The Beauty Diet (2 page)

Throughout the book you'll find special in-depth descriptions of the vital vitamins and mighty minerals that help you wake up gorgeous every day. You'll also find different kinds of sidebars: each "Beauty Myth" addresses a common misconception, each "Beauty Diet Rx" offers prescriptive nutrition advice, and each "Beyond the Beauty Diet" provides up-to-the-minute beauty advice you can use in your daily life. I have also included useful information from my guest experts, which you will find in various chapters.

In the final chapter are my Beauty Diet meal plans and recipes for four weeks of spectacular breakfast, lunch, dinner, and beauty snacks—all using one or more of my Top 10 Beauty Foods. You'll be ravishing in no time!

Sound tempting? Stay with me, and I'll teach you how to make every calorie contribute to your head-to-toe transformation. You'll experience the full glory of your natural beauty and, of course, a feeling of fabulousness that you have never known before. When the compliments start to roll in, just say you're on the Beauty Diet!

I'm a firm believer in the idea that beauty starts with a healthy lifestyle.

—Bobbi Brown

It's a great time to be you! Gone are the days when there was just one standard of beauty. Open a catalog or magazine and you'll see beauty of all shapes, sizes, ages, and colors. Models and movie stars are skinny and plump, tall and short, young and old. Beauty can mean ample curves or elegant angles; long, luxuriant hair or a short bob; smoky eyes or a freckled face. What's
not
in style is looking super-skinny, undernourished, and unhealthy. Today the key to attractiveness is radiant health and abundant energy.

By making the most of your natural beauty, you'll turn heads and capture hearts. If you were born with pale skin, freckles, and flaming red locks, you can be beautiful. If you have golden skin, almond eyes, and pin-straight hair, you can be beautiful. If you have ebony skin, lush features, and wild curls, you can be beautiful. Whether your hair is jet black,
snow white, or anything in between, you can set your own standards of beauty because your allure is going to come from
inside
.

When you start really nourishing the beautiful body you were given, you'll find yourself reaching less often for the concealers you've been using to hide troubled skin or camouflage those dark circles under your eyes. You'll use less makeup and fewer maintenance products once your skin regains its youthful suppleness, your thick and glossy hair grows in, and your nails grow long and strong. People will comment on how fabulous you look—or, if they can't quite put their finger on your new appearance, you'll get comments like "Did you get new glasses?" or "Did you cut your hair?"

As you will read in the pages ahead, I stand firmly behind the fact that what you put into your body—including all of the food and beverages you consume on a daily basis—will come out through your physical appearance. When you eat a healthy, antiaging beauty diet, you exude confidence while looking your absolute best.

While I have to admit genetics plays a role in how we age, it's now clear that there is a lot we can do to stay looking youthful well into our 40s, 50s, and beyond. It's good to know that eating my Top 10 Beauty Foods—and drinking my two Beauty Beverages!—can help keep our skin firm, eyes sparkling, hair glossy, nails strong, and teeth gleaming.

When I see celebrities and Hollywood legends who look especially terrific for their age, I feel inspired. So, in that spirit, here are some age-defying beautiful women. If I look half as good as they do when I reach their age, I'll be more than happy! Follow my antiaging Beauty Diet, and you may look like Raquel Welch (born in 1940), Helen Mirren and Diane Sawyer (born in 1945), Susan Lucci and Susan Sarandon

(born in 1946), Meryl Streep (born in 1949), Mary Hart (born in 1950), Kim Basinger (born in 1953), Oprah Winfrey and Christie Brinkley (born in 1954), Iman (born in 1955), Sela Ward (born in 1956), or Michelle Pfeiffer (born in 1958).

First, some food basics. Don't worry, this will be fun. I just want you to understand the concepts of eating for beauty so that you will make the best possible decisions for your health and appearance for the rest of your life.

When we eat poorly, it shows. Even if we maintain an ideal weight, our skin tends to break out or become wrinkled. Our hair looks dry and damaged, our fingernails may have ridges or white spots, and our teeth become stained and even cavity-ridden. Definitely not the picture of beauty! Thankfully, changing our diet is easy, and the rewards are both rapid and radiant.

What makes a Beauty Food? Look for quality proteins, wholesome carbohydrates, healthy fats, and plenty of beauty-enhancing
vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. The more healthful nutrients a food has, the more you'll want to include it in your Beauty Diet.

An important beauty nutrient, protein is the main structural component of our bodies, and it plays a key role in the health of our features. Hair, skin, fingernails, muscles, bones, organs, tissues, and cells all need a constant supply of protein for growth and repair. By nourishing our bodies with protein, we are more likely to attain beautiful hair and fingernails. Protein also is an essential component of collagen, the connective tissue that provides support for beautiful skin. To keep skin supple and slow down the signs of aging, it is important to consume an adequate amount of protein on a daily basis.

On the Beauty Diet, I recommend consuming about 25 percent of your calories as protein. Based on 1,500 calories, this is equivalent to 94 grams of protein a day. More than this amount is not necessary, and consuming excess protein (such as the amounts indicated on very low–carbohydrate diets) can stress the liver and kidneys; plus, the body converts any protein it can't use into fat. Because you do need some high-quality protein every day—it's critical to beauty!—my Beauty Diet meal plans give you the amount that you need without going overboard.

Carbohydrates provide beauty nutrients and are essential for energy, radiance, and long-term weight management. They