The Real Cause of Acne and How to Fix It

Welcome to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow. The website, this show, and our newsletter all focus on making the science of advanced nutrition and greater overall health accessible to everyone. Buckle up for our latest episode to get ideas, tools, and practical knowledge you can use to improve your health and move towards your perfect version of ultimate wellness. The Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast shares interviews with nutrition experts, health researchers, and everyday people that have changed their lifestyle nutrition to support greater health. You'll learn how to implement lasting change and create new habits that support greater wellness and a happier, healthier life. Please visit healnourishgrowpodcast.com for full show notes and links to our guests.

Meg Gunnick is a holistic nutritionist and acne expert who suffered from over a decade-long journey with hormonal acne. After trying everything under the sun and spending thousands on things that didn't work, she took control of her own health went to nutrition school and healed herself. The Get Glow Method was born out of what she so desperately needed when she was going through it and takes every aspect of acne healing into account: internal root cause, external skincare, and mindset. She has now helped over 2,500 clients worldwide get clear, balanced, and have acne freedom both physically and mentally.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Meg Gage. I hope I got that right.

It's spelled a little differently.

You did. And she has a really interesting health history. She's a holistic nutritionist. She specializes actually in acne, I guess, prevention and treatment. And as you can see by her skin, I mean, it looks amazing here if you're watching on video. So if you can't see it, maybe pop over to YouTube. But it wasn't always this way, Meg, right? So I'd love it if you could just start by sharing a little bit of your history, your health journey, and then we'll eventually get into how you came to figure out like how to get rid of acne. So welcome.

Thank you. Yeah, it's quite the journey. I feel anyone who becomes a healer always has quite a— quite their own story too, as to how they got there. But I— yeah, ever since I was 5, I just dealt with multiple traumas and that kind of stress of living in prolonged kind of fight, flight, freeze since I was little showed up very physically for me in a lot of symptoms, one of which was longstanding acne since I was 12. And others were chronic pain, chronic fatigue, a lot of misdiagnoses of like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. All the while, at that point when I was 12, being put on hormonal birth control without any kind of questions asked because that's just what we did back in those days. So, you know, without having many cycles of my own, I was just put on these synthetic hormones as well. And kind of throughout dealing with major health issues over the years and a couple car accidents and whiplash and PTSD and concussions, my acne was always such a consistent thing in the background. And when I came off hormonal birth control without any prep work or understanding that after a decade this might have crazy impacts on my hormones when they try to kind of rebalance themselves, my acne exploded into very cystic hormonal acne all over my face, all over my back, all over my bum, very painful. And it really just started my quest in kind of the natural healing world. And for the next 5 years, I tried everything from, you know, naturopaths to nutritionists to Chinese medicine practitioners to herbalists. To acupuncture, all in a quest kind of to heal my skin and nothing worked. And it was a very frustrating journey. And it, you know, I was spending upwards of $30,000 on this. It felt like a full-time job. The stress when you're kind of putting 100% of your effort into healing something for it not to work. And then just seeing so many practitioners that were telling you so many, so many varying things. And I just got to a point where I was like, I need to do this myself. I need to listen to my own intuition. I need to take my power back. I feel like everyone's just pulling me in 50 different directions and taking my money. So that's when I became a holistic nutritionist and my mind was just blown. Once I actually learned about the body and how much could be impacting my skin, it just basically led me to my own healing journey. Of multiple root causes that I had lived with for my entire life. And Get Glow was kind of born very organically after that once I graduated because I was like, oh my gosh, if I can do this for myself, I want to do this for others and never have them go through what I went through. And also just becoming the practitioner I wanted throughout that journey, which was a really hard thing to find anyone who had been through debilitating acne or health issues and had that like understanding and validation component. Of what's needed out of a practitioner at that time. So yeah, I've been doing it 9 years now and helped over 2,500 clients.

That's amazing. And, you know, I'm sure a lot of people can really relate to this story because especially people that are in their, you know, teens and then into their early 20s, a lot of people really struggle with acne. And, you know, there's so many— there's so many things out there that people think are the reason. And, you know, nutrition, I think, is certainly part of it. But, you know, as you know and as you've come to find out, that's not the the whole story. So when you were originally being put on hormonal birth control, which I think is really common and really unfortunate because it can have a lot of long-term impacts on your future fertility and things like that— so I think people should really be digging into that further, and a lot of practitioners, that's still kind of their go-to today. Um, but after the hormonal birth control, were there any things where you thought, you know, that was helping a little, or that seemed promising initially to you and then didn't end up panning out? Were there any of those things in there that did turn out to be a piece of the puzzle once you finally got it figured out?

