Strategies for Lifelong Health

To stay beautiful, you've got to incorporate the health foods into your daily life; the occasional carrot stick won't do it. That won't be difficult to do once you've seen the results.

The most important foods are those in your refrigerator and those you reach for first when you're hungry and want a snack. Lifelong health strategies are not nearly as restrictive as you might imagine. They just take a little organisation and desire to be healthy.

The next time you go grocery shopping, take a good look at your shopping cart and keep the following points in mind.

• Replace white-flour foods and white rice with whole-grain products and brown rice. Almost nothing in white flour makes you healthy because all of the fibre and nearly all of the essential vitamins have been lost in the refining process. Your basic carbohydrates are whole-grain breads and crackers, although you can have a little white-flour bread occasionally.
• Leave light and heavy cream, half-and-half, and fatty cheeses in the dairy case and buy low-fat or skim milk (whole milk in tea and coffee substitutes is okay if that's all that's available), low-fat cottage cheese and yoghurt, and farmer cheeses, such as mozzarella, are good too.
• Instead of chocolate, cookies, cakes, and candy, go on a fruit shopping binge. You can also lay in a supply of fresh and dried fruit, unsalted nuts, and whole-grain cookies.
• Eggs, fish, poultry, and lean meat should definitely be in your cart.
• Vegetables are it! They're one of your chief beauty sources because they're full of vitamins and low in calories. Have a good selection of fresh vegetables and crisp salad ingredients in your refrigerator.
• You can buy small quantities of butter; but whenever you can, try to substitute other similar products with less cholesterol and fewer calories. In cooking, use vegetable oils and try fat-free methods.
• Replace jams and preserves that are more than half sugar with the sugar-free variety. Or you might want to try making your own from fresh or dried fruits.
• Stock up on mineral water and natural fruit juices so that you can feel healthy while you're quenching your thirst.

If your kitchen is well supplied with health foods and you've given your last candy bar to the neighbours, you're well on your way. Then you'll automatically reach for yoghurt with fresh fruit in your refrigerator. For other snacks, try crisp raw vegetables with a cottage cheese dip and some whole-grain crackers. When you want more than a snack, try a hearty slice of whole-grain toast with cottage cheese, tomatoes, and herbal seasoning. Have dried fruit and whole-grain cookies instead of a rich dessert and then you can get up from the table feeling virtuous. Your little repast was not only delicious, but good for you as well. No worries about blemishes, dull hair, or gaining weight. Quite the contrary. The more often you pass up the marbled roast beef, fries, and chocolate cake for such health foods as fish, fruit salads, and whole-grain breads, the better the effect. You'll look radiant and feel great.

Health at Home

While devising my lifelong health strategies, I discovered ways to get around some of my bad habits with little tricks to ensure a variety of good-tasting foods that aren't expensive. I'd like to pass them on to you.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO GIVE UP SWEETS. As you know from the section on Sweet Temptations, you can Eat Yourself Beautiful and still enjoy sweets.

On a day-to-day basis, you should replace sugar, which is a high-calorie, low-vitamin no-no with other sweet goodies that aren't bad for you.

Honey is one of the best alternatives. It's very sweet, which means you can use less, it contains small amounts of many vitamins and minerals, and it consists entirely of fructose, which has fewer calories than sucrose - conventional sugar. Fructose also is easier for our bodies to process because it does not involve the pancreas as much as refined sugar. Because it has a higher concentration of "sweetness," you need less. Although it's better for you, honey still contains almost as many calories as sugar, therefore it should be used in moderation. Another excellent alternative to sugar is fresh or dried fruit. Fruit contains many vitamins and minerals as well as fibre. Depending on the season, you can have apricots, peaches, grapes, pears, or, for more exotic tastes, mangoes and papayas for dessert.

Dried fruit is especially good for a sweet tooth because it's sweeter than fresh. It's always available and doesn't spoil as quickly as fresh fruit, making it an excellent alternative to sugary desserts.

Dried apricots, pears, dates, or figs are delicious. Just pour boiling water over the fruit and let it stand overnight. The next day, puree it and store it in glass jars. To make it even sweeter, use a little artificial sweetener, which in small quantities is not bad for you.

If you do without refined sugar for a couple of weeks and have only fruit, fruit juices, and honey, you won't even want that excessively sugary taste, one of the keys to eating yourself healthy.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO EAT BLAND FOOD. We said in other sections that table salt is bad for your health and your beauty. The sodium in table salt causes elevated blood pressure making you more susceptible to strokes and heart attacks. High salt consumption also causes water retention, which results in unsightly swelling of the joints, legs, and hands.

