The Beauty Detox Solution (2 page)

With my first venture, I learned the ropes of running my own business. It was a great learning experience. But soon I was pulled in the direction of a much larger mission in life: to share my passion for health and beauty with others in a much broader way. I started a health and beauty blog (www.kimberlysnyder.net), which grew quickly by word of mouth and soon started attracting a lot of press and media attention. I began conducting private nutritional counseling sessions and working with A-list celebrities (and on location at some of Hollywood's biggest film sets), counseling them on how to improve and balance their diets through cleansing. Throughout the book I share stories of some of my actual clients so that you can see the sorts of incredible results this program achieves. Of course, their real names have been changed for privacy.

It was clear from the response to my blog and counseling that there was an enormous hunger out there for the information I was sharing, and it became clear to me that I needed to do something to help people on an even larger scale. It was this hunger that was the true inspiration for this book. It also became clear to me that as part of this mission I needed to create a lifestyle company that would encompass
all
aspects of health, beauty, nutrition and wellness—a community devoted to sharing information and ideas. The inspiration for KS 1Life was born in one powerful moment: opening my bathroom cabinet. One evening I just stood staring at all the mediocre products in there, forgetting what half of them were for and not trusting those that were familiar, and I realized I had the knowledge and the ability to create amazing beauty products that would really
work
by incorporating the best of nature and technology. Then I moved to the kitchen and looked at my shelves, reflecting on the same thing: all those supplements, like probiotics and digestive enzymes, which strengthen our body's ability to cleanse itself, could be made better and more effective.

The Beauty Detox Solution
and KS 1Life reflect the heart and soul of the lessons I learned during my world journey and studies, and my passion for health. As I learned from the beautiful women of Africa, I don't advocate slathering tons of products on your skin or following complicated skin-care programs just because I want to make some extra bucks pushing unnecessary products. I want our largest organ, the skin, to breathe, and I also want women to look to the internal root causes of beauty issues to fix them, rather than mask these problems with makeup or prescription drugs. We can eat and cleanse our way to profound beauty. The right products can greatly support this, but the right diet is critical to the overall program.

From my three-year world journey and subsequent years of study, I discovered the truth about health and beauty: the healthiest tools, those that will enable us all to achieve our most beautiful selves, are born in nature and are right there for the taking. The answer is so simple: it is about eating the right foods in the right way to ensure we are consistently cleansing our bodies of toxins and getting all the beauty nutrients we need to look our best.

We don't have to starve or deprive ourselves, and we can eat abundantly. By keeping to the simple principles that I outline for you in this book, you will reach new levels of beauty and energy that will amaze you. You can look better in your thirties, forties and fifties than you did in your twenties and thirties, and
feel
better.

In Part 1 of this book I outline the broad concepts of detoxing for beauty, and in Part 2 I outline the actual phases, meal plans and recipes for you to create your own beauty solution. I recognize that we're all at different levels of health. For this reason, I've created three Beauty Detox phases: Blossoming Beauty, Radiant Beauty and True Beauty. There is one phase to fit everyone. I did
not
design the Beauty Detox Solution to be a three-step program. If you feel great as a Blossoming Beauty, then you might want to stay there. Or perhaps you're inspired to move into True Beauty. This is not a race or a competition—start with the phase that's right for you and progress at your own pace. This is not a short-term diet, but rather a lifestyle program.

Whenever I start working with a new client, before I make any dietary changes whatsoever, I always begin by explaining the concepts in Part 1. Understanding the concepts in Part 1 is critical to making this program work for you, especially since a lot of the concepts may be new to you. Reading all the information in Part 1 is essential to following the Beauty Detox and will ensure you see the results you want.

The information in this book is different from that in any other diet or detox book you may read. It is a hybrid of knowledge I've acquired from many different teachers, health institutions and training programs, as well as from my around-the-world journey.

Some of the principles we will discuss have not yet trickled into mainstream health and nutrition practices, but the concepts presented here are based on the sound, thorough research and work of many doctors, scientists and research institutions. I have cited numerous studies and specific research throughout for your reference, so that you can see how the science supports the program.

Keep an open mind as you read, and remember that many tenets of health that are widely accepted now—like how smoking cigarettes increases your odds of getting lung cancer—were not always mainstream ideas. Set aside the myriad of confusing and conflicting health concepts that you have internalized from various media, health magazines, doctors and family members. If you keep an open mind and listen to your intuition, you can discover the true secrets to beauty.

