4 Ways Eating Plants Helps Enhance Your Natural Beauty

When it comes to looking and feeling naturally beautiful, you absolutely need a healthy, whole-food diet.  Eating a rainbow of colors will make a world of difference, which means you'll be eating lots of delicious plants and botanicals like vegetables, herbs, and berries. Yay!

Plants and botanicals provide unique, potent, medicinal effects that build resistance to disease and aging by fighting free radical damage, and affecting inflammation, detoxification, and your hormones. Here's how:

• Many can be eaten raw with their inherent digestive enzymes intact.
  
• They are mainly alkalizing to the body, which promotes pH balance by neutralizing excess dietary or metabolic acids.
• These same plants and botanicals are those which also provide you healthy fiber for good digestion and detoxification.  
• But, their superstar quality comes from the fact that there are thousands of antioxidants found in plants and botanicals that play accessory roles in optimizing health and beauty.  These antioxidants are the phytonutrients responsible for the color, taste, smell, and unique characteristics of plants such as fruits, berries, vegetables from the land and sea, herbs, spices, sprouts, fresh juices, and green powders.  

​So, I have certainly written about the benefits and necessity of healthy fats to enhance your beauty, plus the advantages of healthy proteins, including grass fed meats and collagen. But, plant foods (especially vegetables) should still make up the majority of your plate at every meal, they're also the best snacks - nature's fast food!  Eight in 10 Americans have a "phytonutrient gap," meaning they are missing out on health benefits provided by phytonutrients given their lack of fruit and vegetable intake. Ten servings per day is ideal, so try to work up to that amount.

Eating plants definitely helps to enhance your natural beauty in so many ways.  Read on:

​4 Ways Eating Plants Helps ​Enhance Your Natural Beauty

​Guest Author: Shelly Stinson. Shelly is a Denver-based freelance writer who's passionate about all things related to healthy living. Follow her on twitter at @shellystins to keep up with her latest work.​
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Since 2002, the cosmetics industry in the United States has grown by more than $22 billion annually. Yes, billion. It’s no surprise really because one trip to the make-up store to pick up your favorite foundation, eyeshadow, lipstick, or blush can hit your debit or credit card pretty hard. And if you buy your goods from a high-end retailer instead, it can hurt your bank account even more.

While there’s certainly no problem with dressing up your assets with a little bit of color, true beauty or natural beauty is something that starts on the inside. Physically, it involves giving your body the nutrients it needs in order to flourish as much as possible, showing off all of its exquisiteness, like a flower in full bloom. Mentally, it means giving your mind and spirit the best environment for growth, allowing you to be the best person you can be.

One way to enhance this type of inner and outer natural beauty is to eat a diet that is high in plants. This means taking in more vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, herbs, spices, and any other foods that come from the earth. Eating a lot of plant-based foods helps enhance your natural beauty a few different ways.
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Here are four of them:

1. It lowers your risk of disease.
​Being naturally beautiful means having that healthy glow. Research has found that eating plants can reduce your risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other types of major medical conditions that threaten to take it away. Not that you can’t be beautiful if you’re ill, because you most certainly can. However, eating plant-based foods can add a little more color to your cheeks as they’re giving the body the nutrients it needs to do as good as it possibly can.

​2. It increases your nutrition quota.
When you’re energetic and loving life, your natural beauty will shine right through. Plants help with this because, in eating them, you’re getting the vitamins and minerals necessary to not only help your body function, but help it function well. All of your systems work better because they’re getting the substances and nourishment they need, which means that you’re able to do whatever it is that makes you happy—and happiness is beautiful!

​3. It gives you healthier skin.
If your goal is healthy skin, maximizing your natural beauty on the outside, the foods you eat can help. For instance, the lycopene in tomatoes increases your skin’s natural SPF and kale’s vitamin C and A can give you firmer skin. Additionally, eating a lot of processed foods, especially those high in sugar, can increase your incidences of breakouts and cause wrinkles, making whole foods a better option when it comes to protecting and enhancing your beautiful outer covering.

​4. It promotes brain health.
Another part of being naturally beautiful means using all of your knowledge and skills to do wonderfully amazing things. It is leaving the world a better place than it was when you arrived thanks to the inner beauty you possess and willingly give to others. Protecting your brain power is critical then, and that is something that has been linked to diets high in plant-based foods.


So, whether you eat your plant foods raw, baked, sautee'd, soaked, sprouted, fermented, or grilled, try to find ways to incorporate them into your daily life.  Your beauty, body, and brain will thank you. Your mama was right - eat your veggies!

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