There are many alternative seasonings that can make avoiding salt easier. Low-sodium diet salt is one logical alternative (but make sure you check with your doctor before using it). You might also consider pepper, mustard, paprika, soy sauce (not too much because it is salty), and all sorts of tasty herbs and spices. Vegetable bouillon cubes or vegetable concentrate can be used for soups, stews, and cooked meat and fish dishes, as well as for vegetables, rice, and whole-grain products.

Like a desire for very sweet foods, that for very salty foods is just a habit and one you won't miss after a few weeks of low-salt eating.

INSTEAD OF FATS. Too much fat in our diet is one of the most unhealthy eating practices in our society. Increasingly, physicians and researchers in nutrition are realising that in addition to causing overweight and skin blemishes, excessive fat consumption and too little exercise may help to account for the high incidence of cancer, strokes, and heart attacks.

Since most of the cooking methods that use a lot of fat can easily be replaced by low-fat alternatives, you can check out the tips below for some ideas and do some experimenting in your own kitchen.

If possible, meat should not be breaded and fried, sautéed in oil, or served with heavy cream sauces. If you need a little fat, use vegetable oils and avoid fats that are solid at room temperature.

Refrigerate soups and stews before serving. That way you can skim the fat that rises to the top before you reheat the dish. Doing that turns a potential no-no into a real health food.

Meat can be broiled or it can be braised or simmered in vegetable stock. Fairly large pieces of meat can be roasted in the oven and allowed to make their own gravy. All visible fat should be trimmed before serving.

Fish is very well suited for fat-free preparation. It can be poached, broiled with lemon juice and pepper, or stuffed and then baked in aluminium foil. Or you can turn it into a fish stew, soup, or casserole. You can also combine cooked fish with a salad dressing and a tossed green salad and have a delicious, healthy cold meal.

Lobster, shrimp, and mussels can be cooked in a seasoned broth and then served hot or cold with a refreshing herbed yoghurt sauce. Brown rice, whole-grain toast, and salad round out this light, easy-to-prepare meal.

The best fat-free way to prepare eggs is to boil or poach them. But you can also prepare delicious soufflés and omelettes with little or no fat. Steamed vegetables are an excellent additional ingredient for these.

Eggs contain a number of important beauty vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins A, B2, D, and E and the minerals sulphur, zinc, iron, and phosphorus, as well as lecithin, which is part of every cell in our body. As far as its health contribution is concerned, lecithin helps distribute your body weight and contributes to clear, youthful skin. Also, like the vitamin B complex, lecithin is important for maintaining a healthy nervous system. Eggs also contain some unsaturated fatty acids. We've already mentioned the cholesterol content of eggs elsewhere so keep that in mind.

Vegetable dishes of all kinds are ideally suited for low-fat cooking. They can be varied in many different and delicious ways. Vegetables can be steamed, braised, topped with low-fat cheese and baked in the oven; made into curries, purees, stews, and soups; combined with rice, potatoes, fish, meat, eggs, and natural grain products such as wheat, oats, barley - like this sentence, the list is endless. Almost all of our vegetables are stocked year-round so their vitamins and fibre are always available. From bean ragout to yam soufflé, your delicious vegetable inventions will convert your family and friends into enthusiastic beauty food fans.

Salads and crudités are of course the ne plus ultra of your lifelong beauty strategy. They contain the most vitamins, minerals, and fibre and the fewest calories. They do the most for our beauty, health, and well-being.

Try and eat a fresh, crisp salad at least once or twice a day (more often is even better). Keep a dish of rabbit food (cucumbers, carrot sticks, radishes, cauliflower, zucchini, celery, and whatever else appeals to you) ready in your refrigerator at all times to combat the nibbles. Try your cucumber, carrot, and zucchini sticks dipped in seasoned cottage cheese.

DRINKING RIGHT IS PART OF IT TOO. Drinking a lot of liquids is essential for beauty, but they need to be the right ones.

You ought to keep away from no-nos such as coffee; strong tea; sweet, non-alcoholic beverages; and alcohol. They either raise your blood pressure or overload the pancreas with too much sugar, which causes excess insulin secretion and, in the long run, increases the probability of diabetes. Drinking sugared or alcoholic drinks regularly is definitely not part of a lifelong health strategy.

