Counting Calories is a Lie! (ft. Dr. Jason Fung)
14 May 2025 · 65 min
In this episode, host Jorge Cruise interviews Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist and author of The Obesity Code, to debunk the traditional "calories in, calories out" model of weight loss. They argue that while excess calories correlate with weight gain, the model fails to explain why weight loss is difficult and why many people who count calories still carry excess belly fat. The core argument is that insulin, driven by refined carbohydrates and sugars, is the hormonal regulator that determines whether calories are stored as body fat or burned for energy. High insulin levels both promote fat storage and suppress fat oxidation, leading to increased hunger and a self‑reinforcing cycle of overeating. Fung introduces the concept of a body‑weight "thermostat" that maintains a set point; when calories are reduced, the body compensates by lowering basal metabolic rate and increasing hunger, much like a thermostat adjusts heating and cooling. To reset this thermostat, they recommend two primary strategies: intermittent fasting (which lowers insulin during the fasting window) and reducing intake of refined carbs (or choosing low‑glycemic foods). They discuss historical shifts from carbohydrate‑focused, low‑fat diets to the modern calorie‑counting era, noting that earlier weight‑loss advice (pre‑1970s) already emphasized cutting carbs. Practical advice includes meal timing (favoring a mid‑afternoon main meal or OM‑One‑Meal‑A‑Day), managing hunger with tools like "Zero Hunger Water" (electrolyte‑enhanced water) and mental reframing of hunger as the body tapping stored fat. They also address concerns about fasting safety, muscle loss, and autophagy, explaining that fasting primarily oxidizes fat, that perceived lean‑mass loss is often water loss, and that strength can be maintained or even improve. The conversation then delves into hormonal modulators beyond insulin: GLP‑1 agonists (e.g., Ozempic), cortisol, and sympathetic‑tone‑activating agents such as fen‑phen and nicotine. Fung explains that GLP‑1 drugs lower the weight‑set‑point thermostat, leading to weight loss without directly burning calories, but they can cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. He notes most users take GLP‑1s long‑term, and while they are generally safe, they are not a magic bullet. He compares the current enthusiasm for GLP‑1s to past hype around bariatric surgery, acknowledging both have efficacy but also significant side effects. Fung emphasizes that medication alone is insufficient; understanding nutrition, proper food choices, and lifestyle remains essential. He offers a confidence‑building affirmation for listeners attempting extreme fasting schedules, reassuring them that the body intelligently mobilizes stored fat when meals are infrequent. Finally, Fung shares his online platforms (Twitter @DrJasonFung, YouTube channel "Jason Fung", Medium blog) and recommends his book The Obesity Code as the central resource for listeners wanting to dive deeper into the hormonal and set‑point perspective on obesity. Overall, the conversation reframes obesity as a hormonal and set‑point issue rather than a simple calorie balance, offering listeners actionable steps (fasting, carb reduction, mindful meal timing) and reassurance about the safety and efficacy of these approaches, while also providing realistic caveats about pharmacological aids and the importance of mindset.
Chapters
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Jorge Cruise, and I can tell you on today's show you are going to learn some incredible information that for me I didn't discover until about 5 years ago. And I can tell you, Dr. Jason Fung is a leader. He is a leader in insulin science, intermittent fasting. He's in Toronto, Canada, and he's the man that got me to think differently. Because when I wrote some of my earlier books in the early 2000s, I can tell you the training methodology of weight loss, of losing belly fat, as you guys can imagine, was either counting calories or if you were in Weight Watchers, counting points, you know what I mean? And unfortunately, none of that works. And if you've done either one and still have belly fat or in a place where you're not feeling your best, I can tell you it is not your fault. On today's show, we're gonna set the record straight with Dr. Fung. And what Jason's gonna do, he's gonna share with us this point of view that I think has not only helped millions of people and is part of his groundbreaking book called The Obesity Code, but more importantly, it's going to give you some sanity where you think, all right, I'm not crazy. Because I have some clients— I, I have a coaching, uh, program where I have a lot of elite clients that work with me, and these are people that are not only high net worth and highly educated and sophisticated, but they've been counting calories since they were 8 years old, and their parents had them enrolled in all sorts of weight loss programs, if you know what I mean. And I can tell you that's been the prevailing way of thinking, is that calories in and calories out is the solution to losing weight. Now, Dr. Funk sets the record straight. He says that's a part of the puzzle. That's why we're overweight, but the way you want to lose the weight has nothing to do with how many calories you're consuming, but rather with insulin science and understanding that high insulin environments in your body that are caused by simple carbohydrates, processed foods, you name it, from pastas to breads to OJ, orange juice even, are the reason why insulin goes up. And when your insulin goes up, not only do you lock in belly fat, but you add belly fat. And worst of all, it makes you more hungry. Yeah, literally sugar and carbs feed hunger, make you want to eat more, and more importantly, store belly fat. So, you know, I have a lot of people, a lot of clients I work with that are vegans, and they do it for the right reasons, maybe not to hurt animals, but I can tell you, if you eat a high processed or non-processed plant-based diet and it's made of only carbohydrates, you're going to be in trouble. So on today's show, you're going to learn not just how to lose the weight and why insulin is the reason you're overweight and why you may have belly fat that you've not been able to get rid of your entire life, but more importantly, you're going to learn how easy it is to lose up to 2 pounds a week. Some people lose even more. Dr. Fung has an incredible clinic in Toronto. He has an online program. He has an incredible YouTube channel. We're going to put I'll put that all in the show notes. He has New York Times bestselling books and he's been a dear friend. He's helped me understand a topic that I thought I knew all about, but more importantly, he shows us how simple it is to finally lose the belly fat and finally stop blaming yourself for why maybe you have belly fat and why you've been struggling your entire life. And he shows you the way out. And I am just so excited. For you to watch this show. And, uh, before we start, I want to thank you for your support as well, for, uh, all the feedback I've gotten. I got lots of emails from you guys about Zero Hunger Water. If you don't know what Zero Hunger Water is, it's the Hunger Eraser. It's a project I've been working on for a couple years. We had to take a step back, uh, about a year and a half ago, and now we're moving forward this summer, and we'll make a big announcement this summer about it coming out. And it's a project that for me, that I think is provocative. It's a totally different paradigm for thinking of how to turn off hunger. No GLP-1s required. And whether you're on a GLP-1 like, uh, Ozempic or not, Zero Hunger Water will be that solution that'll help quell and, and turn off hunger so you have control. And more importantly, on today's podcast, you're gonna get the control right now in the sense of not just knowing what to do, but how to lose the belly fat effectively. I think it's gonna be the best hour of your entire day. So check it out and please do me a huge favor. Please share today's episode with your loved ones. Copy and paste the link wherever you're watching it, whether it's on Spotify, whether it's on Apple, or whether you're watching us on YouTube. Please do that because as we grow, we can do more and more for you. And I'm just so excited to be back with the podcast and sharing these with you every single week. So take good care, guys. Let's get started with Dr. Jason Fung and get ready to learn everything you need to know to finally lose That belly fat.
