The Beauty Detox Solution (14 page)
Read The Beauty Detox Solution Online
Authors: Kimberly Snyder
Our goal with the Beauty Detox Solution is to preserve as many of our enzymes as possible. Think about it: if we have
fewer
enzymes working for us, their priority has to be the major processes that help us to stay alive, like digestion and blood rebuilding. This fits right in with Beauty Energy. Enzymes are essential for our vitality and increase our Beauty Energy. What if we had a
plentiful
supply of enzymes in our system? You guessed it! The enzymes would be able to tend to both the major processes and those lower on the body's totem pole of priorities (but that are very important to us), like tending to our limp hair and the crow's-feet around our eyes!
One way to do this is to infuse our body with enzymes, which are found in raw plant foods. The more of this living fuel we eat, the more alive we will feel! Enzymes are heat-sensitive entities. Though they hold up pretty well in the freezer, they become denatured and damaged at about 118 degrees F, and die at temperatures just above that. This makes sense if you think about the fact that fire does not add; it takes away. Have you ever burned your finger with a match or by picking up something really hot? The skin on your finger turned red and then possibly even black, as the cells were destroyed.
It is the same process with vegetables. Take a look at a head of vibrant green kale. It is so incredibly thick and waxy that when you go to wash it, the water molecules slip right of it, just like they do on the mighty leafy plants in the Amazon jungle, which could shade us from a torrential downpour. Now sauté that kale, fry it in a heated pan, and watch how the very vibrancy of the leaves fades. The leaves acquire a soft, mushy consistency and absorb water. Their powerful energy has been broken down.
Why You've Never Seen an Old Wild Animal
Unless a wild animal is
really
old or sick and close to death, have you ever noticed that you can't really tell how old it is? I noticed this throughout the eleven African safaris I went on during my world journey in such countries as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania and Swaziland.
Domesticated animals and pets start to look old and weathered over time. They also get degenerative diseases like we do, such as arthritis, cancer and type 2 diabetes! Well, it makes sense, because unlike wild animals, they are usually fed processed and pre-packaged food!
When we cook our food, we kill off the enzymes and diminish the vibrancy of the food itself. When we constantly eat food with diminished vibrancy, our own “oomph” factor starts to fizzle. We directly take in the energy of the food that we con
sume. Therefore, to promote our rejuvenation process, we need to load up on our living food friends: the mighty enzymes. Life begets life.
Enzyme-rich foods are also uniquely designed to help us digest them, and this helps us lose weight. How? The enzymes in raw foods alleviate some of the work that our digestive enzymes have to do to break down and digest food. The three basic digestive enzymes we're concerned with are amylases, proteases and lipases, which are the specific digestive enzymes used to break down starches, proteins and fats, respectively. Let's use the example of fats to demonstrate what happens when we cook our food. When you eat avocados, for instance, the lipase in the avocado helps you digest the avocado without taxing your digestive enzyme reserves. But let's say you're going to use olive oil to cook a vegetable. The fat in the olive oil gets heated to high temperatures, killing of its lipase enzymes. Without the lipase in the olive oil, you need to use more of your lipase enzymes to digest the fat. Not only do you use more digestive enzymes, but you run the risk of that olive oil contributing to the sludge (and ultimately to your body fat) since it doesn't digest as easily.
Again, this is not the case with a raw plant fat, such as an avocado, which will digest in the stomach with its own lipase enzymes. This is why raw nuts are much less fattening than roasted nuts!
Beauty Detox Digestive Enzymes
SPECIFIC ENZYME | BREAKS DOWN⦠|
Amylase | Starch |
Protease | Protein |
Lipase | Fat |
Wait,
you might be thinking,
there-are centuries-old culinary traditions that rely on heating and processing foods⦠And don't we have enough enzymes to digest our food?
Sure we do, but that doesn't mean we need to overly rely on them. Doing so takes enzymes away from the myriad of other things they can do for your body. The Beauty Detox is all about
maximizing
your body's potential, and part of that is preservingâand even increasingâyour enzyme reserves.
