Healthy Eating Tips from Our Surgeons

At Southern Surgical Arts, we know that beautiful skin is not just a by-product of peels, scrubs, and laser resurfacing. There is a lot you can do, every day, to ensure your skin looks healthy and fresh—starting with the food you eat. After all, beauty starts from within, and that makes good nutrition essential to anyone who wants youthful, fresh, and radiant-looking skin, as well as more energy and better health overall. Here are some of the healthy-eating routines of our award-winning cosmetic surgeons, Dr. Carey Nease, Dr. Chad Deal, and Dr. Vincent Gardner.

Dr. Carey Nease

We prefer to eat a Mediterranean-style diet most of the time, with lots of veggies and lean meats. We use olive and coconut oil while cooking because we prefer the taste as well as the heart-healthy benefits. And we try to work in a good amount of healthy fats, like avocado and good nuts like almonds and walnuts.

We minimize our carb intake and eat very little sugar. Sugar causes inflammation and elevated consumption has been linked to so many health problems. We just feel our best when we eat as little sugar as possible—and we don’t miss it.

Dr. Chad Deal

Avoiding processed food is the #1 most important advice I can offer others to maintain a healthier lifestyle. Processed foods are filled with additives and chemicals and usually have little to no nutritional value, as well as being loaded with empty calories. Reading the labels on this kind of food can be a real eye-opener. We try to eat as little processed food as possible at home, and we all feel better for it.

Caloric restriction is another important piece of advice. It has been clinically proven to be one of the best lifestyle changes a person can make, especially if you are overweight. Eating fresh, natural foods like fruits, vegetables and meats versus empty carbohydrates will help you feel full longer. This, in turn, will help you to reduce overall caloric intake. The fiber in fruits and vegetables will also keep your digestive system running smoothly.

In the past, people have been encouraged to avoid fats, but we now know this isn’t the best advice. Healthy fats can help boost your metabolism and help you feel full. Make sure you’re getting good fats from nuts, lean meats, fish (e.g. salmon), and avocado.

We try to follow these guidelines at home, not only for our own health but to set a good example for our kids. We want healthy nutrition habits to be second nature to them as they get older.

Dr. Vincent Gardner

We recently started using a table top electric pressure cooker to prepare meals, because preparing food this way allows your food to retain more nutrients because the cooking time is reduced. We love the idea of serving meals that haven’t had most of their vitamins and minerals boiled or cooked away. Using a pressure cooker also cuts cooking time, allowing us to serve healthy meals even if we’re in a rush—we don’t have to choose between quick and nutritious. There are lots of blogs out there with thousands of recipes to choose from depending on your tastes.

I’ve also discovered that I feel healthier if I consume less gluten, so I’ve been incorporating more gluten-free meals into my diet. This makes me feel more energetic and rejuvenated. I also seem to be losing some unwanted weight because by going gluten-free, I end up eating less processed sugar/carbs and more protein.