But you can be generous with mineral water, some of the herbal teas (check these out with your doctor because not all herbal teas are innocuous), and coffee substitutes that contain no caffeine. You should also try freshly-pressed vegetable and fruit juices and, to warm up, a vegetable bouillon cube dissolved in hot water.

Try an herb tea with lemon and honey for breakfast and a coffee substitute with milk for a pre-noontime treat. Have cold mineral water with lemon for lunch and for that all-important afternoon pick-me-up, a health drink of mineral water and fruit juice or buttermilk. If you're at home you can put your blender and your imagination to work to come up with a tasty treat.

Make some changes at the cocktail hour. Instead of an alcoholic drink, try some beauty in a glass - freshly squeezed vegetable or fruit juice or a cooler made of mineral water and fruit juice with a little lemon. You'll cut out loads of calories and spare your system the stress caused by alcohol that was discussed in the previous chapter. Alcohol gives you a brief feeling of being calm and relaxed, but that's followed immediately by greater fatigue and a decline in alertness.

If you're used to having a couple of glasses of wine every evening, you'll be amazed at how alert, awake, and energetic you'll feel if you drink something non-alcoholic instead. The whole trick is to have alcohol very infrequently and in small quantities. That way your body can easily deal with its negative effects and your appearance won't suffer.

The diminished oxygen supply that results from regular alcohol intake is due to constriction of blood vessels and a slight increase in density of the blood. In addition, the liver is the only organ in the body that can neutralise and decompose alcohol. If you drink a lot, it becomes overloaded and your liver cells degenerate into non-functional fatty tissue.

The outer signs of regular alcohol intake are pasty skin; a slightly red and swollen nose; and watery, cloudy eyes. But changing your drinking habits has the potential to get rid of these signs. When your liver has recovered, and depending on your earlier drinking habits it may take a few months or a few years, your skin and eyes will be clear and bright again.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, EATING HEALTHY MAKES YOU BEAUTIFUL TOO. It may surprise you, but how you eat - whether you consciously enjoy your food or simply gulp it down - and how much you eat can have both positive and negative effects on your looks.

First, don't eat while you're doing something else, like watching TV or reading. Standing in the kitchen and nibbling isn't good either because you're not aware of enjoying your food and you can't keep track of how much you've eaten.

Every time you eat, even if it's only a snack, arrange the food attractively on a pretty plate, and don't fill the plate too full. Take very small bites and chew each one thoroughly; have an occasional sip of water.

There are a number of good reasons for these habits. We don't eat just because we're hungry. Most of us eat with our eyes, to satisfy an emotional need. Eating slowly and being aware of what we eat is the fastest way to satisfy our appetite.

Medical research has shown that chewing thoroughly starts off the digestive process in the mouth, and that our stomachs can digest food best and make optimum use of nutrients when we eat slowly. Furthermore, we don't feel really satisfied until twenty to thirty minutes after eating. This means that if you don't stop eating until you're full, you'll feel uncomfortably stuffed half an hour later. If you eat slowly you're giving yourself more of a chance to feel full with less food.

This brings us to a very important beauty tip: Try to get up from the table still feeling a little hungry. Twenty minutes later you'll be fully satisfied but you won't have overloaded your stomach with unnecessary quantities.

SHOULD IT BE WARM OR COLD? Myths about eating warm and cold food have existed for generations. For example, Austrian grandmothers would tell you that cold coffee (which is a no-no anyway) makes you beautiful; other grandmothers would say that you should have at least one hot meal daily, because it's more nourishing for your system. These myths are just that - myths.
Coffee will never make you healthy whether it's hot or cold. What you eat is more important than the temperature of the food
when you put it in your mouth. It makes a difference whether you eat vegetables raw (with all of the vitamins and fibre intact) or
cooked. Whether the cooked vegetables are warm or cold has no bearing on their nutritional value since all food is at the same temperature in the stomach five minutes after you eat it. The only thing that's important is what you eat and what tastes good to you. If you're hot, drink something cold. If you need something hot to wake you up, have some hot tea every morning. The choice of hot or cold is up to you.

WHEN YOU OVERINDULGE. Few of us are absolute health freaks and we're all going to eat and drink too much occasionally when we're out with friends or home alone.

If you've been following the Eat Yourself Beautiful approach and practising lifelong health strategies, the occasional indulgence (provided it is only occasional) doesn't matter at all. Your appearance won't suffer. A day of salads and beauty drinks is all your body needs to forget the chocolates, the mayonnaise on your fish, and all those glasses of champagne.

