Bad Foods vs. Good Foods: Find the Balance

Below you will find some good reasons to cut back on empty foods, along with some alternative options that are healthy and packed with nutrients. Remember that foods are endless, so if one replacement doesn't suit you, don't get discouraged. Once you make one good choice about your diet, you'll make another, and another, and another. It's that easy!

Bad Carbohydrates: carbohydrates that are bad are comprised of refined, simple sugars. These include wheat products, anything with sugar, and processed flours. Examples of bad carbohydrates include pastries, cookies, sweets, and some cereals (such as cornflakes or rice crispies). Because most of these flours and sugars are refined, they are stripped of most nutrients. As a result, food manufacturers incorporate supplemental vitamins and minerals that are not readily absorbed as naturally occurring nutrients are in the body.

Good Carbohydrates: carbohydrates are present almost everywhere. Fortunately, with the enormous variety of carbohydrates that exist, we can still make healthy choices while satisfying our cravings. To curb your carbohydrate cravings, go for fruits and vegetables, whole wheat or grain breads, and cereals and brown rice.

Bad Vegetables: veggies are not only delicious; they are easy on the digestive system and packed with tissue enhancing nutrients. Nevertheless, many people forget that in the process of cooking our vegetables, vitamins and minerals and weakened. If vegetables are boiled for a long period of time, all nutrients can be lost in the boiling liquid, making vegetables just as empty as fast foods.

Good Vegetables: To make the most of your vegetable intake, try to consume as many veggies as possible in their raw state. Instead of making white grain pasta with broccoli, try a cold pasta salad with whole-wheat noodles, asparagus, broccoli, tomatoes, and quinoa for a fully balanced meal. Dress with a natural, pure oil such as olive oil and incorporate some acid (lemon, lime juice, or vinegar) to ease digestion and supply vitamin C.

Maintain a Balanced Diet

Even though dermatologists have long said that diet is not related to acne, today we have evidence proving that what we eat not only affects our overall health, it can also affect our skin.

Considering that skin is the largest organ in our bodies, it would be silly to assume that what we put in our bodies will not reflect on our skin.

The skin makes up for 16 percent of our body weight. It is responsible not only for the protection of our organs and tissues, but it helps the body rid itself of waste, working alongside the kidneys, lungs, and colon. The skin reacts to our body's conditions and it reflects mainly on two things: (1) whether we have the necessary nutrients to sustain healthy living functions, and (2) how healthy our living functions are.

It is known that foods like sugars, carbohydrates, processed foods, preservatives, heavy diary products, and junk food all have adverse effects on our bodies. They not only promote mucus formations in the colon due to their yeast feeding qualities, they interfere with the proper cleansing of our systems, making us strongly retain toxins and waste.

One of the worst foods for acne is sugar. It is a devilish food, as it is present in almost everything that we eat, making it very hard to avoid.

Sugar and related sugars (such as carbohydrates) impact our body by altering the glucose levels in our blood. This detonates an insulin response, which makes our blood levels to drastically drop. When we eat more sugar than we are supposed to in a day, the insulin response is triggered constantly, thus affecting other hormones in the process. This generates an important hormonal imbalance that leads to the overproduction of oil and sebum in skin oil glands. The oil plugs our pores trapping bacteria within it, and the follicle results in a skin lesion.

If we maintain a diet that is filled with foods that cause this chain reaction, skin lesions would be more frequent flare-ups known as mild, moderate or severe acne.

Keeping a Balanced Diet

As an adult with acne, you probably remember breaking out during puberty. Back then, when our bodies were young and resilient, we couldn't overload on chocolate without experiencing a break out. It was easy then to identify the causes of our acne. When we are young, are bodies are pure and healthy. Resilience to stress is easily maintained and bodily functions (other than hormonal changes) are intact.

Once acne develops, breakouts become an everyday thing, making it hard to determine the cause of our condition. We don't know whether it was that chocolate bar we ate after lunch or the unexpected meeting with the boss that gave us the jeepers.

While turning back time to our young days isn't an option, there are things that we can do to purify our body and start our relationship with it from scratch. A prolonged toxic overload will affect every single system in your body. If you are experiencing breakouts, you might also be sweating excessively, producing excess oils, or having sinus problems and an over production of wax in your ears.

These are all means of the body to rid itself of the toxic substances and waste that becomes accumulated in your system. Because of this, having a balanced diet is essential to keeping waste levels in the body under control. If you surrender to fried foods, animal fats, sugar, dairy, and caffeine on a daily basis, then you are putting more waste into your body than it can handle.

Feed your body with nutrient-rich foods that are easy to digest. Keep a high fiber diet with fats in the form of pure vegetable oils such as olive oil, flaxseed oil, grape seed oil, and canola oil.

Eat fruits and vegetables every day. Try to eat them raw as often as possible to take full advantage of their nutritional properties.

Also, reduce or totally eliminate sugars in your diet. Yeasts feed on undigested sugars, making our colon more prone to the development of candiadiasis.

Eat protein-based products that are easy to digest. Meat, for example, is high in protein but is also loaded with hormones, animal fats, and toxins. As an alternative, resort to proteic sources such as fish and organic chicken breasts, or stick to grains like quinoa and soybeans.