All right, well, welcome Jason. It's so good to see you again. I haven't seen you forever. It's been at least 2 years and we've done so many things. We were talking before the show and I feel like we've known each other about 10 years. And I have to tell you, your work has changed my thinking and clarified my thinking over the years because, you know, I started my first book in 2001 and that's back in the day when calories were calories. And what did, what were people told, let alone 20 years ago, right Jason, about calories versus what really I think is the science of Jason Fung. And I love what the Daily Mail, uh, said about you. I'm going to read it. It says, the doctor who invented intermittent fasting. So before we dive into it, tell everyone a little bit of your background, Jason, because I feel like you've done so many things, you've written so many books, you truly are more than just a fasting expert. I think of you as a human, um, human nutrition and human potential expert because you have walked your talk and you have an incredible family. And I'm just honored to have you back on show, but tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this, Jason. And then we'll dive into the big question about calories versus, I think, insulin, right? That's kind of like the controversy out there. But take us back a little bit, Jason. Tell us a little bit about how you got started and what you do.
Yeah. So I'm a kidney specialist actually. So I trained very much conventionally. You know, I did medical school in Toronto and then I went to California, Los Angeles for a couple of years to do my specialty training. And I finished around 2004. 2001 that I practiced, started practicing. And of course there was a lot of increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes over that period of time. So I became very interested in the question of diabetes because diabetes was the main cause of kidney disease. And the thinking at the time was really that type 2 diabetes was this sort of chronic progressive disease, meaning once you got it, you had it for life. And I thought, well, that's not right. It's actually completely untrue. Wow. Anybody who knows the, knows anybody knows that if you lose weight, that diabetes often goes away. So the question is not, is it chronic and progressive? It's not some inevitable thing like aging. It's a reversible thing. So if it's reversible, you need to try to reverse it. But the key is the weight loss, of course, and not giving more medications, which was of course the standard, what I had been taught, but virtually every doctor was taught was that, oh, you have type 2 diabetes, here's the medication. Instead of you have type 2 diabetes, let's change your diet, get you to lose weight, and then you can reverse it, right? Which is a completely 180-degree opposite way of thinking, but much, much better, right? So I became very interested in weight loss and I started thinking about it. So again, I was brought up, I was trained in this whole calories in, calories out thing. And the part that's weird is that None of that is actually true in any sense.
Hold on one second, Jason. So you said calories in, calories out. We've all heard this. I mean, I go on YouTube right now and some of the biggest nutrition influencers out there say, oh, if you want to lose weight, what do they tell you, Jason? You tell me, right?
It's all about, you know, eating fewer calories than you burn, right? And it sounds so simple. It's sort of deceptively simple but completely wrong. And it's, it's, it's in the way you have to think about calories. So let's take, let's take an analogy, for example. So, you know, people say, well, let's, let's look at the energy balance equation, which is body fat, right? Body fat is a store of energy. The body stores energy, food energy, which is calories, in the form of body fat. So if you have excess body fat, And then body fat equals calories in minus calories out, right? So then people always go take that and say, well, from there you say that you must eat less or burn less, right? But then you have to— or they say something like you must have a caloric deficit, right?
That's the word.
The problem is, and you see all these, you know, people who should really know better say this kind of thing, but it's really stupid because remember, that if you have too much body fat, yes, it does mean that calories in exceeded calories out, but it doesn't tell you anything about what to do about it, right? If you say that body fat equals calories in, calories out, or increased body fat equals calories in greater than calories out, that's what it is. It doesn't tell you that it isn't caused by it, right? But if you say that calories in is more than calories out, you want to know why the calories in are greater than the calories out. So people always take that next step step and say, well, it's because you didn't have willpower or you ate too much or whatever. But that's not the case at all. Remember, there's 3 variables here that have to balance. So there's never a caloric deficit. Yeah, body fat equals calories in minus calories out, which means that if you eat fewer calories, which is what everybody tells you, what happens is that there's 3 variables: body fat, calories in, calories out. You reduce calories in You can balance that equation by either losing body fat, yes, or you can balance that equation by reducing your body's energy expenditure, which remember you don't control. It's not exercise. Most of the calories you burn are for your brain, your liver, your kidney. You cannot control, oh, I'm gonna tell my kidney to burn more calories because I wanna lose weight. You can't do that, right? So nobody can control their basal metabolic rate. Rate like that. It's not a conscious thing. So therefore, if you simply eat less, fewer calories, which is what everybody says works, it doesn't work because you can either lose body fat, which is possible, or you can reduce energy expenditure. So if you go to the medical literature and look at virtually every single study done in the last 50 years of nutrition, what actually happens when you reduce your calories in? Do you, one, lose body fat, or do you, two, reduce your energy expenditure. In every single study, energy expenditure goes down, right? So you eat less, you burn less, and your body fat is relatively unchanged. Wow. So that's the science. So when the people say, oh, you just have to count calories, you just have to reduce your calories. No, because calories in goes down, calories out can also go down. So therefore body fat has not changed. So it's not inevitable that if you eat fewer calories, same thing when you exercise, if you increase your, your exercise, therefore increase your energy expenditure, calories out goes up. So there's 3 variables. You can either balance that with an increase in intake, or you can, you know, or you can lose body fat. Again, what happens in almost every single case You eat more, right? So you exercise more, you eat more. Well, everybody knows that. It's called working up an appetite, right? So it happens. So the whole point is that that whole calories in, calories out is not an inevitable argument. Increase in body fat equals calories in greater than calories out, which means that in any case, in any place where you see calories in greater than calories out, it equals weight gain. So if you say weight gain is caused by calories in greater than calories out, right, that means you're just saying weight gain is caused by weight gain. No, it's not.
Makes no sense.
Yeah, makes no sense. Because remember, cal— energy balance says it's equal. Calories in minus calories out equals body weight, right?
Correct.
So any place you can see calories in minus calories out because it's equal. You can replace it with body weight. It's saying that— it's like saying hurricane winds equal— hurricane equal winds greater than 74 miles per hour, right? So if you say, okay, I have winds greater than— what causes a hurricane? And you say, well, it's caused by winds greater than 74 miles per hour. It's like, no, that is the definition of a hurricane, right? So if you say you're gaining body weight, That is the— by definition, that is the exact same thing as saying calories in is greater than calories out. It isn't caused by calories in greater than calories out. It is calories in minus calories out. So you don't know what is causing it.
I feel like I just had, to quote Oprah Winfrey, an aha moment, because I feel like you and I have talked about this for many years, and it's the basis of many— I mean, it's the basis of all your books. It's the basis of many of my more recent books. And I feel like there's so many intelligent people, and I don't want to name names, but people that I respect that are trainers, nutritionists, doctors, PhDs that say if you want to lose weight, just download MyFitnessPal, track what you're eating and make sure you eat— what do they usually say? 1,000 calories less. And over the course of a couple of weeks, you're going to lose a pound. And what you just said kind of— it just takes that argument and throws it away. And, and I know what you're going to share, because there is a different way of thinking about this that's more— not just intelligent, but it's more based on biochemistry and really a hormone, right? And then we can get into intermittent fasting and all that. But tell us the solution, please.
