Jolene Hart - Eat Pretty: Nutrition for Beauty, Inside and Out

To my mom, who taught me that food is medicine, and my dad, who showed me that laughter is, too. And to Rob, who makes every day more beautiful.

Text copyright 2014 by Jolene Hart.
Illustrations copyright 2014 by Chronicle Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-3229-7 (epub, mobi)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Hart, Jolene.
Eat pretty / by Jolene Hart.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4521-2366-0 (alk. paper)
1. Nutrition. 2. Beauty, Personal. 3. Functional foods. I. Title.

RA784.H369 2014
613.2dc23
2013026812

Designed by Allison Weiner
Illustrations by Vikki Chu
Typesetting by Frank Brayton

The opinions expressed in this book are solely those of Jolene Hart, a health coach certified by the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and the American Association of Drugless Practitioners, who does not dispense medical advice and is not acting in the capacity of a licensed physician, dietician, nutritionist, psychologist, or other licensed or registered professional. The information presented in this book should not be construed as medical advice and is not meant to replace treatment by licensed health-care professionals. Please consult your physician or professional health-care advisor regarding your specific health-care needs before making any changes to your diet, lifestyle, or medical treatment regimen. Use of the information in this book is at the readers own discretion and risk. The author and Chronicle Books hereby disclaim any and all liability resulting from injuries, loss, or damage caused by following any recommendations contained in this book.

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

Imagine youre a beauty editor at a major magazine. You have access to all the makeup, styling products, nail polish, cutting-edge skin care and perfumes you can handle, and you get them all before your friends and family. Did I mention that they dont cost you a thing, because its your job to test them? You can call up any beauty company and theyll gladly rush you the product that youre coveting, and half a dozen others. You also get facials, blowouts, haircuts, massages, manicures (performed at your desk, if necessary), pedicures, and the like pretty regularly; all in a days work. Some would say you have it all. All except the one thing you want most: clear skin.

Welcome to my personal nightmare.

My painfully irritated complexion was just one sign that I was coming up short on healthy beauty tools. There was the itchy eczema on my legs, the dark circles under my eyes, the expanding waistlinebut that wasnt even the extent of it. I didnt feel beautiful either. I didnt have energy or sparkle the way I knew I should. When I realized that I had just about every beauty product in existence at my fingertips and yet I wasnt a step closer to looking and feeling my best, I started searching for an answer beyond the beauty aisle. I needed real solutions, and the conventional lineup of treatments, products, and prescriptions had already failed. Where was that magic product that would restore the beauty and well-being that was my birthright?

If youve been asking yourself the same question, I welcome you into this space. You, along with millions of other women around the world, are ready for a powerful new approach to your beauty: Eat Pretty. The information in this book brought beauty back into my life, cleared my skin, rebuilt my relationship with food, helped me become more resilient to the effects of stress, and enabled me to create a lifestyle of beauty that supports my body and mind every day. My Eat Pretty journey was a more pampering, empowering, and transformative experience than I ever imagined it would be. You too have a transformation ahead of you, one that requires you to look beyond quick fixes. Looking and feeling your best means exploring good digestion, healthy hormones, restful sleep, emotional health and, as the foundation of it all, Eat Pretty foods that support your beauty and wellness. Each of these beauty players contributes to your ultimate goal: to reveal your most radiant self. Ill discuss their functions in detail in the pages ahead.

You may already know that good nutrition is more than just getting your recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals, or adhering to a calories in, calories out equation. You may have adopted diets designed to help with issues from weight loss to allergies to mood. But so many of us possess a foundational understanding of nutrition without an appreciation of the deep connection between food and beauty. Its time to learn one vital nutritional lesson: that the power to shape all aspects of our appearance, today and in the future, lies on our plates. One can have an underlying knowledge of good health and nutrition, as I did, and still fail to create a diet and lifestyle that supports beauty. So many of the foods readily available to us today are sneaky saboteurs of our looks that tempt us with promises of weight loss, convenience, or adventurous eating. I filled my diet with them, unknowingly. I also didnt take time to cook meals from whole, unprocessed foods, or even establish a regular mealtime. I saw food as an enemy, a vice, or a cover for my emotions. And I listened to advice from experts who assured me that there was no connection between my skin problems and my diet, even though I sensed that my blemishes and rashes were cries for help from my body. But all of that changed when I learned to eat for beauty.

In this age of unprecedented exploration in nutritional science, the groundbreaking research and mind-blowing discoveries happening around us finally prove something about beauty that is as familiar as it is true, simple, and fundamental: we are what we eat. I can hear the groans already. Ugh, I guess Im a Diet Coke, a grilled cheese sandwich, and a side of fries. Or, Well, I look pretty good, but I dont feel great ... am I all those years of microwave popcorn and Cosmopolitans? But I say, Absolutely not! Even if your eating habits were less than beautiful yesterday, boosting your beauty nutrition will have a major impact on your glow and energy today. Once I freed my own diet from processed snacks, diet sodas, and inflammation-causing foods and replaced them with fresh, living beauty foods, the longstanding burden was lifted from my body and skin.

This news is incredibly empoweringwe write our beauty story with every biteso dont feel overwhelmed at the changes that you may want to make as you work your way through this book. I promise, the Eat Pretty lifestyle feels so true to you that you wont crave anything less for your beautiful life. Get excited that you have a hand in your beauty. Actually, you have two handsone for your fork and one for your knife.

I created the Eat Pretty program to be the perfect complement to your current beauty routine; its a lifestyle that will deepen your beauty many times over, giving you a stunning canvas for the products you already love. In this compact volume built to accompany you through your busy and fabulous life, Eat Pretty explains in detail exactly how to put your beautifying lifestyle into practice. Well concentrate on the factors you strongly influence, to start you on the path to gorgeous for life.

My approach to beauty borrows from my experience as a beauty editor and journalist, my personal search for beauty and wellness, and my work as a health coach. In , The Essential Beauty Players, reveals that diet is by no means the only influencer of healthy beauty. Stress, digestion, environment, sleep, emotions, and yes, genetics, all factor into the beauty equation. My goal in writing