[Bonus Episode] Fasting for Weight Loss and Optimal Health with Dr. Jason Fung

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Sweet Ray Ban Meta glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers. If you cut 500 calories a day, every day, hunger goes up even after a year. You can measure the hormones. You can ask people surveys. Their hunger levels are much higher than they before they lost weight. And that's the reason that they can't fight it. Because. And everybody blames them. They say, oh, it's because you have no willpower. It's like, no, they're physiologically hungrier than you are. They. That's why they want to eat, and that's why they cannot fight it as well as you can. And that's the point.

Hey, it's JJ and welcome to Ask the Health Expert. But this isn't just any old Ask the Health Expert session. This is your bonus session. Yes, it's the weekend, and because it's the weekend, we are going to take some time with an amazing expert. So be on the lookout for these Saturday Ask the Health Expert bonus sessions where we're gonna go deep into an amazing subject with an incredible expert to give you actionable items that you can.

Put into your life.

I have been getting so many questions about fasting and intermittent fasting, and I have the man. I went straight to the source. So here's where I'm so super lucky. I have access to some of the most incredible experts. So I was like, I was talking to Dr. Joe Mercola about fasting, and he said, ah, you got to talk to Dr. Jason Fung. Have you read his work? I'm like, no. So anyway, he hooked me up and I asked Dr. Jason Fung to be on the podcast and he said yes. So I have this. I have, like, the great honor today of bringing, really, the guy who has been pushing all of fasting out into the world. And he's going to walk us through it, how he came to find out about this, how you can put this into practice and why you want to and really make it easy and accessible. Plus, he is giving out his introductory course on fasting for free. Don't you love being a member of my community? And you'll get that@jjvirchen.com fasting let me tell you a little bit about Jason. He is Canadian, graduated from University of Toronto and then went to UCLA to do his specialty in kidneys. And that's, you'll hear the story about that and how that helped him discover fasting and the benefits of fasting. And then he wrote the Obesity Code and the Complete Guide to Fasting. Now he's the medical director of the Intensive Dietary Management Program. He has literally helped thousands of people successfully fast. So this is going to be incredible information for you. You know, I've been talking a lot about making sure that you're eating, you're, you're stopping eating, giving yourself a good 12, 12 hour fast and then moving into the time restricted eating and then starting to play around with alternate day fasting. So we're going to break down all of that today. Super excited about it. Before we dive into that, want to do a shout out to Janice. And Janice, her code name is Chocolate is a Vegetable. I mean, how do you not just love this? Janice gave me a five star review in Apple Podcasts saying loving this podcast and learning so much from JJ As a health coach, I have an exhaustive library of nutrition and fitness books and I'm always learning from the fast. J J is definitely one of the best. Her podcasts are fun and informative and I learn something new every time I tune in. By far my favorite podcast to tune into. And I will tell you, you think I'm fun. Like Dr. Jason Fung. Super fun. Super fun. And I didn't know when I was getting on the line with him. I'm like, I didn't know if he was going to be like stuffy, you know, had no idea what I was getting into. I should have known buddy of, of Dr. Joe McCollos would be cool. Like Joe is all right. So thanks again for that awesome review, Janice, and if you have not left a review yet, I'd love to shout you out. So pop on over to itunes, leave a review, whatever you're thinking, and I would love to acknowledge you on air. All right, before we dive into this week's amazing interview, love to share another favorite with you.

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Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try.

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Dr. Jason Fung, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to dig into this topic with you.

Well, thanks for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

I was chatting with our mutual buddy Dr. Joe Mercola, who got me into all of this craziness years and years ago and you know, your name just kept coming up and I was like, all right, I gotta have him. So thank you for coming on. We are going to dig into fasting, but I like to start with how the heck did you get into this.

Yeah, it's a great story because I was trained as a kidney specialist, so very conventionally doing regular medicine. And the biggest cause of kidney disease is type 2 diabetes. And one of the things I sort of realized after quite a number of years, years was that really I had been sort of going about the whole thing the wrong way. That is, people would get their type 2 diabetes and then they would get kidney disease and then I would treat that. But really, if you're going to treat it at the end, it's not going to be very good. Really, what you should do is tell people to get rid of their type 2 diabetes and they won't get their diabetic kidney disease.

It sounds very logical, but, like, it's not. I'm sure it's easier said than done. You just get rid of your type 2 diabetes?

