Proven Skincare: I tried it for 6 weeks…

by | Apr 20, 2021 | Beauty

Click here to try Proven

*Awaiting shipment* March 2, 2021:

Something I’ve been tired of seeing lately, is a bathroom counter full of skin care products that just aren’t giving me the result I desire. It feels like rinsing money down the drain every night I wash my face. It doesn’t make me feel good knowing I not only wasted money myself, but am also causing a negative impact on the planet by creating more waste in the landfill that I’m not fully using or enjoying. Not to mention I recently became an esthetician, I want to be taking better care of my skin, and have things to recommend to clients. I’ve certainly got a list of things I WOULDN’T recommend. I want to find my all-star, “ride-or-die” products, that are equally affordable, results oriented, and free of harsh chemicals and comedogenic ingredients.

Funnily enough, I have found many of my ride-or-dies through facebook ads. I’m a sucker for a good ad. Things I’ve found through facebook ads include: my shampoo and conditioner which I ADORE from Viori; my husband (NOT a joke!); and Lumé deodorant (they have the BEST ads.)

Recently, I’ve been getting ads for PROVEN skincare. They caught my attention because they simplify the skincare process into 2 steps with 3 products, a cleanser/toner in one, a day cream with SPF and a night cream, all customized to my own skin based on my results to a comprehensive survey. They offer it in a subscription service where you can customize your dates to fit when you need a refill. Generally they recommend 8 weeks, but it all depends on how quickly you go through them. With the subscription, it comes out to $119/shipment, or $60/month for 8 weeks.

I decided to give it a try because if it works as I hope, I can free up my bathroom shelves of products I’m just not happy with – and replace them with potentially my new ride-or-dies? We’ll see as we take this journey together! I placed the order and am waiting for the products to arrive. I’ll take you along the journey of the first 6 weeks to see what kind of results we can achieve.

Currently, I’m writing this blog while I wait for my products to arrive. I’ll add more to this article as the weeks progress as I use the products and my thoughts at each time. I’ll mark each new section with the date it was written so you can get the idea and you get my unfiltered thoughts in the moment.

ABOUT MY SKIN:

Before we get started with talking about my experience with them, a little about me and my skin. I’m 27 years old, got fair, combination skin. I tend to scar easily and unfortunately am prone to hypertrophic scars, which look like little pimples or small white dots. That means I need to exfoliate frequently and avoid treatments like micro-needling as it has the potential to scar up my whole face. I’ve tend to break out hormonally along my jawline most of all. The masks definitely don’t help, but I’ve been wearing silk masks to keep it as gentle and skin friendly as possible. Sadly I also have to wax my jawline/neck, because I get stubble that resembles my arm hairs down there. Dang you, hormones! I’ve got large pores on my forehead and T-zone in general, along with a pore of the winer on my forehead (which eventually I’ll get stitched up. For now I just say it’s the hole where the aliens get through to communicate with my brain. Joking joking.) My skin does tend to feel tight, dry in need of moisturizer right out of the shower, but will also get oily in the summer. Also I should mention that unfortunately I am a picker… It’s a terrible habit I know, definitely contributes to my scarring and I’m working on breaking it – but the sake of transparency, there you go! So – all of that said – Proven’s got its work cut out for it!

For skincare so far I’ve just been experimenting for the most part, honestly using products I’m gifted from brands that might not be best suited for my skin. Working in this industry I’m given a lot of gratis, which can be a gift and a curse. It’s free, they’re generally high quality, and I HATE wasting things – but often times they’re just not quite right for my skin! So it’s time to try something catered to my needs, hence, PROVEN!

Their Skin Genome quiz was very long and detailed. One thing that I do feel was missing however, was a place to upload photos, and add details such as my hypertrophic scarring. But perhaps that is secondary in their mind, because the questions covered everything they needed to know despite such things.

March 5, 2021:

Here are my before photos taken today on March 5, 2021. Please excuse my “up-the-deviated-septum-nose” shot, I just thought it important to show you what my jawline looks like as that’s where the majority of my breakouts live. I got notification that my products should be arriving today, yay!

