The Truth About Beauty: Transform Your Looks and Your Life from the Inside Out Book

This book starts from an excellent premise: love your body and treat it well. The author said that if your skin is red and itchy, or you have dark circles under your eyes, or you look bloated, don't focus on covering these problems up. Get to the root of the problems and fix them. These problems are ways that your body is communicating that it doesn't like something you're doing, and you should love your body enough to listen to it.

Next, Kat James offers some reasons your body might have adverse reactions, and goes on to suggest ways that you can replace your unhealthy habits with healthier alternatives. She writes both about products you put inside your body (i.e., food, drink, and supplementation), and products you put on your body (i.e., shower and beauty products). She sites countless studies to back up her claims.

The final section is full of products that James recommends, as well as additional resources people can use to educate themselves further.

I have not taken so many notes on a book since I graduated from college. I actually learned how to use the highlighting feature on my Kindle specifically because of this book. This is not to say that I bought what she was selling hook, line, and sinker. James is a proponent of natural ingredients over synthetic, pretty much without exception. While that may be a good mantra to adopt if you want to keep things simple, I believe the actual reality is much more complex than that. While I am no chemist, I think some natural ingredients are great for you and some aren't so good, and likewise, some synthetic ingredients are probably pretty unsafe, but others are relatively harmless. In fact, some of the products James recommended contained natural ingredients (such as menthol or citrus) which I have read (in other sources) are harmful to skin.

However, I give James tremendous credit for inspiring me to take a closer look at what I am putting in and on my body. Furthermore, I applaud her for researching this as thoroughly as she has, because she supports her claims with studies that the reader can look into further. This book has transformed my thinking, and helped me to be a better informed consumer.