No way. Well, exactly. And the thing was that we had been going about the type 2 diabetes question completely wrong because we were trying to give people all these drugs, but we knew that the drugs were not going to get rid of it. That is, if you took a medication for the type 2 diabetes, it didn't get rid of it. It just made your sugars better, but you still had it. Whereas if people lost weight, then they would actually get rid of their type 2 diabetes. The sugars would come down, and then if you measure their blood work, they wouldn't be diabetic. So really the whole point was that you had to lose weight in order to make the type 2 diabetes. But it wasn't just some trivial thing of looking good in a bikini kind of thing. This was like a serious health problem. It was causing type 2 diabetes and all the sort of downstream events like heart attacks and strokes and kidney disease. So that's where I really, really, really got interested in the question of weight loss. And, you know, I, as a doctor, you really get no training whatsoever in nutrition. You get a lot of training in how to give drugs and what surgeries to use. And, you know, those are all very important things. But as we move into this sort of century, a lot of the diseases that we're facing are chronic diseases. And a lot of them, truthfully, are related to metabolic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes. So we had no training to sort of deal with these things. And that's where I sort of really delved into it. And one of the things that I realized very quickly was that this whole calories in calories out notion was really, really flawed. It wasn't correct and it wasn't useful.

I'm so excited to hear this. Like, I'm like, can I get an amen? I've been talking about that for 25 years. And people are like, of course. Calories. The calories in, calories out. I'm like, come on.

Yeah. It's the craziest thing, I gotta tell you. Like, you know, as soon as I started looking to, I thinking, what are, what are we thinking? Like, this is crazy. Like, how can you pretend that 100 calories of cookies is the same as 100 calories of broccoli? There is. There is nothing the same about that.

I know, right? I literally had a doctor tell I had a client who couldn't lose weight. And she went to the doctor and her doctor told her, this is going to make you so, you know, hold onto your chair. That she could eat apple pie and snickers all day long. And she was counting her calories. It was calories in, calories out. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I've seen.

That written in a book, actually, by a doctor. It's like, whoa, that's crazy. Right? And it's. And, and. But that's the thinking that pervades the sort of mainstream kind of academic view of obesity. And you know what? The thing is that if calories in, calories out, you know, this sort of eat less, move more strategy, you know, cut 500 calories a day. If it worked, I'd be the first one to prescribe it. Right? Because I don't care why it works. I care that it works. So if it works for people, then go ahead and do it. But the problem was that this approach clearly didn't work. Like, every single trial we had done, and there was a huge 50,000 person randomized trial that showed that this approach just didn't work. And everybody who's done it knows that it doesn't work. The failure rate's like 95% at least. So why would we tell people to use a strategy that fails 95% of the time? It's absolutely ridiculous. So that's kind of the point. I was, a few years ago, I was thinking, wow, this whole calories thing, which is the basis of all of most of obesity medicine, is complete crap.

Yeah.

That's when I started thinking about other things, including, you know, the types of foods and hormones, insulin, that kind of thing. And then I thought about it for a second. I thought, well, you know, the other thing you could do is just not eat anything at all, which is intermittent fasting. And I thought, wow, that's a really bad idea because, you know, everybody knows you have to eat eat even to lose weight. Right?

And I thought, remember when they told us to eat all day long because it kept our metabolism going?

Yeah. That was the dumbest thing. Like, it truly is dumb. And I always say that, like, one. There was no studies that ever showed that was actually true. People just kept saying it over and over, and then people believed it. And it's like, think about it. You're saying that you have to eat all the time to lose weight. Like, it sounds really dumb because it is really dumb. Like, there's nothing subtle about it. It's like a dumb idea.

I wish it was true, though. Wouldn't it be awesome?

I know. And it's like, really? And the other thing, again, is that if it worked, I would be the first one to use it. But nobody has done that in all of human history. Okay? So it's not like they were doing that in the 50s. Right. We have studies about how people ate in the 50s and 60s, and it was three times a day. Now it's like six or seven times.

A day because we got to keep our blood sugar stable.

Come on.

Yeah, that was the other. Oh, God. That's the stupidest thing. Because again, it's. It's like, let's look at the scientific evidence. And it's like, if you don't. If you're not on medications and you're not on diabetic, your blood sugar will be stable. If you eat 10 times a day or 10 times a year, it actually doesn't matter. Your body will keep that blood sugar at a stable level. We have people who fast for years. Like Gandhi, like in the past. Not talking diabetics. People do hunger strikes and all that sort of thing. And their blood sugars were stable. It's like, yeah, they got into trouble when their body fat percentage got really low. But it's like, think about it. You don't. Like, your blood sugar will remain stable. Think about all those prisoners of war and World War II, Japan, and, you know, the concentration camps. Like, they were literally starving, but they weren't going hypoglycemic and having seizures until the very, very, very end.