**Taken with iPhone 10 in natural window lighting mid-day on a partly cloudy day. Click here to try Proven

UNBOXING FIRST IMPRESSIONS

It is now the evening – my products have arrived, and I used them for the first time. They came in quite the premium quality packaging, with a free organic mint flavored lip balm as a nice little bonus! (They really seem to want every bit of our facial skin taken care of.) As far as the boxes and bottles themselves, they didn’t have ingredients on them. Understandably as each is customized, I could imagine the extra cost and work involved in customizing every label too! Instead, they sent a separate envelope explaining each of my products, their key ingredients as well as the full list, and how they’re personalized to my own concerns.

USING FIRST IMPRESSIONS

CLEANSER:

Here are the pamphlets that came with it to describe the cleanser/list the ingredients:

The cleanser is non-foaming but feels very silky smooth. I will say everything smells amazing, and yet there’s no added fragrance. It was easy to rinse off. I cleansed for a couple minutes, giving myself a light massage, to get the full potential out of it. I definitely felt a slight tingling, probably because of the exfoliating acids in the mix. April 20 addition: That tingling went away as the weeks went on.

NIGHT CREAM:

I followed up with the night cream. Here are the descriptive pamphlet, front and back:

This night cream absorbed into my skin very quickly, but didn’t spread very far on its own. A tiny spritz of water on my face helped with that. My skin is definitely on the dryer side especially because of winter/early spring weather. I used as much as I needed, probably about a dime size amount. I dabbed it around my under eyes too. It doesn’t by any means feel heavy, but definitely very balanced in its hydration level. I’ve found with most night creams I’ve tried, they usually feel too heavy and break me out. Alternatively, I end up feeling like I need more moisture after slathering them on. It’s very hard to find the right amount of hydration, but this might have hit the ticket. We’ll see as time goes on how it performs! The instructions told me to ease into it, use it every couple days at first, because it has near prescription strength Retin-A. My skin definitely feels a light burn, but not irritatingly so or like its too much. It feels like the kind of light burn that means it’s working, and calms down within the hour. I expect this feeling will fade over the next coming weeks as I continue to use these products and my skin adjusts. Will keep you posted! (April 20 update: My skin doesn’t burn at all when I use the night cream now. Totally did adjust after a couple weeks!)

DAY CREAM:

The day cream is the one thing that I’m not too sure about yet. It does seem to hydrate my skin slightly, but the actives are all far down on the list in the ingredients – AFTER the preservative. See the pamphlet and my ingredients list here:

Further, for the SPF to truly protect you throughout the day, you’ll have to keep re-appying it every couple hours depending how sensitive your skin is to the sun. I definitely suggest pairing it with a makeup friendly spray on sunscreen, such as Ulta’s brand, so that you don’t go through this moisturizer so quickly.

It also doesn’t have the magical, fresh smell and texture that the cleanser and night cream have. But that’s secondary in my book, I’d rather have something that smells a little funky but doesn’t have added, irritating fragrance. It’s definitely less hydrating then the night cream, and my skin does feel starved for moisture even after applying it. I think in the next formulation I’ll ask for more hydration, and hopefully that will do the trick. For now, I might just have to layer it with another moisturizer, or skip the cleanse in the morning so my skin can retain the little bit of natural oil it excretes overnight.

2 week Mid-way checkin:

My skin definitely went through a purging phase 2-3 weeks in. I noticed dry/flakiness on my forehead, and more breakouts where I normally do, plus some tiny red bumps/patchiness. I emailed my concerns to Proven support about it, and they let me know my skin was purging, it’ll clear in a few weeks and rebalance itself. They advised me to use other skin care every other day to make the transition easier and more gradual. They were right, these symptoms thankfully started to calm down a couple weeks later.

04/20/2021 RESULTS 6.5 weeks later:

*Taken on iPhone X on a sunny day mid morning. Click here to try Proven

Results After 6.5 Weeks

You can see it definitely helped clear my acne, and did brighten my skin. I still get some breakouts along my jaw line due to hormones, but it definitely helps them calm down faster and I don’t get them as frequently. A lot of the spots you’re seeing in these photos are scars, hypertrophic and regular. It will definitely take longer than 6 weeks for the formula and retinol to fade the marks and flatten them, but I can only hope that with time they will disappear! I wouldn’t say the results have revolutionized my skin in 6 weeks, but I have definitely seen some improvements.

