The Best Treatment For Weight Loss and Preventing Disease w/ Dr. Jason Fung EP 1361

Watch your calories, watch your calories, watch your calories. And I think it's a disastrous sort of idea because the thing about calories.

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In your opinion, what is the best way to stay consistent in maintaining weight loss and preventing disease?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that it gets to some of the, you know, environmental aspects of weight because the way we look at it is that, you know, a lot of people think that it's just about knowledge, right? It's just about knowing what you're supposed to do, right? And the thing is that that's probably that's just the beginning, it's not the end, right? It's like saying, don't eat cookies. That's good advice. Doesn't mean I'm not gonna eat cookies, right? Cause there's all different reasons why people do it. And so, so, so just knowing something, just knowing, oh, I could fast. Well, yes, you could, but will you? Right? That's. That's the real key. And you have to realize that there's actually a lot of other things that go into it, and the one of them is the environment. So the environment that you find yourself in plays a huge role into how well you're going to do in this. And that's important because you can change your environment, right? So, you know, I think, think about two situations, right? 1970s, you're in the meeting at your office and you're bored, but there's nothing to do, so you sit there and listen. You don't eat, because what are you going to do? Get up and walk out and get yourself a cookie. Everybody be like, what the hell are you doing? Right? And compare that to the 2000 and 20s where you have a meeting, 10, 30, somebody orders bagels and cream cheese, right? They stick them in front of you at the meeting, so you're not actually hungry, but your bar boss is going on and on. So you eat that bagel, right? So it's a completely. It's not that you didn't know that the cookies, the bagels, the whatever was good for you. Nobody thought that. But the environment's so different because one of them is so like, you're not moving from your seat because, you know, your whole company's there, your boss is there, the other one, oh, I'm just gonna eat that way I'm, you know, I'm gonna pass the time, right? So the environment plays like a huge role. Same thing, you know, 1970s, this coffee. You take a coffee, right? You go to, you know, the little thing, you get your coffee, there's nothing else. So that's all you got, coffee, 20, 20. You didn't go down. You go to the, you know, local coffee store. There's more than coffee there. Everybody knows that, right?

And all the coffee has, you know, 50 grams of sugar and whipped cream.

Exactly.

There's Rice Krispies treats.

Exactly. You got the caramel this and mocha this and those all have sugar. And then you got your donut, then your muffins and things. So it's not just coffee. So what was the difference between the two? It certainly wasn't the knowledge and it certainly wasn't the willpower. The difference was the environment is very conducive on one side to weight loss by forcing you to not eat. And the. On the other side, it's just very easy to, right? And this sort of environment means that you can change it. So if you're an office manager, you can say, guess what? We're not having any food at meetings anymore. It's not allowed. It's not allowed to eat at your desk. If you want to work, you work. If you want to eat, you go into the cafeteria, right? There's no candy on the bowl. Like, no. No candy in the office. That's just not what we do because it's not fair to people trying to lose weight. Those are easy rules. But now all of a sudden, you've tilted your odds of success much higher because if you're spending eight hours in the office, you actually have no thing. And no more of these office birthday parties with cake, right? That everybody feels obligated to go and have a little bit of cake that you really didn't want in the first place, right? And again, it's the same thing, right? You say, okay, we'll celebrate, but we're just going to have fruit or whatever it is, right? Whatever you want to do. Once you, once you understand that it's the environment that's more important than, you know, purely knowledge, then you can make those changes. Or you can get yourself a Keurig machine and say, okay, we're going to make the coffees here so that you don't have to go down there, right? So there's all different things you can do. The other thing you have to think about is the sort of deeper reasons why people are eating. So if you think about things like emotional eating, right? There's lots of different reasons why people eat, and hunger is really just one of them. You eat because you're bored, you eat because you're stressed. You eat because you know you're sad, for example. So this is a very interesting thing. If you look at refined carbohydrates and sugar, what we know is that you eat, you know, sugar. Some people, the dopamine in their brain lights up like a Christmas tree, right? What it means is that they're being flooded with these sort of feel good chemicals. So if you're all of a sudden sad you broke up with somebody or whatever it is, you're a little sad at work, you're looking for a little happiness. Well, you get yourself some sugar because you know that it's going to make you feel better. That's what comfort foods are, right? Comfort foods are like, you know, sweets like, you know, Cookies, chocolates, ice cream, you know, or starchy foods like Mac and cheese and stuff, right? Nobody's like, getting themselves a piece of salmon, right? That's not comfort food. It's like, it's delicious, but it's not comfort food, right? So the point is that if you just say, oh, just don't eat well, you're not understanding why people are eating, right? So maybe the environment is not right for them. Maybe they're eating because they're emotional, like they're sad, they're depressed, they're, you know, bored, whatever. Then you can fix that. It's like, oh, if you're bored, let's figure out what you want to do. Or if you're sad, let's figure out something that you can do instead or whatever it is, right? And so that's, that's, that's, you know, that's, that's a couple of things that you really have to think about. And then the third thing you really have to think about is habits, because habits are huge. And I think this is, you know, people have started to realize how huge habits really are. Because if you have something that's not fun, then as long as you make it into a habit, then you'll still do it. And you don't have to think about it, because once it's a habit, it doesn't require willpower. So if you think about brushing your teeth, for example, we all brush our teeth twice a day. Nobody thinks it's fun. Nobody really wants to brush your teeth. You do it because it's a habit. You feel incomplete if you don't, right? You get up and you don't brush your teeth. You feel a little weird, right? So you go and brush your teeth, because that's just what you do. But that's the key, right? You make your habits and then the habits make you. Because then you derive all the benefits of brushing your teeth, that is less cavities later on. But you did, did it because you created that habit deliberately, right? So if time restricted eating, intermittent fasting goes along with those things, right? If you create that habit that, hey, you don't eat breakfast, or hey, you're gonna stop eating after dinner, after a while, you're the one that's gonna derive the benefits of that because you've, yes, the first two weeks of trying to create that habit, maybe it's a little hard, right? So. But after a while, you do that for the rest of your life. You think about the 1970s again, because again, there's a time where there's not a lot of starvation, but there is not a lot of obesity either. Right.

What was the obesity metric at in the 70s compared to. Where is it now in 2020?

I think it was probably like 15% sort of thing compared to like 60, 70%. Now.

Wait, 60, 70% obesity now is that an American?

Overweight and obesity? Yeah, overweight and obesity. Right.

So what is overweight? What does overweight and obese mean?

So we use a body mass index, which is basically, It's a height versus weight sort of calculation. 20 to 25 is considered normal. Now 25 is, 25 to 30 is considered overweight. But that, that actually catches a lot of people who are just on the muscular side. So it's actually not a great metric, but those are the definitions. And then you go over 30 is obese. And then they've had to add a couple of. They've had to add a few. Like over 40 is like morbidly obese and stuff because people were going up and up and up on that scale. So it's.

So that's. So over 30% body fat is considered obese currently.

It's. No, it's a body mass index which is like weight over height sort of thing. Right. So the higher it is, the higher the, the, the more your weight. But you have to divide it by your height so that, you know, you're comparing apples to apple.

Okay.

But anyway, it's, it's not a great metric, but it is a standard sort of metric that we use.

But based in the 70s on the same metric, there was only 50% overweight or obese, whereas now it's 60% overweight.

Yeah, it's a lot higher. And yeah, it's, it's, it's sad. And it's especially stark in childhood because. Of course.

Why, why is that? I see so many kids walking around now that don't look healthy. They look extremely overweight and obese as 5, 8, 10, 12 year olds. And when, when I was a kid growing up in the 80s, early 90s, there was a lot of sugar available.

Yeah.

And we, and I remember having a lot of sugar, but I also remember being outside constantly running around, playing sports and activities. And being outside, it was less being inside on the phone and less on video games. It was more about playing.

Playing.

Is that one of the main factors or what is the main factor of so much child obesity?

I think there's been a couple of major factors. I think one of the major factors was probably the increase. So, so it was the increase in Sort of processed sugary foods. So if you look at when the obesity epidemic really went, got going, it was sort of in the late 70s, just as we got the food pyramid, right? That was the big change.

Interesting. So is that, is that mark, is that marketing then? Is that just sharing marketing ideas and saying this is what you need to have in your, in your meals and have more breads and more carbs and more cereals?

