The Doctor's Diet: Dr. Travis Stork's STAT Program to Help You Lose Weight & Restore Your Health (32 page)

I don’t want to go overboard here, but the fact is that vegetables are just about the healthiest foods out there. They may not be your favorite food—I admit, they’re not always my first choice—but when you think about how packed they are with all kinds of nutrients and disease-fighting compounds, you have to love them. And when you look at the studies that associate vegetable eating with long-term weight loss and longer life, you can’t argue with the fact that they belong on your plate.

If, like me, you don’t have a natural love for veggies, use the ideas in this Food Prescription to sneak them into your meals. As long as they’re somewhere—blended into a smoothie, tucked into an omelet, chopped into a salsa—you’ll get all of their amazing health benefits and weight-loss boost.

And now, in the next Food Prescription, get ready for some great news about another occupant of your grocery store’s produce aisle.

As you know, I feel pretty strongly that we should be cutting added sugar—sweeteners added to processed foods, beverages, baked goods, breakfast cereals, and other everyday staples—out of our diets as much as possible. All that added sugar is a huge contributing factor to weight gain and disease risk. But when I suggest staying away from sugar, I’m talking about the sweeteners added to foods, not the natural sugars in whole, healthy foods such as fruits.

Yes, I’m telling you to eat fruit.

I know I’m going to get some flack for this. Most of the diets being promoted these days tell you to stay away from most fruit because of the sugar it contains. They say you can’t lose weight or break your sugar addiction if you keep eating fruit.

I heartily disagree with this line of thinking. Unless you have poorly controlled diabetes and your doctor tells you not to, there’s simply no reason to stop eating fruit.

Listen, I’m all about healthy weight loss and breaking sugar addictions. But I simply don’t believe that cutting out an entire group of very healthful foods—fruit—is a good idea. In fact, I think it’s a terrible idea.

As I’ve said before, the reason that two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese is not that we are eating too much fruit. It’s because we’re eating too much of everything else.

Obesity researchers back this up. They have found no link between fruit consumption and health problems. In fact, long-term studies looking at the eating habits of large numbers of people find that eating fruit is associated with lower body weight and a decreased risk of heart disease and other weight-related health problems.

The nutritional benefits of fruit make it an excellent part of a healthy diet. That’s why The Doctor’s Diet includes fruit every day.

I’m not telling you to go out and gorge on fruit—absolutely not. You can’t eat it in unlimited quantities, or you won’t lose any weight at all. But by including it in your meals in an intelligent, balanced way, you can get a windfall of nutrients without any downside at all. And most fruit tastes great to boot.

So, come on, let’s head out to the farmer’s market or grocery store. It’s time to start eating fruit again.

Fruit contains a cornucopia of nutritional benefits. Here are some of them:

Fruits are high in dietary fiber (soluble and insoluble). Since I’ve already explained this and I don’t want to get into too-much-information territory here, suffice it to say that processed foods are digested quickly, but fruit and other high-fiber food stays in the digestive tract long enough to allow satiety hormones time to send your brain plenty of “I’m full” signals.

The fiber in fruit doesn’t just keep hunger pangs at bay: studies show it helps lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. And it helps keep your bowels functioning normally. Unfortunately, fruit juice has most of the fiber removed (more on this later), which is why I always suggest eating whole fruit or blending whole fruit into a smoothie.

Fruit contains a natural sugar known as fructose. Although it is a kind of sugar, the fructose in whole fruit does not raise your blood sugar
the way added sugar in processed foods does.

The sugar in fruit is far different from processed cane sugar, corn syrup, and other sweeteners added to soda, cookies, cakes, and just about every other processed food out there.

When you eat candy, for example, you experience a rapid blood sugar response as glucose is dumped into your bloodstream right away. But when you eat a piece of fruit, the fructose within it takes awhile to have an effect on blood sugar because it’s hidden away within the fruit’s dietary fiber—basically a fibrous net of cell walls.

Because your body has to work hard to break down the dietary fiber in fruit, eating it slows down digestion, giving you a feeling of fullness that you are less likely to get from low-fiber foods. It also allows blood sugar to rise gradually rather than rapidly, as it does when you eat candy or other food with lots of added sugar.

You may think of bacteria and other microbes as being “bad.” Some are—for example, E. coli can be toxic and can make you very sick. But our intestines are full of “good” bacteria and other microorganisms that assist in digestion, boost our immune systems, keep us regular, and do lots of other good things. Eating fruit helps keep your intestinal flora healthy.

The huge range of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants in fruit help lower the risk of a variety of diseases, including cancer and heart disease. The potassium in certain fruits (including cantaloupe, papaya, bananas, oranges, and berries) can help lower blood pressure and contribute to bone and kidney health. The vitamin C in many fruits helps the immune system fight disease and heal wounds. Other nutrients in fruit benefit your body pretty much from head to toe, contributing to everything from brain fitness to the healthy appearance of your skin, hair, and nails.