The Doctor's Diet: Dr. Travis Stork's STAT Program to Help You Lose Weight & Restore Your Health (39 page)

There you have my 10 Food Prescriptions for optimal health. By following these recommendations, you’ll put yourself on the path to a lower weight, a slimmer waist, a healthier body, and a longer life. I hope you’ll take these prescriptions every bit as seriously as you would a prescription for a medicine or a medical treatment, because, as Hippocrates said, food really can be your medicine—provided you choose the healthiest foods.

Now that you understand how The Doctor’s Diet is designed and you’ve had some time to follow the STAT Plan, I’ll tell you about the next phase of my eating program: the RESTORE Plan.

A
fter kicking off your healthy new life with my 14-day STAT Plan, you’re ready to move on to the next phase of The Doctor’s Diet: the 14-day RESTORE Plan.

During your 14 days on the STAT Plan, you “stopped the bleeding” on your excess weight emergency. You began shedding pounds and burning fat.

By now you should be feeling some pleasant changes in both body and mind. Most people discover that being on the STAT Plan significantly lowers their cravings for sugar and high-fat junk foods. They also find their taste buds getting reset in such a way that they appreciate the natural taste of whole foods more than they have in years.

Now that you’ve completed the 14-day STAT Plan, overly sweet soft drinks and desserts that you recently enjoyed may taste way too sweet, and the salty, greasy snacks that you once craved may be far less appealing to you.

If you aren’t seeing these changes, I’m guessing that your cravings and sugar addictions are so entrenched that you need a little more time to overcome them. Don’t worry—if you follow the RESTORE Plan exactly as written, you should start noticing these changes very soon.

The RESTORE Plan is a natural outgrowth of the STAT Plan. RESTORE builds on STAT by adding more flexibility and more choices.

Meal Plan Equations for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are the same for RESTORE as they are for STAT. However, you’ll have a longer list
of Fruits to choose from on the RESTORE Plan, in addition to STAT’s apples, berries, and grapefruit.

To make things even more interesting, RESTORE expands the list of Whole Grains, allowing you to choose favorite foods such as whole-grain crackers, whole-grain pasta, and more.

Another big difference between STAT and RESTORE is in the daily Flex-Time Foods. With RESTORE, you get even more choices of foods to add into your daily menu plan. RESTORE gives you an additional Flex-Time Whole Grain choice (for a total of two per day), and an additional Healthy Fat (for a total of two per day).

Plus, RESTORE gives you one extra Snack Protein. That means instead of one daily snack, you can have two. I recommend that one of your snacks includes a Snack Protein and a RESTORE Fruit, and that one combines a Snack Protein and an Anytime Vegetable. This widens your snacking choices and gives you even more opportunities to eat healthy, life-supporting foods.

Finally, raise a glass to this part of the RESTORE Plan: each week, the plan makes room for two Alcohol-based Beverages, allowing you to enjoy an occasional cocktail or glass of wine or beer.

The goal of the RESTORE Plan is to continue allowing you to lose weight by eating reasonable amounts of tasty yet also the healthiest of foods. The emphasis will still be on weight loss, but with the RESTORE Plan, you’ll add a wider variety of foods to your daily meal plans. Many of these come from the list of Food Prescriptions I recommended in the previous section.

The RESTORE Plan is designed to be followed for 14 days. After that, you’ll either shift back to the STAT Plan for two weeks in order to continue losing weight, or if you’ve reached your goal, you’ll move on to the lifelong MAINTAIN Plan.

Either way, you’ll continue to restore optimal health, lower your risk of chronic diseases, and eat foods throughout the day that will help you live a longer, happier, healthier life.