It was, it was the U.S. u.S. Department of Agriculture. So the USDA came out. So what happened was that before 1977, so the first food pyramid, it was the Dietary Guidelines for Americans was 1977. And before that it was very much the government wouldn't tell you what to eat, your mom told you what to eat, right? The government didn't get involved with that. And 1977 was the first time that they decided, okay, we're going to put out national guidelines. So the problem was they couldn't agree on a lot of stuff because there's this whole anti fat movement that was going, right? And the reason for that was in the 50s, people were getting heart attacks. So you know, 50 year olds, they get a heart attack and people didn't know why. They said, why are all these people getting heart attacks? And so a couple of researchers said it's because they're eating more fat. And it wasn't actually true. That's the problem. Because if you look at the diets of Americans, they hadn't changed much over the previous hundred years. So they're eating the same amount of fat, they're having more heart attacks. When you look back, it's actually pretty obvious what was going on. People were smoking like crazy, right? All the way from 1900 through the world wars, people were just smoking, smoking, smoking. Of course, nobody knew it was that bad for you. And by the 50s and 60s, people were having the heart attacks. And remember, the cigarette companies were saying, that's not us, right? Everybody smokes, your doctor smokes, right? So, you know, remember for years they had just denied everything. So that was all that all came out in the litigation, you know, years later. But people were smoking, that's why they're having heart attack. But at the time, this is the 60s, nobody knew why they had heart attacks. So there's this one group of people who said it's because people are eating fat. Dietary fat causes heart disease. Eat fat, get heart disease. The problem was that if you look at the percentage fat in the American diet in the 50s, it was the same as it was in 1900. So that didn't make any sense at all. But it sort of made, it seemed like it made sense. So that's why there's this whole group of people that said it's the fat. And so therefore. But there's a lot of debate, but in 1977, the government says we need to put something down. And the sort of anti fat movement was like, well, it's the fat. So once they said it's the fat, that was it, right? It was official government policy to go low fat. The problem is that, you know, if you eat less fat, then you're going to eat more carbs because there's only three macronutrients. There's carbohydrates, there's fat, and there's protein. You can't increase protein that much because if you eat pure protein, it's, it's a little bit gross, right? So super lean meat and stuff, it's just not that good, right? So it was hard to eat just protein. So you wind up getting less fat in the diet. You have more carbs, which is fine if you're eating broccoli, but not so fine if you're just eating a lot of white bread. But that's what happened, right? So the original food Pyramid was all 7 servings of bread and rice and potatoes, right? So then people started to gain weight because, hey, it's, it's a lot of carbs, right? So, and refined carbs is the main problem. So as people started to gain weight, they, you know, that was the sort of big turning point because now everybody was teaching this in the schools, right? And every, the dietitian had to sort of toe the line and say, eat less fat and eat more protein. And then the government really encouraged processed foods. They spent a lot of money telling food companies to process food so that you can get the fat out of that, right? So you get these low fat foods, right? But they're highly processed, so they took everything out and then they stuff sugar in to make it taste better. So what happened was that everybody was eating refined carbs and sugar, right? So you know, refined carbs and sugar is basically a cookie, right? That's what. Right, right. It's like cookies and donuts. That's refined sugar and carbs, right?

There's no nutritional value.

Not nutritional and not good for your waistline. So people started gaining weight. And then the other thing that happens when you eat a lot of refined carbs is that it doesn't keep you full. So if you think about it, if you eat steak and eggs at breakfast, you don't really feel like eating something at 10:30 because it really keeps you full. You eat a couple of slices of white bread and jam and orange juice. By 10:30 you're just ravenously hungry. And there's a good reason for that because there's certain things in the diet that make you full, those are satiety hormones. So if you eat a lot of protein containing foods, you release a peptide yy, which is a hormone that tells you to stop. Same thing with fat, it releases cholecystokine and it tells you to stop. So you eat a steak, those hormones start going up and then eventually you just can't push through. That's why they have those competitions, you know, eat a 16 ounce steak and we'll get to it for free. They don't give out a lot of free steak because it's very hard to push past that. If you eat a lot of unrefined carbs with a lot of fiber, well, it stretches your stomach. That tells you stop eating. So all hormones tell you to stop eating. Well, what happens when you eat that? Highly refined carbs plus sugar, which is the white bread and jam. There's no protein, there's no fat and there's no fiber. So you don't feel full. You could keep eating that stuff and you just won't get full, right? It's just like if you have a big buffet and somebody says, here, have another pork chop. You go, right? It's like, I can't do that. But somebody says, here, drink some coke. You're like, okay. Why? It could have the same number of calories, but it has no satiety signaling, it's pure sugar. So that's the difference, right? So then people started eating all the time. So you had this, this, this huge change in the population where all of a sudden you're eating carbs, you're eating sugar. Because we're all focused on the fat and, and we're eating constantly. Because if you eat your white bread and jam at, you know, 8 o', clock, 10:30, you're looking for a low fat muffin. And so you're eating five, six times a day. So before, you know, when people used to say don't snack, now everybody says you need to snack because people are like saying, I have to eat six times a day, but I'm eating the right foods. The white bread and jam, the low fat white bread and jam, right? Therefore eating six times a day must be good. But it never was. So that's sort of how that Whole thing developed. And then of course we realized eventually that the low fat thing was just a scam. The whole thing was just wrong.

Is that the government saying this? Is that some other.

Yeah, the government. Like if you, if you look at the, the dietary guidelines, they get updated every, every five years and they've completely taken out that stuff about fat. So before they said, oh, you should eat maximum, this percentage of fat. So if you remember. So America was super low fat and they were gaining weight like crazy. And the French didn't have that. They're eating their, the butter full cream, you know, foie gras, you know, fatty, fatty foods, cheeses. So cheese, yeah. So they're eating all this fat. So in the 80s, and they're skinny.

And they're skinny, but everyone was saying, well, they're skinny because they're smoking all day, but they weren't getting heart attacks. So there's something there.

Well, that was the whole French paradox, right? That was what we called it. There's a whole debate about why aren't these French people getting heart attacks because they're eating so much fat, they should be getting heart attacks. But they're getting like a third of the heart attacks that the Americans were. And the answer was that all that fat, you know, the fat and their butter and cheese and stuff, it just wasn't that bad for them. Right? And that's what eventually the study showed. Then you started to realize, we started to realize that, you know, stuff like nuts, which are very high in fat, was not bad. The Mediterranean diet with its olive oil was not bad. Salmon was not bad. Avocados weren't bad. So in the 80s, avocados were completely like, oh, my God, how can you eat that? Right? And it goes from that to a superfood, right? So it's full of fat. Avocados full of fat, right? And, you know, this whole low fat thing, it sort of turned around. And then, you know, we realized that even stuff like butter, that's not that bad for you, right? So butters come back. They used to get people on margarine, but the whole thing is that by going to these sort of high, highly refined carbohydrates and, you know, sugary foods, that's what sort of, I think, fed the obesity epidemic. On top of that, you're eating foods that basically didn't make you full at all. So therefore you're just eating more because there's nothing to stop you, right? So if you didn't stop, you're just going to eat more and you're eating more often. So it was this perfect sort of, you know, you're eating really fattening foods, you're eating more often than usual and you're eating more because there's nothing to tell you to stop. So it's like, okay, well what's going to happen? Well, you're going to gain weight, right? So it was never about willpower. It's all about this sort of thing that was set in motion by the government suddenly decreeing that we should eat processed fat free foods. That was basically what the dietary guidelines in 77 said.

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What is the thing in this space right now that people are saying this is the way? The government is preaching this, doctors, institutions are saying this is it. And in 10, 20 years, you think we're going to discover. We jump too quick to that conclusion, and the data is showing now that there's actually really negative effects to this belief. Is there anything you think might come out?