Gorging regularly on cakes and candy, fatty cheeses, and alcohol will make your skin look dull and will make you feel bloated. Obviously, overindulgence won't allow you to look your best.

But when you are going to overindulge, do it consciously and enjoy every last bite and sip. Don't spoil the enjoyment with a guilty conscience. You've done it and now you'll go back to beauty eating. Neither your body nor your face will suffer! No guilt trips, please, because feeling good about yourself is one of the most important health precepts.

 Health When You're Out

 Your health strategies are not limited to when you're home. Here are a few tricks for when you're at the office, travelling, or eating in restaurants or when you've been invited out for meals.

AT THE OFFICE. If you can't go to a restaurant or cafeteria for lunch and you're limited to a sandwich, don't worry. It takes only a few minutes before you leave the house to pack a salad with dressing on the side and a whole-grain roll, a container of cottage cheese with soybean sprouts and sesame seeds, or one of the following beauty sandwiches. You might also like some fresh fruit and some of the raw vegetables that you keep in the refrigerator for snacks.

HEALTH SANDWICHES. Make each sandwich with two slices of whole-grain bread spread with a thin layer of farmer's cheese to which you've added herbal seasoning.

RESTAURANT EATING. It's easy to Eat Yourself Beautiful in restaurants. Most of them don't mind making minor changes, such as broiling foods instead of sautéing and serving salad without heavy, creamy dressings. All you have to do is keep in mind the health foods that you can eat until ordering them becomes second nature for you. Your first course can be any clear soup such as consommé, oxtail, or turtle soup. You can have vegetable soups as long as they're prepared without cream (or with a little bit of light cream). Cold first courses can be any kind of salad, which is full of vitamins, or shrimp or other seafood (without heavy cocktail sauces; use lemon juice and black pepper, or a little vinaigrette or yoghurt dressing). Because of its relatively high fat content, smoked salmon is advisable only in small quantities.

Mozzarella with tomatoes, artichoke hearts with vinaigrette sauce, melon, or a fresh fruit salad are all wonderful starters.

For the main course, the rule is the simpler the better. You can have any kind of broiled or braised fish, meat, or poultry, accompanied by cooked vegetables without butter, salad, and rice or a baked potato. Trim all visible fat and stay away from vegetables in cream sauce, fried rice, scalloped potatoes, tartar sauce on fish, and herbed butter sauces. Instead, stick with beauty foods, such as lean meat or broiled shrimp, fish, and chicken accompanied by vegetable salads and rice.

Don't eat dessert just out of habit. And don't feel that you have to order food you don't want to eat to keep your friends company while they splurge. But if your appetite and associates do demand it, there are desserts you can have that won't jeopardise your looks or your vitamin intake.

First of all there's fruit; any fresh fruit such as strawberries, raspberries, pineapple, or kiwis are wonderful. They have lots of vitamins and fibre, very little sugar, and no fat. Fresh fruit salad is another good thing provided you don't eat too much of the sugar syrup. Fruit sorbet, yoghurt, and cottage cheese with fruit are also fine in small quantities. Unfortunately, there's no way to extend the beauty food label to cream, fatty cheese, chocolate mousse, or rich cakes.

If you can't escape, eat the no-nos in very small helpings so that you don't ambush your body with a lot of concentrated fat and sugar.

In general, there are a few basics for health-conscious eating in restaurants: Eat only as much as you want. Restaurant portions are usually too large so you can leave at least a third of the food on your plate.

Don't be forced to order or eat something you don't want for the sake of being polite. It's your body and you have to decide what you eat. It's important that you eat with enjoyment and without a guilty conscience. Everyone will understand, and perhaps be envious of or amazed at your refusing the salad that's loaded with mayonnaise or the gooey chocolate cake. They won't think you're being impolite.

Take occasional small sips of wine to enhance the taste of your food but if you're thirsty drink tap or mineral water. A before dinner drink can be fruit or vegetable juice instead of a cocktail. You should have after-dinner coffee only occasionally because coffee elevates your blood pressure and acts as a stimulant for your entire system. It's also very habit-forming.

Our last bit of advice is very simple. Don't salt your food. Salt increases blood pressure in most people, therefore greatly increasing the risk of strokes and - because of hypersalemia in the stomach - gastric ulcers. As we've said before, high salt intake also results in water retention which shows up as swollen arms, legs, ankles, or hands.

