Last year I suffocated my face with so much makeup I looked like a powdered donut.

A few years back, before I started my skin care journey, I shot some videos and when I saw the makeup on my face, applied as I had done so many times before, it didn’t look right. It was crusty, it was cakey, it settled into lines and wrinkles I didn’t know I had. I looked like a caricature of myself. I didn’t look like myself, I didn’t look like the image I had of myself in my mind.

I was hoping no one would notice the changes I saw.

That’s the funny thing about hiding – people can see what you’re up to! Like a kid’s game of hide-and-seek, where you hold up a leaf and pretend no one can see you.

Since then I learned the two biggest lessons to healing rough skin texture.

Whew!

It makes such a big difference to follow these two keys to smooth skin.
* Makeup lays right.
* Makeup-free days are again possible! 
* My face doesn’t hurt when I smile.
* I don’t look at my face at the end of the day and think, “Oooh, really? Why’s it so crusty under my eyes and around my nose? Has it looked like that all day?”

Here are the two keys to change the texture of your skin so it looks great, happy and healthy, whether you don’t wear makeup or like fancy, full-coverage, full-contour, smokey-eye event makeup.

Let’s get started!

Key 1 – Hydration is the name of the game.

I’m not talking about the kind of hydration where you drink so much water that you feel like puffer fish about to explode. Yes that does help, but what makes the biggest impact in the visual appearance of your skin is to hydrate your skin directly.

Oils and creams are all the rage these days. But what no one talks about is the difference between healthy, smooth skin is HYDRATION. Hydration doesn’t come from oil, but from WATER.

There is a difference between dry skin and dehydrated skin. Dry skin is a description of the surface of the skin, as in dry skin or oily skin. You can have skin that appears dry on the surface or appears oily on the surface, yet both can be dehydrated. In fact, sometimes an oily skin surface (“oily skin”) is an indicator of dehydrated skin, as the oil glands attempt to pour out more sebum (oil) to seal in moisture. We have to help our skin out by hydrating it – an excess of sebum can’t seal in moisture if there is nothing to seal in! You’ll see this as oily skin that feels tight and is flakey.

Dehydration is about having enough hydration AKA water in your skin mantle, the epidermis. 

The key is to heal the skin through hydration. This plumps and smooths the appearance of the skin surface.

My Hydration Mistake – Powdered Donut Face

I learned the dry vs dehydrated game the hard way.

I was on tour as a DJ and one of the first stops on the tour was a full day set in Lake Tahoe. Here I was, outdoors all day long in high-altitude air. The winds were so strong that barricades were blowing down left and right.

That night when I went back to my hotel I tried to heal my skin. I applied serums with vitamins, I use aloe to soothe my dry and damaged skin, and then I used shea butter on top of all of it to help to moisturize my skin.

Shea butter was my latest find. It was working great on the skin on my body – it was the only thing that I found that would help the dry skin on my arms and legs not be ashy.

The difference is that the skin on your body is thicker, and thicker skin means it’s more able to hold in its own moisture and lie flat. This is why the skin on your face tends to wrinkle a lot faster, a lot sooner, than the skin on your body, because the skin on your face is a lot thinner.

So the rest of the tour I used shea butter on my face thinking that I was helping to add oil and moisture to my skin. Instead what I did was smother and suffocate up my dehydrated skin with a layer of oil. Underneath the oil my poor skin was still damaged.

I prolonged the time that my skin was damaged because I did not actually hydrate it to let it heal itself. I just slapped on some oily shea butter and on top of that I applied my makeup. I then had to add enough powder on my skin so that I wasn’t a very shiny mess. The result – I looked like a powdered donut the rest of that tour.

Powdered donut from afar. (Photo Credit: Craig Huffman)

Here’s what to do instead….

Using Key #1 – Your Hydration Gameplan

Hydrate your skin! Hydrating your skin will plump the cells, smooth your skin texture and prepare a smooth, healthy, strong canvas for makeup.

It can take 14-17 days for your skin to heal itself from dehydration so be patient with yourself and your skin as it rebalances and stabilizes.

Key 2 – Exfoliate to reveal fresh skin.

There are three ways to exfoliate:

1. Chemical exfoliation (i.e. glycolic acid, alpha hydroxy acid)
2. Physical exfoliation with products (i.e. scrubs, gel exfoliants)
3. Physical exfoliation with tools (i.e. Clarisonic)

Chemical exfoliators such as glycolic acid and Alpha hydroxy acid are integrated into lotions or serums that you apply to your skin as part of your skin care routine. The acids gently eat away the top layer of your skin, thereby revealing fresh skin. If that sounds scary to you – acids eating away the top layer of your skin – well it certainly can be but it doesn’t have to be.  You definitely want to ease yourself into a chemical exfoliation process and not just bombard your skin with a lot of acid. More on that later.

Physical exfoliation with products involves scrubs and gentle gels that you rub on your skin, and rub away dry, dead skin. 

Physical exfoliation with tools involves tools such as the Clarisonic, brushes, or scrub cloths. Here the device or tool scrubs away the top layer of your skin. 

My Exfoliation Mistake – Angry Irritated, Red, Blotchy Skin

I DO NOT recommend harsh physical exfoliators – neither tools like the Clarisonic nor facial scrubs. 

I know the advertising is compelling, and the photos of fresh-faced 20-somethings with perfect skin makes me want to scrub the years off my face too.

I used a Clarisonic for years.

A dermatologist once looked at me and said, “Your skin…it looks red…irritated…I don’t know what it is…”

After some talk I mentioned my Clarisonic.

Her: “What?? Why do you use that?”
Me: “To exfoliate.”
Her: “No! It’s irritating your skin! You don’t need it!”

Sure enough, I stopped using it and in a few weeks my skin was much much happier – more even toned, less red, and (ironically) smoother.

For the same reason I don’t believe in physical product exfoliators – scrubs with apricot bits or even finely milled diamonds or rice grains or whatever they put in scrubs these days can be too harsh for the skin, causing micro damage to the skin’s surface. 

I DO recommend gel exfoliators such as Ocean Mire White Peel or Natural Aqua Gel Cure . These are water based gels that very gently remove dead and dry skin cells from the skin’s surface. These are gentle enough to be used on that flakey skin that surrounds pimples, without irritating the pimple. 

The key benefit to using gel exfoliators is that is will only remove the excess skin that is WILLING AND READY to go, as opposed to physical tools or harsh scrubs that force the skin to shed before it is ready.

Using Key #2 – Your Exfoliation Gameplan

Exfoliate gently, exfoliate softly, exfoliate over time.
Ahhh….. Yes that’s right, exfoliation can be a gentle and loving process, not a harsh, abrasive process.

Let your beautiful, fresh, smooth skin reveal itself to you!

These two keys flip the first switch to skin that learns to GROW HEALTHIER, stronger, smoother, and more vibrant over time.

Sign up below to grab a front row seat to my awesome, skin-transforming program “The 3-Switch Super Skin System”, the best system on planet internet to GROW vibrant, healthy, vital, strong skin that causes babies to want to touch your face and significant others to steal glimpses of you from across the room! 

This program will show you the most important pieces to incorporate into your skin care routine, whether you already have a routine down and want to know what else you could be missing and could optimize, or if you are new to skin care and want to get started the right way, without making a lot of mistakes, without wondering if what you try will work, and without wasting your precious time and money, this program will show you what works FOR YOU. 

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It is a wonderful thing to look into your friends faces and see them growing more and more beautiful in front of your eyes. Trust me I know the feeling – and I love it! Beautiful, vibrant friends are key to happiness!