Yeah, but yet you're told to have these things with you. I can't tell you how many people in the community will go, but I have hypoglycemia.

I know. It's like, yeah, it's. You, like, at least, you know, 80 pounds overweight, you know, have that. And the concentration camp people didn't Right. It's like, that doesn't make any sense. So completely illogical. The whole of weight loss field was completely illogical. So then that's when I started really looking. So my advantage was that I can read the literature. And I just went into. I said, why is fasting such a bad idea? Like, really, let's look at it. And then so I dug into the studies and I looked at the medical physiology. It turns out it's not a bad idea at all. It's actually a really, really good idea that people have been doing for thousands of years. So it's. It's crazy because every major religion in the world prescribes periods of fasting. So the Buddhists, the, you know, the Catholics, the Jews, the, you know, Muslims, the Buddhists, the Hindus, like everybody that you can possibly think of has periods of fasting. So clearly it can be done. Clearly, billions of people around the world over thousands of years have done it, and yet we think since 1980 that it cannot be done. Possibly the done. It's like, come on, that's ridiculous. So, you know, and the point was, you know, when I was starting out, the point was that I wanted something very simple because I was treating these sort of older people, and they didn't understand the changes in diet and they didn't really want to change their diet, but they sort of understood what fasting was all about. And that's the, that's the point. It's a simple idea. If you don't eat, you're going to lose weight. If you lose weight, you'll get rid of your diabetes. So it's like, okay, well, here's something I can explain. Here's something they can do. And the funny part was that as soon as we started doing that, we got these sort of crazy stories like people were just getting so much better. It was just ridiculous. People whose diabetes was completely reversing after 20 years, it was just terrific. And that's where, when I really started to use it as a therapeutic strategy, that is, I would simply. When they came into my office and they had these problems, I said, this is what you need to do. Think of it like a pill or a treatment that I would prescribe. I want you to fast for 24 hours or 16 hours this many times a week. Come back to me in a couple of weeks and we'll see how that's sort of where it started. So I've treated sort of thousands of people, and I think probably, I don't think there's anybody else who has that many Patients, because honestly, nobody was talking about it back then.

So you started with people, and you started like, what sort of things came up when you started to do this? First of all, you know, now in the last couple years, it's become more mainstream. But, you know, even five, 10 years ago, if you fasted, you would lose your muscle and, you know, you would damage your metabolism and like, all these things. Right. So did you. Did. Did you have to overcome some of these crazy urban legends that are out there?

Yeah, and that's. That's the. The two probably biggest things. Like, so our sort of hunger was probably most people's concerns through the. But from a medical perspective, like the dietitians and the other doctors, they were worried about muscle loss and.

Yeah. And that. That one day is gonna really, like, that's it.

Yeah, exactly. And this is the thing that always struck me that was sort of weird is that a couple of things. One, okay, if you eat three meals a day over a year, you're gonna eat about a thousand meals. So say you fast for 24 hours. That is, you missed two meals. You miss two meals out of a thousand, and you think that's going to be a problem. The other thing is that I actually do it all the time. I actually tell people to fast all the time. Because even before all this, if people were going for colonoscopy, they had to fast. If they were going for surgery, they had to pass. If they had to do fasting blood work, they had to fast. So I was using it all the time, not for weight loss, but for other reasons. And nothing bad happens. Nothing bad ever happens when you miss a couple meals. Yeah, you might be little bit hungry, but nothing bad happens. And the other thing about that's, you know, always strange about this whole burning muscle thing is that, okay, so our body stores food energy in two forms, that is glycogen in the liver and body fat. So that's how we store food energy. So we think that our bodies are so incredibly stupid that we store energy as body fat, but the minute we need it, we start burning muscle. Is that right? You think our bodies are just that stupid? It's like, come on, that's ridiculous. It's sort of like if you store firewood all winter, and then as soon as it gets cold, you chop up your sofa and throw it into the fire. It's like, do you think that that's the way our bodies are designed? It's like, I don't think so. So the studies show, and we've had more recent Studies of alternate daily fasts and so on. I mean, it shows that clearly lean mass is preserved or relatively preserved compared to calorie counting. So it actually does much better than, you know, not eating 500 or reducing 500 calories a day, for example. They've compared it and is either better or equal to that in terms of muscle mass and also for basal metabolic rate. So it's the same thing. Like if our bodies shut down every time we didn't eat for a couple of hours, Think about the consequences. I mean, if you're a caveman and there's no food to eat after two, three days, and if your metabolic rate goes down, you have no energy, you're actually never going to eat again because it's a downward spiral, right? Because you don't eat, you have no energy, so you really can't get any food. So you have even less energy and you just die over the winter, right? So our bodies actually don't do that. Our bodies actually ramp ourselves up. They actually eat, increase the amount of energy that's going to our bodies, but switch fuel sources from food to body fat, because that's our stores, right? That's our energy stores. We actually increase the amount of concentration ability, and we increase the amount of energy because think about it for a second. If you're in the wild, would you rather face the lion that just ate, or would you rather face the hungry wolf? It's like that hungry wolf is not, you know, you know, just ready to drop dead sort of thing, right? That's the most dangerous enemy out there. Because we know that when you don't eat, when you're fasting, you actually increase your sympathetic tone, which is your fight or flight response, and you increase noradrenaline. So you're actually increasing the amount of energy that you have. And this is one of the interesting parts about the physiology of fasting, is that it's actually perfect because that's what you want to do. You have more energy when you don't eat because you're actually opening up access to your stores of body fat. You're actually eating your stores of body fat, which is exactly what it's put there to do.