Yeah, yeah. So if you think about how the body works, okay, and I'm going to tell you something that virtually everybody knows already, because what, what always bothers me is that you have a doctor, you have all these doctors out there that say it's all about calories in, calories out. That's all it is. They say this to you. I know.
All the time. I mean, all the time.
All the time. And I'm always like, oh my God, like, do you? And I always think these doctors, it's a terrible argument because when these doctors say that, like, do they not realize that that person in front of you who's been trying to lose weight for the last 30 years is a bigger calorie expert than you will find virtually anywhere. It's like a PhD level.
Yeah.
Expertise in calorie counting.
They've been looking at labels since they were teenagers, probably, right?
Probably since they're like 8 years old, right? So the whole thing is that like, do you not realize that this person that you're, you're dismissively saying, oh, it's all about calories. It's like, there is no greater expert in this room than that person. Who has been trying to lose weight. It's not just, you know, it's horribly, like to say that is horribly dismissive, right? To these people. It basically is saying you're actually really stupid because it's all about calories, right? You're so dumb. It's all about calories and it's because you have no willpower, right? It's such a dismissive argument. It's a horrible argument. And it leads to this bias against overweight and fat shaming and all that because it's like, well, I told you the solution is calories in, calories out, which actually isn't. It's the definition, right? Losing weight is caused by— how do you lose weight? Well, calories in minus calories out. Well, replace that with, you know, lose weight. So you lose weight by losing weight. Like, it's a circular argument. You can't get it. It's sort of like saying, okay, if you have alcoholism equals alcohol in minus alcohol out, right? And it's like, oh, so I just solved world alcoholism, right? World alcoholism. I just solved the problem. Just drink less alcohol. And you'd say, you'd say, that's stupid, right? That's really, really dumb, right? Yeah.
Yeah.
Because obviously the question is not whether alcohol in is greater than alcohol out. The question is why. If somebody is addicted to alcohol, that is going to lead to in alcohol in greater than alcohol out, which is going to cause, by definition, alcoholism. Okay, so let's, let's flip that and say, say you have a food addiction, which is causing you to increase calories in greater than calories out, which causes weight gain. Is it a calories problem? No, absolutely not. It's an addiction problem. It is alcohol, right?
Yeah.
Suppose you're depressed. And therefore you drink alcohol, which causes alcoholism. Is the problem alcohol in minus cal-cohol out? No, that's dumb. The problem is depression.
It's the mindset.
Yeah. So now you can flip it. Say you're depressed and you eat just because of the depression. So calories in is greater than calories out, which causes weight gain. Is the problem the calories? Absolutely not. It was the depression, or it was the refined foods.
Well said.
Or it was the ultra-processed foods, or it was eating too frequently, or it was the emotional eating, or it was the mindless eating. Those are the problems that lead you to the calories in greater than calories out, which is by definition obesity. It didn't cause obesity. It is obesity. It is the weight gain. That is by definition weight gain. So the whole thing is like, you know, these people are so stupid because they're looking at the calories as if that's the whole issue. But it's not any more than saying alcohol in greater than alcohol out. In that situation, you see what a stupid argument it is. In the calorie situation, everybody says, oh, that's the holy grail.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like, come on, that's so stupid. So the question is, why is calorie— the question is not that calories in are greater than calories out. The question is why. So you see that you're trying to get to that deeper level of understanding why is it, and it's different for different people. So some people are going to be emotional eaters, some people are going to be addicted. You know, there are many, many other things that can cause that, just like there are lots of things that can cause alcoholism, which is alcohol in greater than alcohol out, right? So just saying, oh, you should drink less alcohol or give it more time between drinks, like, come on, that's so stupid, right?
Yeah.
And the calories in and the calories out is also that stupid. So the issue The issue is that if you think about how the body works, this is what everybody already knows. The body has a certain set weight, okay? And again, this is established for like 50 years of scientific evidence, but people just choose to ignore it because they wanna go with the simplistic calories model. If you lose weight, if your body has a set weight, that means it sets a weight that it wants you to be at, a certain body fat percentage. If you gain weight, your body's going to try to burn it off. If you lose weight, your body's going to try to make you hungry and therefore eat more. So if you take somebody who is a certain weight and you drop their weight, you make them lose weight. Well, two things happen. One, they get hungrier. And it's not just some voodoo psychology. You can measure hunger hormones, you can measure satiety hormones. They are physiologically hungrier than they were before they lost weight.
Why?
Because the body wants them to gain that weight back up. Yeah. The other thing that happens is that the amount of calories that they burn goes down, right? So your basal metabolic rate falls again. Why? Well, if you're in that— if, if you can control what you eat, so you might be hungry, but you decide not to eat. So the body says, well, your weight is too low. I want you to gain weight. And if you're not going to eat, then I'm just going to reduce the number of calories that I spend so that you gain weight. Just like if you have a budget, right, then you're not making more money, you got to spend less. Same thing. The body—
the body knows.
Yeah, the body knows. So I have this certain number of calories coming in. I can't, you know, access my body fat. So therefore I'm going to burn less. Right? So the whole thing is that it's this body set weight that's really important because it's like a thermostat, right? It's a thermostat in your room. So say you have room temperature.
Yeah.
You set a room temperature at like 72 degrees, for example. And you might say that, hey, you know, the temperature in your room is heat in minus heat out. Right? But what controls the heat in minus heat out is the thermostat, right? It gets too cold, it turns on the furnace, turns up the heat, gets too hot, turns on the air conditioning. So this is the thing that the calories people are like the people who say, well, it's all about heat in minus heat out. So therefore, if you want to heat up the room, I'm just going to get a little space heater. I'm going to plug it in the wall. I'm going to turn it on. I increase heat in. Therefore, the room is going to get warmer. Is it? No, it's not.
Yeah.
Why? Because as the room heats up, the thermostat is going to sense that and turn on the air conditioning.
Yes.
Bring it back down. Right? So the problem is, and so the people who say, well, it's all heat in minus heat out. So I'm just going to increase heat. Well, that's the same argument as the calories people, right? They say it's calories in minus calories out. I'm going to reduce my calories in. I'm going to eat less. With the idea that the amount that they burn is going to stay the same. That's the assumption. That is not true.
It has never been said, Jason.
So, yes, what's crazy is that the studies— there were definitive studies that showed this whole body set weight 30 years ago. So we've known about it for 30 years.
30 years. Yeah.
Yeah. They just don't tell you about this. Everybody knows it's true. Everybody knows that you go back to your original weight. So the problem of weight loss is not calories in minus calories out any more than it's heat in minus heat out. It's how do you control the thermostat.
Ooh, say that one more time, because now we're going to get to the solution, the real solution, which is based on— not to brag, but how many decades of work have you done and how many books, right? And how many clients, right?