But the issue always is when you're taking an either-or approach, it never works, right? And that's what was happening. So, okay, fine. I was seeing a naturopath who was running Dutch tests and, you know, obviously my results were coming back with cortisol and very, very common indications of living in fight, flight, freeze. So sure, that's an answer. But if you're giving a very stressed out out person, a million supplements that are super expensive and not getting to the root of the stress. And then I'm going— they're telling me nothing about skincare or they're not doing anything from a support perspective. Of course it's not going to work, right? So by the same token, you're seeing an esthetician. People always go right to skincare, right? When they're breaking out and they go see an esthetician, they do chemical peels and lasers and all that. I was doing that on and off too. But again, there was no communication between the 3 modalities that I now do and have an understanding of the 3 things you need. You need mindset, you need rewiring of all the negative belief patterns, limiting beliefs, fears to get yourself out of fight, flight, freeze and get your cortisol regulated. You need proper skincare. Yes. And then you also need the internal root cause of like, what is your body trying to communicate with you? So without those, it just wasn't a complete picture. So you would never really know what was working or not because you didn't have all the pieces. Do you know what I mean? Like, it just, it never worked. So to me, it's like, in either approach is just wasting a lot of money for someone with acne because those protocols are extremely expensive. But if you don't have all three, you're going to think it's not working, right?

So it sounds like from what you're saying, I mean, it's a multi, it's a multifactorial problem that we're dealing with here, usually with acne. But would you say that the first thing you mentioned, mindset, and you mentioned, you know, getting yourself out of stress. Would that be, for example, maybe one of the first things that you would address when you start working with somebody? Because I think stress affects so many things, not just acne, of course, but so many health problems. It seems like, you know, even if it didn't clear your acne, that'd be an amazing place to start. So could you talk a little bit more about that and how you start to help people get out of that fight-flight mode?

The root of the root of the root of everything for acne is your mindset. Like, I stand by that 100%. It is always where I start with people, because if you are telling yourself, I'll always have acne, nothing works for me, that's a script you're printing out and your body's going to be like, okay, I'm going to have more acne. I'm going to— I'm going to get stuck in this state. So until we actually rewire that kind of subconscious pattern that people are having and they— and you make your body feel actually safe to heal, I don't care how perfect your diet is. I don't care how many supplements you're taking. I don't care how much, how many expensive tests you're doing. It doesn't matter if you don't have that piece under control. And this is where I see people running into these walls, why they have these 10, 20-year acne journeys. And they say to me, without doubt, the number one thing on application is, well, I've tried it all. And I'm like, you haven't tried it all. There's something missing or else you'd be clear. Right? Right there is a limiting belief keeping you stuck and still and in this acne journey, right? So the number one thing I do is a lot of subconscious reprogramming, eradicating the root of that fear, that limiting belief, and really ensuring that your body can regulate on its own and not produce constant cortisol, which then is going to impact things like blood sugar and sex hormones and your gut and your liver. And it's this like tornado impact. Um, so yeah, it's always where I start, 100%.

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And do you have tips for people? Like, of course, um, you have programs, you have your website, and then all these really great resources for people. But I'm thinking there's probably people out there that have been on this journey and they're thinking, yep, I've heard— I think they're like what you're just saying to me, I've already tried it all, this isn't gonna work either, what makes this lady think that, you know, I haven't done all these things? If that's where their head's at and they just need like some kind of taste of how things could be, where would you have them start in addressing the beliefs or the stress? Is there something that they can kind of do on their own so that they see like, oh yeah, Meg is kind of onto something here. Maybe, maybe I do trust her to move forward with this process.

