So for my 2k, I decided to make a thread which can enrich all of your lives! Back in early December, someone linked me to a blog about how someone did not use soap or shampoo in a whole year. You can read it yourselves if you want (it's a good read IMO, and not too long), but tl;dr, his skin and hair condition improved significantly after doing so. Apparently, the chemicals in soap and shampoo really dry out your skin and in order to compensate, your body tends to excrete more oils than it normally would. Once you eliminate soap and shampoo from the equation though, your body normalizes and only produces a small amount of oil. Of course, there's a period of 2-4 weeks where you'll be a bit more oily than usual because it takes some time for your body to adjust, but after that period, everything's great. Note: he did not stop showering. He only stopped using soap and shampoo when he showered.
Although I have always had pretty good skin, I was intrigued by this story and the logic behind it made sense to me, so I decided to try it out myself. I embarked on my journey of no soap/shampoo on December 10th. I decided I wasn't going to tell anybody I knew IRL about this, just to see if they would make any comments about my appearance or smell. The experiment began.
At first, there wasn't too much of a difference. My skin maybe was a little bit more oily, but it wasn't a notable change. In terms of smell, I never once smelled bad. Though I stopped using soap, using deodorant is completely fine. In fact, three weeks into this, my girlfriend came over and told me I smelled good! The big issue was my hair. I didn't start to get dandruff or anything (I've actually had flakes before in the past, so I suppose this was a good thing?), but my hair really was getting greasy. It got to the point where I could mold my hair however I liked it without using any styling products (I actually got a compliment or two about my hairstyle at this point, which made me chuckle inside). Anyways, despite it looking fine, I really didn't like how my hair felt, so I gave up on the no shampoo bit after around a month of not using shampoo. Instead, I decided to only use shampoo twice a week.
After a month or so, my skin started to look and feel really good. I no longer came out of the shower with an extremely dry face which I had to apply lotion to. My skin felt very smooth and soft and didn't look oily at all. My family members, friends, and girlfriend did not seem to notice any negative changes to me (believe me, they would have said something) and as I mentioned early, all I got were compliments from time to time. To top it all off, showering became a lot faster for me, and packing for travel became significantly easier. I basically only had to pack a toothbrush, deodorant, and a razor for shaving when I went places. Basically, it worked!
So it has been nearly 4 months now since soap has touched my skin (well, I wash my hands still), and I feel great. I'm not the only person from Smogon who started doing this, by the way. I linked that same blog to a bunch of my friends, and we've all been doing this ever since. I won't list any names other than Earthworm and zerowing, simply because I haven't asked anybody else if it would be okay to list them in this thread (I'm sure some people might be a bit embarrassed about doing this, though I personally don't see why). I understand that the idea of not using soap or shampoo might seem weird to some of you (believe me, I had my reservations before deciding to do this as well), but it has been good to everybody that I know who has tried this, so just some food for thought :).
Although I have always had pretty good skin, I was intrigued by this story and the logic behind it made sense to me, so I decided to try it out myself. I embarked on my journey of no soap/shampoo on December 10th. I decided I wasn't going to tell anybody I knew IRL about this, just to see if they would make any comments about my appearance or smell. The experiment began.
At first, there wasn't too much of a difference. My skin maybe was a little bit more oily, but it wasn't a notable change. In terms of smell, I never once smelled bad. Though I stopped using soap, using deodorant is completely fine. In fact, three weeks into this, my girlfriend came over and told me I smelled good! The big issue was my hair. I didn't start to get dandruff or anything (I've actually had flakes before in the past, so I suppose this was a good thing?), but my hair really was getting greasy. It got to the point where I could mold my hair however I liked it without using any styling products (I actually got a compliment or two about my hairstyle at this point, which made me chuckle inside). Anyways, despite it looking fine, I really didn't like how my hair felt, so I gave up on the no shampoo bit after around a month of not using shampoo. Instead, I decided to only use shampoo twice a week.
After a month or so, my skin started to look and feel really good. I no longer came out of the shower with an extremely dry face which I had to apply lotion to. My skin felt very smooth and soft and didn't look oily at all. My family members, friends, and girlfriend did not seem to notice any negative changes to me (believe me, they would have said something) and as I mentioned early, all I got were compliments from time to time. To top it all off, showering became a lot faster for me, and packing for travel became significantly easier. I basically only had to pack a toothbrush, deodorant, and a razor for shaving when I went places. Basically, it worked!
So it has been nearly 4 months now since soap has touched my skin (well, I wash my hands still), and I feel great. I'm not the only person from Smogon who started doing this, by the way. I linked that same blog to a bunch of my friends, and we've all been doing this ever since. I won't list any names other than Earthworm and zerowing, simply because I haven't asked anybody else if it would be okay to list them in this thread (I'm sure some people might be a bit embarrassed about doing this, though I personally don't see why). I understand that the idea of not using soap or shampoo might seem weird to some of you (believe me, I had my reservations before deciding to do this as well), but it has been good to everybody that I know who has tried this, so just some food for thought :).