My skin does feel a little more leathery than it used too in certain places on certain days, like there’s a layer of dead skin at the surface. I’m guessing it’s because my skin is turning over at a faster rate now. When this happens I just skip my cleanser and do a gentle manual exfoliation to help slough the layer off.

I honestly don’t think my skin needs a cleanse in the morning, because it is fairly dry. This last week I’ve decided to just rinse with water in the morning from now, and then apply my day cream and see if that helps with hydration levels. I may start to cleanse in the morning again depending on how hydrating my next formula is.

Bottle Usage Longevity

As far as longevity of the bottles, I’m probably only about half way through my tubes though I’m already due for another shipment. The cleanser is 1.7 oz, and the two moisturizers 1 oz each. I’ve put off my next shipment for a while because if there’s something I can’t stand, it’s wasting products! One thing I do wish I could see is how much is left in the bottles. Since they’re airless pumps and aren’t transparent bottles, they keep pushing the product up further so you can’t really tell when it’s nearing the end and time to restock. I’ll try sticking a spatula in to check the levels, but I think I still have enough product to last a while. I also hope that they all finish around the same time and I don’t use up one faster than the other!

Though Proven has an auto replenishment which you can set for 6, 8, or 10 weeks, you can easily change the date in your account settings. The fact that it’s been almost 7 weeks and I’m likely only halfway through the bottles means this is going to be a much more affordable than I originally anticipated.

Products to Buy Alongside

While Proven does replace seemingly thousands of steps in our skincare routine, there are still a couple things that you might still need to add on top. Firstly, makeup remover. You could double cleansing with an oil cleanser first to melt off all your makeup, then go in and cleanse with Proven. I usually just use a magic eraser first so that I don’t clog my pores with excess oils. Another thing to consider is a spray on face sunscreen so you can touchup your SPF protection throughout the day. While Proven does instruct to re-apply the day cream every 3-4 hours to maintain sun protection, if you wear makeup re-application through rubbing won’t be possible. If you don’t wear makeup and you do reapply as they suggest, you’ll be going through that bottle of moisturizer much faster than every 2 months, and it’s quite the premium to pay! My suggestion would be to get a good makeup friendly sunscreen spray to touchup your protection and freshen your makeup through out the day. You may also still want to consider a gentle physical exfoliator to supplement, depending on your skin type (talk to your dermatologist!). I do love acid exfoliation, however sometimes you do need that extra grain to really clear off what the acids bring up.

Final Thoughts:

I’m going to give Proven more time to see if they can continue to improve and tweak my formulation. They have a section for feedback and what you’d like to see in your next round – for me, definitely more hydration. I really do love how it’s simplified my routine. I think with slight adjustments, it’ll just keep getting better.

Let me know in the comments if you would like another update, maybe a couple months from now, after going through an updated formulation? And of course if you have any questions or thoughts, please leave them below!

Lastly, if you want to give it a try for yourself, use my link! You’ll get $25 off your first set – and yes I’ll also get $25 off of mine. Hopefully this review has been helpful in your decision making, and if it has this’ll help me too! https://www.provenskincare.com/quiz/concern?code=5f4glkla7jq4t

Please note that I’m not an affiliate with Proven, however they do have this referral program available to anyone who buys their products. You’ll be able to extend your own link to your friends after you purchase as well.

Signing off,

Heidi

Written by Heidi Austin

More From This Category

Cape Town’s Top 6 Gluten Dairy Free Restaurants and Cafes

Having spent a total of 5 months in Cape Town now between two separate trips, it's safe to say I've been to quite a few restaurants. I’ve found Cape Town can be hit-or-miss when it comes to living the gluten free lifestyle. There’s less education around it, and...

read more

Cape Town’s Top 6 Gluten Dairy Free Restaurants and Cafes

Having spent a total of 5 months in Cape Town now between two separate trips, it's safe to say I've been to quite a few restaurants. I’ve found Cape Town can be hit-or-miss when it comes to living the gluten free lifestyle. There’s less education around it, and...

read more

Cape Town’s Top 6 Gluten Dairy Free Restaurants and Cafes

Having spent a total of 5 months in Cape Town now between two separate trips, it's safe to say I've been to quite a few restaurants. I’ve found Cape Town can be hit-or-miss when it comes to living the gluten free lifestyle. There’s less education around it, and...

read more

0 Comments

0 Comments