For sure. The first thing I would do is start to be conscious and make a list of every limiting thought you're having in a day. Any negative thought you're having, because if you've got acne, that's on a Rolodex multiple times a day. You catch yourself in the mirror, you hate what you see. What are you saying to yourself? What are you saying to yourself all day? How many cortisol spikes are you doing as soon as you wake up? In the morning, is the first thing you do touching your face, running to the mirror and crying at what you see because you have 10 new pimples or it didn't magically, you know, appear overnight or clear up overnight? Make a list of exactly what you're saying to yourself and then look at that list and be shocked that this is how you're talking to yourself. And once you see the actual like physical words, It really does usually show people like, imagine you spoke to your daughter like this. Imagine you spoke to your best friend like this. You would never, and you're speaking to yourself like this 30 times a day. Like that alone can just trigger how much power our words have. So I would try starting there and just kind of understanding and being aware of it. And then using something like a powerful affirmation tool that's the opposite of that, of what you want to be saying to yourself, and start repeating those instead. It's almost like you have to catch it. It's like if you think of that mean girl on your shoulder who's constantly trying to bully you, and sometimes I tell clients to visualize it. Mine's Val, she wears all black, she is nasty, she's been around since I've been 12, and I'm like, "Val, I don't have time for you today. Out you go." But sometimes it helps with that, right, of just like giving it a character. And, you know, once we kind of replace those negative with positive thoughts, you will start to physically feel different in your body.

I think you're on to something with not just— I think it's not only limiting beliefs in relation to acne, but really this could help people with their entire life.

Everything. Yes.

So of course you're in that mindset.

It's just that I do it specifically to acne.

But yes, yes, of course.

The ripple effect. Like, this is why I work so much with mindset now. It's been such a huge shift in my practice over the last couple of years because it has a ripple effect. So when my clients see me, I'm like, okay, but what's your like best, happiest, most aligned life? Everything from finances to relationships to your career, all of that gets shifted with mindset work.

Yeah, that's amazing. I love that tip. And just for people out there who are so stuck in that, I feel like initially when people go into this kind of work, they might struggle to even find themselves a positive affirmation. So could you give an example of maybe, maybe it's one of yours, or maybe it's one that, an example that you love from one of your clients that they used to kind of make this shift and, and kind of repeatedly go back to, to have like one in your back pocket that, you know, kind of would work?

Yeah, the biggest limiting belief I've seen across the board is worthiness. So I think starting with I am worthy, I am enough, are huge. Because that just does have a ricochet effect into every kind of area they're not feeling good enough in. Right. I think starting really simple is good as well. Getting familiar with that feeling of like, oh my gosh, like usually when you start that work, like when I did, I would have like this like, ugh, reaction to saying a positive affirmation, like, oh, this is so foreign to be nice to myself. But the more that you do it, it's like I always explain, like the brain is like a muscle that needs flexing, right? If you don't go to the gym and you go 3 times and you walk out with a six-pack and the whole time you're going to the gym as well, your brain's like, oh, I'm tired. It hurts. I don't want to go back there. I don't think we should go. Let's just eat chips on the couch. It's the same thing with your brain. Like there, it's going to be refuting that process because it thinks it's keeping you safe. And you've been telling yourself that for years. So just like something very simple is where I would start with that.

That's a, that's a great tip. I love when we can get guests with like tangible things, like something that can, somebody can put into practice immediately today to start to really shift things in their lives. So that being said, mindset is the very base, base, base that you're working with. After people start to kind of dig into that and start to do that work, you know, it's not only like, obviously you still need to cleanse your skin in a way that's healthful and, and of course, foods that you eat that will support that journey. So what's kind of your next level thing that you start to address once people start to get their mindset in order? What's the next thing that you have them work on?

So the next thing is definitely clicking the symptoms into a puzzle piece of what your body is trying to communicate with you. So I think the biggest thing women come to me and they say also is, my body hates me, my body's working against me, I have all these problems. Ones. It's such a shift of like your body's like on your team and is screaming at you to just listen. And it's trying to be like, hey, I'm here, I'm help, I'm helping, I'm helping. Please just listen to me instead of fighting against me. And then we're going to heal. So I like to reconnect people back to their bodies and say that symptoms are an amazing tool because we get to, we get to heal it, right? So obviously there's always a physical root cause of acne. Acne doesn't just show up out of nowhere, right? Like there's something internally going on. The major ones I see are obviously cortisol, so stress hormone dysregulation, blood sugar dysregulation, a lot of gut stuff. So overgrowth, infections, just a lack of good bacteria. And you know what, it's basic. The skin is an organ of elimination, right? So if there's other systems that are backed up, usually I see the liver being really overburdened, the gut, sometimes the lymphatic system. It's going to come out in your skin, right? So we want to make sure we're also bringing the body back into harmony and balance, but also having people kind of connect back with their bodies and listen to what it's trying to communicate with, because that's the keys to the castle long term. Like, I always want to give clients tools so that they're not relying on me past the 6-month program. They have the tools for long-term healing and success once they know how to kind of tap into their intuition and learn what their body's trying to say to them.