This is not to suggest that we must eat 100 percent raw foods. Easily digestible cooked food has its place also. But it does mean that we need to increase the percentage of raw greens and vegetables we consume overall. As you learned in Chapter 3, it is important to always consume raw plant foods at the beginning of every meal. That could mean a salad
or simply a few celery sticks. We can build sensibly from there, but starting each meal with these raw greens and other veggies will ensure that we are increasing our enzyme intake. This alone will start rebuilding our beauty and adding to our Beauty Energy. And enzymes aren't the only heat-sensitive entities on our list. Vitamins and other nutrients also respond to temperature. When we eat
all
cooked food, our organs do not get as many nutrients as they do when we consume raw food, and we tend to eat more to feel satiated.
True Beauty Story
JULIAN DE VITO IS A THIRTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD MAN WITH A VERY BUSY PRODUCTION
and publicity career in Hollywood. When he was working on a movie, it was not unusual for him to gain twenty pounds over the course of three months, due to stress and the ubiquitous snack service stations stocked with junk food. Overall, he was about forty pounds overweight. At his young age, he already had high blood pressure and, thanks in part to his raging sweet tooth, he was an ideal diabetes candidate.
He periodically undertook a weight loss program in which he would eat only the prepackaged, microwaved food products that this particular diet program required. He would go on the program for a few weeks at a time, drop a bunch of weight, then gain it back a few weeks later. I don't know what was more horrifying: his yo-yo weight loss efforts and the strain they put on his poor body, or the amount of processed, preservative-filled, “dead” food he ate regularly on these weight loss programs, which only created more sludge in his body.
We started working together, and I put him on a transition diet with an emphasis on eating unprocessed foods with their natural enzymes intact through the first part of his day. He always started his meal with a raw salad or vegetable, and increased the overall percentage of unprocessed food in his diet. He cut out acidic or processed foods, such as grilled chicken sandwiches and commercial cereal with skim milk.
He loved the easy recipes I taught him, and realized that it was simple to make salads and other dishes taste amazing, and that there were so many great options. In eight months he shed his forty-two extra pounds and got the added bonus of glowing skin. People even started telling him he looked like he was in his late twenties (not a bad thing when you work in Hollywood)! It has been over two years now since Julian and I started working together, and he has broken the cycle of yo-yoing and kept the weight off. He currently weighs in at 160 pounds, down from the 205 pounds he weighed when I met himâan ideal weight for his five-foot-nine-inch frame.
By starting our meals with raw greens and other raw vegetables, we load up on some enzymes right at the start to help us digest the rest of our food. We also feel fuller faster since these foods contain so much fiber, and we can eat them in abundance while still eating fewer overall calories.
WHERE COOKED FOOD FITS IN
Even while the majority of what you eat should be enzyme-rich raw food, there is definitely room for the right kind of cooked food in your diet. In fact, cooked food plays a beneficial role, as it brings some heaviness and grounding to the diet. We always start our meals with some raw vegetables or greens, but we can follow with some high-quality cooked food, especially at dinner. For people with weak digestive systems, lightly cooked vegetables, such as broccoli, may digest better than raw ones. Starchy vegetables, such as sweet potatoes and yams, digest better when they are very well cooked. And high-quality, gluten-free cooked grains, such as quinoa, are excellent for us to include in our diet.
MINERALS + ENZYMES = GREEN DRINKS
The absolute most powerful way to simultaneously up our mineral and enzyme consumption is to consume green drinks every day, specifically the
Glowing Green Smoothie
and the
Glowing Green Juice
. In green drinks we condense the vegetables and fruits by blending or juicing and, in so doing, multiply the quantities of enzymes and minerals we obtain. Green-based drinks are the
real
super foodsânot exotic, expensive or hard-to-find fruits or plants from foreign countries.
Perhaps you are thinking,
How many days a week do I have to do that?
or
For how long do I have to that?
