Excerpted from the book “Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You” by Tonya Zavasta. The book is available at: http://www.beautifulonraw.com.

All of my life, I wanted to be beautiful. In today’s society, it is more acceptable to insist that you are “beautiful on the inside”, unfortunately, those of us on the outside are not seeing your insides. Wanting to be beautiful is now criticized as being shallow. I’m sorry but I would rather be perceived as shallow than hypocritical because I find it impossible to believe than any women is content to be less than she can be.

Personal initiative is a powerful force in achieving goals and attaining wealth. What about beauty? Are we desperately helpless here, or is there a way to bring it under personal control? I believe we have as much leverage in becoming beautiful as we have in accomplishing anything else we set our minds to. But we have not been looking in the right places for beauty.

The most inspiring books about becoming wealthy are written by people who have made it from rags to riches. However, advice on becoming beautiful often comes from those blessed with exceptional beauty to begin with. For a woman born beautiful to teach others how to become beautiful is like a sweepstakes winner teaching people how to earn a fortune through hard work. Is there a means for achieving beauty for those of us who are not big winners in the gene lottery?

Good news! It is biologically possible to look beautiful at any age. If you do not see yourself as beautiful, it is because your beauty is unclaimed. Your body has never been given a chance to reveal how it can look when provided with the best possible nourishment and care.

Some of our physical characteristics we cannot change—they are determined by our lineage, food choices our mothers made during pregnancy, and our environment. Oriental diagnosis has noted that small eyes are caused by consumption of cooked vegetables and animal products during pregnancy and early childhood. Large eyes, on the other hand, are caused by intake of 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.

These things we cannot change. We can change much, however, by the consumption of a raw plant diet as an adult. This diet will make a difference in weight, complexion, and the texture of skin, hair, and nails. All of these traits and more are determined by our daily choices, with food being one of the most important—and one we have full control of.

Our bodies’ natural ability to renew cells means that your body is capable of improving your looks. After all, we were designed to bloom continuously as old cells are replaced by new ones. The raw food diet makes the most of that rejuvenating ability. Rawsome beauty is not manufactured from the outside; it is cultivated from the inside by nutritionally charged food. The body responds with alacrity to an improved diet. As the body strengthens and heals your insides, you will see your beauty starting to surface on your face and re-structuring your body.

The artistic ability of your body will surprise you. It will seem as though a sculptor is chiseling your face and body. Fat deposits will disappear from the right spots. Everything bumpy or lumpy will be smoothed or straightened. Everything dull will be illuminated. The features will be refined until a lovely face surfaces, and the skin will be polished until it glows. By revealing and intensifying what is good, the raw food lifestyle will make the best of whatever goodness you have and will open every avenue for more. This lifestyle bestows upon you an identity of your own and makes you beautiful.

Only the body sustained on raw food demonstrates natural beauty or, shall we say, “rawsome beauty.” The landscape of the body will change. Fat that has accumulated in pockets under the eyes and at the jaw will melt away. The lumpy potato look of one‘s face will give way to sleek, smooth contours. Pockets of fat and retained water will disappear. The surface of the skin will become soft and smooth yet firm and supple. Visible pores will diminish. Sallow, yellowish skin will turn into a porcelain-like complexion. The whites of the eyes, once red, will become bright with a bluish tinge.

The body becomes transformed 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 your eyes, once sunken in bulbous flesh, look larger and rounder 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 it will improve every one of your 3,000 square inches of skin.

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 slowly give way to a more desirable oval shape. Sagging cheeks will gradually become tauter and tighter. Incidentally, an oval-shaped face, high cheekbones, thin jaws, and large eyes are universally considered to be the major characteristics of a beautiful face.

As the cleansing is completed, you will see how you were meant to look. You will become satisfied, even fascinated, with your appearance. When you look your very best, you look perfect, in a sense that you are as close to the divine image for yourself as you could ever be. You accept yourself completely. Natural beauty is above conformity; it doesn’t demand to be accepted by the dictates of the beauty norm.

People who have been on the raw food lifestyle for several years begin to have an emerging radiance. The glow is hard to fake because it is basically 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. Several years on the raw diet will give you a translucent radiance.

There are beautiful people who are not on the diet, but even they have never been as beautiful as they could be because they have not been cleansed of all toxins. Our frustration with our looks is a subconscious reaction to our innate knowledge that we have not achieved our best look. The Rawsome Diet gives us confidence that we look the way we were meant to look when we are at our most beautiful.

The best proof that raw plant eating is optimal for the body is that it makes you beautiful. Slim face, slender waist, and clear skin with smooth coloration—these subtle changes will convince you that the raw plant diet is the best for good health and graceful beauty. No woman knows her true beauty until she cleanses her body completely of all waste.

I like to study each woman’s face. I see not just how she does look, but how much better she could look. What I now see is just how far her looks fall short of her potential. I see her beauty as it would be if her body had been cleansed from all toxins and excesses. On the Rawsome Diet, you will be stunned by how the Master Artist makes the most of your individual features and brings balance to the face. Texture, hues, and shape will be re-arranged into a harmonious whole. Perfection and imperfection will be joined into a unique personal beauty.

But our imagination is limited. The perfect face is an invention of our culture. It shows human preference in particular time and place, and it is severely limited in its variety. While eye bags, puffiness, and sallow skin make faces look similarly unattractive, the variety of beauty versions, supplied by God Himself, is endless.

When your peer group is going through a stage where they think: “I am losing my looks,” you will be finding yours. At 47, I enjoy looking in the mirror, while in my youth and young adult life I detested my reflection. People who have not seen me for years often tell me that they hardly recognize me. Even my mother recently said I looked like a different person.

Adopting the raw food diet actually brings the beauty equation full circle. Finally, beauty is for everyone! We can drop the pretence. Ugly Ducklings of the world, this is your chance! It is forgivable to be born ugly, but there is no more excuse for staying ugly. Healthy foods create healthy organs. Strive to become beautiful on the inside—you will be beautiful on the outside.

"This article may be freely reprinted as long as the entire article and byline are included."

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.

In these books Tonya makes a stand as an ambassador for plain looking women in their quest for physical beauty. Firmly believing that the roots of under-performing and under-achieving lie in feeling and looking less than your personal best, she is on a mission: she wants every woman to look and feel beautiful.

For more information on how to reveal your Rawsome beauty visit her web-site at: http://www.beautifulonraw.com. Write to: BR Publishing, PO Box 623, Cordova, TN 38088-0623, USA or Call 866-STAY-RAW

Excerpted from the book "Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You" by Tonya Zavasta. The book is available at: http://www.beautifulonraw.com