I think that the. I mean, one of the things which is still very prevalent is this idea of sort of calories in, calories out sort of thing. I think it's actually one of the most destructive ideas in weight loss. I think it's because it's so deceptively sort of simple if you look at most academic centers. So as I was just showing that the amer, like a lot of the guidelines are like, you know, watch your calories, watch your calories, watch your calories. And I think it's a disastrous sort of idea because the thing about calories is that calories is a measure of food energy, right? That's how much energy is released when you put a piece of food into a sort of measuring device called the bomb calorimeter. And it's like, okay, this cheesecake has 200 calories, because when you burn it, you get this amount of heat generated, right? That's how you measure that, right? And so people say stuff like, oh, you know, it's all about calories and calories out, right? That's something here all the time. Or calorie is a calorie. And it's, it's. It's really sort of very simplistic, and it's actually not very helpful because you can have two foods, right? Think about two foods. You have one which is, you know, cookies, which is 100 calories or 200 calories. And you have, say, sandwiches, 200 calories. So equal amounts of calories. The minute you eat the cookies, you release the hormone insulin, okay? And the insulin is a hormone that tells your body what to do with those calories. So the insulin tells your body to store those calories. It moves it right into the fat stores, right? So the whole thing is that if all that energy moves directly into your fat store, so these highly refined carbohydrates, sugar goes way up, insulin goes way up. When insulin goes way up, it is Literally, the thing that is telling your body, put those calories into storage, and you store the calories in your body fat. That's all it is. Body fat's just a store of calories. So imagine you take the 200 calories of, of cookies, now the 200 calories of salmon. Doesn't, Doesn't. Doesn't raise insulin. So you take the 200 calories and your body just burns it, right? It uses it. That's going to make a huge difference in terms of obesity, because in one case, you're just storing the whole damn thing. The other one, you're using it. You've got energy, you're generating body heat, you're feeling good. The other one, you took the 200 calories, you shoved it all into body fat. Your body's like, oh, I have no energy to use, so you're feeling a little bit, oh, I have no energy. I'm a little tired and I'm a little hungry, so let me go eat something, right? So. So it wasn't the calories. It wasn't the number of calories. It was the response to the calories, which is related to the hormones that are released. So the strange part is that what we're saying is that food contains not just the food energy, but it also contains instructions as to what your body is supposed to do with those calories. And both of them are very, very important. Whereas the calories, people say, well, it's just the number of calories. Well, once you get past that, once you put it in your mouth, you can measure the difference in hormones between the two foods. And you have to pretend that that's completely irrelevant. Because if you're eating, if you're told to eat the refined carbs and sugar, which is what we're told, then you're setting yourself up to a situation where insulin is going to go way up and that insulin is going to tell your body to store fat. That's its job. That's literally its job. You told your body to do that with your choice of food. I don't see why that is considered irrelevant. Not just the amount of calories, but you have to also look at the hormonal response, because our body is completely dependent on hormones to tell us what to do. The other thing that insulin does, of course, course it tells you that you. You need to put energy into storage, right? It's only when energy. It's only when insulin falls that you can pull the energy back out, right? So what we say technically is insulin inhibits lipolysis that is, if insulin is high, you can't burn fat because your instructions are to store fat. Right. You can either store fat or you can burn fat. Right. But you can't do both at the same time. So if you want to burn fat, but you're keeping your insulin levels high with the choice of foods, then, hey, it's not going to work because insulin's high. You're not going to be able to move the energy from the fat back out.

What would you say are the, the top five foods or food groups to support in burning fat faster?

I think you really have to look at the sort of very low carbohydrate foods because of course they're going to provide you the energy. So things like, you know, salmon, of course, the fatty fish is very good. Eggs are very good. Avocados are, you know, very good. If you want to do carbs. Then things like beans are very good because of all the fiber and stuff. Like they're unrefined. So then they have other things that, that, that will work. But those very low carbohydrates foods a lot of people find very useful to encourage fat burning. Because if you take salmon and eggs, for example, you're going to get that energy, the calories from that, which is energy. But insulin's not going to go up, so your body's not going to say, okay, well, let's put it into storage. It's just going to burn it, right? You're going to stay in that sort of fat burning state and you're going to be able to use those calories because that's, that's what you've told your body. So you're allowing your body to still access the body fat for energy. And it's going to keep you full because again, it's got, it's got, it's going to release hormones like peptide yy, like polycystokinin that are, keep you full as opposed to the white bread and jam. Right. The problem is, you know, people like to eat those refined carbs. They're cheap, it tastes good, so they taste good, they're cheap, they're donuts, Right, Right. So the, you know, and that sets up a situation and there's a lot of people who say, well, it's just calories, right? So you could eat ice cream for dinner, right? I mean, if you told your grandmother that, she'd say you're stupid, right? Like, you can't eat ice cream for dinner even if they're the same number of calories. Because again, One of them is going to go straight into stores, which is body fat, leave you hungry. The other one, you're going to feel full, you going to feel good, you're going to have energy to do whatever you need to do, right? So you're, you know, your grandmother was totally right. You can't just say, oh, both are 800 calories. So instead of eating my dinner, I'm gonna have an ice cream sundae, right? Because that is literally what people have been telling, telling people, like, it's all about the calories, right? It's like, no, that's like the worst advice you can give.

It's about the quality of calories. It sounds like it's about the quality.

It's about the choices. Because, you know, what we're saying is that certain calories are more fattening than other calories. That's all. Like, some foods are more fattening than other foods. And that doesn't seem to be that controversial a statement. But by the time you get to the universities and stuff, people are like, oh, it's all calories. It's all calories. It's like, why don't you kind of live in the real world where people are actually trying weight? Because that advice is horribly wrong.

Now, there's a lot of, there's a lot of people talking about fasting. Like you said, you've been talking about this for years. And it seems like more and more people are learning about the benefits, are practicing fasting in different various ways, and are seeing results in their own health or with potential clients they work with teaching about fasting. I'm curious, how does fasting, since I've talked to you last in the last year, I think it's been a year and a half now. How does fasting support weight loss in a healthy way? And is there any new research that's come out since we last talked?

Yeah, so there's, there's been a little bit of research and it's been sort of spits and starts. But fasting is very simple when you don't eat, right? So any period of time you're not eating is fasting. That's just what it is. If you don't eat, your body needs to take the energy out of its body stores. That's all you're trying to do, right? And it's normal, it's natural. That's how we survived as a species, because we had the ability to store calories for a time that we weren't eating. Otherwise you'd die in your Sleep like every single night, right? But you don't because you can store it. So body fat is a store of calories. The reason fasting so effective is because you're allowing the, you know, hormone insulin to fall. So therefore now you're opening up the floodgates of energy. So you're like, oh, your body might have a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand calories of energy sitting in its body fat stores depending on how much weight you're trying to lose. But you can't get at it until you let insulin fall. So if you're nibbling all through the day and keeping your insulin high, you're eating, you know, the crackers because they're low fat, but you're not going to be able to access body fat because you've kept your insulin high. You've basically told your body, store energy, don't burn energy. So once you start to release the, you know, let the instant fall, then you can start to release energy. And that's all you're trying to do with the fasting. So it's a hugely important thing to do and has always been part of a sort of traditional way of eating. So if you think about the 1970s again, you finish dinner at like 6pm, you know, and you maybe ate breakfast at like 8am, right? That's a 14 hour period of fasting that people did every single day without even thinking about it. In other words, they have 14 hours that they're dragging calories back out of their body. That doesn't happen anymore because when you do studies of, you know, how people eat now, on average they eat for I think it was like six, 14 hours and 45 minutes. So if you started eating at 8am you wouldn't finish until 10:45pm on average. That's the average length of time that people are eating. In other words, the only time people are actually fasting is when they went to sleep, right? That's the only time so people is eating.

Consider consuming liquid drinks also that are non water.

