The Food...begin the transformation
The 5 pillars of Dr. Dan's food plans
First and of course, all food must be nutritious and low inflammatory. It must be real food. It must feed the gut microbiome and create happy mitochondria.
Second, the food must be delicious! This is no sacrifice program. There is an adjustment period while the microbiome is shifting your taste buds around, but once settled in the food is fantastic. I look forward to my meals every day and eat as much as I want. No calorie counting here!
Third, the food must be cost efficient. This isn’t to say quality food can be as inexpensive as processed food. Not likely, but when we consider the costs of medications, doctors visits, surgery and the quality of life decline caused by the standard American diet (SAD) I think the trade off on spending more on real food instead of medical expenses makes sense. Skip the case of diet soda and buy the grass fed beef or wild caught salmon.
Fourth we have the must of time efficient. I’m busy, you’re busy. Very few of us have many hours to prep meals. So every recipe I use has a time efficient method to allow all types of “busy” people to still enjoy nutritious meals. This was one of the most challenging aspects of the food plan and I think you’ll appreciate it once you get into the system. I enjoy watching many of the YouTube chef personalities, but don’t have an army of helpers to prepare the ingredients and I suspect neither do you. The main feature is the “planover”. These are not leftovers but planovers- food made in enough quantity in advance to plan to have it over the next couple days. It will make more sense when we discuss actual menus in the sections ahead.
Fifth and last, it must be sustainable! This is not a quick fix fad diet that people use for a two week tune up before the beach vacation only to return to the usual. This is a food lifestyle that will make amazing and dramatic improvements in how you look and feel. Improve lab values and likely extend your “health-span” and lifespan. This is a food plan that returns us more in line with our ancestral diets, the ones our genetics evolved with.