And do you find that, um, you mentioned a few different things there as far as like liver support, or, um, you mentioned gut things, so maybe like a SIBO kind of situation, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Do you, is there anything that you see kind of more consistently than others, or is it really just the whole system across the board, all kinds of different things?

It's always cortisol.

That's—

so the mindset and the physical symptoms are always tied for me. So the root of the root is always the cortisol piece, which is highly inflammatory, which then usually impacts the same systems every time because cortisol is like a master hormone, right? So in terms of gut stuff, like I see a lot of H. pylori, I see a lot of overgrowth of like opportunistic bacteria and just like a lack of good guys. Like those are definitely patterns that I see. And then, yeah, Like liver is a big one. I feel just with like our foods, our environments, microplastics, all the things, it's really, really hard. You do your best, but we still just like have so much more exposure than we once did. And the gut and liver are working really hard for us.

You know, I definitely want to get more into the gut because that's such a popular topic lately. But to stay on the liver for just a moment, is there anything that you— any protocols that you found or any tools that people can use to, you know, you mentioned kind of overburden of toxins. So are there any tools to maybe support eliminating those toxins or reducing toxins? That's one of my favorite topics as far as like phthalates, parabens, plastics, you know, not going so crazy about it that you can't eat or drink or put your hands on anything anymore, but, but at the same time limiting the things that are easy enough to limit. So I'd love to hear your perspective on that and what things you kind of recommend in that arena.

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Yeah, I'm— listen, I never want to add more stress to people, so I always say do within your realm of reality and like what's sustainable for you to do. And so of course, that is usually like household cleaning products, your food, stuff that you're like, you know, I like perfumes and hair care and face care and all that stuff, right? Like all of the stuff that's going to like add, add, add to your bucket until it's overflowing. So yeah, I feel like there's so many like alternatives out there at this point. At any health food store that you go into, there's really healthy alternative for, for most things at this point. So I definitely— reducing your toxic load as much as possible, but not stressing about it where you're freaking out that you're eating like a plastic, off of a plastic tray as a takeout. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to toe the line too far. I'm not an extremist ever. I feel like that's always super unhealthy. Just doing what you can to reduce it.

Yeah, totally agree. And you're right. You don't want to get, you know, because stress is such a component of it. You don't want to start stressing out about things that For a lot of it, we can't control. But, and one resource for people that I've mentioned in the past, I just want to throw it in here since it's relevant to what we just talked about, is the Environmental Working Group website. You can look for specific beauty products, hair care, skincare, face wash, all that kind of stuff, and find which ones they have a certification that's kind of like it's the cleanest it can be. And then they also rate like from 1 to 7 as far as 1 being closer to the best that you can get with no toxins and 7 being like you probably want to avoid that. You can also put in a list of ingredients if you can't find the product in there. So I often do that. I'll— I learn about a new beauty product, you know, on TikTok or whatever, because they're all over the place all the time. Oh yeah. And I'll look at the ingredients, I'll pop it in there. It's like, nope, this is no good. It's got— usually I find phthalates is the one that's still really prevalent because that's in just about every fragrance. So anyway, so that's just a little resource for people out there. So, okay, we've talked about eating the mindset. We're starting to look at what's in their environment. What's kind of the next level? We haven't talked about the obvious thing yet is how do you cleanse your skin? What do you do to take care of it? Is it like this 20-step Korean system that's gotten so popular on social media, or is it— I— should it be simple? I would love to hear.