Yeah, it's crazy. Um, but it's, it's, it's, you know, it's a couple of decades, uh, you know, but But really think about it this way. If your body has this body fat thermostat, then you need to know how to control the thermostat in order to get your body fat in the right, in the right range. Just like your room temperature, you cannot just add heat or add cooling because the thermostat is going to counteract what you're doing. And we know that the body does that. So it's how do you adjust your body fat thermostat up and how do you adjust it down? And we already know this because Everything in your body runs on hormones. So insulin is the main hormone you have to be worried about, but there are others. Insulin, when it goes up, when you increase insulin, people gain weight, right? We know this because we give people insulin as a drug, and there is one side effect that every person who takes insulin knows about. That's weight gain. So if you give insulin, you are gaining weight, which is really that ratcheting up of your body fat thermostat. When you give insulin, you haven't given anybody calories. There's no calories in that insulin. You haven't increased their exercise or decreased their exercise. When you give insulin, you don't tell them, oh, you should exercise less, right? Insulin is just a hormone that ratchets up your body fat thermostat. Your body now says, well, I shouldn't be 150 pounds, I need to be 180 pounds. How am I going to do that? I'm going to suck away more calories, right, into body fat because I don't have enough. So you eat your normal meals, but your body now with the insulin sucks all your energy, all those calories into body fat. Now you have no calories for the rest of your body, right?
Because that's if insulin is high.
If insulin is high, you start pumping—
calories get stored into body fat. Yeah, insulin goes up.
Think about it this way.
Yeah.
You think about insulin. What is its job? Its job is to store body fat. Wow. So that's the whole point. Is insulin high? That's it. That's all it is.
So then we should run away from insulin if we have too much body fat in theory, right? Or lower insulin. Now, is there a magic way to do that, Jason? You're about to tell us, probably.
Well, yeah, I don't know how magical it is, but go ahead. It's not that much. But intermittent fasting is a way to lower insulin levels.
Yes.
And reducing refined carbohydrates is another good way to do it because—
Say that again, Jason, for everyone at home.
Yes, cutting it down.
There's two simple ways. Number one.
Intermittent fasting because when you don't eat, insulin falls. When you do eat, certain foods raise insulin more than other foods and those are The refined carbohydrates do it more than anything else.
And that's number 2. If you can exchange in or like, give us example, what are the top ones? I mean, for my clients, whether they're celebrities or not, it tends to be refined carbohydrates, right? I hate to say sugar, fruit drinks. Give us some of the ones that are like, oh, that can't have sugar in it.
Sugary drinks and, you know, refined carbohydrates being things like French fries and white bread and that kind of thing.
Bagels.
Yeah. And again, it's probably not new, like cutting down refined carbs. A lot of people know that that already causes weight loss. In fact, you can see this even back in books like 150 years old, people were talking about, oh, I had to lose weight, so I just cut out bread and sweets and they lost weight. So it's not a new idea. Everybody knew it. In fact, It was actually the dominant idea for weight loss for most of, you know, from 1850 to say 1970. It was only this whole low-fat era that brought in this whole calories thing.
And that was in the '70s. And that was a time when Dr. Atkins, you remember Atkins? If we're old enough, we remember who that was. He said it, bacon and eggs and things like that. Shockingly, when you do eat those things, people lose weight because it doesn't raise insulin. Now there was this whole argument, I think low-fat, tell me if this is somewhat true, not that we wanna stay on this, but let's spend a minute maybe, was the idea that if you ate too much butter and yolks, that the cholesterol would kill you, right? And that's been shown to not be true, correct, Jason?
Yeah, absolutely. So if you think about it, what happened was that people didn't know what caused heart disease, right? There's this huge epidemic of heart disease in the '50s and '60s. Mm-hmm. And people said, well, we don't know what caused it. Now, the diet in America had not changed. So in fact, they were eating about the same level of fat as they were and yolks and stuff.
Totally.
As they were. But in the '50s and '60s, a huge spike in heart disease and everybody's like, why, why, why? Now when you look back, it's obvious it was smoking. People were smoking more. They were through the war and everything. Every smoke, everybody smoked back then, right? You had the smoking and non-smoking section in the restaurant. You had the little trays in the airline, in the airplanes, which seems really stupid now.
And doctors were promoting it as a way to reduce stress and anxiety, right? Smoke is this was so cool.
It actually causes weight loss too, actually.
Yeah. And it's all true. It does help you relax. It does help you burn calories, but it also causes heart disease, right?
Yeah. Lots of heart disease anyway.
You know?
Yeah. So anyway, super bad for you. So, but of course the tobacco companies never admitted that. Yeah. So nobody's— people are like, why is there heart disease? And somebody said, well, it's because of the fat in the diet, which made no sense because the fat in the diet was the same But there's this easy to think about thing, which is that, oh, the fat is gonna clog your arteries. And so therefore that just because of that, which has no scientific basis whatsoever, that's what caused the whole low-fat movement. So eventually it became sort of government policy and everything. But if you say, okay, so what studies have definitively proved that eating fat caused heart disease? Zero. There were zero studies in the last 50 years.
Is it the zero, the big zero there, right?
Yeah, absolute zero. So then of course it was actually super bad for you. And this led to the so-called French paradox in the '80s, which if you remember was all these, again, it's like people think they're smart, but they weren't that smart because these doctors were like, why does the French with all their cream and their butter and all this?
Butter, they love butter. And I love butter. Yeah, yeah.
Butter everywhere. They're eating all this saturated fat. And these Americans are eating rice cakes and stuff, right? Super low fat. But the Americans had 3 times the heart disease that the French had with all their saturated fat. And the answer was, of course, the saturated fat wasn't that bad for you. The Americans were eating tons of refined carbs. They're getting fat and getting diabetes, which actually caused a lot of heart disease. That's right. And they were eating the margarine, which turned out to be full of trans fats, which also caused—
Which is even worse, yeah.
That was even worse. So that was the so-called French paradox. Then by the 2000s, people were looking at the Mediterranean diet with all its fatty fish and avocados and olive oil and again, a higher fat diet. Yeah.
And more meats and fish and all that.
Meats and nuts and stuff. Nuts were like so high in fat. Remember avocados? Nobody ate avocados through the '80s because it was full of fat. Then everybody's like, oh, they're so healthy for you. It's like, it's still full of fat, but the fat wasn't bad for you. Then they had to call it healthy fats, right?
Healthy fats.
Yeah. The whole thing was crazy because, but in the meantime, because the Americans had switched to rice cakes and white bread.
And hydrogenated oils and these fake fats, the fake, the seed oils, right? The seed oils.
Yeah. And the government actually encouraged all these processed foods because you could process the fat out of them. Right? So they thought they were doing people a favor. So we were eating ultra processed foods. We're eating tons of carbs, tons of refined carbs, gaining weight like crazy, right? So, oh yeah, a huge epidemic.
