Introduction: Eat Your Way to Gorgeous Skin All of us are looking to spend less but still get high-level results with our beauty routines. The good news is that including foods in your diet that support healthy skin is easier and more cost effective than any other skin-care method. Feeding your skin from the inside out with skin-friendly foods and whipping up skin-saving beauty treatments with things you have in your pantry are what I call being skin savvy. What many people don't know is that your kitchen pantry holds many secret ingredients with multiple uses that will give you skin-revitalizing results. I will show you how to use many of them, such as olive oil, baking soda, honey, canned beans, avocados, vanilla extract, sea salt, oatmeal, and fiber powder, and I will also introduce you to many new powerful ingredient favorites.
If you choose to live life productively and to the max, if you are open to lifestyle improvement, achieving better skin quickly, a slimmer silhouette, and a pared-down medicine cabinet, plus fewer trips to the cosmetics counter, this book is for you. Enjoy it over the course of many months, or years, and I guarantee you'll see and feel a significant difference. Cooking Your Way to Gorgeous teaches you how to combine the power of ingestible nutrients and topical ingredients to visibly change the appearance of your skin.
You will read a lot about 'hero' ingredients in this book. When discussing gorgeous skin, the term pops up frequently. A hero is any nutrient or food, or combination thereof, that boosts health, wellness, and beauty. Hero ingredients and recipes offer you A+ benefits, above and beyond the rest. You'll notice that we have labeled quite a few recipes in this book as 'hero -recipes'--these are my all-time favorites and most efficacious. In the -chapters that follow, I will explain what these hero foods can do for your skin and offer you a wealth of simple, delicious recipes you can make with them.
But for now, here is your jump-start cheat sheet: The most important hero foods to eat, in my opinion, are:
1) berries, camu camu, and pomegranates (antioxidants)
2) seeds, nuts, and sprouts (protein and vitamin E)
3) fish (omega-3 fatty acids)
4) greens, the darker the better (vitamin A)
5) whole grains (antioxidants)
These hero foods work for every body part and physical channel to provide internal and external beauty. In this book, I encourage you to not only cook with hero items to feed your skin, but to use them in facial recipes and concoctions to apply to your skin.
Focusing on beauty as a whole, this book will help you leverage your everyday eating habits to become the most beautiful person you can be inside and out. You can get a skin-care guru, health and beauty coach, and a personal chef without the $2,000 per hour price tag. I'm all about the pep talk and helping YOU reach your goals. If you like chocolate, you will get it. Craving nachos? I have a recipe that's good for your skin and cheesy delicious. Are you a hearty-soup fan or a burger connoisseur? In this book you will find simple, fresh recipes that can actually aid you in your quest for clearer skin. If you like your mac and cheese and cake, too, you will have them--with a high performance twist that's beneficial to your skin and beauty. Even your cocktails get a Borba health boost, as was written about in the New York Times. I want you to use all the information I have researched, reviewed, and refined over the years so you don't have to reinvent the way you cook. I want you to look and feel your best without having to sacrifice what you love to eat. Eating the foods you love in the right way will reveal your healthiest skin. When you look great you feel great, your inner light shines through, your beauty beams across the room, and that shining inner beauty conquers all.
If you are serious about improving the health and appearance of your skin, this cooking beauty book is for you. In these user-friendly recipes, the key ingredients can also be used to create homemade facials or cosmetic tricks while you prepare the meal, or during the few minutes you sneak for yourself in your own home spa.
Each ingredient can yield multiple uses for total body benefit. For example, due to their high vitamin C content, red and green hot chile peppers and bell peppers can power your skin to glow. Making a great chicken sauté with these ingredients, plus grapeseed oil for the pan, will give you multiple health and beauty benefits in one fell swoop, deliciously. But did you also know that when you apply hot chile peppers on your skin it helps with circulation, which is great for dimply skin on the legs, tummy, and body? A quick, targeted body serum would be to muddle (mash/mix together) the chile pepper or a chile paste along with the grapeseed oil and rub it vigorously on the skin before a hot shower. Wash it off when you feel the tingle.