Yeah, if it's calories. If there's calories then, then it's considered energy, Right? So what, what, what of course was happening was that in the past people would be like, you know, if you wanted bedtime snack, your mom would say, no, you should ate more at dinner, right? There's nothing to eat right now. It's like, hey, eat anytime you want, right? There's food everywhere. You can buy food everywhere. You know, stores are everywhere. And that may have played a huge role in that, right? So there have been A few small studies, a few studies of fasting that have come out in the literature. It's a bit of a mixed bag. Some have shown really good success and then others have not because again, they've sort of done it a bit wrong. They sort of did. They mixed fasting. So they'd say fast one day and then eat more the next day. It's like, that's not really what you're supposed to do. I always think it's like, why would you design a study like that? Like, if you're gonna fast one day, What I'm trying to do is say, you know, if you drop a meal, I want to take your body. To take the calories that you would have eaten in that meal. I want you to take that out of your body fat. That's what I want you to do. So you're pulling that energy back out. You're basically feeding yourself on body fat. Because body fat is a store of food energy. It came from the food you ate in the past, right? You turned it into fat. Now you have to bring it back out. If the next day you overeat, you're simply going to fill up the fat again. So why would you do that? But there's a number of studies that alternated fasting with overeating. I'm like thinking that's crazy. And of course they didn't show any benefits. Like, okay, like, come into the real world, please. Like, I never tell people, when you're eating, eat extra. Like, why would you do that? And then there's another study that was, took a, it was very prominent in the New York Times, said, oh, there's no benefits. But the problem was that is the, you know, they, they look at fast and they, they said, okay, we're gonna go, you know, increase the amount of fasting. And the problem was they increased it by like 14 or something like that. And the number of. And they needed to show almost a 40% increased efficacy with the fasting to be positive, which is a high bar, like increasing fasting by, you know, 15 time wise. Like, I think they went from like 14 to 16 hours. So there's a small increase in the fasting time, but they expected this huge, massive increase in the effectiveness of weight loss. But it's like, again, welcome to the real world. You can't get a 15 increase, percent increase in your fasting time, which results in a 40 decrease in weight above what the other people do, right? It's like if you increase fasting by 15, the best, you should really hope for is a 15 increase in your efficacy, but they showed was a 28% increase in the efficacy but they needed 40. So they said it doesn't work. Okay, well that's not exactly the way I would interpret it. So there's been a few studies.

I'm curious then what. I feel like a lot of people have tried it in the last year, you know, especially people on the who are consumers of this show, who watch on YouTube or listen on audio that they've heard me talk about fasting, they've heard me talk about my experiments of doing, you know, two day fast, one day fast, three day fasts and bring on different experts talking about fasting and the benefits. I'm curious from all the things that you've learned over fasting over the last many years and what you've seen people trying to come out and talk about lately, what are your three best strategies and or practices for fasting that people can practice for the next seven days that is sustainable, maintainable and doable and it will also get added benefits.

Yeah, I mean I think that the, in terms of fasting, one, make it a habit, right? So habits are what makes it easy, you know, tough stuff, not so tough, right? So if you are, you know, make it a habit to sort of do a 16 hour fast, right? Say my eating window is between this and this. Do it consistently so that it feels normal to you and therefore when you step outside that you feel a little bit uncomfortable. Just like that day you don't brush your teeth, right? It's like you feel a little bit like something's off here because that's a thing, right? So you do it consistently. And I think that's one of the big, you know, big things that happened in the 70s that is they had that 14 hour period of fasting without thinking about it, right. So it was never onerous because they just did it. Right. It's not like I have to not eat after dinner, that's just what I do. Right. It's, it's a huge shift in the way you think about things. Two is sort of staying busy so that you don't think about the food and there's certain things that you can do and something that are good and some things that aren't so good. So one of the things of course is trying to avoid the triggers. So if you decide, okay, once a week I'm going to do a 24 hour fast, I'm going to eat just one meal that day, that's fine. But then you have to make sure that you schedule something into that period where you would be not eating. So, you know, if, if you're doing something else, you're not going to eat. For me, for example, for years, I would just schedule, you know, I would do writing. I would write like my books or I do a podcast or something like that. So it's easy because if I'm, if it's 12 o', clock, I need to go do this podcast. I'm not thinking about lunch because I'm doing this podcast or it was to the library or somewhere where it's quiet. Then I do some writing, I write my blog, right? And it's like, oh, okay, well, now I'm not missing it anymore, right? So put it on the schedule and make sure that you have something else that's going to sort of take your mind off that makes it easier for yourself, right? And that's, you know, that's the key. And then the third thing I think is to really plan ahead of time how you're going to deal with the hunger, right? Because as a hunger comes, you have to have a plan. Like, you can't just show up, right?

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Clear. What's the best plan that you do or that you recommend for people when they're like, they're hungry and they're just like, I'm emotional or I'm having a challenging day or I'm sad or. And I'm so used to grabbing for the chips, the snacks, the cookies, the crunchies. What's the best practice to keep people's discipline at a high when they feel like all they want to do is.

Munch? Yeah, there's. There's two things. If, if you're in a place where you can do it, do something active, especially outside, because, of course, then you're taking yourself away. So going out for a walk or a run is great because exercise, like, it does two things. First of all, you can schedule it. Second of all, when you're actually exercising, you'll almost never be hungry, right? Like, think about the last time you played tennis or basketball or soccer. You're so fun, fully into the game. You're not thinking, boy, I'm really hungry. Like, almost never. Like, like it almost. You. You almost can't do it, right? Like, you, you know, you've. You, You've done plenty of stuff. You never think in the middle of a game, boy, I could really use a burger, right? You're thinking, how am I gonna score, right? Or whatever you're doing, right. So putting a pickup game of whatever you like to play, right? Does wonders because you know the hunger is going to go away. You're taking the time where you are. You know, you're in the past, you would have taken something so lunch hour, for example, you're taking that time. And three, when you make a plan to play a game of tennis with your friend, you're not going to back out. You're not going to just say, ah, forget it. I'm going to go for a pizza. Because you're going to let your friend down. So that keeps you accountable to yourself. So it's like, okay, so once a week, and this is great, when people are kind of say, lose weight together. It's like, okay, let's figure out what we like to play. Is it, you know, yoga? Is it riding a bicycle? Is it going for a hike? Is it going, like, whatever it is, let's do it together and let's do it at a time so that we get through this period, right? And that's how we help each other, right? We help each other by doing these sorts of things. And of Course, that's sort of the secret of how people fasted in the past. Like, you think about groups of people now, there's all sorts of religious fasting traditions. So around Lent, for example, around Ramadan, Yom Kippur, whatever it is, there's. There's fasting. Well, literally millions of people are doing it. Why? Because they're doing it together. It's just a lot easier if your family is not eating. You're a lot less likely to eat because it's just the norm. So, you know, doing things together in a supportive group, that's important. Like, it's, it's the way we get things done. We're humans, we're social beings.

Right. Earlier you talked about environment and willpower. How does someone develop more willpower or discipline when their environment continually challenges them to stay disciplined? You know, maybe they don't have the ability to remove all the sugary foods, or they're working in an office where they can't say, hey, can we get rid of this stuff? How does someone with a room full of distractions manage to stay disciplined and have.

Willpower? Yeah, that's a tough one. Because, you know, I, I don't think, you know, a lot of people think obesity or weight gain is about lack of willpower, but again, I don't think it is. I think it's the change in sort of the norms, I.e. the eating norms and the environment which is led. And the processed food has led to that. So if you can't take yourself out of the environment, then you really have to look at alternative ways to, you know, again, you have to plan for it. So if you know that there's going to be something like, you know, in the. Meaning there's going to be food, right? And you don't want to eat because you don't want to gain weight, then you have to decide what are you going to do to sort of counteract that? Maybe you're going to get a tea, right? And then that's all you'll have. So at least you'll have something to sip on, put in your mouth because you know, you need something in there. It's just like the way people used to when they stopped smoking, they chew gum, right? Because you need something in there to take. Take away the sort of thing. So it's. It still takes willpower, but it takes a little less because you're still getting something, right? Or you have to decide, okay, well, how, you know, you have to decide, what am I going to do to sort of minimize and Maybe I'll step further away from where things are. You know, if you're. Sometimes you have these meetings where you're, you know, in the auditorium and the food's at the back, I'll sit at the front so that it's going to be embarrassing for me to get out and get some food because it's going to look so bad. Right. Whereas if you're back, you just grab it and then go back to your seat. Right. So. So there's, there's. There's ways, but it's really still about trying to figure out how you're going to mitigate those effects of what you're. Of what you're trying to do, because the temptations are always going to be there. Right. And. And you have to realize the foods are made to be tempting. Like, nobody's trying to make their foods not. Not appetizing.

So, yeah, I feel like it's going to be a chance. I mean, I feel like there's so many emotions are tied towards the discipline of eating. With all the marketing messages, with all the stress that people have. It feels good to eat and consume. It takes away some of the pain. It takes away some of the emotional challenges that people face. And I, you know, I. I can empathize with parents. I'm not a parent, so I can't speak into how it might feel having kids who are. Who maybe are a handful or maybe you have a lot of emotional and energy, and it's hard to manage that. It's hard to manage your job and your relationships and your own health. And so I know a lot of parents probably know what's good for their kids, but they maybe give in sometimes because it's just easier to just give them candy and have some peace. So I understand, even though I'm not a parent, but I can see how that challenge could come up. What can parents do? Because it seems like parents have a massive control on what their kids eat, you.

