# How long does it take?

The honest answer is: months before you notice anything, and usually several years to reach full coverage. Knowing that up front is the single best thing you can do for your own success, because the people who quit almost always quit early, expecting a pace that was never realistic.

## Why it is slow

Restoration asks your body to grow a large amount of new skin, and living tissue grows at its own pace no matter how motivated you are. Gentle tension is what makes it safe and sustainable, and gentle also means gradual. There is no way to rush skin growth without crossing into force that damages tissue instead of building it. Slow is not a sign anything is wrong. Slow is the method working correctly.

## Progress is not a straight line

Do not expect steady, measurable gains every week. Restoration tends to come in plateaus and jumps: long stretches where nothing seems to change, then a period where you suddenly notice more coverage. This is normal. The flat stretches are not wasted; the skin is responding even when the mirror does not show it yet. This is exactly why tracking matters, because week to week you cannot see it, but month to month and year to year you can.

## Rough milestones

Everyone is different and your starting point matters enormously, but as a very general shape:

- First weeks: you are learning the routine and what safe tension feels like. No visible change yet, and that is expected.
- First few months: the habit forms. You may notice small things, more slack, skin sitting a little differently, before any change in coverage level.
- Around a year: many people can point to real, if modest, progress and often a first move up the Coverage Index.
- Several years: the timescale on which substantial coverage is built. People who reach their goal generally measure the journey in years, not months.

Treat these as orientation, not promises. Tighter starting points take longer to show early progress; looser ones move sooner.

## Why comparing yourself to others misleads

Everyone starts at a different Coverage Index, tugs a different amount, and has different skin. Someone else's timeline says almost nothing about yours. Progress photos in the community are motivating, but they are not a schedule you are behind on. The only fair comparison is you against your own earlier photos. That is the comparison the journal is built to make easy.

## Staying with it

Because feedback is so slow, the restorers who succeed are the ones who make the invisible visible and lower the stakes of any single day:

- Track consistently. Log sessions and take photos the same way each time. When you doubt your progress, last year's photo is the answer.
- Count the habit, not just the result. Consistency is the thing you actually control. Cumulative hours and streaks are real progress even before coverage visibly changes.
- Do not judge by the mirror day to day. Judge by the trend over months. The app's compare and timeline views exist for exactly this.
- A missed day is not failure. Restoration is measured in years; a lapse is noise. Just continue.

Ready to start tracking? The Forestorers journal records your CI, sessions, and progress photos privately in your browser, and makes the slow changes visible over time. New to the terms? See the glossary and the FAQ.