30 Days With Rodan + Fields Soothe Skin Care Regimen, Part 2
(Shipping Up To Boston - Dropkick Murphys)
Evening, Day 25, February 21st, 2019: It's not that my skin hasn't been amazing over the last nine days, it's that I don't want to post on things that I've already gushed on. This evening, however, I finally have something new to talk about in terms of how freakishly effective this stuff is, and it's got nothing to do with my face at all.
I'm a guitar player. My left hand, the hand I fret with, has some pretty decent callouses on its fingertips from all of the playing I do. Those callouses are important because they protect my fingers from the metal strings on my instrument. They enable me to play longer without pain. It's a right of passage, building callouses like these. It took me a good, solid three weeks to get them in place. I'm equal parts amazed and horrified to report that after three weeks of using my hands to put various creams -- still not lotions! -- on my face, my callouses have effectively been softened to the point that they're not really there anymore. Anyone who plays a stringed instrument will know how insane this is. If you don't play, well...take my word for it.
As a result of all this, I've started learning to put my regimen on with my right hand only. Which isn't awkward at all.
Another interesting side-note from the guitar playing: Many are the articles about how guitar players have rough hands. This is because they tend to not put lotion on them so that they preserve their callouses and so they avoid transferring any moisturizing product onto the strings or body of the guitar. I haven't really thought about this as a possible problem since I started using the R+F regimen, and it occurred to me that, after weeks of playing, I've never had a problem with any of my creams rubbing off onto my guitar. This stuff soaks into your skin so well and so quickly, it's a little mind-blowing. That's doubly cool because not only do you get the satisfaction of knowing that you won't leave smudgy prints all over everything, this is a sure sign that you're not wasting any of your product, which means you're getting your money's worth out of it.
End of speech.
Evening, Day 27, February 23rd, 2019: I may have painted myself into a corner here. I'm supposed to take a 30-day picture once I'm nearing the end of this regimen, and due to sloth, I've started growing a beard. This is...going to make a 30-day picture awkward.
Evening, Day 30, February 26th, 2019: 30 days. Time's up. Day 1 is on the left, Day 30 is on the
right:
Haven't checked out Part 1 yet? You should! Go here!
Morning, Day 16, February 12th, 2019: Pro Tip: If you've recently put moisturizer on your hands, it's best not to shake the Stage 4 sunscreen bottle vigorously in front of your bathroom mirror. It could slip out of your hand and go flying somewhere ... inopportune.
I'm offering this bit of caution as a hypothetical, mind you.
Evening, Day 25, February 21st, 2019: It's not that my skin hasn't been amazing over the last nine days, it's that I don't want to post on things that I've already gushed on. This evening, however, I finally have something new to talk about in terms of how freakishly effective this stuff is, and it's got nothing to do with my face at all.
I'm a guitar player. My left hand, the hand I fret with, has some pretty decent callouses on its fingertips from all of the playing I do. Those callouses are important because they protect my fingers from the metal strings on my instrument. They enable me to play longer without pain. It's a right of passage, building callouses like these. It took me a good, solid three weeks to get them in place. I'm equal parts amazed and horrified to report that after three weeks of using my hands to put various creams -- still not lotions! -- on my face, my callouses have effectively been softened to the point that they're not really there anymore. Anyone who plays a stringed instrument will know how insane this is. If you don't play, well...take my word for it.
As a result of all this, I've started learning to put my regimen on with my right hand only. Which isn't awkward at all.
Another interesting side-note from the guitar playing: Many are the articles about how guitar players have rough hands. This is because they tend to not put lotion on them so that they preserve their callouses and so they avoid transferring any moisturizing product onto the strings or body of the guitar. I haven't really thought about this as a possible problem since I started using the R+F regimen, and it occurred to me that, after weeks of playing, I've never had a problem with any of my creams rubbing off onto my guitar. This stuff soaks into your skin so well and so quickly, it's a little mind-blowing. That's doubly cool because not only do you get the satisfaction of knowing that you won't leave smudgy prints all over everything, this is a sure sign that you're not wasting any of your product, which means you're getting your money's worth out of it.
End of speech.
Evening, Day 27, February 23rd, 2019: I may have painted myself into a corner here. I'm supposed to take a 30-day picture once I'm nearing the end of this regimen, and due to sloth, I've started growing a beard. This is...going to make a 30-day picture awkward.
Evening, Day 30, February 26th, 2019: 30 days. Time's up. Day 1 is on the left, Day 30 is on the
right:
For the record, that's a MASSIVE image, and if anyone is interested in seeing the full-sized shot, let me know. What you're seeing here on the site doesn't really do it justice.
Mind the cold sore on the right. That has nothing to do with the R+F Regimen, though I will talk about that annoying little bastard here in a moment.
Thank the good Lord, but I didn't really have bad skin when this all started, per se. I wasn't riddled with acne or redness or other forms of skin irritation. I just had rather worn skin that I haven't taken more than average care of. I bathe regularly, I wash my face from time to time, and I shave every three days. Here's what I can tell you about 30 days with the Rodan + Fields Soothe Regimen:
- First and foremost, I will state that my sister made some rather bold statements about what this stuff would do for my skin, and I will honestly tell you that it's delivered on every single one of her claims. Visually, there doesn't look like there's been much of a change, but context is key. The picture on the left is Day 1, as I mentioned. I'd shaved the day before and hadn't really done anything to my skin beyond that. You can see how red it is on the left, and how NOT red it is on the right. Here's where I tell you that the image on the right is about 15 minutes after I shaved again. I took the time to jump into the shower, to scrub the crap out of my face with a rough cloth designed to scrape skin away, and then I hopped out, dried off, put my robe on, and took this picture. Even to my broken down eyes, I can visually tell a difference in the quality of my skin. This is after 30 days.