Cutting down on salt doesn't mean that you have to give up seasoned food. Quite the contrary. If you want to replace the salty taste (which in good cooking shouldn't be the main source of taste anyway), you can experiment with all sorts of herbs and condiments. Such experiments will lead you to expand your taste spectrum without threatening your health or your looks. After a few weeks, you won't even miss the salt.

The good news is that you can Eat Yourself Beautiful and still enjoy a restaurant meal that includes first, main, and dessert courses and a little wine. There are many foods to choose from. Because of the low fat and sugar content of beauty foods, you can eat a really satisfying meal and not have that overfull feeling that comes from a heavy, fatty dinner with lots of wine. You'll get up from the table feeling pleasantly full but not overloaded. Moreover, because of the even flow of energy from unrefined nutrients, such as whole-grains and vegetables, the feeling will last for many hours.

Once you've switched from fatty foods and lots of alcohol to a beauty menu, you'll be so delighted with the results - your improved appearance and the sensation of well-being - that you won't feel like going back to your former habits.

WHEN YOU'RE INVITED OUT. What happens to your beauty food approach when you're invited to someone's home and you feel politeness demands that you do justice to all the food for fear of insulting the cook? If you want to eat in a health-conscious way and don't want to eat all the no-nos, you'll simply have to politely decline whatever doesn't fit into your health diet. You could pass yourself off as a health food nut. That way, the guests will laugh and the hostess won't feel personally responsible for your not eating.

You'll feel much better if you're the only one who doesn't eat two helpings of chocolate mousse than if you end up suffering from an overly full stomach and a guilty conscience. Regardless of where you spend the evening, be it at a cocktail party, a buffet, or a sit down dinner, you'll probably find enough food that you can eat safely. You can eat all of the salads except those loaded with mayonnaise. All types of fish, meat, and poultry are fine, so long as you trim all visible fat from the meat and remove the skin from the poultry. You can eat a lot of poached or steamed fish as long as you don't eat any accompanying mayonnaise. Vegetables without butter are excellent as are rice and cooked potatoes. Turn down fried or scalloped potatoes because of their high fat content.

Avoid foods with heavy cream sauces and all fried foods, since both contain large quantities of fat. Politely declining them will save you from lots of health no-nos.

Be very careful with desserts and try to stick to fruit if you can. If it's a birthday party or some other celebration, take a piece of cake and push it around on your plate; no one will notice.

You can even handle an opulent five-course meal following these tips. Drink mineral water or juice, take small bites, and chew thoroughly. Take frequent sips of water and talk. You can get through the entire meal that way and feel pleasantly satisfied without being stuffed.

We have a few other ideas for a cocktail party or buffet.

Cocktail parties usually follow the same sequence of alcohol, peanuts, canapés, a little more alcohol (actually your glass is always full so you don't really know how much you've had), another handful of peanuts and so on. After the first half-hour, you've lost track of how many little sandwiches, peanuts, and cheese hors d'oeuvres you've nibbled and, after all that wine you've had, you probably don't care.

The myth that you can spend an evening with friends only if you eat and drink too much is just that - a myth. Any health conscious individual will tell you that's not necessary. But standing around and eating without thinking about it often results in unintended lapses.

Try and quench your thirst with mineral water or juice and decline offers of alcoholic drinks. But don't feel that you have to refuse a glass of wine for a toast.

Although peanuts contain vitamins B, E, and F, and the minerals calcium, magnesium, manganese, and zinc, as well as lots of protein, those served at parties are roasted in oil or butter and are very salty. Their good nutritional components are cancelled out by the no-nos fat and salt; besides that they already have lots of calories without them (five hundred thirty in four ounces of peanuts). The additional calories, all in the form of fat, then make them out of sight. So politely decline the peanuts and wine and stick with the crudités, which will keep your stomach unencumbered for the next course.

The most important trick with buffets, whether they're served formally or self-service, is to take only what you really want. Don't get carried away and take something from every passing tray.

All of these tips are aimed at allowing you to go out as much as you like without jeopardising your beauty or your conscience. By following these suggestions, you can go out every night (don't stay out too late though), enjoy yourself, and still like what you see in your mirror next morning. Your friends will wonder how you can be so radiant when you're leading such a hectic life.

In the section More Ways to a More Healthy You, we share a few ideas that enhance the effects of the health foods you eat.