Have you ever been convinced by a gorgeous-looking friend who tells you her beauty secret and you go straight home to try it? It happened to me.

I wouldn’t say I’m gullible to the point that I would go to any lengths to get better skin and lose more weight. Pills — no. Starving — a firm no.

But, a few weeks ago, a girlfriend of mine in Tokyo was waxing lyrical about how natto (fermented soybeans) is great for skin and maintaining your weight.

Natto in a styrofoam pack

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My answer would be yes to both. Many friends and readers ask me what’s the difference — it’s a valid question and I used to wonder, “Why should I throw away all that fiber?”

Let’s do a quick recap on the difference: green juices are just the juice of greens and fruit.

And green smoothies are vegetables and fruit blended together.

Okay, so here is my honest opinion on the benefits of both for radiant skin and health…

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Here’s a wellness/diet tip for today: pack your lunch.

It’s not a new approach to our daily diet but I think we are so often swept away by stress and deadlines that we fail to nourish ourselves in such a way so we can do more in our day and feel good. We need to be reminded that going back to basics can be good for us.

Forget crappy deli sandwiches and the huge store-bought portions we feel obligated to consume in the middle of day.

Banish sluggish sleep demons that threaten to steal the afternoon away from you.

Lose the weight that you’ve been wanting to lose for the past five years.

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I think it’s about time I update my foray into the raw food diet. Readers of this blog must’ve thought my tentative steps into this radical lifestyle were just experimental, but shortly after starting I fell in love with the exuberance raw food gave me. Unfortunately, the great new physical well-being came with some emotional confusion at the ninety day point. So where am I now?

I’m still eating a high raw diet with some cooked food daily and have lost a total of 8kg (17.6 lbs). Around the fourth month I was riding a wave of being 100% raw for a few weeks — I felt great until I went back to Singapore for a short holiday and ate quite a bit of cooked food, so have been struggling to get back to 90-100%. To sum it up, I am vegetarian with a mostly vegan diet though I tend to eat a bit of dairy when I am out socializing.

Here are my thoughts…

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If you’re wondering why your skin isn’t reaching the level of radiance you want, maybe you need to look deeper into the food you’re putting into your body.

As they say, you are what you eat and what goes in will come out.

Here are 7 tips to munch your way to lasting luscious skin…

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I’ve been talking a lot about skin-related beauty, but today I want to touch on a weight issue and it certainly affects our physical appearance.

I’ll put my hand up and admit I put on almost 20 pounds over several years due to comfort eating. I just thought I “loved” pasta, but pasta didn’t love me back — I couldn’t buckle my jeans up without a struggle and my thighs grew a bit too close for comfort. I have a rather petite frame so excess weight truly shows up.

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We’re all pretty well-educated on how bad the sun is for our skin and it’s normal to see the words “SPF” on our cosmetics and beauty products. But there is one more thing that is even more invisible that causes wrinkles: SUGAR.

While I don’t think it’s possible to rule out sugar from our diet completely, it’s probably a good idea to decrease our intake of it.

Here are three reasons to make you sit up and pay attention:

#1 Sugar in your blood combines with proteins to form harmful molecules called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). So these bad boys attack collagen and elastin — the stuff that makes your skin smooth and supple.

#2 AGEs transform collagen to be more fragile. When this happens, your skin looks and feels less plump.

#3 AGEs make your body’s anti-oxidant enzymes useless which then leaves your skin more vulnerable to sun damage — still a main cause for aging.

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I’ve posted about green smoothies being great for the skin and today I will touch on green juice. Some people might just assume green juice means wheatgrass or barley green juice, which taste too hardcore for those who don’t embrace an extremely healthy lifestyle, but there is a lot more to it and can be palatable to most people (I will suggest some “beginner” recipes later on in this post).

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I’ve had a surprising number of private messages about being raw, so I think it would be useful to those who are interested in a raw lifestyle for beauty and health.

I want to address something before I list out my physical changes. In my previous update, I know I sounded like I was at the honeymoon stage of raw, in many ways I still am, but I think I didn’t touch on an important reality of transitioning to a raw vegan lifestyle — it’s hard on many levels.

Why am I finding it difficult? It’s not quite the reasons you may first think. No, I don’t have problems finding new ways to un-cook, in fact, it’s a daily joy I cherish.

+ Negative reactions from loved ones. When many of the people you seek approval from disagree with you, it’s not easy. Some think I am downright extreme, weird, harboring a latent illness (a family member speculated that I was pre-diabetic because of my sudden weight gain last year) or blindly throwing myself into the “latest diet fad”. I feel I need to harness an independent soul to carry on the way I want to eat and with happiness.

It’s not a good feeling to have that “lone warrior” burden, and many raw foodists have talked about this ad nauseum so I have steeled myself against negative comments. But at the end of the day, it still feels lonely.

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I promised an update of my raw journey which I started in mid-Jan, so here it is. I’ve been mostly raw for sixty days now and I’ve to say, I’m sold. I’ve never felt so good nor looked better in a very long time.

During my first forays into the raw food diet, I just told myself, “I’ll just eat one raw meal a day.” But that proved too easy so I went up to two and then all my snacks were raw. I’m still half-raw at dinner where I will have a cooked portion of grilled fish or a vegetable soup or curry. I was a very heavy meat-eater before so I still struggle with forgoing meat altogether. I’m not sure if I want to, but it’s something to put on the back burner for now.

Okay, I’ll give you a breakdown of my experience…

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