The Doctor's Diet

INTRODUCTION

THE WEIGHT GAIN EMERGENCY

Lights flash. Sirens blare. An emergency services vehicle rushes through the streets in a life-or-death race against time. Inside the ambulance, emergency medical technicians work frantically to stabilize their patient. Screeching to a halt, the EMTs throw open the ambulance doors, grab the gurney on which their patient lies, and charge into the emergency room. There, highly trained ER doctors and nurses take over, springing into action in a tenacious fight for the patient's life. When luck is on their side, the patient pulls through. When it's not, an ER doctor is left with the heartbreaking task of having to deliver the tragic news of the patient's death to their family.

Too many times, I have been the ER doc giving this awful news. No matter how many times it happens, it never gets any easier to tell someone that the person who means more to them than anyone else in the world—their mom, their dad, their sister, their brother, their child—has passed away. I feel as if I lose a little piece of my heart every time I have to do it.

What makes it toughest is knowing that so many untimely deaths could have been prevented.

Death is inevitable, of course. No matter how hard we try, we can't avoid it. But death isn't always a tragedy. When someone who's lived a long, happy life dies peacefully at home, surrounded by family and friends, that's terribly sad, of course. But it's not a tragedy. When someone's life ends years or even decades before it should? When someone's quality of life is compromised at an early age? That's a tragedy. And that's the kind of death and disability that ER docs see every single day.

When you think about all of these unnecessary ER deaths, you may shudder as you imagine their causes—horrible trauma, grisly accidents, car crashes, even gun violence.

But when it comes to the kinds of problems we see most often in the ER, the reality is actually quite different than what most people imagine.

NOT AN ACCIDENT

The majority of patients in ERs are not there because of trauma or accidents. They are there because of their diets. That's right: the biggest emergency in ERs across the United States is the food we willingly, knowingly, happily choose to eat.

Our food choices are so dangerously unhealthy that eating-related diseases send twice as many people to hospital ERs than injuries and accidents.

Unhealthy eating contributes to as many as 580,000 deaths in the United States every year. That's more than smoking, drug abuse, gun violence, and traffic accidents combined. If you eat the typical American diet, it very well may kill you.

I don't want that to happen to you! As an ER doctor and as a fellow human being who loves life with an infinite passion, I want to protect you from that fate. I don't want YOU to be the person on the gurney being rushed to the hospital with flashing lights and blaring sirens. I don't want YOU to be the patient lying in the ER with a medical team fighting desperately to save your life. I don't want YOU to be the corpse wheeled to the morgue while an ER doctor gives your shocked family the tragic news that you are gone forever because your life could not be saved.

I'm not telling you this to scare you. Quite the opposite—I'm leveling with you because I care about you. I want to empower you. I want to energize you and give you hope! As bad as this black cloud of health facts sounds, it actually has a really amazing silver lining. It doesn't have to happen to you! You don't have to be the dying ER patient with a distraught family. You can turn your diet around, and in doing so, you can revive your health and change your life.

That's right. No matter how bad your diet is, no matter how much excess weight you're carrying around, no matter how many food-related mistakes you've made in the past, you can start fresh now. You can embark on a new way of living today that will immediately begin to chip away at your risk of dying from your diet.

How? By following The Doctor's Diet.

It's that simple. Changes that you can start to make right this minute can turn your diet from a flashing-lights emergency to a health-boosting, life-saving gift that you give yourself and your family. You really can turn your life around—and The Doctor's Diet can show you how.

DELICIOUS CHANGES

Change can be difficult—believe me, I understand that. It's hard to let go of a lifetime of poor eating habits and grab on to a healthy new diet. But I promise you, with The Doctor's Diet, I'm making it as easy for you as possible. I've created a program that will guide you, step by step, in the simplest way possible, to develop a healthier dietary outlook that will help you lose weight, restore your health, reduce disease risk, and pave the way for you to live a longer, happier life.

The Doctor's Diet is way more than just an eating plan—it's a blueprint for a longer, healthier, happier life. It's everything you need to know to keep yourself OUT of the ER.

