.

And to top it all off? I went through my first real breakup.

So to break it all down… for about 2–3 years, I was:

Suffocating my skin
Skipping a proper skincare routine
Sleeping in makeup (and getting poor sleep)
Drinking often
Eating poorly
Under a lot of emotional stress
Using random viral skincare products not suited for my skin type (and using them wrong)
Using endocrine disrupting products

All of this combined led to a damaged skin barrier and a hormonal imbalance. And that’s why it’s so important to be honest with your esthetician—because sometimes the root cause isn’t just one thing. It’s a bunch of things adding up over time.

And here’s the wildest part: I didn’t even realize I was doing all this to myself until I became an esthetician and started connecting the dots.

We’ve all heard it before and maybe ignored it, but here it is again:
What we do when we’re young will affect us as we get older.
But here’s the light at the end of the tunnel:
It’s never too late to do better—for your skin, your body, and your health.

We only get one body in life. This is the skin God blessed you with. It’s unique, beautiful, and complex—and it deserves your care. Start loving it. Start nourishing it. Protect it. And I promise, it will love you right back.

Where I Started My Healing Journey

Don’t worry, Mom—partying was just a phase. 😅

The first step I took toward healing was cutting out alcohol and fast food/processed foods. Now, I didn’t eliminate processed foods completely—I'm still working on cutting them out more and more. It definitely takes time. These foods are literally addictive, and if you struggle with self-discipline like I do, it can be a lot harder to let go.

I also didn’t cut out alcohol 100% right away. That came later, at the end of 2024. Let me just say—no one is perfect. We all have cravings, and some things are totally okay in moderation. Everyone has their own version of success—whether that’s cutting something out completely or learning how to enjoy it in small, mindful amounts. That’s why this part is hard to give a one-size-fits-all answer for… because it really is different for everyone.

Stay tuned for the next step in my journey—the importance of mind body connection when eating food 🍽️

But before we get into that, let’s go in order. The next step I personally took in healing my skin was improving my skincare routine and making better choices with my food.

The skincare part took me a solid two years to figure out. The second year was when I became an esthetician. During that first year, I had never had a facial or even spoken to a skincare professional. I over-exfoliated, didn’t know my skin type, and used harsh cleansers and moisturizers that were stripping and irritating my skin. And dare I say it… I wasn’t wearing SPF. 😱 The horror!

At that point, my skin barrier was fried. I’m still repairing it to this day—but wow, it has come such a long way with a proper at home skincare routine. If you’re feeling lost with your skin, do yourself a favor and DM me or book a Skin Consultation with me—or with a skincare professional you trust. It can make all the difference.

So timeline-wise, by the middle of 2024, here’s where I was at:
✔️ Cut out alcohol completely
✔️ Eating better, mostly home-cooked meals
✔️ Healing my skin barrier
✔️ Following a simple, nourishing skincare routine
✔️ In a happy, healthy marriage
✔️ God is at the center of my life
✔️ Sleeping better
✔️ Less stress than before

With all that, my skin should be showing up for me now… right?

The Mind-Body-Skin Connection

Your body has a way of speaking to you, but it speaks slowly and quietly. It shows symptoms by gently bringing them to the surface over time. I truly believe it’s so important to slow down and listen to what your body is trying to tell you—because it will tell you when something’s wrong and when something’s right. This is what I call the Mind-Body-Skin Connection.

There’s no easy way to explain how this connection happens, but once you get in tune with your body, slow down, and really listen, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. This is exactly how I realized something was wrong with my hormones.

Now, I have to add a disclaimer:
I’m not a medical professional, and I didn’t consult one for this process. I didn’t get any tests done; this journey was purely self-led. So please take this information knowing that it’s based on my personal experience. This approach isn’t recommended for everyone—there will always be special cases where professional guidance is necessary. Everyone’s body is different, and what worked for me might not be the right path for someone else. Always do what feels safest and healthiest for you.

The first step in building my mind-body connection was ruling out my trigger foods. This process will look different for every single person, and everyone has different thresholds for how much of a particular food their body can tolerate. I started by eliminating the most common trigger foods, which are:
🥛 Dairy
🍬 Artificial sweeteners
🍔 Fast food/processed foods
🍞 Refined carbs (white bread, white pasta, gluten)
🥩 Processed meats
🥜 Peanuts
🧴 Canola, vegetable, and seed oils
🍷 Alcohol
💪 Whey protein powder
🍫 Milk chocolate (not to be mistaken with real dark chocolate, which has so many benefits!)

Here’s how I tested certain foods:

For refined carbs, I cut out all carbs for a few days and only ate sourdough bread. I also bought gluten-free flour to make my own pancakes and baked brownies with it. I tried gluten-free pasta as well. After eating those, I paid close attention to how my body felt—my energy levels, bloating, and overall mood. I noticed my energy stayed steady; it didn’t spike and crash like before. I didn’t feel heavy or bloated after meals. The best way I can explain it is—I didn’t feel “guilty” after eating because my body wasn’t feeling awful.

I had a similar experience with processed foods and fast food—cutting them out brought instant relief to my energy and digestion.

When it came to dairy, though, my body gave me a very loud response. It inflamed my body so badly that I would get intense sinus pressure, leading to migraines. The pressure was so intense that my teeth would start to ache. My body was literally screaming, “Stop this now, you are hurting me.”

While testing milk alternatives, I found out that almond milk works for me, but oat milk inflames my skin. I also decided to fully cut out alcohol because it simply does more harm than good (except for the occasional glass of wine, which can have its benefits 🍷).

I made smaller swaps too—switching from peanut butter to almond butter. But the saddest realization (and the most specific to me) was that I can no longer eat pork. Growing up in a Romanian household, pork was a staple. But unfortunately, now, it gives me cystic acne, so this is a food I can’t have at all—not even in moderation.

Some of the other trigger foods I mentioned, I can enjoy occasionally, but my body will definitely let me know it’s not happy with me.

All of this is to say—it’s so important to take the time to understand what works for your body. Could you speed up this process by seeing a doctor or nutritionist and getting tests done? Absolutely! But for me, it felt important to build a relationship with my body and figure this out on my own.

Because of this, I’m now at a point where I can instantly tell when my body doesn’t like something—right after I eat it. I feel it, and I see it… especially in my skin. That realization is what sent me down the rabbit hole of healing my body.

This was the first and most important step in healing my body and skin from the inside out, and this where I found myself by the end of 2024. But I decided to take it one step further because something still didn’t feel right…

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I’ll share how I started eating in sync with my menstrual cycle to nourish my hormones and skin! 🌿🩸 I’ll also be sharing the book that helped me get started, some of my go-to recipes, and references that guided me along the way.

Hormone Healing (Part 1)