It was then that I realized just how promising this new principle was, not just for Sharon, but for everyone. I took what I had learned from Sharon and applied these principles to some of my other patients, focusing their treatment not simply on weight loss but on rebuilding damaged immune systems.
I scrutinized the diet, life-style, and stress level of all my patients because each of these affect immune function. I devised special diets to remove a patient's individual toxic foods. Then, I used all of nature's nutritional building blocks—vitamins, amino acids, and minerals—to rebuild their damaged immune systems.
The more I refined treatment based on individual immune responses, the broader improvements I saw in every area of my patients' health. No matter why they had first consulted me, they became more alert, vital, happier, and less prone to infection. And, they lost weight. Truly, healthy immune cells mean a healthy person.
BREAKING THE FAT CYCLE
I have treated more than 3,000 patients since making this discovery, and I know that the Immune Power Diet works. Those who follow this nutrition plan become healthier, have a better mental state, and get thin. And they don't just get thin—they stay thin. Initial weight loss is important, but keeping that weight off is critical.
This treatment has proven the modality of choice for steady long-term maintenance. This is because the Immune Power Diet is specifically designed to balance the body's immune system, creating what biologists call homeostasis—"self-regulation."
Nutritional peaks and valleys are smoothed out, food cravings and the need to binge uncontrollably are eliminated.
THE BOTTOM LINE
I've tried to wear four hats here. I've personally felt the agony and frustration of spending half of my life grossly fat and profoundly unhealthy. Knowing my own misery during that period, I have a personal stake in making sure that my patients won't have to waste valuable years feeling unhealthy and unloved.
As a physician, rigorously trained at Tufts and Harvard, I know my nutrition plan must incorporate only proven, safe medical principles.
The Hippocratic Oath, which each graduating physician must take, reminds us: "Above all else, do no harm." That became my guiding principle. Both my sense of medical ethics and my professional reputation among my research colleagues demands that nothing in this plan ever could, in any way, endanger patients.
As a psychiatrist, I know that no matter how biologically sound a nutrition program is, it will only work if it takes into account all that we encompass: our needs and fears, family and peer support, individual life-style, and commitment to making real behavior changes. These all must be orchestrated for any true growth to take place, so I have built in the principles of psychological health which help people to make positive changes in their lives.
But most important, as one who makes his living every day by helping people get healthy and lose weight, I knew this plan had to work for everyone.
This brings me to a statistic I'm very proud of: in the recent years that I have used the Immune Power Diet, I have helped over 3,000 of my patients lose a total of more than 74,000 pounds of extra weight. Seventy-four thousand pounds. That's 37 tons of fat. Enough fat to fill a dozen dumptrucks. Every one of those pounds—mine and my patients'—has taught me a lesson about effective, safe, and health-promoting weight control.
This book is based on my scientific study and research over the last decade, but I owe its inspiration to something much more personal: to those 37 tons of lessons from all those different patients. |