It makes. I mean, just. There's a couple logical things here. It's. It would be like, how do you feel after Thanksgiving dinner?

Exactly.

Well, it's like no one after Thanksgiving dinner goes, now let's go play football. That's like. No one ever says that. But the other thing that I find so interesting is when you look at. I started out in exercise physiology. That was my first, my first grad and doctoral work was all an exercise fizz before I ran out of classes and got obsessed with nutrition because I realized you could not out exercise bad diet. And again, we were taught back then in school was calories in, calories out. I'm like, this isn't working and I'm not going to get paid to make people worse, you know, so clearly not working. But what's so key in exercise that I kept going, why is this not put into the diet world was, you know, progressive exercise and vary it and then rest days, you know, you would never do like in diet they go, you know, it should be breakfast, lunch and dinner and it's very stable every single day and eat the same thing and the same schedule and they go, but we don't do this in exercise because we know we get a better metabolic effect when we change things up. And we have recovery days and the recovery days are just, just as important as the workout days. And I look at alternate day fasting or intermittent fasting is the same type of thing. You're mixing things up so your body doesn't just adapt to what's going on.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's the whole rage. Right before, you know, years ago, it was all about cardio. So you had all those jobs.

Yeah, that was so ridiculous. That's what I was fighting against. I'm like, would you trash your trash? Like, this is so I would go walk through this gym and it was so funny. I used to work out at Sports Club la and you would see the people in the weight room and they were looking amazing. And then you go upstairs to those people in the cardio and I'm like, cardio people can see the people in the weight room. How do they not see that? They're, they're looking better down below on the weight room and those people on the cardio are looking worse. Like, I've been here for a couple years, you guys are looking worse, they're looking better. Are you blind? So I really see these as the same types of things. And where I think we've gotten, you know, with HIIT training and resistance training, people kind of have figured it out that like going out and doing long distance cardio, which was what I was trained, you had to do at least an hour. Don't even bother. I was like, this is so stupid.

It totally is the same thing. Right? Because you're talking about putting stress on the body and that's not necessarily a bad thing because exercise is a stress, right? You're stressing your muscles or you're stressing your heart for cardio and that's how you get stronger. So it's the same thing and it's a, it's a concept called hermesis, which is that small amounts of, you know, things that would otherwise be bad for you in big quantities are actually good for you in small quantities. So fasting is the same thing, right. Obviously you can't fast forever. You will eventually die if you, if you don't have enough energy. But in small doses, that's actually a very, very helpful thing to sort of clear out your body. You know, you're putting your body under stress so that you can get better. I mean that's the same idea with astronauts, right? So they go up into space and there's no gravity on their muscles or bones, there's no stress on their bones. They get osteoporosis, right. So you need a bit of stress and then recovery. It's the same idea exactly. Yet you know, you get this whole just cut your calories and stuff. It's, it's, it's totally like ridiculous. So this is sort of the, it's the same, right? We've come come to hit and now this is the same thing, right? Yeah, that's right.

It's what it really feels like to me.