Reading this book will open up a whole new way for you to understand the powerful connection between food, health and beauty.
The Beauty Detox Solution
will take you to your most beautiful, energetic, healthy self. When I started my personal Beauty Detox, it changed my life—and I know this book can do the same for you. I'm so excited for you!

 

With Love and Best Wishes for True Beauty,

Kimberly

The connection between food and beauty is incredibly powerful—just by changing the foods you eat, you can radically change the way you look and feel. So our discussion begins with a very basic question: what are we designed to eat? And to answer it, we have to know where we as humans belong in nature. Not in a philosophical, “new age” sense, but in a physical, anatomical sense. We can't do calculus until we know how to add nine and three, and so it is in all aspects of life. Let's first take a step back and examine our place within the animal kingdom and nature.

HOW OUR BODY IS DESIGNED

One of the best ways to figure out where we belong is to look at the animal kingdom. The human body is most closely related to that of primates: monkeys, chimps (like Tarzan's sidekick) and gorillas. Our genetic makeup is more similar to that of chimpanzees than to that of any other species on the planet, with an estimated 99.4 percent of our DNA sequence shared.
¹

Look down at your hands, which are holding this book. Don't they look similar to monkeys' hands? Look at your nails, flexible fingers and opposable thumbs. Now grind your teeth back and forth. You'll find that our teeth, like monkeys', are flattened (except the front canines, which can be used to help open up the harder shells of some fruits). Our back molars are appropriate for grinding plants for easy digestion.

Carnivorous animals, like the tiger, for example, have short, inflexible “fingers,” which are really protrusions to push out and retract claws. These claws are needed to rip into the flesh of their prey. The tiger and other carnivores have sharp fangs: even their back molars are sharp and pointed, perfect for hunting and eating raw meat.
Without
these claws and sharp teeth, it would be impossible for the tiger to feast on its prey. Our hands, teeth and bodies simply aren't designed for hunting and devouring animals in the same way; we have to use tools, weapons and utensils instead.

Okay, so we
look
different. But it turns out that our digestive tract is built differently, as well. The human liver, for instance, has a low tolerance for uric acid, a by-product of digesting animal protein. In contrast, the liver of the carnivorous tiger contains uricase, which is an enzyme used to break down uric acid. This enzyme gives the carnivorous tiger's liver about fifteen times the capacity to break down uric acid from animal protein than a human liver has.

Not only are our livers designed to digest plant foods, but our stomachs are, too. The stomach juices of the tiger and other carnivores have a very high concentration of acid. This high concentration of acid helps to quickly and efficiently break down the high concentration of proteins that make up the carnivore's diet. Humans' stomach acid, on the other hand, is much less concentrated. Carnivores' stomach acid is at least ten times more concentrated, and some researchers believe it could be many times more concentrated than that.

And what is true in the liver and stomach is true in the rest of the digestive tract. The human intestine is extremely complex, and at around thirty feet, it is about twelve times as long as our torso. (The gorilla also has a long intestine—about eight to twelve times its torso length.) It is designed to be long so there is adequate time to absorb the minerals and nutrients of fruits and plant matter, which quickly break down and move through our bodies much faster than animal protein does. The carnivorous tiger, on the other hand, has a short intestine—only about three times the length of its torso. Its intestinal tract is designed for quickly getting rid of the acidic waste matter that is the by-product of animal protein.

HOW OUR DESIGN AFFECTS OUR DIET

Now we've taken a quick look at where we belong in the animal kingdom. So what does this mean for our diet?

The gorilla is a natural vegetarian, and 86 percent of its diet is composed of green leaves, shoots and stems, with the other 14 percent made up primarily of bark, roots, flowers and fruit.
²
The gorilla gets all its protein, vitamin and mineral needs from its plant-based diet and is in fact the strongest animal on earth, pound for pound.

In contrast, the tiger is a full-blooded carnivore and lives off other animals' flesh to derive its nutrition. Its organs are efficiently designed for quickly breaking down and expelling heavy fat and protein molecules, as well as the by-products of their digestion. A tiger's speedy digestive system keeps the tiger from becoming toxic and sick from its very acidic diet. Its body uses what it needs and gets the rest of the garbage out…fast!

So what happens when we have the biological makeup of a gorilla but we eat like a tiger? Trouble! We are going against the natural laws of biology.

