Alexis Wolfer - The Recipe for Radiance: Discover Beautys Best-Kept Secrets in Your Kitchen

2014 by Alexis Wolfer

Photography 2014 by Evan Sung

Published by Running Press,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013953426

E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5186-9

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Edited by Cindy De La Hoz

Designed by Corinda Cook

Photography: Evan Sung

Photography assistant: Eric Bissell

Food styling: Suzanne Lenzer

Food styling assistant: Ashely Schleeper

Prop styling: Maeve Sheridan

Prop styling assistant: Kristen Usui

Hair and makeup: Desirae Cherman

Models: Abeba Davis, Jeanette Eng, Sharlotta Kay, Katelyn

OFriel, Annika Sundin, Carly Wolfer

Typography: Avenir, Gotham, Great Vibes, Lomba, and Melbourne

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Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

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Dedication

For all of the women and girls out there who think theyre anything less than stunningly gorgeous, know this: you are beautiful exactly as you are. Makeup, skin care, and, yes, even these beauty recipes are fun and glamorous, but they neither determine nor define your beauty. Your real beauty exudes from within. Dont let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

In memory of my papa, Dr. James J. Feffer, who taught me the power of education, hard work, and knowledge; and showed me the value of integrity, loyalty, poise, and kindness. Hoping this is of interest.

Contents

S o many of us obsess over calories, fat grams, and carbohydrates in the quest for beauty, but were doing it all wrong. If the goal is to be beautiful (and I dont know a woman for whom thats not the goal!), we need to ditch the low-carb, fat-free, whatever-is-next fad diet and fundamentally shift our perspective. We need to put ourselves on a beauty dietone that embraces the power of food and its impact on our looks both when eaten and applied topically.

Want to be more beautiful? Say good-bye to diets that may make you drop pounds but leave your complexion dull and hair drab. Wave farewell to all those pricey store-bought products lining your bathroom counters, many of them packed with chemicals, providing questionable results and draining your wallet. Instead, meet me in your kitchen, because thats where youll find the key to radiant skin, thick hair, and strong nails. You just need to know the recipesthe same ones that led Access Hollywood to dub me Female Beauty MacGyver and People StyleWatch to name me The DIY Queenand now you have them!

I say all this with conviction and confidence now, but I didnt always know that food was the key to beauty.

For a long time, I thought beauty was a number on a scale, a pricey skin cream, and perfectly painted nails. When an eating disorder brought me to that number, Este Lauder gave me that crme, and a manicure gave me those nails, I realized how wrong I was. Instead of Cindy Crawford-like looks, I had thinning hair, dull skin, and weakened (albeit perfectly polished) nails. My dietthe diet I had so strictly adhered to in the hope of achieving some ever-elusive beauty idealwas backfiring.

It finally dawned on me, you really are what you eat. (And nobody wants to be sugar-free Jell-O.)

A diet that considered Crystal Light and cucumbers food groups had an intensely negative effect on my hair, nails, skin, and eyes. That made me acutely aware of the power of food and the holistic connection between our bodies and our beauty. So, I changed gears. (Well, thats oversimplifying things, but Ill spare you the saga, because who wants the lengthy story when I can just skip right to the juicy parts?) Bottom line: I started to EAT for beauty and the payoff was profound. It fundamentally changed how I approached both my personal beauty regimen as well as my career in the beauty industry.

Combining my professional background in beauty editorial and my masters degree in womens rights, I had already begun to launch TheBeautyBean.com as the ultimate place for women to get their beauty and lifestyle information in a more empowering way. Where most womens magazines were predicated on making women feel crummy about themselves in the hopes of selling them the latest fix, I wanted to help empower women to live more beautiful lives, to subtly promote better body images, and to prevent eating disorders. Merely eliminating the unrealistic beauty ideals promoted in most womens publications in the hope of creating a place where women could get all their desired lifestyle content in a more positive way wasnt enough though.

Once I realized the power food had over our beauty (and it wasnt about eliminating food groups or crash dieting), I had to do more. I had developed a level of expertise that led me to appear on Today, share DIY beauty tips with Martha Stewart, and put champagne on a models face on E! News. Now I wanted to share all I knew about feeding your body for beauty, to help women take back the power of food for beauty the same way I had.

When I finally realized that my skin is my bodys largest organ, everything else started to make sense and I wanted to share this ultimate beauty secret! How I was feeding my body was how I was feeding my hair, skin, nails, and every other part of me. When you sweat (one of our bodys primary detoxifying mechanisms), you push the by-products of your diet through your skin. No wonder I was breaking out from all those artificial sweeteners, and suffering from dry skin on a diet that was pretty much entirely fat-free. My hair and nails were failing to grow in as quickly and strongly as I liked. No shocker there! I was barely consuming any protein, let alone any iron or any of the essential B vitamins required for healthy hair and nails.