The Beauty Diet (4 page)

of healthy fats for many important reasons, including the maintenance of your beauty. Fats supply certain essential fatty acids that your body can't make but are key to soft, supple skin. These fats help to maintain the oil barrier of the skin, which keeps moisture in and germs out. Your body also needs fats to produce hormones, and fats are used as a structural component of cells. Fats in your diet allow your body to absorb fat-soluble vitamins that are key to beauty, such as vitamin A, as well as vitamins D, E, and K. In addition, "good" fats (such as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats) protect you against heart disease while they satiate you and stabilize your blood sugar.

The items vital to life include moisturizer, tweezers, your most comfortable pair of ballet flats, your little black book,

the locket your mother gave you, and essential fatty acids. In fact, the essential fatty acids are as important a part of your beauty regimen as the moisturizer and tweezers.

While essential fats include specific omega-6 and omega-3 fats, omega-3s are the fatty acids you need to know about. Omega-3s play a key role in keeping your skin smooth and supple. Aside from skin benefits, a great deal of research indicates that adding omega-3s to your diet, especially long-chain omega-3s from fatty fish like salmon, helps lower blood pressure, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, stabilizes blood sugar, enhances nerve function, and improves
mood. Omega-3 fatty acids can also help alleviate the symptoms of arthritis and protect against memory loss.

It's the little things that count. Vitamins and minerals, the micronutrients in food, keep your eyes bright, your hair shiny, your nails strong, your skin glowing, and your teeth gleaming—and that's not all! Throughout this book I describe the important beauty roles that vitamins and minerals play in your body. Be sure to check out the vitamin and mineral tables, which list the best food sources of these important beauty nutrients.

An optimal beauty diet includes vital vitamins, mighty minerals, and generous quantities of antioxidants. These are the substances that combat free radicals, compounds that are formed from normal activities like breathing and digesting, as well as sun exposure, air pollution, radiation, toxins, food additives, pesticides, smoking, stress, excessive exercise, drugs, alcohol, and more. Free radicals cause damage—not only in our skin, where everyone can see the results, but also inside our bodies, where the damage is hidden but just as harmful.

Free radicals are no joke. The "free radical theory of aging" holds that free radicals wreak havoc on a molecular level, and over time this damage accumulates to the point where we develop problems like wrinkles, cataracts, cancer, and various other diseases and disorders of old age. The good news is
that there is a way to quench free radicals and to minimize the harmful effects they cause.

Antioxidants are substances that take hungry free radicals out of circulation by supplying them with the electrons they are seeking without doing any harm to the body. Often, the antioxidant is itself oxidized and can no longer function as an antioxidant—unless it is regenerated by another antioxidant. This is why you need a constant supply of refreshing antioxidants!

It is impossible to live a life that is completely free of all negative influences, so it's important to keep up your intake of antiaging antioxidants. Consuming these powerful beauty nutrients is one of the simplest, most natural things you can do when it comes to enhancing your health and beauty. When you eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, you take in natural antioxidants such as beta-carotene and vitamin E, both of which are fat soluble and therefore help protect the fatty membranes of cells, and vitamin C, which is water soluble and helps protects cells from the inside (see vitamin A in
Chapter 7
and vitamin E in
Chapter 3
, in addition to the preceding discussion of vitamin C). The more of these natural antioxidants you consume, the greater protection you have against the effects of aging, both health related and cosmetic.

Ancient cultures have known about the medicinal qualities of plants for thousands of years. Plants contain many substances that are biologically active. Some have a direct effect on the body, while others are called
biological response modifiers
because they somehow stimulate the body to help itself.

Neither vitamins nor minerals, phytochemicals are simply chemicals produced by plants, and some of them are very beneficial—especially because they have antioxidant properties. In addition to fighting free radicals, they can enhance the immune response, repair DNA damage, fight carcinogens and toxins, boost metabolism, and enhance cell-to-cell communication. Phytochemicals include polyphenols, carotenoids, flavonoids, lignans, and many more. Foods rich in phytochemicals include onions, broccoli, apples, red grapes, grape juice, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, cherries, plums, olive oil, chocolate, red wine, and tea.

