It is possible to take care of your skin condition while ALSO reprogramming your thoughts to live better in your skin, just as it looks today. Here is how to start on your path of skin acceptance.

Starting my coaching practice and this blog made me realise there were strong parallels to be drawn for me personally between acne and chronic dieting. As I sat with this idea, it occurred to me there could be many more links to draw between skin and weight stigma. I thought it’d be interesting to delve into this a bit further, and to take you on this journey with me.

If you spent years obsessing over food and exercise, like I did, there is a good chance it slowly engulfed whatever free time you had on your hands. It can go as far as defining your whole identity among colleagues, classmates or your family as the ultra-fit, diet-obsessed gym freak. In most cases, there is a point where this identity suffocates us, for physical or emotional reasons. But how do you find your ‘real self’ again after being defined by your food and exercise routines for so long?

For the biggest chunk of my first 30 odd years on earth, I was a perfectionist. Perfectionism insinuated itself in my mental and emotional life without my conscious knowledge. It felt like the safest thing to pursue when the world around me was scary, unfair or uncertain. It felt like the ‘proper’ answer when teachers, then later employers, asked me what I thought my ‘biggest weakness’ was. In fact, this constant chasing of perfection was highly toxic. But there are ways to let go of the self-abusing habit…

Parenting is typically overwhelming. Add to that a generous serving of judgement and body hate from diet culture, and parenting becomes downright scary. But don’t fret! Here is a list of simple things to do everyday, that can support your efforts to raise body confident kids.

You don’t have to love your body to ditch diet culture and thrive as an individual, regardless of your appearance. Body neutrality is a stance that I found really helpful in my recovery.

I don’t believe we can talk about true ‘health’ if we leave mental health out of the picture. Since moving to Dubai in 2008, I found excellent practitioners in the Emirate, but it was certainly not easy to get there. Here are some of the mental health resources that could be of support to you if you feel you might need them and reside in Dubai.

Until last year, I used to routinely define myself as a ‘dermatology disaster’. But my number one enemy for the past 25 years has always been: acne. Read more about why I recently decided to make peace with my skin at long last. And no, it is not because it suddenly cleared up.

Before reading further, please remember that I typically share my own version of parenting trial and errors here…