And my counterquestion back to you is, “How many days do you want to be healthy and beautiful?” Remember this is not a quick-fix answer to detoxify and look great but a way to permanently break out of our old habits. To maximize our intake of minerals and enzymes, we should aim to consume the Glowing Green Smoothie or the Glowing Green Juice
every
day.
But don't fret. The green drinks are delicious! The fruit cuts right through any “green” taste and makes for a balanced, enjoyable flavor. You will be pleasantly surprised with your first sip! When I drink them, I get a rush of sustained energy that lasts for hours, I feel
clearheaded, calm, and it is much easier to focus on work or any tasks at hand. I can't wait for you to experience the same thing! The great news is that as the biochemistry of your body changes and your looks and energy start to improve, you will actually look forward to your green drinks. Seriously! I have had tons of clients report back months later that they are now addicted to their morning ritual.
Think having a blended vegetable drink sounds weird? Don't want to invest in a blender at this time? You are not alone and it is totally okay. In the Blossoming Beauty phase you will not have to make or consume these green drinks. The Blossoming Beauty phase still provides for powerful cleansing and improvement by incorporating all the other principles we talked about. Down the road, as you start to experience great results and your body becomes cleaner, you may be interested in going further and revisiting the green drinks, which come into play beginning in the Radiant Beauty phase.
True Beauty Story
AARON STEINER IS A FORTY-SOMETHING-YEAR-OLD BANKER. SINCE HE DEALS WITH
trading stock, he usually gets to his office by 5:30 a.m. When I met him, he was consuming five cups of coffee
before
noon, and he was still in a perpetual energy slump. After work he ate some kind of quick dinner, then usually passed out right away. He never felt good or felt that he had any real energy to do anything. He was literally dragging himself through lifeâif you can call that living! He did not want to change his lunches and dinners very much, since they were often either rushed or at fancy restaurants with clients. But the one thing he did agree to have every morning was a Glowing Green Smoothie on his way to work. I brought his wife on board and she started making them for the both of them. Within a week Aaron reported to me that he was feeling much more energetic and was already cutting back on coffee. Within six weeks he was down to one and a half cups of coffee for the whole day and was dropping weight. At the four-month mark he was still drinking one and a half cups of coffee, but he had lost fifteen pounds, his cholesterol numbers had improved considerably and he had more energy than he had had in years! He had even started to practice yoga on the weekends and one night during the week. While he cut back on his meat intake and made some other improvements, it was the Glowing Green Smoothie that really made the major difference.
Over time, as your body's makeup shifts, you will start rooting out the blockages and poisons that are causing cravings for the heavier foods or caffeinated beverages that you consumed in the past. And you will start loving how the green drinks make you feel light and energetic and, yes, how they improve your appearance and help you drop the pounds!
GLOWING GREEN SMOOTHIE
I've been talking about my Glowing Green Smoothie on my website and in the press for years. It is based on Dr. Ann Wigmore's philosophy of blended food, which I learned about firsthand at her institute in Puerto Rico. Dr. Wigmore studied cellular nutritional healing for over thirty-five years. One of her major theories is that by blending foods before eating them, you “predigest” them, so the body does not have to work to break down the foods and waste unnecessary energy in digestion.
Remember our Beauty Energy principle?
Many of the important minerals and other nutrients in food are encased in the cell walls, and these need to be ruptured to extract the nutrients. Thus, blending helps make the greens' full spectrum of nutrition readily available to the body without the body doing any work. We also add some fresh fruit, which really balances the taste of the greens. Served cold, the Glowing Green Smoothie is delicious!
What is so wonderful about the Glowing Green Smoothie is that you retain the
integrity of the whole vegetables and fruits, so you still enjoy all the fiber. When we move into this new way of eating, fiber is one of our best friends, as it helps to sweep up the newly awakened poisons and helps strengthen our bowel movements. The high volume of fiber in the Glowing Green Smoothie keeps us feeling full throughout the morning and up to lunch, especially in the beginning, when we are used to being stimulated by denser and heavier volumes of food.