People have an auto-destruct button: it is their mouth. For years my job has been to provide an operation to assist them in weight loss, and then help them to adopt their lifestyle to maximize the effect of weight loss. Every patient who undergoes weight loss surgery from my office is required to sign off that they will eat differently after surgery, they will change their eating habits. The document they sign says that the food they currently eat, maybe even more than the excess weight, may be contributing to their ill health.

What is sad is when it becomes evident that after weight loss surgery they resume their previous eating habits. No matter what weight loss operation patients have, if they resume what they ate before they will regain weight.

So now I prescribe recipes. Simple recipes to help patients learn to cook, and have delicious food. My prescription pads have become recipe cards. It provides patients with better guidance of what they should be eating – and I give them a number of times a week they should be eating that food.

If they follow the plan they should be eating healthy and losing weight. What you won’t find on my prescription pads are fast foods, pizza, hamburgers, processed food. Because healthy food is what this doctor orders.