Acne Talk is— is— I'm gonna tell you, and I know anyone who has acne is on Acne Talk, get off that right now. It is the number one thing I tell my clients, like, stop it. It is so wrong. It is so clickbaity. It is like mass influencer marketing. Like when I go on TikTok, it drives me wild because of the misinformation. So please be careful out there and only take advice from people that have certifications behind their name and have the education to be giving that advice. Otherwise it can get very scary. But skincare matters immensely. So first of all, acne type and skin type are going to determine how to use certain products and the frequency to use certain products. You know, there I find, as is just the world we live in, it's just like two extremes and they talk shit about each other. And, you know, there's all this divide. I hope it's okay that I swore. But there's the all-natural camp and then there's, you know, the tretinoin and like the dermatologist route, right? So I am somewhere in the middle where skin barrier and hydration, super, super important, but also it's exfoliation and keeping the pores clean and preventing new acne from coming into play are important. In terms of what products and how to use them, it's so entirely dependent on the person. So there's different types of acne. There is non-inflamed acne, which is like the closed comedones that like texture kind of thing, the kind of like flesh-colored bumps. And then there's more inflamed acne, right? So that's what the pustules that come to a head. There's cystic acne, which are more of the like nodular stuff that doesn't really come to a head. It can last for months. So You know, most people have a mix of both, and that's going to inform the strategy that I'm going to give them in terms of exposing them to different products to, again, get that up and out, but then prevent through the product as well from it coming back.

What now? Because people out there that have acne, there are definitely certain products that are marketed towards acne. And I think there are some basic ones that goes back to— and I'll, you know, age myself here, but like the Stridex pads and all of that kind of stuff that used to be popular.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Proactiv. Yes.

Yes. Proactiv. Yeah, that was a huge one probably 15 years ago.

Yes.

Do any of those work or does it really just depend on the person and the type of acne? And is it worth experimenting with some of those or do you find for most people that's just still not going to work?

No, you should never be using any of that stuff. Yeah, it, again, it has to be high quality product, no pore cloggers. Um, and again, just ensuring that everything's tailored to you. So this is the issue, right? Like people are buying stuff based off TikTok influencers and, and, you know, paid ads and stuff like that. And none of it's tailored to them. So at the end of the day, the most important thing that you can take away from anything is that you need to have a customized approach through all 3 pillars to have long-term success.. And otherwise you're literally like throwing stuff at the wall hoping something's gonna stick and it's not. And I say this cuz I went through that myself and that's why I talk about that either or approach, right? That's why it never worked is cuz I didn't have one person in-house that was doing everything for me based on the specifics of what my acne was telling me from skincare to mindset to what my root causes were, right? So just buying these random products or going to Sephora and just like, you know, it had a good rating online. It's never going to be enough, right? Like, it has to be customized to you.

That makes sense. And then what about, um, we never did go quite back to the gut part yet, uh, so there's a lot of information out there obviously about gut health. They're starting to be microbiome testing, uh, one thing that's really popular that a lot of people promote and think is a good thing are prebiotics or probiotics. What are your thoughts on that in relation to gut health?

So, yeah, gut health is, you know, it's a billion-dollar industry these days, right? And we're always getting sold new supplements and things. I think at the end of the day, I'm still going to say the same answer. It has to be customized to you. So I utilize a GI map in practice often. If there was any longstanding digestive issues, I would rather just see exactly what's going on through a stool sample and really, really get a clear picture of how to best heal that for you. Otherwise, it's kind of the same thing. You're just trying out all these supplements that have claims that it's going to make you feel better, and it can be literally lighting money on fire or making things worse if, you know, depending on the gut infection or issues that you're having, right? It's always best with the gut to test, in my opinion. And I actually don't feel that way about other tests. I just feel that way about the gut. And the reason for that is because the symptoms of the gut gut overlap for almost everything. Whereas a hormonal symptom or a cortisol symptom, I'm very— it's very obvious to me based on their story and their journey and what's going on with their cycles and their symptoms. I'm like, "Oh, this is exactly what—" I don't need a Dutch test to tell me that. With the gut, the same person can have constipation and diarrhea, and one person can have no good bacteria and 3 parasites, and the other person can have H. pylori and, you know, Candida, and we would have no idea based alone on the symptoms of the gut.

And in those ones that you just mentioned that are some of the somewhat more common ones— H. pylori, SIBO, that kind of thing— when you've identified that they have a parasite or some of these things and you do some kind of healing protocol, do you find that in some cases that that really was the root of their acne problem and then it goes away just based on these gut symptoms, or Again, is it more like, okay, that was a big part of it, but they still might have some other things going on too?