But don't worry: as we travel together down the path to better health, I'm not going to ask you to eat bland, boring "diet" food. Listen, I'm a man who loves food. I absolutely cannot make a meal out of a giant bowl of raw broccoli—to tell you the truth, eating straight-up veggies like that is about as appealing to me as sitting down to a plate of swamp grass and acorns. I grew up in the Midwest, raised on bacon and eggs for breakfast, big sandwiches for lunch, and meat and potatoes for dinner. Vegetables were an afterthought, and more often than not they came from a can. My idea of a snack was a football-sized burrito or as many brownies as I could fit in my hands—and these mitts are pretty big, so that's a lot of brownies.

As I got older and started tasting food from other parts of the United States and the world, I fell in love with exciting new flavors and delicious new foods. And as I spent year after grueling year training to become a physician, I learned about the strength of the link between food and wellness. So believe me, I love good health. But I also love to eat, and I am not about to tell you (or myself) that a healthy diet has to be boring or tasteless.

FOODS YOU CAN LIVE WITH

Switching from low-nutrient foods (white bread, processed meats, chips, cookies, and so on) to the super-nutritious foods included in The Doctor's Diet does take some getting used to—I understand that. When you're accustomed to having a greasy burger with fries for lunch, for example, it may seem strange to sit down to a meal made up of vegetables, healthy protein, and whole grains.

Let me give you some reassurance on this. Yeah, the food in The Doctor's Diet may not be what you're used to. But believe me when I tell you you're going to love it.

I'll tell you a story. When I first started hosting The Doctors, the caterers who provided lunch for our first photo shoot brought in the usual fast-food fare. I took one look at it and realized we needed to make a change—here I was hosting a medical show about health, and the food we were eating was far from healthy. I had to speak up.

Since that time, the caterers have started serving the most delicious, healthiest food you can imagine. And I'm not the only one who loves it—the crew goes crazy over it, too. I always laugh to myself when I see these big guys—the ones who help build the sets and such—devouring a dish with salmon or chicken, quinoa, and veggies served with a spicy curry sauce. This is Doctor's Diet food, but they're not eating it because they're watching their weight—they're eating it because it tastes incredible.

I think you're going to love it as much as they do—and as much as I do.

I live The Doctor's Diet, and I eat the food I'm encouraging you to eat. I'm not about to tell you to put something on your plate that I wouldn't have on mine!

My program is designed to help you eat the foods you love, but to eat them in a healthy way that will add vibrancy to your life and help keep you out of the ER. Those big burritos I mentioned? I've put together my own burrito recipe that is about ten times healthier than those fast-food bombs I used to eat, and you know what? They're also about ten times tastier, too. Those handfuls of brownies I used to scarf down? Well, I still have a brownie now and then—total deprivation doesn't work for me, and research shows it doesn't work for most other people, either.

But I've learned that adding a dollop of mindfulness to an occasional treat makes it way more enjoyable and satisfying than a handful gobbled up thoughtlessly. That's why mindfulness—developing an awareness of what you're eating so you can fully enjoy its flavor—is one of the many new mindsets you'll learn in my program that will help you taste and savor healthy food in a whole new way.

STEEPED IN SCIENCE

Just as flavor is a big part of The Doctor's Diet, so is medical integrity. My most important professional role in life is being a physician. When I swore the Hippocratic oath—as every doctor does—I promised to practice medicine honestly and without harm to patients. I take that oath very seriously. You can be sure that all of my advice and recommendations are based on my full commitment to your health.

My program is not a gimmicky fad diet based on the latest pseudo-science. It is an evidence-based plan that is grounded in nutritional science. Every recommendation and guideline is backed by solid research that you can trust, and by my sacred oath as a physician. That's my promise to you.

Come along with me on this journey to optimal health and I'll do everything in my power to make sure you live a long, vibrant life. Decide now to commit to an eating plan that could very well save your life. Don't wait until you're lying in the ER, praying for a second chance. Do it now, before it's too late!