'The Beauty Detox Solution: Eat Your Way to Radiant Skin, Renewed Energy and the Body You’ve Always Wanted' by Kimberly Snyder, C.N.

"In order to become younger, many of ones habits must be changed. To do this constructively one can do it only with an open mind and with the wholehearted desire to see if it really works. A closed mind, a mind which has made it a practice to frown on radical changes in thought, habits and actions, is the greatest stumbling block towards any progress on the road to become younger. "
Dr. Norman Walker -Become Younger

This is another one of those books that - like "Crazy Sexy Diet" - I initially ignored because I thought it was just another fad diet book. Once again I was proven wrong, and I’m so glad that I decided to give this book a chance. Like the before mentioned CSD this isn’t a diet book, it’s a lifestyle book that focuses on bringing you to your optimal level of health through long term dietary and lifestyle changes.

After Christmas I was searching amazon for health and wellness books I hadn’t read yet, that I could spend some of my Christmas money on. In almost every search this book kept popping up. I continued to ignore it, until finally I decided to at least read the reviews. From those reviews I was able to gleam that this book was in fact about health, how to achieve it and sustain it through holistic measurers and a nutritious plant based diet. Strangely it happened to be the negative reviews that got me the most curious about reading this book. Some people seemed outraged by the books obvious vegan and raw lean, and many claimed that the advice offered within it’s pages was ‘unrealistic’ and ‘unaccessible to the average person’ after all that drama how could I not read the book? Luckily I found a copy of it collecting dust at my local library, took it home and devoured it.

The author Kimberly Snyder has an interesting story, and while she didn’t turn to veganism and raw food because she was battling an incurable disease she was fighting a grab bag of maladies that seem to plague a great majority of us. Battles with weight, poor complection and bad skin, lack of energy, poor digestion, constipation, indigestion, and more. By chance she came across an Australian holistic nutritionist - she was living in Australia at the time - who ran a holistic detox center and from there she was transformed. Giddy and impassioned by this new information Snyder realized that she was not truly living the life she wanted or was meant to. Within one week she quit her job, quit law school, dumped her boyfriend and broke her apartment lease. Instead she decided to take a trip around the world - that ended up lasting 3 years - in which she would study natural health and beauty, as well as holistic living in various remote communities across the glob. Upon her return she got jobs at beauty companies, and longevity centers to further her knowledge, became a certified clinical nutritionist and started her own business. This story in itself is amazing and inspiring, but the rest of the information within the book is certainly worth reading for all that it has to offer.

This book focuses on holistic healing, and healing oneself through diet and lifestyle changes. The book goes into great detail about why consuming massive quantities of meat and dairy products is toxic for our health, what symptoms and diseases they initiate and how they react in the body on a chemical level once ingested. There is a lot of really good solid information in this book about the PH balance of your body, how to attain a more alkaline ph as well as how to sustain it. Though the author herself is vegan she does not call for those interested in her plan to take an all or nothing approach. Her program Is very adaptable to all diets. Though one thing this book does advocates quite strongly is eating raw foods as often and as much as possible. Some people may be put off by that notion, however all the recipes in the book are super simple and easy, and don’t require any expensive equipment. - Except for a juicer but if you don’t have one - I don’t - then you can simply follow the plan by drinking a smoothie each day rather then a juice.

"The Problem is not that ageing is inevitable, it is that most of us don’t understand what causes it" - Kimberly Snyder, C.N. 'The Beauty Detox Solution"

In addition to PH Snyder talks a lot about food pairing which is a concept I find very interesting and I think makes a lot of sense. She says fruits should be eaten first and on their own as they digest the fastest, or they can be eaten with non-starchy high water content vegetables. She recommends eating proteins and Starches closer to the end of the day because they take longer to digest. The reason this order is important is because say you eat a bowl of rice and beans for dinner it is going to take a long time to break down in your body and digest. If you eat an apple after dinner for dessert, the apple will already be broken down and ready for digestion but it can’t be processed because your digestion is still working on the rice and beans. Which leaves the apple sitting on top of the rice and beans, in a state of fermentation. Which in turn causes bloating and gas. This is a really interesting concept, and I think it goes a long way in explaining how some of us may feel bloated after eating certain meals that are seemingly healthy. This isn’t something I’d ever heard of before so I really appreciate the chapters devoted to it. This is definitely a concept I’ve been trying to work into my daily meals and on days that I have done it I find my digestion is smoother.

Another concept she discusses in some length is the idea that we should eat light to heavy. Eat our lightest meal in the morning and our heaviest meal at night. Her rational for this is because eating a heavy meal in the morning will leave us feeling bogged down most of, if not all day, where as a heavy meal at night will digest over the course of our sleep. She also recommends starting the day off by drinking water with lemon, followed by a green juice or smoothie. No solid food early in the morning leaves are digestive enzymes free to repair other parts of the body that may need attention. Attention they might not get if our enzymes are once again busy breaking down yet more food.

There is an extensive amount of information on enzymes and probiotics and how they help to keep us not only healthy but looking young as well. I found the information on enzymes particularly fascinating and I’d recommend the book based solely on those chapters, but there are a lot of great ideas, concepts and principals discussed in the book that are at least worth knowing, even if you don’t practice them.
Snyder also includes lists of the best foods, minerals, and fats to eat for beauty. She includes a detox plan that has three levels depending on your comfort and how much you want to commit. Each level is suppose to be of some benefit to those interested in participating. She also includes a bunch of recipes. None of which I’ve tried yet, however they all look really delicious and I can’t wait to start making some of them!

"Detoxing ourselves by getting rid of old waste is key to allowing our digestion to function optimally" Kimberly Snyder, C.N. 'The Beauty Detox Solution"

As for the negative reviews I’ve read of this book, to say that this plan is unreasonable or unrealistic for the average person is ridiculous. None of the recipes require any heavy prep, nor do they require any strange ingredients or expensive kitchen tools to prepare them. - Except of course the before mentioned juicer but we discussed that. - Snyder’s whole idea is that we should eat healthfully, and simply using as few ingredients as possible as long as those ingredients are nutrient dense. While she does recommends colonics, or enemas, as well as taking probiotics and digestive enzyme supplements it is not an all or nothing deal. If you don’t want to get a colonic no one is putting a gun to your head. If you don’t want to go to your local health food store and buy a probiotic supplement then no one is forcing you. This plan is all on you, it’s at your own pace, at the level for which you feel comfortable and there is no judgement from Snyder about which road you wish to take. I think the people who post such negative reviews containing such ridiculous statements are really just after another fad diet book, in which they can continue eating the garbage they already eat, while making it look like they’re actually making significant change when they aren’t. If that’s you, if that’s what you’re looking for then forget this book.

On the other hand if you’re serious about grabbing the reigns of your health then you might want to consider giving this book a good and thorough read. It just might be the thing you’ve been looking for.

*** Note - Photo found using Google Image Search ***