Can you really eat your way to amazing skin?
The secret to a glowing, youthful complexion may not come from the beauty counter, but from your local farmers market.
At least, according to makeup and beauty expert Wendy Rowe.
“When you eat things that are natural and organic … that shows on the outside, too,” says Rowe, whose clients include such fresh-faced stars as Sienna Miller and Cara Delevingne. Her new lifestyle and beauty book, “Eat Beautiful” (Clarkson Potter, out now), boasts some 70 recipes featuring “nutrient-boosting ingredients” that will, per the author, “nourish your skin from the inside out.”
Could one eat one’s way to more beautiful skin? I was willing — OK, desperate — to find out, and turned to Rowe for help.
“The most important thing is to buy fresh produce,” Rowe says, suggesting I make her bone broth and use it for a soup with organic vegetables. She also recommends abstaining from alcohol three days a week, braving the cold to get air and sunshine, exercising 20 minutes a day, and washing and moisturizing morning and night. As for some of the more extreme advice in her book — like chewing each piece of food 40 times and fasting twice a week — she suggests I just do what feels right.
“You don’t want to murder anyone,” she says. “It’s all about listening to your body — and being mindful of what you eat.”
On Sunday, I start off with hot water with lemon to aid digestion, and visit the farmers market, where I buy leafy greens, root vegetables and a whole chicken. I feel so virtuously “mindful” that I reward myself by eating out at my favorite restaurant and ordering a glass of wine. And then another. But I do dutifully chew each mouthful of food 40 times, which is not as easy as it sounds and makes me look — judging from my dining companion’s facial expressions — like I’ve lost my mind.
I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but after five days my skin looks better: fewer zits, tighter pores, and a bright and rosy complexion.
Monday, I make myself Rowe’s red cabbage salad for lunch, featuring kale, shaved carrots, sliced almonds and a turmeric dressing. The roughage makes me feel more bloated than “beautiful,” plus I then stay up all night to make roast chicken and broth so I can eat “clean” for the rest of the week, which means I end up exhausted.
But the fowl? The stock? Delicious. Most of the recipes I try from “Eat Beautiful” are tasty. The chicken stew with carrots and sweet potato gets unexpected sweetness from sweating “infection fighting” onions and garlic in coconut oil. The pureed kale soup is rich and flavorful. The whitefish with parsley butter is simple and virtuous.
I avoid wine and wind down nights with herbal tea, a surprisingly satisfying ritual I plan to (mostly) keep. I also give myself two “calming” chamomile-mud face masks — which Rowe recommends, although I went for store-bought as opposed to one of her DIY concoctions. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but after five days my skin looks better: fewer zits, tighter pores, and a bright and rosy complexion.
On the sixth day of the cleanse, I try to drink only liquids, first a coconut-pineapple-spinach smoothie and then several cups of broth. But I break down at lunch and order lentil soup and practically inhale the complimentary — and “beauty betraying,” as Rowe calls it — white bread that comes with it.
When I get back to the office, a colleague tells me that my skin looks “great” — leaving me guilt-ridden.
“I’m going to do this diet forever,” I tell myself. And by “forever,” I mean until the weekend, when I gorge on Cuban food and red wine — and don’t feel bad about it in the least.