Know? Yeah.

Yeah. Until a certain.

Age. Until a certain age. I think that parents, on the one hand, there's a lot of challenges there, but on the other hand, they're very motivated. So that's good because they want to do good for their kids. Right. So. And I think that's where a lot of, you know, a lot of parents have actually made those changes, are trying to cut out sugary drinks and cut out some of the snacking. Because, remember back in, you know, not that long ago, it was all about giving snacks. So I had, you know, my kids are older now, but they used to play soccer at night, you know, and. And it was always like, for. For years it was like, oh, at halftime we have to give them some juice and.

Cookies. Yeah. Some oranges and stuff like.

That. Yeah. Why? But I was always thinking. Well, I was thinking, like, I played soccer when I was a kid. I had so much fun, and nobody chased me around trying to give me juice and cookies because I had water. Yeah. And I probably would have just asked. I probably would have preferred to play, truthfully. Right. Because it's so much fun. Right. All these games are fun for kids. And so one is limiting the drinks. So, you know, you see water has come back in sort of a big way. Sparkling water, still water. Like, you know, 15, 20 years ago, it was all juices and pop. Now you see water available everywhere. So that's good. Cutting down the sugar, cutting down the refined food, so making sure they have good choices. And the other thing, of course, is that if you're. Again, if you're in a situation where you know there's going to be stuff that's tempting is to sort of spoil your appetite, right. Make sure you're eating something good before you go in where there's a lot of stuff that's bad, Right. Because if you're full, you're going to be less tempted than eating other stuff. So if you're going into a place where there's just going to be tons of stuff, make sure you have a good dinner first or a good lunch first. So that when you're going in, you're not like, oh, cookies, chips, right? And it's like, you know, So I think parents have already made some of those good changes. The thing about the snacks, which I thought was strange, was. So this always happens, actually. So my, my. When my kids used to go on these field trips and stuff, you know, you'd get this letter to the parent, and it's like, we're going on a field trip to whatever museum. You know, they're going to take the bus. Make sure you pack two snacks for them. Like. Like, why are they not eating lunch or am I not feeding them dinner? Like, which one? Because there's no other reason that they need a snack. And the problem with this, and this was just a few years ago, is that it sort of institutionalizes the fact, right. That you should be eating all the time. Right. But you shouldn't because there's no reason to. Why would you want somebody? Remember, when you eat, you're gonna store energy, which is body fat. There's no way around it, right? It's calories, especially these refined snacks. Snacks are the worst actually because they tend to be refined carbs because like cookies, because they don't spoil, right? Nobody's packing a piece of salmon for snack, right? It's like a cookie, right. Or a cracker or something, right? So it institutionalizes the fact to two parents and two kids that snacking is a good thing and that you should eat two snacks in between sort of lunch and dinner. And it's healthy for you, but it's not, you really shouldn't because that's the period of time that you should have been using the energy you, you ate at lunch, remember? Like if you wanted an after school snack in the past, in the 70s, and I grew up in the 70s, your mom would say, no, you're going to ruin your dinner, right? Want a bedtime snack? No. You should ate more at dinner, right? And dinner, of course was, you know, the fully cooked meal, home cooked meal. It was the, the proteins and the fats and, you know, the good stuff that you're cooking, you know, that you spent time cooking, not the packaged cookie that you put into the, you know, into the snack box. But yeah, it's, it's trying to get back to those basics. And I feel like we don't, we're just, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to look back at what we did in the 70s and you'll get your blueprint for what you're supposed to be doing. Three snacks, unprocessed foods, cut the sugar and make sure you have a period of time at night where you're going to use those calories that you took in during the day, right? Because if you don't give your body time to use those calories, how is it going to use those calories? So in the 70s, from 6 o' clock onward, you're using calorie. Right now it's like 11pm practically before you start using calories. Up until that point, you're taking in calories. So how is that going to work? So realizing that this, this, this question of how often you eat, the frequency of eating when you're eating is almost as important as the foods that you are eating, right? And that was one of the big things I talked about in the obesity code, which people never really thought about, was that there's two things in the dot IN weight, weight loss, weight gain, right? The foods that you're eating, which is the diet and the period of time that you're not eating, which is your fasting period. And the fasting period doesn't tell you what to eat when you're eating, right? It just tells you how long you should go before the next meal. And that's really important because you can use it with any diet, right? And so those two things are really important. So not just the quality of the calories, but also this idea that you have to really make sure you're paying attention to the fasting period so that your hormones, your insulin can drop and you can start using those calories. And that's really, really, you know, a underappreciated part of sort of weight.

Loss. So what's the. You had, like, a formula in there that you said about two minutes ago. You. You said no snacking. You. You said a few other things. Can you share that formula.

Again? Yeah, yeah. So one, you want to cut down the sugar, because sugar is not good. And I think everybody agrees on that, right? Cut down the refined foods. So this actually applies mostly to carbohydrates, but refined food, other stuff is not good either. So refined fats, for example, are not good for you. So fans, fats were pretty clearly bad. Refined meat, like bologna and hot dogs and stuff are not really good for you either. So you want to eat whole foods, right? So whole foods, you want to eat, no sugar, you want to eat, you know, plenty of proteins and fats. And then you want to make sure you have a, you know, cut out the snacks and have a decent period of fasting. And that really just gets you back to 1970, where people were still eating white bread, right? White bread. I know. I grew up in that period. Nobody ate whole wheat bread. Nobody ate whole wheat pasta. It was white bread. It's white pasta, right? But you didn't eat all the time. That was the big difference, right? And it was the same everywhere you went. You know, the Irish were eating potatoes, the Chinese were eating rice, the Japanese were eating rice. You know, those are all carbs, refined carbs, right? Bread, rice, potatoes. But they were doing okay because they weren't eating all the time. They give their bodies a break from eating, right? Whereas now we don't give our bodies a break from eating. We think that it's healthy to constantly eat. We've lost the idea that there's that balance between eating and not eating. Like, why wouldn't you think that that's important? Balance everything else in life, right? Why wouldn't you want to balance eating and not eating, right? Don't you think that's, like, fundamentally important? Like, I Think it is. But up until sort of I wrote the obesity code, people just thought fasting was really bad for you. Which is sort of odd, you know, because it's like up until then there, everybody's saying, oh, fasting so bad for you, right? You're gonna do so bad. It's like, you know, we've been doing it for a long.

Time. So I'm curious then, what effect does fasting have on reducing our chances of getting life threatening diseases? And also which diseases are, are most people at risk if they don't fast and improve their, their.

Diet? Type 2 diabetes is probably the biggest one. And the reason is that it's a huge one. It's become an epidemic. So, so lots of people have it. If you look at prediabetes and diabetes, which is sort of, and you do big surveys, it's actually about 50% of adult Americans, right? So it's very common to have pre diabetes and diabetes. And the problem with it is that it causes all kinds of other problems. It increases your risk of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, it's leading cause of blindness, leading cause of non traumatic amputations, leading cause of kidney disease, all of those things. And you know, in trying to understand type 2 diabetes, you just have to understand that it's basically your body has too much sugar. That's it. So if you have too much sugar, remember. Excuse me, your body really has two sources of energy. It can use, it can use sugar, which is mostly glucose, and it can use fat. And when your body stores energy, it stores it as sugar or stores it as fat. Makes sense, right? So if you have too much fat, then you have obesity. If you have too much sugar, you have type 2.

Diabetes.

Interesting. But the situation, the solution is the same. So think about it. Your body has too much energy, both situations, obesity, you have too much energy stored away. In type 2 diabetes, you have too much sugar, which is also too much energy stored away because both fat and sugar are sources of energy for the body. So if you think about trying to reverse type 2 diabetes, because again, I wrote about this in the diabetes code and I said it's a reversible disease because your body doesn't have too little energy, it has too much energy. So think about this situation. Think about your car. Suppose you go to the gas station three times a day, you fill up, now it's full, but you still keep pumping gas in, right? So it's spilling out, it's spilling out, it's spilling into your back seat and it's now making you sick. But what are you going to do? Well, here's what you wouldn't do is keep going to that gas station three times a day, right? It's ridiculous. You do two things. One, stop putting gas in, and two, drive that car around so that you use the gas that's there. That's what you would do. Now think.