If you have a lot on your plate, and you don't have the time or focus to radically change the way you cook, eat, and care for your skin (who does?) but you are open to improvement--this book gives you an easy route to beautiful skin. It's the insider's scoop on how to achieve results without completely overhauling your eating habits or lifestyle--and it's immensely helpful and fun, too. You will find time-saving tips, tricks, fun facts, home-spa treatments, and problem-solving food ingredients that are essential for increased energy and improved health--and will help the body and complexion at any age.
For example, do you ever find that when bedtime rolls around that you and your loved one retire at the same time, but, by the time you've just gotten into your beauty routine, your partner's already done and fast asleep in bed? You dab on cream for that dry patch, and astringent for that breakout, a dab of moisturizer A for the forehead, a slathering of moisturizer B for the neck . . . pimple cream on the left, vitamin E on the scar, a pat-pat under the jowls for tightening (doesn't work), serum on the nose, cream under the eyes, Vaseline on your lips, skin brightening cream on your cheeks . . . too much time spent catering to bathroom-business minutia is eating up your free time! This is precious time you could be reading, relaxing in front of the TV, or, ahem, enjoying your partner. Wouldn't it be fabulous if you could pare down your beauty rituals and synthesize your facial products and procedures? If you had better skin overall, you could. And you will, if you can tweak the way you eat.
As you begin your journey, the biggest thing to know is that even if you start to revert to your old habits--unhealthy eating can be a vicious cycle--you can quickly make up for lost time and get back on track, so don't give up! Simply by being mindful, you can control and nurture your beauty. You will learn how to experiment with items you already have at home to make your own regimen, meal, or skin-care items on the cheap. For example, if you use topical anti-aging serums or even basic moisturizers, why wouldn't you use the same active ingredients internally? This book will give you the tools to creatively synergize both the topical and internal systems to work together. For example, if you get great results from a skin-care product that contains vitamin C, I will show you how to get optimal results by making recipes that contain vitamin C. If you're using an ingredient in a topical skin-care product, try to eat foods that contain the same ingredients.
What you do and don't have in your cabinets, pantry, and refrigerator will help keep your skin looking its best. With over 125 healthy recipes, quick and easy facials, hair-care treatments, and pantry-stocking tips, curbing the frenzied cycle of unhealthy eating and recapturing your beauty power will be an eye opener, a game changer, and won't dent your dollars. Many of us suffer from acne scarring, premature gray hair, smoker's face, unwanted facial hair, dark under-eye circles . . . but let's face it, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Dry sensitive skin, enlarged pores, bacne, wrinkles, weight challenges . . . whatever your challenge, Cooking Your Way to Gorgeous will help keep skin looking flawlessly translucent and radiant. I want you to feel enthralled, to walk away looking and feeling gorgeous--and empowered inside and out. You should feel inspired by your own health and life!
Take It from the Top
Chapter 1
Your hair is the frame of your face. Hair makes a statement that dictates a lot about your personality, too. When it looks great you feel confident and beautiful. When it looks dry, frizzy, or oily, you pull it back in a ponytail or smother it under a hat. Good news: It's very easy to enhance and improve your hair's beautiful luster and shine and fall in love with it all over again. Square one: Make sure that you are drinking at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water daily. Not only will your skin repair and recharge, but your entire body will thank you, including your hair. If you find the taste of water to be boring--and lots of people do--squeeze in some lemon juice, use the flavored water brand of your choice, or turn your water into a pitcher of cold, easy-to-gulp green tea. Green tea may influence the serum levels of certain hormones that are linked to at least one form of hair loss common in women and men.
To have radiant, healthy, and glowing skin and full, shiny hair, it's important to understand that skin and hair share the same nutritional requirements. In other words, if your body is healthy and nourished, your hair will shine and your skin will glow, too.
Since many of us can't afford frequent salon visits or high-end designer shampoos, I will give you some recipes for homemade hair treatments.
TIP: Give your skin an antioxidant boost by treating yourself to a green tea Popsicle. Brew a quart of green tea. Once it has cooled, add in ¼ cup Truvia Baking Blend, and stir until dissolved. Transfer to Popsicle molds and freeze.
©2013 Scott-Vincent Borba. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Cooking Your Way to Gorgeous: Skin-Friendly Superfoods, Age-Reversing Recipes, and Fabulous Homemade Facials. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.