Big part of it, but it's never just one thing in my 9 years that I've seen. So definitely that's like, again, to me, the gut's the foundation alongside cortisol and insulin. So it plays a huge part. But so this is a prime example of someone went with acne and just saw a gut nutritionist and had this amazing protocol with them. But they were using the wrong skincare and they weren't doing mindset work, they wouldn't heal their skin and they would think, oh my God, it wasn't my gut, but it was a piece. It was one-third, but we missed the other two. So that's why it's super important to make sure that you're always taking all three into consideration at all times.

Yeah, that makes sense. And with the gut stuff as well, how prevalent in people that are having acne issues? How prevalent do you find that they do have some kind of issue in their GI map?

Very, very, very, very. And it's not surprising, right? Like, we learn so much too, and there's so much more coming out about the gut-brain axis too, right? Like how there's just like a right connection with stress, right? So it's any time anyone's had a longstanding acne journey, They're constantly stressed, their immune system's down, their defenses are down, you know, and oftentimes too, then their diet suffers. They're not exercising enough. Like all these things that kind of keep us in a healthier state sometimes fall by the wayside just due to the sheer amount of stress that they're doing. So it can be, yeah, a really common thing. I mean, it's, it's easy to have digestive dysfunction just like the state of our society. Pretty sure most people would come up with something on a GI map at this point in their lives, like especially in their 30s. Yeah, I'm really curious.

I still haven't done that yet to this point, so maybe I'll find you afterwards. I'm sure it'd be very interesting. The one thing we haven't talked about— you've mentioned insulin, you've mentioned blood sugar a couple times— so we haven't talked about diet yet. So I'd love to hear what your perspective on that is, because, you know, back in the day, again, you know, people kind of traditional wisdom or something about acne is, you know, it's sugar, it's chocolate. It's— there are definitely things that are triggers. But what have you found actually works? And what recommendations do you have for people to do with their diet if they want to really focus on their skincare?

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Food fear plays a massive role. So yes, this traditional, this narrative, I'm going to call it a narrative story that's been perpetuated for years and years and years is perpetuated when I was in in school and learned 2 pages about acne that was incorrect. So food doesn't cause acne. You can have triggers to certain foods, often if you've got an allergy, an intolerance, or you've got like crazy inflammation in your gut where you just like, you can't handle it until you heal your gut. But it's very different from saying if you have acne, you can't eat sugar, dairy, gluten, soy, you can't have alcohol, you can't have coffee, you can't live your life. Now the issue is that narrative is so rooted and it's the first thing people are going to come up on Google, on TikTok, on anything like that. They fear these foods, so they have an emotional connection with these foods that's not healthy. And they also have a restrictive mentality that's very, very stressful. So they cut all these foods out. They're stressed. They can't go out and enjoy their lives. They can't go on vacations. I have had stories from clients where Like, it's heartbreaking. They go to a beautiful 10-course tasting dinner with their husband's work and like they don't eat anything and they don't go on vacations or they bring their own food. Like, you know, I remember doing that. I'd go to cottage weekends bringing my own little things of like healthy food. And it wasn't ever about the food. It was about how stressed I was. I was telling myself dairy breaks me out. I'm going to get a pimple if I eat this cheese. Lo and behold, I got a pimple, not because I ate a little cheese, because I told myself and I printed out that script and boom, my body was listening to me. So I love food. I'm a nutritionist. I very much believe in the power of anti-inflammatory diet and whole foods and not processed foods. But I also believe in living your life joyfully. And so many things in our society revolve around food. And just because you have acne does not mean you shouldn't enjoy your life to the fullest. So once we heal the body, you should be able— unless there's an intolerance or an allergy, you should be able to eat everything in moderation. I do a 70/30 approach, 70% of like a whole foods diet and 30% of like just eating what you want when you want it because you want to order the cheesecake after you had a beautiful meal with a girlfriend.

So, so no specific— sounds like no specific things to avoid. It's more in line with your approach to mindset. Like once you kind of get that more holistic view, then you're still trying to eat healthy most of the time, whatever healthy means whatever healthy eating means to people, right? Because that's a, that's a whole nother topic. Yeah. But then allowing yourself some flexibility there so that you're not creating that extra stress over food. Yeah.