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So let's talk. You've talked about some of them but I'd love you just to run down like sell everyone on why you need to do this. I think it's very. I've been like selling everyone on you, you know, stop all that long cardio, get your hit from, get your burst training. I call it burst training and your resistance training in. Now let's look at the same for the body if someone's. And then we'll talk about the different ways you can fast but fasting name, name the benefits for people as to why they want to do this.

Yeah, there's like so many benefits. So a couple of things like if you look at the myths of the fasting is one, you know, they say it burns muscles actually better for building muscle, you know, the metabolic rate. It's actually better in terms of keeping your metabolic rate up because of this sort of increased sympathetic tone and noradrenaline and so on. But there's actually much more to it than that. I mean, if you look at other studies like on autophagy, so there's all these new studies on wellness and so on, and fasting is this sort of been used for thousands of years not because they had weight to lose, because they didn't 2,000 years ago, but really as a means of getting, you know, maintaining your health. And it was this sort of cleansing idea. And it turns out that that's exactly right. So there's this process called autophagy where as you get into the longer fast, your body actually starts to break down some of its old proteins. So it sounds really bad, but the thing is that as you break that down, you're breaking down all the stuff you don't, the junky stuff. And then your growth hormone actually goes up so that when you do eat again, you actually rebuild it. So you're actually talking about a, basically a renovation cycle for your cells. It's like an anti aging process.

That's what I was just going to say. It sounds like the ultimate. I heard one of my buddies said hunger equals younger. And I go, that is so good. Because, you know, it's like that day if you are a little hungry. Although, you know, I think that's overrated, the whole hunger fear thing. And, and I think we also have to reframe. Like somewhere along the lines when the snack food companies came in, they got this whole idea that you should never feel hungry.

I'm like, you know, yeah, yeah. And, and there's a huge, you know, I talk a lot about hunger because the funny part about hunger is that people think that fasting is going to make you hungrier. Because in the long term, what is going to determine how much you eat is how hungry you are. So, you know, you can control what you eat. But you know, for day after day, year after year, if you're hungry and trying not to eat, it's very difficult. So if you look at hunger, most people who start doing fasting, so in the short term, yes, you get an increase in hunger. But the thing is that when you don't eat over 24 hours, what you find is that hunger actually just comes as a wave. So if you skip lunch, you're hungry at one o', clock, but if you continue to not eat by 4 o', clock, you're actually the same level of hunger whether you ate or you didn't eat. And it's very funny because you can measure this and it just comes as a wave. And the reason why is that your body has taken the calories that it's needed from your own body stores. So you've essentially fed yourself through your own body source, which is perfect. And the thing is that if you do it for long term, people always come back and they go, you know what? I think my stomach shrank. And then I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, well, because I just can't eat that much anymore. I'm full. And I'm like, that's perfect. Because now you're working with your body to lose weight instead of fighting your body every single step of the way. Because we know, and we've done so many studies on this, that if you cut 500 calories a day, every day, hunger goes up even after a year. You can measure the hormones, you can ask people surveys. Their hunger levels are much higher than before they lost weight. And that's the reason that they can't fight it. Because, and everybody blames them. They say, oh, it's because you have no willpower. It's like, no, they're physiologically hungrier than you are. That's why they want to eat, and that's why they cannot fight it as well as you can. And that's the point. So you're, you're actually controlling that hunger. And there's so many other parts of hunger that are so interesting with fasting, in that, you know, when you're fasting, you wind up changing your relationship with food. A lot of the cravings start to go away when you don't take them. And then the other thing is you start to appreciate the foods when you do eat them. You know, so this whole mindfulness idea and so on, it's, it's, you know, it really is sort of reestablishing that relationship with food as opposed to having food there constantly. Because, you know that this is the, this is. I think one of the biggest problems is that we've come to a culture where we actually eat all the time and we think it's normal. Right? I'm sure you've gone to conferences, right? You have a full breakfast, then 10:30, they roll out the muffins, and then 12 o', clock, there's more stuff at 2:30 at the break, they roll out some cookies, then you have dinner.

And the challenge, Jason, is you're talking probably about one of the health conferences you've been at.

Talking about the obesity conferences.

That's the saddest part of all, because I say, not my conferences.

We only.

We do not have that kind of stuff. In fact, wouldn't be great. Just have a fasting conference. Think of the money that you would save. So, yeah, it is. It's. I think a lot of this shifted when we got afraid of fat. Carbs went up. All of a sudden, snacking became a thing. And then all of a sudden, you're eating six meals a day, like, breakfast, snack, and you shouldn't feel hungry. That whole thing came out about you shouldn't feel hungry. And then away we went. So hopefully the reframe here is. And I always find this, the less I eat, the less I want to eat, right?