And the reason being, a little side note, Jason, insulin levels were staying not just constant, but they were going up because of the refined carbohydrates.
Refined carbs. Yeah. So when you're eating the, when those French people were eating all their saturated fats, they weren't raising the insulin. So you think, okay, well, what What does insulin do, right? So, okay, talk to us. So we know that when insulin goes up, so when you eat, insulin goes up, and this is, this is the normal job. It's not a bad hormone. It's just a normal job. It's just that insulin, when it's too high, it's gonna lead to weight gain. So insulin's job is to tell your body that, hey, food is coming in, so therefore we need to store food. We need to store this food energy, which is calories, and it stores it as body fat. So when you eat, insulin goes up and it does two things to body fat. It tells you to store body fat and it stops you from breaking down body fat. Okay, so if you think, okay, well now suppose you have a situation where insulin levels are doubled or tripled or quadrupled, what's gonna happen? Well, your body's going to store a lot of energy as body fat and it's not gonna burn any energy as body fat. You're not gonna burn any body fat, you're gonna store it, right? So it's only when insulin falls that you can actually burn body fat. So it's like, okay, well, that's not too hard to imagine that this is a— this is going to be a problem if you're trying to lose weight. So again, let's take a situation. If you eat 2,000 calories in and you burn 2,000 calories, okay, so you're equal. It's nothing. You're not gaining weight, you're not losing weight. Now you reduce your calories in to 1,500 because people said, you know, but you cut your fat, you eat all the time because people say you should eat 10 times a day. So your insulin levels are still very high.
We're going to talk about that in a minute, please, about fasting. So I've got some questions people have been asking, but they knew about us doing this interview. I put it on Instagram and the questions came in, and they're questions you've seen before, so they'll be a piece of cake, no pun intended. But so this insulin is really The— it's the mechanism. Is that right, Jason?
It's the key to it all. Well, think about this for a second. Say your insulin levels are super, super high because of the foods that you're eating. So you're eating 2,000 calories, but the foods that you're eating are super, super high in refined carbs, which is gonna spike your insulin. So what's gonna happen to those calories that you eat? Well, because your insulin's much higher, it's gonna suck it all into body fat, right? Yeah, because that's what insulin's job. Yeah, all of that. So you eat 1,000 calories, now your body shoves it all directly into your body fat. Well, what's going to happen is that your body— the rest of your body has nothing, right? So then you're like, oh, my liver, my kidney, my heart, I need energy. You need to go eat, right? So then you get hungry and then you go eat. Well, what just happened here? Well, yes, calories in went increased over calories out, But why, why, why? That's the question. You got to get that deeper why. Why? Because you sucked all the energy into your body fat stores. It's just like if you went to Costco and you bought like a lot too much food, right? And you shoved it all in your refrigerator, right?
Yeah.
Right? Because the refrigerator is a store of food. You shove it all in. Now your fridge is overflowing.
Packed.
But you're like, I have nothing to eat.
Why?
Because you shoved it all in your fridge. Then you go, I need to go to Costco again. So it's like, okay, that's the situation with your body. You took the food, but the calories went directly into body fat because of all that insulin. So you said, oh, I need to go eat more. Now contrast that to you eat lean, you eat low-carb foods. So you're gonna eat—
So healthy proteins and healthy fats.
Healthy proteins, healthy fats, Cut down the carbs in general.
Yup.
Yeah, because carbs are just gonna spike insulin.
And what happens? We then access the stored— Yeah.
Well, if you eat and you have all that calories but your insulin's not that high, you're not gonna shovel it into your stores. You're not gonna shovel it into fat. So therefore, your body has plenty of energy to use and therefore you don't get hungry an hour later because your body has plenty of calories to burn. Right? As opposed to the insulin partitioning it all away so that you can't use it. Same thing when you try to lose weight. If your insulin is high, say you cut down, so now you eat 1,500 calories, you're burning 2,000 calories. So where are you gonna get— you can't— that, remember, this is a balanced equation, so that does not balance. If you have 1,500 coming in and you have 2,000 going out, Now your insulin levels are super high, but guess what? You can't access any of your body fat because insulin blocks fat burning.
Yes.
So you have 1,500 coming in, 2,000 going out. You don't have access to your fat stores. That's not balanced. You can't do that. In fact, the body's only option is to reduce its energy expenditure to 1,500. So now you're eating 1,500, you're burning 1,500. You're not losing weight. The difference is if you allowed those insulin levels to fall, say with intermittent fasting, 1,500 is coming in, 2,000 is going out, you allowed insulin to fall, so now you can access the, the stores of energy in your body fat. You take 500 out from your body fat. Wow, you're all done.
It's magic, but it's not magic.
It's just, it's not, it's knowing physiology.
And if those, if those calories going in for example, I'll give you scenario A and then B. You tell me which one's better, obviously, for unlocking stored body fat. And I'm guessing it's the one that's lower in insulin-causing, uh, stimulation, right? So say you sat down, you had a banana in the morning and a glass of orange juice because you want to be healthy, right? You don't eat— you're plant-based. And then for lunch you have pasta and maybe a low-fat cracker or whatever, right? And then for dinner you have rice and, uh, I don't know, some sort of soy sauce and maybe a little piece of chicken. You're basically eating carbs high in fiber, maybe all day, but insulin is up all day, right? So your body's fat is locked up, right? It's just not coming out. Versus B, let's see, here's option B. Say you start your day. Say we're not fasting it. We'll call it just food. Food. You know, just making food choices. You're eating an egg. Maybe it's one boiled egg. I don't know. For lunch, you're eating another protein. Maybe it's tuna fish with a little healthy mayo or something, no bread, you're doing it light, maybe with a little lettuce, right, like a tuna salad, and then for dinner you're having a ribeye. No, almost no carbohydrates all day. Does that, versus A and B, is B more magical, shall we say, in the sense of unlocking fat? Yeah.
Well, let's, let's, let's go through. So if you say take your, you know, high carb meal, so you take at breakfast, you take a banana and orange juice, right? Yeah. So You take, say, 500 calories or 1,000 calories, whatever it is. Yeah, it's super— your insulin spikes way up because it's lots of refined carbohydrates. So all of those 500 calories goes right into body fat. Now by 10 o'clock, 10 in the morning, you're like, oh, I'm ravenously hungry, right? Which is of course what happens. Like, you eat white bread and jam in the morning, it doesn't keep you full for long. Everybody knows that because your insulin, your Glucose goes up, your insulin goes up, then it crashes because it's so refined. By 10 o'clock, you're ravenous. So you go get yourself a low-fat muffin, right?
Yeah.
Now you do the same thing. Insulin spikes up, glucose spikes up. By 12, you're crashing and then you go eat more. So what's happening is—
You just keep storing, storing, storing.
Yeah, you're pulling it all into storage. That's where all your calories are going. So at the end of the day, you're eating, you know, breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, Dinner, snack, because you haven't been able to stay full versus say you eat a vegetable omelet in the morning. Well, you eat the same 500 calories, but none of that goes into storage because insulin's knocked down, right? So, all of it stays around for you to burn. Well, at 10 o'clock, you don't have to eat because you're full, right? You eat steak and eggs in the morning, you don't have to eat at 10:30. Everybody knows that already.