What does this mean for your health and beauty? The key to being your healthiest, more beautiful self is eating the way your body was designed to eat. As you'll discover in more detail in Chapter 4, fruits and vegetables have powerful minerals and enzymes that promote beauty from the inside out. And it's well documented that loading up on plant foods and cutting back on animal protein help us slim down. At the Pritikin Longevity Center in Florida, forty-five hundred patients who went through a three-week program and were given a mostly plant-based diet and who exercised lost 5.5 percent of their body weight.
³

Where We Belong in Nature

 

Eating too much animal protein actually strips your body of beauty, because digestion of protein produces toxins in the body. This makes sense when you think about how your body works. It causes a great strain on your liver to process all the uric acid created from digesting animal protein. And that's big trouble, because your liver has a lot of work to do: your liver is the largest internal organ, and it's in charge of metabolizing fat and cleansing the body of toxins.

Your long intestinal tract is simply not designed to process large amounts of meat. When you put large amounts of heavy animal protein in your long intestine, the protein just hobbles along as best it can, which isn't very fast, since it has to pass through the winding corridors of so many feet of intestine. Because it takes so long in that hot environment, it can start to putrefy, or, in other words, rot, causing unhealthy bacterial growth and toxicity. There is no other way to put it: waste from digested animal products is meant to exit the body quickly, as it does in a carnivore's body, not linger in your long digestive tract.

Digesting protein creates all sorts of by-products in the body, like purines, uric acid and ammonia, all of which create acidity in the body. These toxins are absorbed into our bloodstream through the colon and circulate all around our bodies. When our blood is clogged with toxins, it can't transport as many beautifying minerals, and these toxins can age and clog the skin cells of our face. In his book Conscious Eating, Gabriel Cousens, M.D., discusses how ammonia, a by-product of digesting protein, contributes to aging. As he states, “Ammonia, which is a breakdown product of a high-flesh-food diet, is directly toxic to the system. It has been found to create free radical damage and cross-linking (a process associated with skin wrinkles and aging), as well as depletes the body's energy.”
⁴

Our bodies are cleverly designed for from the amino acids, the building blocks survival, and one of the most important of protein, in plants. That is solid proof in ways to do that is to protect the vital organs. As renowned microbiologist Dr. Robert Young points out, one way the body does this is by expanding fat cells to store acidic and toxic waste, to keep it away from our organs.
⁵
This is one reason detoxing will help you lose weight. The body won't let go of excess fat that's protecting you from your own toxins! But as you begin to cleanse yourself of toxic, acidic waste, as well as fat-soluble chemicals found in many processed foods,
⁶
you can shed the pesky extra pounds much easier. The more toxicity you have in your body, the faster you age and the more you will struggle with maintaining your ideal weight.

Let's return for a moment to the question we opened with: where do human beings fit in nature? We now have an answer. We are designed to eat a diet primarily made up of plant foods: greens, fruits and vegetables, sprouts, seeds and nuts. With this type of diet, we flourish and derive all our necessary nutrients, while also keeping our bodies toxin free and looking our most beautiful. This is the basis of the Beauty Detox Solution—you will be filling your body with nourishing plant foods that are chock-full of Beauty Minerals and other key nutrients that will make you more beautiful from the inside out.

If we want to reach our highest goals and achieve True Beauty, we have to work with nature. Many of us load up on animal protein, probably because we've been taught that we need animal protein to “be healthy,” and that we must “get enough protein” to feed our muscles and tissues. Just think about it. If we were designed to eat so much animal protein, why are so many people getting fatter and fatter, and sicker and sicker, and visibly aging so fast that Botox injections and face-lifts are now commonplace procedures? It is because we are going against nature's inherent laws. Aging at the fast rate most people age is
not
inevitable.

Don't worry. You will be getting more than enough protein on the Beauty Detox Solution, but it will be derived from beautifying plant foods.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE BEAUTY DETOX SOLUTION

What I've told you so far has been mainly observational, but there's also significant scientific evidence supporting the benefits of a plant-based, low-acid diet. And there's more and more research coming out on how dangerous a diet high in animal protein really is.

There are over thirty-five hundred scientific studies involving over fifteen thousand research scientists that report a relationship between the consumption of meats, poultry, eggs and dairy products and the incidence of numerous health issues, including but not restricted to heart disease, cancer, kidney failure, constipation, gout, gallstones, diverticulosis, hemorrhoids and osteoporosis. This research could fill this whole book alone! Here I'll list a few landmark studies and the work of researchers that I think are so important that everyone should know about their findings.