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Healthy Fat, and 1 High-Density Vegetable.
    Menu items in bold have recipes included at the end of this book.
    This menu is designed in a traditional breakfast-lunch-dinner style, with soups and salads at lunch and main-dish entrées at dinner. But if you’d like to switch it up, go right ahead—lunch and dinner on the STAT Plan use the same Meal Plan Equations.
    G: Whole-Grain Flex-Time Food (1 daily)
    F: Healthy Fat Flex-Time Food (1 daily)
    V: High-Density Vegetable Flex-Time Food (1 daily)

PART TWO
LIFE-SAVING FOOD PRESCRIPTIONS
    “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”
-Hippocrates
    W hen patients are brought into the emergency room suffering from a heart attack, stroke, or other life-threatening emergency, doctors and nurses jump into action, administering treatment and giving medications in hopes of pulling them from the jaws of death.
    Once they’re stabilized—once we “stop the bleeding,” so to speak—our emergency room patients go back to their own doctors and specialists, who work with them to make changes that will keep them out of the ER in the future.
    After leaving the ER, patients typically receive a stack of prescriptions. Post–heart attack, for example, they might walk out with prescriptions for blood thinners, beta-blockers, or statins.
    Now that you’ve started The Doctor’s Diet, and you’re at least a few meals into the STAT Plan—now that you’re taking crucial steps to stabilize your own weight emergency—I’m going to follow my typical ER procedure and hand you a stack of prescriptions.
    Unlike what you’d get after an ER visit, though, these aren’t prescriptions for medicines. They’re prescriptions for food.
    My Doctor’s Diet Food Prescriptions will help you not only lose weight, but aid you in restoring your vitality and lowering your risk of disease. They’ll explain in detail the science behind the design of The Doctor’s Diet, why certain foods can boost your health, and why other foods can devastate it. They’ll give you a step-by-step blueprint for healthy eating—and it’s one that you can follow for the rest of your life.
THE POWER OF “WHY”
    Sure, you could just follow the meal plans in this book and lose weight without understanding the “why” behind the recommendations I make. But I don’t think that’s the best way to go. Unless you really get the thinking behind my dietary advice, you won’t really own it yourself.
    I’m a big believer in everyone owning their own health-care decisions. And I’m a big believer in the power of “why.”
    Here’s the way I look at it. If someone suggests that I do something, and they tell me
why
I ought to do it, I’m much more likely to understand it and to want to do it that way than I am if I don’t get an explanation. (We’re also more likely to remember to do something a certain way if we understand why we’re doing it.) When I was in medical school, and one of my professors demonstrated a particular way to suture a laceration, I picked it up a whole lot quicker when I understood the
why
of it, rather than just the
how
. For example, the kind of suture that is best for a deep wound may leave too much of a scar if it’s used on a superficial skin wound.
    That’s why I want you to understand not just
which
foods are best for your health, but
why
they are so good.
    I don’t want you choosing one food over another because you’re thinking, “That’s what Dr. Travis thinks I should eat.” It’s not about me—it’s about you, your body, and your health. When you understand how food impacts your blood, your organs, and every cell in your body, making the healthiest choices becomes easier. When you own your decisions, you’re better able to live them.
CONTRADICTORY RESEARCH—
WHAT SHOULD YOU BELIEVE?
    Before we go any further, let’s talk a little about the scientific research behind my recommendations.
    Sometimes it seems like nutrition scientists are purposely trying to confuse us.