About. Burn the gas. Burn the.

Gas. Exactly. Think about your body. Your body has too much energy. What are you going to do? One, stop putting it in. Two, let it run without putting it in for a while. That's intermittent fasting. That's all you have to do. And think about the this situation. You've got a disease state which has become an epidemic, which contributes to heart attacks, strokes, cancer. But you have a solution which is completely free and has been used for thousands of years, which is not anything more complicated than let your body run off of the fuel that's already sitting on there. Is it fun? No, it's not fun. Is it healthy? Yes, it is in those situations. Very healthy. And people used to say, well, people won't do it. It's like my job as a doctor is not to tell people what they will and won't do. My job is to tell them how they should get healthy and I'll help them, right? So if fasting is a good solution, which I believe it is, then I'll help them. Whether they do it or not is up to them. Right? But the point is that it's, it's, it's free, it's simple. It's been used for thousands of years. It's available to everybody. You don't need special equipment, you don't need a special diet, you don't need a special anything. Everybody in the world can do this at any time. Like literally like today, tomorrow, anytime they could do it. It's not like, you know, I have this great drug for people. Yeah, but septic costs $500,000, right? That's crazy. No, fasting's not doing to that. You're going to save time, you're going to save money, and you're going to get healthier. So what could be better than that? Like, it's a crazy situation where we have this huge health care issue, but the solution is completely free, which explains why there's so few people telling you to do it, because who's going to make money on it? Right? But that's not my concern. My concern is telling people what they need to do to get healthy. Right? Introducing Fidelity Trader plus. With customizable tools and charts, you can access across all your devices. Try our most powerful trading platform yet@fidelity.com trader + investing involves risk including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC member NYSE.

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Clear. What do you think is the biggest mistake people make when it comes to fasting?

Then? I think the single biggest mistake is sort of overeating afterwards. So you fast for a period of time. Then you say, oh, well, I deserve that ice cream. It's like you, you could do it, but you're going to sort of get a lot less benefit. You're gonna, like, you got a great benefit from the fasting now, you know, you're, you're, you're losing some of that because you're eating the foods that you didn't eat. And that, that really is a temptation for people to do. And I think it's natural and we've all done it and you know, but the point is that after you fast, you should really just eat as normally as possible. So if you eat, you know, a normal breakfast, normal lunch, normal dinner, the next day is your fasting day. You don't eat breakfast, you don't eat lunch. You should eat a normal dinner. Don't try to eat all three meals crammed into one, right? That's not the point. Like, the point is to drop those meals and let your body take the energy from your body fat. So you drop breakfast, your body normally gets 500 calories from there. You want to take it out of your body fat. Same thing for lunch. If at dinner, instead of taking a thousand calories, you decide to stick in 2,000 calories, well, you've negated a lot of the benefits that you should have gotten because that energy is going to go in, right? So the good thing is that it's hard to do that. So when you restrict the time and you don't tell people what to eat or how much to eat, they actually naturally eat less. So it's actually an interesting thing because this gets to the question of hunger in terms of weight loss there's sort of two big issues that trip people up. One is metabolic rate, and two is hunger. So hunger. People think that hunger will just go up like this with fasting. It's actually not true. So you can actually measure the hunger hormone called ghrelin, which is basically, it goes up high and you get hungry. So when you fast, ghrelin is high. So if you normally eat lunch, you're hungry. So ghrelin is high. What happens when you don't eat lunch? You skip your lunch. Well, a couple hours later, your ghrelin level actually falls back to.

Baseline. So you don't feel hungry.

Anymore? No, your hunger goes back to baseline.

Level.

Interesting. So if you eat lunch at 12, you're hungry at 12. Now you skip lunch, you're hungry at 12, you're hungry at 1. By 4, it's no different than if you ate or didn't eat. So people are like, what happened? Well, your body took the energy from your body fat stores, you took the 500 calories from body fat. You basically defend yourself off of that body fat. So why would you be hungry? The answer is you're not. And that's why it goes right back to baseline. Same thing happens at dinner. If you do multiple day fasts, it's actually even more interesting because ghrelin actually, after day one to two, it actually starts to go down and down and down. So your hunger actually disappears by like day three, day four, people just aren't hungry anymore because they're fueling themselves on the body fat. And I think it was a. I think it was actually sort of protective mechanism because if there is a prolonged period where you weren't eating, eating, I think the body evolves so that you wouldn't be constantly distracted. So people on these long fasts do very well because they've gone into this stage of fat burning because they're fueling themselves purely on the fat and their hunger is gone. So they're actually feeling pretty good and they're losing.

Clear. They feel productive, they have more.

Energy. Yeah.

Yeah. There comes a point where. There comes a point where I feel like I did a three day fast. I think maybe I did three and a half days. And I remember thinking, okay, I'm kind of feeling a little bit tired, like I could use some food now. Yeah, Maybe it's just because I haven't, you know, pushed it beyond that before. So it's just every day I have to learn how to manage.

It. But it's, it's. It takes a bit of getting used to because most of us are not used to it. And that's, that's more. That's probably the biggest obstacle because we're in a culture where the norm is not sort of 14 hours of fasting. The norm is like, eat until you go to sleep and eat as soon as you wake up. Right? And that was one of those big destructive myths, which was that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, which is fine. If you like breakfast, it's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But the problem was when people took that to mean that if you weren't hungry in the morning and you didn't really like breakfast because you weren't a breakfast person, you should start still eat like Fruit Loops, right? Because you had breakfast. Okay, now that's not the point. Eating sugar and, you know, refined carbs is not a good strategy. You're better off not eating. But then remember this whole thing where, oh, you have to eat breakfast, have to eat breakfast. You have to eat breakfast. Like, no, you don't. Your body knows what to do. If you're. What do you think it's been doing all through the night? It's been taking the energy from your body. So if you don't eat, it will continue to take energy from your stores, your blood sugar or your body fat, one or the other, unless your body fat is so low that it's going to get tripped up. So that was the thing. And then people used to say, you know, eat 10 times a day to keep your metabolism stoked. Right? Which is another complete sort of myth. That was the other thing. So hunger is one of the big things that translates people up in weight loss and fasting provides you a way to sort of get around that. The other one is the metabolic rate, which is the number of calories you burn. And people think it's all about exercise. But in fact, exercise for most people that I deal with are, which are older people, it tends to be a very small part of the number of calories they eat in a day. Because, you know, when you exercise, it's just your skeletal muscles as opposed to the, you know, your heart in your liver and your lungs and your brain, they all need energy as well. And the point is that when you, you can do these studies where you measure the metabolic rate of somebody who is fasting. So you take them on day zero, then you give them nothing to eat for four days. Then you measure how many calories they're burning after four days of zero food, and they wind up burning 10% more calories per day after the fasting, really? And it's like. Yeah. And the reason is that when insulin goes down, other hormones go up. So in fact, you have a release of noradrenaline and you activate the sympathetic nervous system, which is in fact your fight or flight response. So when you're fasting, your body is not shutting down. Your body is actually powering itself up, but fueling itself on your body fat, which is perfect because everybody thinks you need to eat to get energy. But when you're fasting, you actually have more energy because your hormonal state is primed for that. You think about the lion who just ate, just sort of dopey, just wants to sleep. Or you think about the hungry wolf. Hungry wolf is not falling down. Hungry wolf zoned in. It's sharp. And it's because of the sympathetic nervous system, because they're zoned in and they've got energy to burn because they're fueling themselves. A human is the same. So when you fast, in fact, you're actually increasing the sympathetic tone, which means that you have more energy, not less energy. That's why your body is burning 10% more calories. You can also measure the VO2, which is the amount of oxygen that it's using. So it's sort of the same thing. And it's up 10 after four day.

Fast. Four days.

Fast? Yeah, this was 40 fast. That happens, you know, for shorter periods. You also see this increase in tone. So it's like people think you're going into starvation mode, but it's the exact opposite. You're actually activating your body. So these were some of the myths that, you know, people used to have about fasting. And it's like, no, this is people, you can do this. It's actually, there's a ton of good stuff that happens when you're fasting. If you're in this sort of category where you have type 2 diabetes, where you have an excess of energy, or, or you have obesity, which is an excess of energy, you gotta use it. Everybody thinks it's about exercise, but in fact it's, it's sort of a, it's a minor effect unless you do a lot of it. So again, keeping in mind that I typically treat like 60 year olds, 70 year olds, they're not sort of running eight hours a day sort of.