You're full.
So, then you go right to lunch or maybe you're even full, you go right through to dinner, right? Because you're full. So then you count up all the, you know, oh, the white bread and jam and the banana for snack and the pasta and then another snack in the afternoon. You count that all up and go, oh, it's because you ate too many calories, right? But the reason— what's the reason you took so many calories? Because your body is pulling so many calories into body fat stores because of the insulin. Yes. So if you say, at the end of the day, all these people, they go, oh, Oh, look, you're eating all that refined carbs. It's because you eat too many calories. No, it's not.
Amazing. Amazing.
The calories are just getting sucked into your body fat because you told it to go there.
Because the insulin was there, it sucks it in. And no insulin, it just releases it. And the foods that, one more time, the foods that don't cause insulin to go up. One more time, Jason, for those at home. And then we're gonna get into this fasting window because I'll tell you the number one fear and question people have But remind us quickly, the foods that keep insulin levels low are the foods that are—
So you want to stick to lower carbs. So cutting down the carbohydrates is one way, but it's not the only way. There's actually a lot of ways. If you eat carbs, there's other ways to keep your insulin down. So you can look at the glycemic index, for example, because there's been studies, for example. So the glycemic index of foods is this index where people Scientists take a certain food and they just give it to like a lot of people and they measure the average rise in blood glucose. And certain foods are gonna raise more, but you can actually take the same food and process it differently. So you can take— and they did this actually— so you take oatmeal, yeah, you can compare steel-cut oats, which is less processed, to instant oats, and the difference is huge. So you can take the same food which has the same calories, the same carbs, the steel-cut oats, you see that it's— it— because it's harder to digest, so therefore the glucose doesn't spike up, it just sort of goes up gradually and then goes down gradually. The instant oats are ground into this very, very fine powder so that your body absorbs all of it instantly, so therefore glucose spikes way up and it spikes way down, and then you actually crash and you're your blood glucose goes lower than normal, which causes you to be hungry because hunger is a symptom of hypoglycemia, right? So you can take the same food with the same carbs, same calories, but when they're processed differently, it has a very different effect on insulin, which means it has a very different effect on your body. Because if you're—
That's good to know. Yeah.
If your insulin's going way up, remember you're sucking all that into body fat.
So obviously Good proteins, healthy fats, and if there are carbs, look for carbs that are— how are they, uh, how are they marked if you're shopping? Or are they just natural, like steel-cut oats? How do you mark those? Or how do you think of those?
Well, yeah, it's hard.
It's—
you just have to look at how well— how, how much processing there is. So generally, if you're looking at foods that are, um, you know, highly processed, like instant or whatever, that's going to be that's gonna be a marker. Things that are, you know—
So low glycemic index is what we're looking for, right?
Yeah, low glycemic index. So even though you have carbohydrates, if you eat like beans, for example, beans have a very low glycemic index. They may be the same total number of carbs as say white rice, but the glycemic index is much lower. But you can also do other things. So if you add vinegar, for example, that significantly lowers the insulin effect. If you eat the carbs later on in the meal versus early on in the meal. If you eat later in the day, it's worse than eating earlier in the day. So there's all these different effects.
Wow.
That can affect not just— it's not just the food, the carbs, the calories, but it affects how you process it, which affects your hormones, which affects how much weight you gain. So, you know, that's, that's, it's, it's a fascinating topic actually. And I have a lot of YouTube videos about that.
No, you do.
Early.
We'll put all that in the, in the show notes and your books and all that. Let's end with this, Jason, because I think this is where we're at in 2023. 2024. There's so many people that are doing fasting now, shall we say, both just the old school way and now using products like Ozempic, you know, and these products that help take away hunger. Where, you know, I, I'm working with certain people that are actually utilizing those celebrities and some normal folks as well, just everyday folks. And their number one question to me is, oh my gosh, Jorge, I feel like I'm only eating once a day. Isn't this dangerous? And the truth is, you've told me over the years that whether you do it with Ozempic or you do it on your own by eating low glycemic index foods and foods that are high in protein and fats, however you want to create the fast, tell us your opinion of the dangers of eating, say, 1 or 2 meals a day and cutting meals down. And, you know, I've written many books on fasting. You've written more. As the Daily Mail says, you really— you're the doctor when the world comes to intermittent fasting. So explain to us why that may not be dangerous and how, because I think the biggest fear people have is if I fast and eat once a day, OMAD, right? That's that acronym, one meal a day, that I'm going to lose all my muscle and I'm going to just destroy my health. Tell us what you think about this fasting window and how it's helpful, not helpful, and whether people are using Ozempic or not, if that matters. Tell us your thoughts a little bit on this.— world of not eating these days, you know?
Yeah, the one meal a day is a perfectly fine strategy because remember that if you don't eat, what's gonna happen? Well, insulin is gonna fall. As insulin falls, it's going to open up your fat stores so that now you can take calories out of your fat, body fat, which is really why you have body fat in the first place. So you're not really doing anything cruel and unusual. You're using your body fat stores for precisely the reason you have body fat. It's not there for looks. It's there for you as a store of calories for when you don't eat. When you don't eat, you're gonna take calories out. So you think, okay, well, how many calories are there? So you take an average person, say they're 200 pounds, and an average percent of body fat is 25%. And keep in mind, 25% is relatively lean. Most people who are overweight are closer to 40 to 50% body fat.
That's right.
Let's say just for argument, you have 200 pounds. This is just for easy calculation. Right? 200 pounds, 25% body fat. So a very muscular person and low body fat. These people look lean, right? They look good.
Yeah.
That's 50 pounds of body fat.
That's a lot. You would think, you would think, and it is though. It is, right?
Absolutely. And the number of calories in a pound of body fat is about 3,500 calories. Calories.
Yeah.
Look at that. You've got 50 pounds times 3,500 calories is 175,000 calories.
You're set. That's like a big budget, right? You're, you're rich. So what does that mean? Could you not eat for a day or two? And why do I know that you have a clinic where you do this with people, right, Jason?
Absolutely, because people have at least that 50 pounds, which means that you're actually set for about 100 days. If you were to fast for 100 days straight, you would still have enough energy, right? Because it's about 1 pound of body fat for 2 days of energy. So people worry, oh, I didn't go like 18 hours eating. You could have gone 18 days, okay? It still would have been fine. That's why you have body fat. Now, as a fun— no, there's other issues, right? But the— if you just think about calories, and then people think, I'm gonna get malnourished, and they go, okay, what, what do you think you're gonna get malnourished from, right? Is it lack of vitamin B, vitamin C? Are you gonna get scurvy? Are you gonna get, you know, how about losing muscle mass, right?
Sarcopenia, is that the word?
