Recipes for Weight-Loss & Diet: EatingWell

This cookbook has been a long time in the making. Soon after I began giving my patients a now-infamous list of “just say no” and “yes, please” foods and sent them on their way with about ten recipes, I recognized the need for a more comprehensive resource that could help them maintain their new way of eating. And so for years, I’ve been collecting recipes from friends and patients and developing my own repertoire. It’s taken a lot of trial and error, tasting and testing, and plenty of dirty dishes, but I’ve finally been able to compile the collection of tasty, healthy, and diverse recipes that my patients—and you readers—deserve.
But let me back up a bit. If you’re just coming to this book without having read The Plant Paradox, you may be thinking: what is this list you’re talking about, and why do I need it? For the past seventeen years, I’ve been treating patients with a combination of nutritional therapy and conventional medicine. People generally come to see me when they’re struggling with a chronic disease and just can’t seem to get better. They arrive at one of my clinics—in Palm Springs or Santa Barbara—on a personal journey to regain their health or their loved one’s health, or to take their “good enough” health to robust, vibrant health.
As my patients and regular readers know, I saw and continue to see dramatic reversals of diseases I once thought impossible to manage; changes that we can track with sophisticated blood work and that my patients can feel and see. Many of these changes are directly linked to nutritional alterations we’ve made to their diets. And so I wrote The Plant Paradox to explain the philosophy behind the list: the idea that proteins called lectins found in many common “health foods”—including fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans—can damage the gut, cause inflammation, and contribute to disease. Removing major lectin-containing foods from the diet, combined with minimizing exposure to environmental toxins, are the practices at the core of the Plant Paradox program.
The Plant Paradox Cookbook is written first and foremost for all of you who have applied my “rules” and regained your health, but keep finding yourselves asking that immortal question: “What the heck can I eat?” I