And I mean, I have 2,500 clients. They've all been able to eat everything and they've got clear, crystal clear skin now. So it is a testament to how much stress plays and these connections that we make in our mind to external things like— and food, acne aside, is an emotional thing. Like I had a client today that, you know, had a huge kind of restrictive mentality with food and rationing mentality. And she was like, well, if I don't ration my food, then I'll swing the other way and binge eat. Like, we have to remember how emotional food is with a lot of the conditioning that we've had to just like, especially as women in society and like what we're exposed to. So those pieces, they inform our relationships with this stuff too. Right? So we want to make sure always it's like a healthy, joyful connection, especially with something that's supposed to nourish us and sustain us.

Now, if somebody's sitting there thinking now after hearing all this, they're like, wow, this is a lot. I could try to do this on my own, but Meg's got it figured out and she's got a thing. She's got— you mentioned you have a 6-month program. So I'd love to hear how people work with you. What does the program look like and what is the success rate of people? Does it always take 6 months? Can it be shorter? Like kind of a picture about how healing might look going forward.

Yeah. So right now I do a 6-month one-to-one program. I find that amount of time is just usually what anyone needs for a proper healing journey. We meet for an hour, we do a deep dive into their acne journey, their health history. We go over, you know, their diet. We go over what they're doing for stress stress management, what their skincare is. And then they're with me for 6 months where I am basically doing customized protocols for skincare, mindset, and obviously their internal root causes. So whatever we're doing, if we have to run a GI map or we're going right into a different phase of healing and they're doing 2-week check-ins because the body responds very differently for each person, right? So I'm always shifting Everything based on what they're updating me with, updated pictures. We do kind of a 3-month Zoom, and it's usually at the 3-month mark where the color is back in their face, their eyes are brighter, they're sitting up more confident, they're like, wow, this is actually really working. So if I had to gauge for most people, it takes at least 3 months for people to really start to see significant shifts and start to believe like, okay, no, this is working. She was right. And I totally get it. I mean, that's again, talk about a brain that needs flexing, right? Like it's going to take 3 months of consistent work for that too. And then yeah, we just, again, it's very different based on each person of what phase of healing we need to address for that person. We also will dig deeper into mindset for some people that have more of a limiting belief issue versus someone who is a little bit more on the just like needs a GI map. So everyone's a little bit different. If clients are following the protocol and they're doing the mindset work, like it's every— everyone heals.

Amazing. So if people do want to look into this further and work with you, what's the best way to get in touch? Where can they find you? Are you on social media? Tell us all that.

Yeah. Yeah. Get Glow Method is my website, getglowmethod.com, and then Get Glow Method on Instagram as well. So my DMs are always open. We try to do lots of of, you know, content just like we chatted about today. So yeah, I would love to chat with anyone who, who's interested.

Well, Meg, thank you. This has been so informative today. I love how it dovetails with really just overall health. It makes perfect sense that this would help your skin if you just get your head right and work on being healthier overall. Um, so before we go, any final thoughts? Anything that we didn't talk about that you'd like to mention? Anything that came to mind like, oh, I should have said this?

I always like to just say to people, like, you can heal. Like, it doesn't matter your backstory. It doesn't matter what you've done so far. Like, you 100% can heal. I promise you, you're not that anomaly that can't be fixed. It's really just about finding, you know, those, those puzzle pieces and putting them into place. And until you do that, just make sure that you're, like, really compassionate to yourself because, you know, I know going through it, I've shepherded so many people through this journey. It's, it's a really hard one to stay positive and to kind of believe in yourself and believe that there is like a happy ending for you too. But I truly, truly know that for everyone there is an answer. Awesome.

Well, Meg, thank you again so much for coming on today. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and, uh, take care and have a good rest of your day.

Thank you.

This has been the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Again, I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow. You can find show notes for this episode at healnourishgrowpodcast.com. If you have feedback on today's episode or questions about the content, please email us at podcast@healnourishgrow.com. We'd love to hear from you. Be sure to sign up for our email list at healnourishgrow.com and subscribe to the show with your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Join us next time for more information that helps you live your best and healthiest life. Thanks for listening. Content on the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast does not constitute medical advice. Content contained in the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast is not intended as medical diagnosis or treatment. Neither the company nor its owner, Heal, Nourish, Grow LLC, nor any of the company's employees, agents, or guest speakers provide medical advice. The content provided on Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult your medical provider with any questions about what health practices are right for you.