Sarcopenia. And that's, that's a very interesting thing because that's been studied forever, because when you fast, your body predominantly oxidizes fat, not muscle. Yes, if you're burning fat, you're not burning muscle. Your muscles do get smaller because they're burning their glycogen, which has water, so that, but that's not muscle. Glycogen is not muscle fiber. When they've done the study, and I just reviewed it in my last blog actually, there's— they did a 10-day fast in this clinic in Germany and they measured. So, so the way— the reason people worry about muscle loss is because of the way it's being measured. So when you measure it, you do this, uh, you either do bioimpedance or you do DEXA. Both of them, uh, in both of those, body water is very similar to body fat. So when you do bioimpedance, you send electrical electrical pulse through the body, then this is the things where you step on that scale that tells you body fat, right? Sends an electrical pulse and it measures how much it is. But body water looks the same as body fat on these scans. So when you lose body water, such as what happens with fasting, it looks like you're losing lean tissue, right? So the lean muscle looks like it's being lost. And so what they did in this Buchinger Clinic study is they they put people on a 10-day fast, a really long fast, longer than most people do. And then they measured the strength directly. They told people, how much can you lift? What is your maximal grip strength? How long can you do this grip strength?
Yeah.
What they found was fascinating because if you look at non-weight-bearing muscles, the strength did not go down. If you look at, I think it was the non-weight-bearing muscles, it went up by 33%.
Wow.
It's like, okay, you're stronger than you were. That's part of it.
From fasting. I love it. Yeah.
From fasting. Because what happens during fasting is that the sympathetic nervous system actually gets ramped up. So you actually get energized through fasting, not the other way around.
And do we also get this effect that many people have talked about called autophagy, which is very cleansing for the body, correct?
Yeah, so autophagy is this period of time where you're burning some protein, and everybody thinks, oh, that's so bad. But in fact, skin is extra protein, connective tissue is extra protein. Remember that it's not just fat that you have to lose, you actually have to lose all the supporting structures. So you can actually lose a lot of that. What happens—
help recoil skin to a certain degree, right, Jason? Yeah, the skin that may be sagging.
Yeah, because if you're only losing fat, then you have this excess skin and you have to do surgery. But when you actually, you actually have to burn off because it can be pounds and pounds of skin, right? Yeah, that's pounds and pounds of tissue that you actually have to burn. And that's protein. That skin is a protein. It's, it's, it's a structure.
So autophagy is the process that allows us to recoil the skin in essence. Yeah. Yeah.
It gets rid of some of the old, uh, old stuff and sort of starts the regeneration process. So it's, it's, it's really, um, you know, a very, very powerful way to do things. But again, A lot of this gets lost in this sort of people who are, you know, have this sort of old style thinking. And so it's like, you think about it this way, like certain religions, for example, they have periods of fasting, right? You know, whether you look at Muslims or you look at Catholics or you look at Jewish people, or if you look at Buddhists or Hindus, there are periods of fasting. We've been doing it for like like thousands of years. Like, yes, there's an issue with muscle loss. We would have figured it out.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
It's not new at all.
And you know what I've told my clients over the years, and you remember the Zero Hunger Water, uh, project I've been working on where it's just electrolytes added to water can help curb appetite while you're fasting. You have teas. There are many things you can do that don't require calories, right, Jason? That if someone says, well, oh my gosh, So I'm gonna start fasting. I bet a lot of people watching right now are ready to start fasting and they're scared to feel hungry. What would you say their tips— what are your tips on how to reduce that hunger while we eat, say, one meal a day?
Yeah, the important thing is to understand that it's all— it's all gonna pass. That is, if you think about hunger during fasting, it actually— you will get hungry. So you have to be prepared for it, right? But the thing is that if you simply ignore it, that hunger actually just fades. And they've done studies on it. It's like, for example, when you work through lunch and you miss lunch, yeah, you're really hungry at like 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock. By 5 o'clock, you actually feel exactly the same. Because when they fast people, what happens is that your body simply— so insulin falls, your body now takes your 500 calories out of your body fat, but you've just eaten your own body fat. Fat.
And that's a good thing.
Hungry.
So when you're hungry, think of it gnawing away at the fat, right?
Yeah, exactly.
So that should make you happy. You're like, yeah, keep eating.
Exactly. You're eating your own body fat, but that's why you have it, right? Just like if you didn't go to Costco, then you went in the fridge and you got yourself a chicken sandwich and ate it, you're not hungry. You don't have to go to Costco again. Why? Because you had this— it's stored away. Yeah, get out of the Well, body fat's the same. You didn't eat lunch, your body went into its refrigerator, went into the body fat, took out the 500 calories, and now you're good to go. It's a problem if you don't have body fat like that, if you're, if you're at like, you know, 4% body fat or something. But most of us are way, way, way over that, right? Most of us are in that 25-35% range. So therefore it's not nearly an issue. So therefore you people worry about hunger because they think that it's going to go up, up, up, up, up, but it doesn't. It actually goes up and then it'll go down. And then the magic actually happens when you go, say, overnight, for example. So say you skip dinner, for example, then you're getting hungry at dinner, it passes, but then by the next morning after you slept, you actually completely reset. Your hunger level just resets.
Incredible. Incredible.
Yeah. Yeah. It's actually quite incredible.
And is there an ideal time to have the one meal a day if someone was to do that? Is it about midday, early evening? I mean, the earlier the better?
The earlier the better. So early, I'd say mid-afternoon is probably the best. If you can just do one, like at breakfast, sure. But most people like to have it somewhere in the middle because they're not that hungry at breakfast in the morning anyway. So you don't want to eat when you're not hungry. So sometimes in the middle of the day, that takes care of that, and then they just go through. If you're eating a big 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock mid-afternoon meal, that's probably ideal, but with people's schedules, doesn't always work out. Then you think about certain cultures like Europeans and stuff, right, where they have that giant— they make their main meal the mid-afternoon meal.
Yeah, like 2 or 3, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, if you look at some southern Italy and Spain and stuff, some people have that big thing, and then they have a siesta, and then they eat. The dinner is like, you know, at 10. Like, it's always a bit of—
yes, it's a little late at night. Maybe we shouldn't do that part, right, Jason? Now we're trying to lose weight.
Yeah, but the dinner is often actually very, very, very little.
And if we do eat at night, have a little bit of protein and healthy fats. Avoid the simple carbs, right? Always. Yeah, yeah, to keep the weight off.
That's the, that's the key. Like, it all comes down to the way that the body processes the energy that you're taking in. It's not the total amount of energy that's always the most important. It's what you're doing with the calories, right? Are you allowing those calories to stick around for you to use them? Are you sucking those calories right into your fat stores? Because that's important, right? And it's not the— that's not the number of calories, because if you suck all those calories into your fat stores, yes, you are going to have have to go and get more calories, right? And that's where the confusion comes in. That's where all those people are like, well, I measured your calories, you have too many calories, you're eating more calories, that's your problem. No, your problem is that you ate the wrong calories, which allowed it to be deposited as body fat, which means that your body didn't have enough calories, so you went and got more. That's why you're eating more. Nobody wants to eat more. Yeah, you have to look for why. And they're like, oh, but you're eating more. That's the bottom line. It's like, no, that's not the bottom line. That was totally root cause of it.
