I am NOT about "Dress for Success." That's old hat, and you want to hear something new. Mark Twain said: "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society." However, I want to talk about something your clothing CANNOT conceal. I'm talking about your health. Your health as it shows--and it WILL show, whatever you're wearing. The bottom line: I want to show you how to look good, as a speaker, with or without your clothes on.

Every 7 seconds another baby boomer turns 50. What does an aging workforce mean? It means that the average age of your seminar attendee if getting older. Health is becoming the most precious asset and they are having less and less of it. It means that if you are talking about reaching your dreams, achieving successful career, or making a lot of money and you are not exhibiting glowing health, you are not believable. It also means that the underlying interest of your audience, no matter what you are speaking about, is the universal search for how to deal with aging. The relation of one's age to one's appearance is more important than ever before. To look and feel younger than one's age has increasingly become a yardstick of success.

Aging would not be so bad if it did not tell on us in every encounter with others, as we take each other's measure. As we hug one another, we register the love handles on the other's waist, the flab on their arms, and the sag on their cheeks. We stare in each other's faces. After all, only saints find no pleasure in the wrinkles of their peers. But we are not inexcusable sinners, either; we check on others only to find out how we, ourselves, are doing.

We always want to know the age of the person we meet. Estimating one's age and deciding whether or not she has worn it well tells a lot about a person. Nowadays, it is as important as reading her resume. It used to be that we would buy a book and not know how the writer looked or how old he was. His credentials were all that mattered. Now it is the custom, whether in an article or a book, to picture the author and reveal his age. We want to know how the author looks and his age before we read his book. We want to compare these two pieces of information and decide whether the author is knowledgeable about something we want to know. With about half of the population being over 35, this is not an unexpected trend. Preoccupation with age is a reality for our rapidly aging society.

Health and beauty are considered to be chronological losses. In my books Your Right to Be Beautiful and Beautiful On Raw I will convince you they don't have to be. It is biologically possible to look beautiful at any age. I intend to prove that beauty is not an accident; beauty is your birthright, it can be yours through the right daily choices, food you put in your mouth being the most important one. You can dramatically improve your appearance and do it 100 percent on your own without expensive products, plastic surgery or costly cosmetics.

I can't promise you'll look 20 years old. If you really want a tiara, try Tiffany's. You'll have better luck there than the Miss America pageant. But I can promise you one thing. I promise this... you will be very pleased at how beautiful you could be. Should be. Can be. Nothing is more gratifying than looking your very best.

Most of us know that what we eat affects how we feel. But what the food we put into our mouth has to do with how we look. EVERYTHING! At any moment in time, you are either degenerating or rejuvenating. You are either going one way or the other depending on the lifestyle choices you make.

Hereditary characteristics are determined by our family lineage, the food choices our mothers made during pregnancy, and our environment. Oriental diagnosis has noted small eyes are caused by the consumption of cooked vegetables and animal products during pregnancy and early childhood. Large eyes, on the other hand, are caused by intake of foods such as raw vegetables, fruits, and fruit juices. Long eyelashes in a child indicate the intake of substantial amounts of liquids, raw vegetables, and fruits by the pregnant mother.

Some physical characteristics of our face and body we cannot change--they were determined prior to our birth. But the consumption of the raw plant diet as an adult will make a difference in the texture of skin and hair, the health of nails, weight and complexion. All of these traits and more are determined by daily choices, with food being one of the most important and, luckily, the one we have full control of.

Interviewers often ask me this...Can anybody can be beautiful through a raw food diet? Or do you have to possess some basic beauty characteristics to begin with? The fact is, all the things we think are basic--high cheekbones, certain body proportions, all the things we label "bone structure," really only hold a minute advantage. As you get older, how tall or how blonde you were born becomes irrelevant. After 40, a glowing complexion is far more important than long legs. Shining and full hair is more important than its color. Clear eyes become a much bigger asset than their size. After 40, any waistline is an achievement, not just 36-24-36.

People who have been on the raw food lifestyle for several years begin to have a glow, the kind not often seen in middle-aged people. Optimal health is recognized by an emerging radiance. Glow is hard to fake because it is internal. It comes from an abundance of clear, pink, almost transparent cells that light up the face. Only superior blood circulation can bring this transfiguring glow. I have seen people in their 60s and 70s glowing with health. You cannot take your eyes off their faces they are so beautiful.

The body becomes transcended and will unfold from the inside out. While your non-raw eating peers discover new blemishes, blotches, and moles on a nearly daily basis, you will see your own skin irregularities gradually fade or disappear. Feeding your body raw food will make eyes, once sunken in bulbous flesh, look larger and more round by eliminating the surrounding puffiness and by firming the eyelids. Eyebrows that were beginning to form an awning over the eyes will regain their youthful arch. As natural collagen production improves, it will fill in the places where it is needed as in hollow cheeks. It will not just patch your face, but every one of your 3,000 square inches of skin will improve.

Raw food eating will clarify and refine your features and bring delicacy to your face. This diet will give the impression of high cheekbones. In fact, it will give the effect of a cheek implant, by providing a subtle contour to the cheek area. The blurred chin-to-neck curve will become sharper and more pronounced. Broad jaws and square jowls will gradually give way to the more desirable oval shape. Sagging and hanging cheeks will gradually become more taut and tight. Incidentally, the oval-shaped face, higher cheekbones, thinner jaws, and larger eyes are features universally considered to be the major characteristics of a beautiful face.

Dissatisfaction with one's appearance arises not from perceiving our bodies inaccurately but because subconsciously we are aware we haven't achieved our optimal look. Unhappiness results when your perceived self, the one you see in the mirror, and the ideal self, the one you feel you can be, differ. Absence of internal physical integrity results in a faulty body image and lack of self-esteem. The body is experienced as alien, an imposter, or as non-self when there is a discrepancy between your real self and your ideal self. This makes even models feel unhappy about their looks. On the contrary, the raw food diet gives one the feeling of authenticity, an assurance we have become what we were meant to be. And your speaking abilities will strive on this acquired self- confidence.

This diet has been embraced by many models (Carol Alt), actresses (Demi Moore) and others who rely on maintaining their looks to maintain their careers. Public speakers are no less reliant on their immediate personal impact to retain their viability. Health message has been included in their presentations by the most famous speakers of the past and present such as Napoleon Hills and Tony Robins. You change your speaking material, your wardrobe, your presentation, why not the way you live as well? So how do you look your best without distracting everyone by tons of make-up or plastic self? Try relying on a complete lifestyle change. "This article may be freely reprinted as long as the entire article and byline are included."

About the author:

Tonya Zavasta is the raw food lifestyle expert, the author of the books Beautiful On Raw: UnCooked Creations and Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You, named a 2004 Health Book of the Year Award finalist by ForeWord Magazine. For more information on how to reveal your Rawsome beauty visit her web-site at: http://www.beautifulonraw.com

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