- It's a shame that you're here right now, because you can't actually witness the most incredible part of this whole ordeal. My skin feels -good-. Like, really good. And that's BEFORE I put my last application of Regimen on this evening. After a shave, a hot shower, and a scouring with a rough rag, my skin still feels GOOD. This is the hardest part to convey to whoever is reading this, because you can't understand what my skin felt like before, and what it feels like now. The change is absolutely amazing.
- The contents of the Regimen are certainly designed to last for around 30 days, though some of the bottles are clearly in better shape than others. The Stage 1 cleaner, for instance, still has a fair amount of cleanser in it -- YAY! I'll touch on that in a second! -- and my Stage 4 sunscreen still feels like it has a fair amount left as well. Stages 2 and 3 are absolutely getting down to the end though. I honestly didn't think that Stage 3 in particular was going to make it the full run, but here we are, and I bet it has another application or two left inside of it.
- R+F designed this regimen so that you could break it apart and order each Stage as you need it. That's smart on their part, because if you're an ongoing user, you're going to run out of some of this stuff sooner than others, as I indicated above. It's also very convenient for those of us who aren't necessarily interested in the entire regimen, but have fallen in love with parts of it. And on that note...
- I am officially smitten with, of all things, the Stage 1 cleanser. I love the scent, and I love how it feels when I use it. I -hate- washing my face because of how it always leaves my skin feeling like a piece of stripped parchment. You don't get that with the R+F cleanser. It's somehow both lightweight and extremely effective. My skin isn't left feeling super roached out once I'm done with it, yet it's still very prepared to accept the moisturizer that you'll apply directly after it. I don't understand how this works, but I'm reasonably sure that there was a virgin sacrifice involved.
- The Stage 3 moisturizer is creepy as hell, and I love it too. It soaks in fast, doesn't leave a lot of greasy crap on my face or hands, and ... well, it moisturizes, which seems like an anti-climactic way to finish. As the great poet Dorvor once said, "Is good."
If you're unsure about getting into this whole ordeal, the R+F Soothe Regimen is a really easy way to dip your proverbial feet into the water without going Whole Hog, and the results are impressive enough that you're reading about them on the blog of a chubby development engineer that cares about skincare about as much as he does physical fitness.
Want to know more? Have specific needs that you'd like to get more information on? Check out my sister's R+F Solution Tool here. She'll get in touch with you and help you find a solution that you're happy with and skin that, like me, you never really knew was there to begin with.
Made it all the way to the end? IT'S TIME FOR THE BONUS ROUND.
My sister's such a bad-ass that she left me with samples of a few other products that we never got around to mentioning. I've been using them off and on over the course of the 30 days that I've also been doing the Soothe regimen. They also kick ass:
- I shave my head every three days. Then I shower, scrub it to death to get any excess dead skin off, hop out of the shower, and marvel about how smooth it is. Except that my version of smooth was actually 'dry'. Enter: Rodan+Fields Active Hydration Body Replenish moisturizing cream. It pretty much does what the lable says, but it does it without leaving your skin feeling greasy or lubed up. It soaks into your skin really well, doesn't have a lingering scent, and leaves your skin feeling...well, moist. I don't write these kinds of reviews a lot. Leave me alone. Anyway, it also doesn't leave you with gummy hands that you then worry about when you have to touch anything else within the next 30 minutes. It soaks in super fast, does its job, and once it's all gone, doesn't make your skin go crazy. My head used to get SUPER oily after I'd shave it because my body was trying to take care of the skin. Oily skin means pimples. Pimples on your head are gross. Shaving with pimples on your head sucks. I don't have that problem anymore. This is what victory looks like.
- That cold sore you're looking at up there? I get one of those little bastards every other year or so in the winter, and they always take about three weeks to run their course. The one you're looking at in that photo is one week old, and only a few days away from being completely healed. "What sorcery is this," you cry! It's R+F Lip Renewing Serum. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because I tried it about a month ago when I had my mini-facial. Seriously go check it out here. Play that YouTube video that I've got embedded in the post and fast forward to 15:07. Anyway, my darling sister made sure that I had a few of those little gray beads full of Lip Serum hanging around to try, and when my cold sore ambushed me, she begged me to put the Lip Serum on it. She was right to do so. It kept the cold sore and the skin around it moist and stable so the skin never stretched or tore around the sore, and it was just allowed to run its course and start healing right away. I had enough to use it for several days, and when I ran out, I noticed it IMMEDIATELY the following day because of how stiff and tender the skin around the sore was. Fortunately, I was far enough along in the healing process that I'd gotten the benefit from the Serum. The crazy thing is, the benefits I experienced were just by-products of putting good lip balm on, and unlike chapstick or other kinds of balm where you see people just layering their lips in it, a -TINY- amount of this stuff goes a long, LONG way. I got several days' use out of a single bead. If you're a lip balm person, someone who suffers from cold sores, or someone who has a mint fetish, you really, REALLY need to look into this stuff. It's insane.
And that's it, folks. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments, or reach out to my sister through this link:
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