So powerful, Jason. And for folks that are using GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, what are your thoughts briefly on that? Briefly?
Yeah. So GLP-1 drugs is another hormone. It's like— so it's the hormones that move it up and the hormones that move it down. So if you think about the hormones that move it up, you have insulin, you give insulin, people gain weight.
Weight.
It doesn't matter how many calories you eat, you're still going to gain weight. Why? Because if you eat the same number of calories that you did, your body will simply reduce the calories it spends and you'll still gain weight. Cortisol, which is like a stress hormone, you give people cortisol, they gain weight. GLP-1 moves it in the opposite direction. Wow. So you give GLP-1s, it goes down. Sympathetic tone, you give people, uh, sympathomimetics, so, so things that increase sympathetic tone. So the sympathetic nervous system is like the activation of the nervous system, right? So you're energized. When you give drugs that increase the sympathetic tone, this includes Fen-Phen, which you might remember from a while ago.
Sure, sure. Way back when.
Very effective weight loss drug that caused a ton of heart problems.
That was the one issue, right? Right. Yeah. So that's why we don't use that. But with GLP-1 drugs, they seem to be okay for the most part.
And GLP-1s are okay, but GLP-1s are working the opposite. They move that thermostat down.
And no heart problems.
No heart problems. It seems to be a very safe medication.
I agree.
So if you give drugs that increase the sympathetic nervous system, that also moves it down. So you have hormones that move it up, move your thermostat up, like insulin, like cortisol. You have hormones that move it down, like GLP-1s. Glycogens. It moves it down. Or, or sympathetic nervous system activators— so fen-phen, nicotine actually activates the sympathetic nervous system. So again, it moves that thing down. So remember, when you give Ozempic, when you get— when people smoke and stuff, you're not giving or taking away calories, you're affecting people's hormonal status, which moves that thermostat up or down, right? So you give that—
that's the bottom line.
You're moves that thermostat down, they lose weight, which is fine. Like, you're not— it doesn't, it doesn't do anything directly to calories. Calories is the, like, what happens after.
And for the people, whether they're using— just end on this— if people are on Ozempic or not and they're scared that they're going to hurt their bodies by eating one meal a day, end on this, Jason. Tell them your best affirmation, your best positive mindset where they can do this and have confidence and feel like, no, they're gonna be fine.
Yeah, your body is very, very smart. So if you only eat once a day, that's fine because insulin's gonna fall, your body's gonna take it— the calories out of storage, and you're gonna be able to use it, which is good because that's how you lose body fat. Your body stores energy as fat. So when you don't eat or eat once a day, your body's gonna take the energy out of those fat stores. So that's what you want to do. To do, right? It's just not fun. And that's how the GLP-1s, the Ozempics, can help you. So I have nothing against those drugs. It's just, it's just, it just helps you along that road.
And I think anyone who has a problem with that, it's just, it's a shame thing. And I think people just don't understand that it's a hormone game we're playing here when it comes to weight loss. And it's a hormone. And if you're going to use it, I mean, more power to you if you can afford it and if you can utilize it in a safe way. And maybe Is it something, do people tend to use it long-term and get better results or is it just episodical? What do you think, Jason?
Most people right now are using it long-term.
Yeah.
I mean, people talk about, the main problem is that the way it works is it also causes a lot of nausea. Yeah. So therefore you get this sort of, not only are you not hungry, but you actually go right into that nausea sometimes vomiting, sometimes diarrhea, all these issues, a lot of side effects with it. So, you know, I, you know, I have nothing against it, but I also don't think it's going to be a magic bullet. It reminds me of when people were so enthusiastic about bariatric surgery. Remember?
Yes, of course.
The sleeve gastrectomy, sure. There is the Roux-en-Y bypass, gastric sleeve, Sure. Bypass. Everybody said, oh, it's gonna cause— it's gonna cure obesity forever. Huge wave of enthusiasm for these surgeries, and they were, they were very effective. I, I don't deny it, but tons of side effects. So therefore, eventually people decided it just actually wasn't that worth it. Yeah, maybe because it's a drug, has less of that, but it's, it, to me, it's following the same thing. You know, huge wave, we're in that huge wave of enthusiasm part. Eventually where I think we're going to get to the point where we realize it's a drug, it's a useful drug.
But it works. Yeah.
It works. Yeah, it works. But it's not like the holy grail of this is all you need to do. Like you still need to know all about good nutrition, proper ways to eat, what the proper foods foods are to eat. You still need to know all that because people are thinking, oh, I don't need to know any of that, I just take my Ozempic. It's like, I don't think it's going to be that.
I think— no, no, absolutely. Well, Jason, I can't thank you enough for your time today. This has been, uh, pivotal. It's like solid gold here. We needed this update from you. And if people want to find you online, we're going to include your website, but give, give your information briefly if you want. All this will be in the show notes, guys, but follow Jason. Go ahead, Jason, tell them where you're at.
Yeah, so You can follow me on Twitter at— that's Dr. Jason Fung, @DrJasonFung. You can find a lot of stuff on YouTube, which is just under Jason Fung. And yeah, you can also— I have a blog on Medium.com and you can follow me.
I love that. We'll put all the links in there so that people can access you and your YouTube channel. Thank you so much, Jason, for your time. And you have so many bestselling books. I think if people were to get one of your books, we're going to link all of them. What would be the one for anyone right now at home that just heard this conversation and wants to go deeper? What's your most central book, would you say?
The Obesity Code, which goes a lot into this sort of, this sort of fallacy about calories and so on. It's really destructive to think about it as a calories in, calories out problem. And I think that that's why people have had such trouble trouble because they've been— had it beaten into them that it's all about calories. So therefore, eating, you know, 500 calories of ice cream is the same as eating 500 calories of chicken salad. It's like, uh, there's nothing the same about those.
So true. I mean, I can't thank you enough, Jason, for being this guy who, uh, who doesn't age, first of all, keeps his fitness going, walks his talk, and more importantly, keeps the passion going, because I can see the gleam in your eye when you talk about this. And I think everyone at home through this conversation here, whether you're watching it or listening to it on Spotify or on Apple, hopefully you're watching it because I can tell you Jason is the real deal. I've known you for over 10 years. It feels like at least 10 years. And I can say you care so much about people, Jason. So I can't thank you enough for all the hard work and for not fighting the system, but for standing standing tall and strong on your, your method because it's based on science. And I can't thank you enough, Jason, because it's changed the way I eat consistently. It really has. And I embrace intermittent fasting, you know, and I, I try to do the best job to communicate your work to everyone. So thank you for doing this interview because I think this will do it. And, uh, I can't wait to meet you in person one of these days soon. All right.
Yeah, for sure.
It'd be great. All right, buddy. Hey, thank you so much.