Thing. Yeah. What's. When, is it a bad time or the worst time to.

Fast? I don't think there's a bad time. Sometimes people ask me, is it better to fast early or late? So, right, if you're going to skip a meal, should you skip breakfast or should you skip dinner? That's a really interesting question because for the same 16 hour fast or whatever, you're going to have different effects in fact. So it's better if you're trying to lose weight, it's actually better to drop dinner. The problem and there's a reason for that because one, dinner tends to be bigger. So and two, for the food that you eat at dinner time, you're going to get more insulin release, right? So if you eat the same meal at breakfast and at dinner and you measure how much insulin is released, you get more insulin than at least that dinner time. So your body, I'm not sure why, I think it's because your body, I think in the, in the morning. So it's, remember it's a seesaw between insulin and these counter regulatory hormones like you know, growth hormone and noradrenaline and so on. So it's sort of the seesaw, right? That's why they're counter regulatory. So insulin goes up, these go down. Insulin goes down, these go up. In the morning, these are already up, right? The counter regulatory hormones are already up. You get a burst, this part of the circadian rhythm. So you get a burst at like 4am so that's why you don't need to eat breakfast because your body's actually already dragging glucose out of your systems. Three, burning energy. It's already getting you ready for the day. So this is up. So therefore when you eat this is a little bit blunted. Whereas during the, you know, after that, during the day these go down. So therefore if you eat your instant just spikes up. So you're, but the, the practical sort of effect of that is that if you eat the exact same meal at breakfast and at dinner you get more insulin effect, which means if you have more insulin effect, there's more instructions to your body to store that energy, which means that you're going to gain more weight, right? So it's actually better to drop dinner. Problem is that it's a lot easier to drop breakfast because you know, a lot of people aren't, aren't hungry at breakfast and nobody misses you at breakfast, right? If you don't eat breakfast, nobody cares. But a lot of people, that's their family social meal, friends, family, dinner. So there's a lot, lot harder to drop dinner as opposed to breakfast. So therefore you have to, you have to balance the two. Which, which is more important, right? You know, should I drop this or that? It's like a long fast. So it's hard to do. Not because they're. They're so difficult, but because there's always something that comes up like, you know, oh, come out and let's have dinner. Right, sure. And it's like you don't want to be. Exactly. It's a social thing. So even though I could have skipped dinner, I won't because I want to see my friend. Right. It's like, I'm not going to skip dinner just because, you know. You know? Yes. You know, there's the meal, but there's, you know.

Interaction.

Yeah.

Yeah. What would you say is your biggest challenge then? You're, you know, an expert at this. You're a doctor, you've been studying this, you've been helping patients at this for many years. Where is your struggle when it comes to fasting, healthy eating, preventing disease and weight.

Loss? I think the biggest struggle has been this whole Covid thing has been a real disaster on the sort of weight gain eating thing. Because, you know, again, it's the idea that eating has a lot of components. So one of them is enjoyment. Right. So it is delicious. So you enjoy it. That's why it's part of every human celebration. Right. When you take away everything that you enjoy doing except eating. Yeah. It's like, well, you know, you can't travel and you can't go to the gym and you can't go to the park and you can't go here. You can't see your friends. See your friends. You can't see your family. Remember, there's that time. Oh, you shouldn't get together for Christmas. No, no. Thanksgiving this year. Right. It's like, yeah, that's a lot. And so I think what happened, the only thing you can do is get food from the grocery store and, you know, take out. So then what do you do? You eat. That's all. Because. Not because you really wanted to, but because there's nothing else to do and you have nothing to give you pleasure except eating. So it was a disaster because the diets just went terribly wrong. Mine did too. And.

Everybody. And you're the.

Expert. I knew what was happening. I just couldn't stop it because it's like, what am I going to do? I have all day sitting here and the only thing I can really do is eat. Right. Yeah, sure. I can do jigsaw puzzles. Puzzles and stuff. And I did that too, and I read some stuff. But, you know, the, the interaction was. It's. It's big. Like the amount of, like, because there is a. There's a huge, long period of time where I didn't, like, I didn't see my family, I think, for like a year and a half. Like, immediate family. Yes, but my brothers, my sisters, my nephews, my. It was a long, long, long time. And I didn't see some of my friends for like a year and a half, two years. It was long, right? And so. And the stuff that, you know, I used to. I used to enjoy, it just shut down, right? It was. It was crazy.

So. So even you with. With all the research and all the knowledge and all the expertise and all. And all the willpower and all the discipline, even you struggled with.

It. It was a struggle. It was a struggle for. Yeah, for, I think everybody. And the weight gain was like. I think my son gained, like, a lot of weight, and luckily he. You know, then he went away and he lost it all and stuff. Right. But, you know, I remember some of his friends who were, like, skinny. They gained, like, 60 pounds. These are high school kids, right? And they're, like, up 60 pounds and stuff. I was like, whoa, what happened to you? Luckily, they're young, right? And so they dropped it very quickly. So, you know, because again, once they found their other things, the hockey and the basketball and stuff, then. Yeah, then that's real life. But it. It took marvel. Toll. So a lot of my patients just. Just were a disaster. Like, they're going along fine. Going along fine. I was monitoring them. They're doing fine with their diets. And then, Booth, every single one was like, the sugars were skyrocketing and weight was skyrocketing. It was not a good time. Like, it's. It's better now because a lot of the restrictions have lifted. But it was a good long year and a half. At least March 2020 till at least 2022 in Canada was like. I think the Americans were. Were better in terms of opening stuff. But, yeah, it was. It was. It was rough. So again. Again, it's. It's the same thing, right? It's. It's. It's. It's easy to predict that because. Because, you know, if. If every. If the only thing you can do is eat, then you eat. Like, I can't help it. Right? And. And, you know, the whole. I think a lot of people had a bit of dysthymia, which is sort of mild.

Depression.

Yeah. From the social isolation, like, we know, mental health problems, again, skyrocketed. I think there's a huge number of people that were mildly depressed, like, and I think I had a bit of that, and I think it. I think it affected everybody, truthfully. But you get to the point where you're like, what? I'm like, why wouldn't I eat? That's all I can do to feel good. And who am I seeing.

Anyway? Right.

Exactly. It doesn't matter. The same three people. Like, I'm not looking good from anything. It was a tough. It was a tough. And, And I, I think it's. It almost. It's almost indecent for us not to acknowledge how bad it was. Like, some of these mental health issues, you know, they. They wind up, you know, affecting other things like your diet. And therefore you get this right, and then you say, oh, it's all about your food and willpower. It's like, no, no, there's a, there's a. There's so much to go in. And it's, it's, it's so sort of feels wrong not to acknowledge the amount of problems that were caused by this. Right. And I'm not trying to say if it's right or if it's wrong, but there was a lot of problems. Right? I mean, it's, it's, it's. It was very unnatural. That's. That. That was the thing.

Right. I've got a couple final questions for you, Jason. I appreciate your time and your, Your advice and wisdom. What advice would you have for someone who is watching or listening that maybe is overweight or obese and feel like they've gone too far, it's too hard to come back. I've gone too far, and they don't feel like they can take control of their weight again, what advice would you have for those.

Individuals? I think, one, you're never too far because people have lost a lot of weight. And two, I think, think that it's important to sort of get some help. Like, you know, everybody thinks you have to do it yourself. You don't have to do it yourself. There's tons of people who will help you. So you can get a coach, you can get a fasting coach. You can get somebody who's going to, like. You know, it's funny because. And the same thing with mental health. Like, there's no shame in getting help for that. Whether you need a coach. Coach or you need, you know, somebody to talk to or whether there's no shame in that because you can get help. And, you know, you think about something like, you know, athletics. If you, if you take an analogy, if you take, you know, the greatest player in the world you know, Michael Jordan, he still has a.

Coach.