By now I hope you have a solid understanding of the basic nutritional aspects of food and how the nutrients in food contribute to your health and beauty. In the next chapter, you'll find all kinds of fascinating information about the rejuvenating powers my Top 10 Beauty Foods. I've done the research for you, so all you have to do is read up—and enjoy the delicious recipes that are part of your Beauty Diet! Get ready to learn how you can achieve beauty from the inside out, as I reveal to you the antiaging secrets of my Top 10 Beauty Foods. Looking great has never been so delicious!

Nature gives you the face you have at 20; it is up to you to merit the face you have at 50!

—Coco Chanel

Why do things go more smoothly when you know you look good? Is the world simply nicer to people who are nice to look at? Or is there something inside you that is making the world take notice?

When your hair has bounce and shine, your eyes are sparkling, and you greet everyone with a delighted smile, of course your day goes better. While some new Maybel-line Great Lash mascara and Bobbi Brown blush may help your cause, there is more than surface beauty at work here. You are at your most radiantly beautiful when you feel good. Looking good can help you
feel
good. But feeling good
always
makes you look good!

During the day your body is busy converting food to energy. Your brain is burning through glucose, your muscles are working, your body is digesting, and free-radical damage is accumulating in your cells. At night, thankfully, your body goes into repair mode. Your digestion slows down. The levels of your stress hormones drop, and blood flow is diverted from your now-sleeping brain to the rest of your body. Your bloodstream rushes nutrients to your cells for growth and repair. Healthy fats are used to rebuild flexible cell membranes. Protein is used to grow hair, repair muscle, and rejuvenate the collagen in your skin. Calcium is used to rebuild bones. Antioxidants quench the free radicals that ravaged your cells during the day and work their antiaging magic. Mighty minerals and vital vitamins are busy refreshing, replenishing, and revitalizing.

My Top 10 Beauty Foods are packed with the powerful nutrients and micronutrients your body needs to keep your cells refreshed and in good repair. This chapter is all about giving your body the materials it needs helps keep you healthy, radiant, vibrant, and young. To have delicate, soft skin, thick, shiny hair; long, smooth fingernails; clear, bright eyes; and a brilliant, gleaming smile, you need to nourish your body from within. The more nutrient-rich foods you eat, the greater you feel and the better you look!

Following are foods that will feed your features and enhance your appearance from the inside out. Read on as I unlock the secrets of the 10 most powerful foods for nourishing your natural beauty:

1.
Wild salmon

2.
Yogurt (low-fat)

3.
Oysters

4.
Blueberries

5.
Kiwifruit

6.
Sweet potatoes

7.
Spinach

8.
Tomatoes

9.
Walnuts

10.
Dark chocolate

Salmon (especially the wild kind) is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. What's even more exciting is that consuming the pink fish can enhance your beauty. I picked salmon for my Top 10 list because it is one of the best food sources of omega-3 fatty acids, those beneficial fats that enhance our health and appearance by fighting inflammation, keeping our cells supple, improving circulation, and helping our brains function optimally. Salmon is a beauty food because its nutrients play a key role in keeping the skin's outer layer soft and smooth. The omega-3s in salmon reduce inflammation on the cellular level that can cause redness, wrinkles, and loss of firmness.

Salmon offers multiple beauty benefits:

Omega-3 fatty acids.
These replenish the lipids in the skin, which helps keep skin flexible, helps reduce moisture loss, and may improve acne symptoms. Studies have found that fish oils can protect against the sun's ultraviolet rays, which can lead to free-radical damage, skin aging, and the potential for skin cancer. Other research suggests that omega-3 fats may help keep eyes healthy by protecting against dry eye syndrome. While it is possible to buy fish oil in capsules, research has suggested that fatty
acids are absorbed better from whole-food sources. The beneficial fatty acids in salmon (and other fatty fish, such as herring and trout) are eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Technically these fatty acids aren't "essential," because the human body is capable of synthesizing them, but this process depends on many different factors. The simplest and most pleasurable way to obtain fatty acids in optimal amounts is to eat them!

Protein.
Salmon is one of the best sources of high-quality, easily digested protein that is low in saturated fat. To maintain healthy skin and grow healthy hair and long, strong fingernails, you need to eat protein every day. Protein also plays an essential role in the production of collagen (which gives skin its structure) and elastin (which gives skin its flexibility). Your body needs protein to make everything from neurotransmitters and antibodies to the enzymes that power chemical reactions and the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in your blood. Protein is good for suppressing appetite because it is digested slowly and does not cause an elevation in blood sugar.