Diet and Exercise Impact on Your Skin
Diet and exercise improve your mind, your body, and your skin. We have all heard the expression, “You are what you eat”.
It’s true in many ways. What we put in our bodies has to find a way out again. Our bodies are designed that way. When we eat healthy food, it shows on our body and our skin.
Just like a steady diet of junk food, foods high in fats, refined carbohydrates, processed foods, and sodium will show up in weight gain and a less than ideal complexion.
Diet and Your Skin
The first favor you can do for your skin is moisture. Moisturizing with a good lotion or cream will help, but drinking plenty of water and eating fresh fruits and vegetables, will too. Vegetables and fruit have a lot of water in them, plus vitamins and nutrients that your body and skin needs. They also contain antioxidants that protect our cells and cell linings from damage by radiation and free radicals. This includes our skin cells.
We also need to eat a healthy portion of the good fats. Good fat helps to provide insulation and help with your temperature regulation. Fat helps keep the skin healthy, so make sure you get enough fat foods like avocados and olives and Omega-3 fatty acids from fish, nuts, and olive oil.
Diets high in fiber are also good. Legumes like lentils pass through the body very nicely, taking all the garbage with them. Nature's little scrub brush. They contain no fat and help clear the skin and stop swelling.
If you eat too many foods that are bad, your skin will reflect that. Blocked pores, spots, pimples, bloating, and even pale or ashy complexion will make you look unhealthy. Your skin can get dried out, look greasy, puffy, and look much older than it needs to.
Consuming too much alcohol can also prematurely age your skin, cause blotches and bloating, dull your skin, and dry it out. If you smoke, that is one of the worst things you can do to your skin.
Read more: Why Having a Sweet Tooth Can Lead to Looking Older
How Working Out Affects Your Skin
Getting enough exercise also helps keep your body trim, your mind clear, and can also have an effect on your skin. You might find both good and bad results from working out.
Sweating
Sweating from exercise really opens up your pores and allows the bad toxins, dirt, and other matter to get out. But you need to wash after, and not let the sweat stay on your skin.
Nothing feels better than a good sweat. You can almost feel the toxins and other garbage leaving through your pores. A good cleanse afterward will clean them out and help them close up again.
Increased Blood Flow
Your increased heart rate gets your blood flowing through your body. That also brings nutrients and more oxygen to your face. The red face during the workout will turn to a glowing, healthy look soon after.
Less Stress
Even mild exercise like walking, yoga, or low-impact aerobics can relieve stress and anxiety. Stress can really age your skin. Always frowning, a furrowed brow, worry lines around your eyes and mouth, and dark circles around your eyes from lack of sleep.
Exercise will help you sleep better and we all know the positive effects that a good night’s sleep can have. Even a little bit of exercise helps to clear your mind and ease the stresses of the day.
The exercise will help you sleep, the better sleep will help you focus and concentrate and give you more energy to get through the day. It all will help clear the worry and stress from your skin.
The facts about stress are that they lead us to eat comfort foods we shouldn’t, drink more than we should, sleep less, and worry too much. It is a vicious cycle we fall into and have a hard time getting out of.
All of those factors have an effect on our skin. We eat the wrong foods and drink too much which makes us look older, puffy, and cause blotches, rashes and pimples.
Less Body Fat
Proper diet and exercise help keep your weight under control. No one will ever look like the women in the magazines but extra weight makes your heart work harder.
We feel better about ourselves when we take better care. It helps our self-esteem when we look better and that self-image is very important for our mental health, too.
Taking the time to take care of ourselves through diet and exercise will make a big difference in how we look, how we feel and it can help keep us healthy in our minds and our bodies.
Indulging yourself is also important. Have the chocolate and the second glass of wine. You earned it.