Yep. Because they do stuff for you. They keep you accountable. They tell you what you're doing right and what you're doing doing wrong. Because you don't always necessarily know. Well, if, and, and people have business coaches, so some of the greatest sort of CEOs, they have business coaches. Like it's a huge industry. So why wouldn't you take advantage of that? Right? Nothing. Like, if you don't know what you're doing or you need somebody to keep you on track or you need somebody to give you a decent program, if you want to get in shape, you go get yourself a personal trainer. It's not like you couldn't watch YouTube, you know. You know how many fitness routines are on YouTube? There's probably 10 million of them. Right. They're, they're good. And there's a lot of great programs out there. It's not the same because they're not there saying, I'm gonna meet you at the gym On Tuesday at 9:00am now all of a sudden you can't not go, right? Because you're, you've made an appointment, right. As opposed to you watch the YouTube and you decide, okay, well, I'm going to go for a run. But then you're tired on Tuesday at 9am so you're like, I'm just going to sleep on. Right? It's totally different. So all of these things is. So if you need help, get yourself the help. Because it exists for weight loss, for, for all of that stuff. Fasting, you know, we have the fastingmethod.com where you can get a coach and whether you need group coaching and groups are very good too, because again, it gives you somebody to go through it with you. So we do a lot of group coaching in there. But get yourself the help because it's, there's no shame in it. The best people, like the very, very top people in the world at whatever it is, they do have a coach. Right. So you should always make yourself available of.

That. I agree. I'm a big fan of coaches. I invest in them. I've got lots of them in different areas of my life. And I feel like it's hard to do anything alone. You know, it's hard to get, it's hard to get good results or great results on your own at anything, let alone many things. Maybe you're an expert at one thing and you can do that, but then you need help with the finances or the fitness or the nutrition. Nutrition or the, the mental health. It's like finding support makes you wise by looking for support and seeing that out. It doesn't make you not capable. It makes.

You. Exactly.

Exactly. Dr. Fung, I appreciate you for, for being here. I want people to follow you over on social media. Dr. Jason Fung, the fastingmethod.com Also, Dr. Jason Fungus. You've got some incredible books that I want people to get a hold of. The Obesity Code, the Complete Guide to Fasting, the Diabetes code, the Cancer code, all these different things. It's all linked up at your website and people can find it there or over on Amazon and things like that. How else can we be of service to you.

Today? I think just getting the word out is what I'm hoping for, for. Right. The more people learn about it, and I talk a lot about the science of it so that, you know, there's a lot of practical stuff too, but there's also a lot of sort of trying to understand the disease that you're facing, whether it's obesity, whether it's type 2 diabetes, trying to understand it so you can come up with a sort of rational plan of how to deal with it. I think that's, you know, that's the best thing, right? If, if we can help people, you know, that's its own reward, right? I mean, if people listen and get better, hey, I love it. I love it. You know, and it's privilege. You know, sometimes I get these emails and they say, oh, I listened to you on, you know, on the School of Greatness, and I started fasting and, you know, I got off all my meds. I'm like, amazing. That feels so good, right? It's like, wow, this guy really changed around his life. And I didn't even know and I didn't have to do anything different, but these guys were able to, you know, you know, they took that advice. So it's great. Like, you just, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, positive vibes in the world. You know, it's like, it's.

Amazing. That's beautiful. Well, Jason, I want to acknowledge you for how you keep showing up in the world, how you keep learning and researching and serving your patients, and also the people in the world that watch and listen you into this content. I know a lot of people from our previous interview got incredible benefits and results. If you guys haven't checked that out, make sure to check it out. We'll link it up below and everything and leave a comment if you did. RC already start implementing some of the fasting principles that Jason has talked about and share your results below so that we can see. We'd love to see that. So I acknowledge you for continually showing up and serving people on living healthier lives. And I asked you these two questions before the last time, but I'm curious if they've changed. So this is called the three truths question. So imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long as you want, but then it's your last day and you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish. Live the full life. But for whatever reason, all of your work, your written material, your videos, your audio content has to go with you to another place. So we don't have access to any of your information anymore. But if you could leave behind three lessons with the world or three truths, what would those be for.

You? I think the first one would be, you know, in terms of fasting, that there's, it's, it's about balance. It's about making sure that you balance the feeding and the fasting. And there's nothing wrong with it. Because that was one of the biggest things, I think when I started writing the books was, you know, I, I, everybody thought it was such a bad thing. And that was one. As for one of the first people that said, let's look at the science of this whole thing, because it really, there really is a lot of good stuff here. So I think that was one of the things that I really think if it could be preserved, I really like that. Second 1 is type 2 diabetes is a reversible disease. And that too is one of the things that I, I fought really hard against, which was that up until 2021, every major diabetes association said type 2 diabetes was a chronic and progressive disease, which means eventually they would get problems like kidney disease, and me, as a kidney specialist would wind up seeing them, right? And it breaks my heart, right? If people know that it's a reversible disease, then you're gonna, you're gonna attack this problem differently than if it's a chronic and progressive disease, right? If it's chronic and progressive, you'd be like, well, I can't do anything about it. I'll just do whatever. Whereas if you know it's a reversible disease, then you're going to go, oh, I'm going to do something about this, right? So that was one of the things. And, you know, I think that that's one of the, from a, from a sort of health standpoint, I really think it can, it can make a huge difference. It's such an important problem that you can really move the needle in terms of that. So, so those two, I would really like to, you know, you know, I hope that it would be preserved. And then, you know, the third one, I mean, you know, I, I kind of think I, I just wish this whole idea of, you know, calories in, calories out, I just find it so simplistic. I really, I hope that people try to go past that because again, it comes down to people who think that obesity is just a willpower problem. It's such a wrong thing because so many people suffer from this disease and then they suffer the ridicule of others because they think that it's all about the personal failing rather than an environment which allows this to happen. Teaching, like, oh, you can't skip breakfast, so you, you know, oh, you have to eat 10 times a day. Like, it's, it's, it's me who have failed them, not them who failed us, right? And I always think that there's a lot of people out there who are always like, oh, you know, it's all about college. It's all about college. And they're mostly people in academic centers and they, they, they pretend they're very, very smart, but they're so disconnected with reality, right. That it's like. And I always think, like, think about it this way. If you have 60% of Americans who are overweight and obese, imagine you're, you're a teacher, right? So you're a teacher. You have 100 students. One of them fails, that's probably the student's fault. But what if 60 or 70 kids fail? Is it really the kid's fault or is it the teacher's fault? Because I think it's the teacher's fault. So therefore it's not the kids problem, it's the teacher problem in this situation. I don't think it's the general public's problem. I think it's the problem with the way that we, we are approaching this disease and because it affects so many people, you know, and every academic, sort of academic center is all focused on calories. It's like, there's more than that. There's this whole hormonal piece. There's the emotional side of things, there's the habit side of things, there's the environmental side of things. Like, get off of this. Just eat last. It doesn't work. Like, how are you going to fix the problem if you don't even know what the problem is? You're so focused on this problem, and I think that's where a lot of the fat shaming comes in. And it's like, you can't do that, right? It's, it's, it's just so wrong. And there's a lot of doctors out there who are all into this sort of thing, right? So, you know, I, I, I wish that part of things. And that's a, that's a tough fight. You know, there's a lot of people who push back against, you know, a lot of people push back and say, all calories, all calories. You could eat ice cream for dinner, right? As long as the same calories. So there are a lot of people who push back on that. But that was one of the ones that I sort of feel. I hope that still.

Stays. That's great. Final question. What's your definition of.

Greatness? I think it's, it's to be able to impact people in a positive way. And I, I suspect a lot of people say that, but it's true. They say it because it's true. You know, it's, it gives you something that's just so, you know, you just feel good. Right? Like, when you help somebody, they feel good. But I feel better. Right. It's like, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to get right? It's, it's, it's why people, you know, contribute to causes and stuff like that. You're part of something bigger than yourself. So even if you pass on, you know, you've contributed to this sort of greater good. Right? And I think we need that sort of idea that there's, there's something out there that's greater than ourselves, and we've been able to help people with that. Right? And it gives you more enjoyment, if you will, than, for instance, money or fame or anything else can. Right? It's a different type. And that's why you see a lot of people who make a lot of money, they give away a lot of money because it makes them feel good. Right? And it really is. And luckily for us, that's, that's, you know, that's, that's, that's greatness, right? It's, it's, Anybody can make money. You can make money by being a drug dealer. Right? It doesn't make you feel good.

Right?

Right.

Right. Jason, thank you so much. I appreciate you for being.

Here. Thank you so much. It's great being.

Here. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey. Journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something.

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