It's totally true. It's totally true. And this is the thing that we know that if you eat a little bit this whole six times a day, just so dumb. Because the whole point is that what they argue is that, well, you know, you eat a little bit so you won't get so hungry otherwise. If you don't, you'll be forced to put some donuts in your mouth. It's like, what do you think the point of an appetizer is? Right? It's a small amount of food to increase your appetite. Okay? Everybody knows that works. Otherwise it wouldn't have lasted for so many years, right? The restaurant industry and so on, so. And physiologically, we know it works. You eat a small amount of food, you start salivating, you start thinking about it, your stomach starts moving things along to prepare for the food coming in. So we know for a fact that eating a little bit of food doesn't decrease hunger, it increases hunger. Okay? That's the whole point of an appetizer. So now we've told people to eat a small portion of appetizer portion six or seven times a day. And just as we want to start eating the main meal, we stop ourselves. It's like, does that sound very smart? It's like, that's going to be so hard, right? And I always say it's sort of like when you start peeing, right? It's like, you don't want to stop. You want to just go until you're done. Yeah. Imagine somebody told you, well, you should pee like, you know, a little thimbleful, and then stop and do that like 20 times a day. Like, you got to be kidding me, right? So we do the same thing to our hunger and then we wonder why we're so hungry. It's ridiculous.

So I know everyone's going to get your free introductory fasting course, which I'm that, that is like so super cool.

That you're doing that.

But I want to just touch on real quick what are. There's intermittent fasting, there's alternate day fasting. Kind of walk us through this and, and which ones like you tend to prescribe the most.

Yeah, so intermittent fasting is sort of fasting in general is just anytime you don't eat. So you know, there's variations. So some allow certain things like tea and coffee and so on. Classically it's just water, but there's no sort of guideline. So you know, the baseline should be sort of, if you were to go from dinner, which is say 7 o' clock to 7 o' clock a.m. breakfast, you should be at a 12 hours fasting, sort of just as a baseline. And then if you want to lose weight, sort of 16 hours is a pretty good way to go. So that's the 16, 8 or time restricted eating, where you eat for sort of eight hours of the day, say 11 to 7 and fast for 16 hours of the day. Now you're shifting yourself towards sort of the fasting which is burning your fat rather than storing it. And then the next step up is sort of around 20 or 24 hours of fasting. So 24 hours of fasting, which is sort of dinner to dinner or lunch to lunch, is another very popular schedule and sometimes called one meal a day. So that's also very popular. And it's generally the longer you go, the less frequently you do it. So if you go, sorry, 16, eight, you might do that six or seven days of the week. If you do 24 hours, it might be two to three days of the week and then you can go up from there. Some people do sort of long fasts, like five day fasts and seven day fasts and so on. And those obviously are more powerful. But then you also have to, you know, they're a little bit harder to fit into a social schedule and so on. The secret with those really is that. And people go, wow, I can't imagine doing that. The first few times might be tough, but the key is that the hunger actually starts to dissipate by day three. So day two is generally the hardest day and after that you're talking significantly decreased hunger. So the hardest part is generally because food is all around us or you're going out for dinner or something. That's where it's actually difficult to get those longer fasts in. Rather than the physical hunger and stuff that's actually the least of your worries. It's the psychological sort of.

The psychological and social probably.

Yeah.

But you know, I love the way you walked through this because I think the, the key thing is start with making sure you've got that 12 hour overnight fast like that needs to be and then move into time restricted eating. Go to 16 hours and then move into going for the 20 to 24 hours and then, you know, so you just start to step into it seems like a really palatable, easy way for people to get started, which is fantastic. And I know we're also going to give out and I'm going to put it@jjvirgin.com fasting and you are going to get Dr. Fung's introductory fasting course for free, which is so cool. Plus I'm going to put your books there too because you have your obesity code book and the. What was the other one? The Complete Guide to Fasting. So we'll hook you up with all of those along with the show notes. So you're going to get everything and how to get started fasting, which is just super generous. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And you have been such a fun guest. I really, really appreciate you taking the time, taking the time today. So again go to jjvirgin.com fasting and Jason, thank you so much again.

Thank you. That's been great.

There was your deep dive bonus episode of Ask the Health Expert. We will be dropping these bonus episodes as amazing experts and incredible titles come to us. You don't want to miss out on this, do ya? Stay in the know. Be the first to know. Go to subscribetoj.com and I'll hook you up.