diet

Hi everyone! I started picking at 11 and am now 35 so I guess I'm like a veteran . I have breaks, which can last up to a month, where I just pick occasionally. These times usually start when I don't have much time alone or to spare so skin starts healing and I'm less self-conscious. Then after my skin is improving, I try fighting the urge to pick. It always defeats me. Bizarrely, once my skin looks almost completely healed I manage to find lots of things to pick at and I'm back to square one - a face of scabs. Maybe a few months in a year my skin is almost free of scabs and sores. Recently I was researching into diet to help with fertility as I'm having problems conceiving. What I read intrigued me and so I started thinking maybe diet was causing some of my son's problems (asperger's). Then I started wondering if diet caused or had an effect on OCDs, compulsions, habits and addictions because I know people struggling with these. Also, skin picking belongs somewhere in this group. Then I wondered if diet caused my daughter to be so depressed and moody. Then I looked at other things to do with diet... I guess it's clear I get fixated on things - exactly as I do when I touch my face or look in the mirror and start picking. Anyway, I continued looking at diet and foods. I looked at documentaries, books, websites, and blogs. I read people's reviews on books too. One comment that struck me was how a guy with an OCD, said the change in diet had caused him to obsessing and also he sometimes picked at his skin and that stopped too. Then I read about people with Trichotillomania changing their diet, which stopped the compulsion. All the diets are slightly different and one will say a certain food is bad but another will say that it's good. So which diet do you do? This bugged me because I was thinking 'Well what the heck are you supposed to eat?' It seems that the best thing you can do is just cut out all the processed and refined foods. Stick to foods in their natural form - Fruits, veg, meats, grains (before they are messed about with). And if you can eat the ones that aren't tinned or bottled and wrapped in materials where the chemicals can leak into them, that's even better. The same goes for drinks - if it ain't water, be careful. Stick to what God provided for you! I also looked into some of the conspiracy theories about these processed foods and although I don't necessarily believe them, I do believe that all these chemicals are going to have an impact on our health - physical, mental and emotional. I mean if the chemicals in drugs and alcohol can cause people all these problems, why wouldn't those in our foods (and we might be consuming high levels) cause similar issues. With this in mind, I thought about how I look a lot like some of those Meth addicts. So I looked into this - why do they pick their skin? There are a few different reasons given, but one of them is that they feel the compulsion to do so. The chemicals cause the compulsion. Also, one Meth user said she gets fixated on picking at her skin - much like I do. There's a video showing her in front of the mirror, picking and picking. (It made me feel ill actually) but that's exactly what I do. Well, I have made changes to the whole family's diet and so far so good. It's not been quite a fortnight and I haven't gone crazy buying specialist foods - mostly just cut out as much crap as possible. I haven't felt much desire to pick at all, I'm sleeping better,I'm calmer. My son's not displayed any violent behaviour, no tantrums, sleeping better. My daughter is sleeping better and not so moody. My husband's belly is still very much there but he says he feels a lot better! Just thought this was worth sharing because I know very well how much skin picking ruins things and controls you. If this helps anyone, then I'm glad.