The Doctor's Diet: Dr. Travis Stork's STAT Program to Help You Lose Weight & Restore Your Health (36 page)

Say you’ve got a can of white beans. Sure, you can heat them up and eat them as is, mix them into soups, or toss them onto salads. But if you join them with a few other ingredients—including tastes from around the globe—you can transform them into some amazing dishes. In less time than it takes to grill a lamb chop, you can make beans the centerpiece of a meal.

Mash them up with garlic, a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of lemon juice, and a sprinkle of fresh oregano, and you have a delicious Mediterranean dip for fresh vegetables.

Toss them with avocado chunks, fresh salsa from your grocery store, and a squirt of lime, and you have the perfect Southern California side dish for grilled fish.

Combine kidney beans and black beans with diced red onions,
chopped jalapeños, cilantro, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar for a zesty Tex-Mex three-bean salad.

Lightly sauté them with garlic, fresh rosemary, and baby spinach for a flavorful Northern Italian sidekick to grilled chicken breasts.

Stir them into tomato sauce flavored with mustard seed, cumin, coriander, chili powder, and turmeric for a distinctive Southeast Asian curry.

Simmer lentils with canned or boxed vegetable broth, chopped vegetables (celery, carrots, onions), canned diced tomatoes, fresh ginger, paprika, saffron, and turmeric for a hearty Moroccan-inspired lentil stew.

Turn everyday vegetable soup into a Tuscan specialty by mixing in kidney beans, garlic, chopped zucchini, and fresh basil.

I don’t know about you, but my mouth is watering just thinking about all of those incredible meals. In fact, I think I’ll make that curry for dinner tonight.

If you’re still not convinced that legumes belong on your table pretty regularly, keep reading. I’m so blown away by their nutritional power that I’m going to wow you with seven really great reasons to include them in your diet at least a few times a week.

Legumes are packed with fiber. More studies than I can count have drawn a connection between high-fiber foods and weight loss. It’s pretty simple: foods that are high in fiber fill you up, staying in your digestive system longer than other, more quickly digested foods. People who eat legumes are less hungry compared with people who eat low-fiber foods with the same amount of calories. Legume eaters also tend to consume fewer calories later in the day.

All this fullness translates to weight loss, as confirmed in a number of studies. For example, in a 2009 study published in the
Journal of Medicinal Food
, obese men following low-calorie diets lost about 50 percent
more weight when their meal plans included legumes. And a 2008 analysis of nearly 1,500 people published in the
Journal of the American College of Nutrition
found that bean eaters had lower body weights and waist sizes than non–bean eaters. In fact, bean eaters were 22 percent less likely to be obese than those who didn’t eat beans.

Legumes are stuffed with both soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber generally helps the heart, and insoluble fiber keeps food moving smoothly through the gut.

Here’s a look at the fiber content of various kinds of legumes:

As we’ve discussed, eating higher-protein meals and snacks can speed up your metabolism, weight loss, and fat burn. Protein is an important part of The Doctor’s Diet Meal Plan Equation for weight loss.

But eating plenty of protein doesn’t mean eating loads and loads of meat. As we discussed under Food Prescription #2, eating a protein-rich diet doesn’t mean piling burgers, bacon, and all kinds of processed meats onto your plate at every meal. Eating legumes allows you to get the protein you need without overdosing on meat or emptying your wallet.

You don’t have to become a vegetarian or vegan to see an impact on your health. Evidence of this comes from several places, including a 2012 study of more than 120,000 adults, which was published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association
. Looking at people’s dietary habits over the course of several decades, the study found that people who substituted legumes for just one serving per day of meat were 10 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who didn’t.

On The Doctor’s Diet, you can choose legumes instead of meat whenever you want. I can tell you personally that this is a substitution I make most days. That’s one of the great things about The Doctor’s Diet: you can make the choices that are best for you.

Take a look at the protein content of several kinds of legumes:

Legumes lower levels of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol when their soluble fiber binds with fatty acids in the body. They also bring down harmful triglycerides and seem to have a beneficial effect on blood pressure—all of which helps cut your risk of developing heart disease.