Counting Calories is a Lie! (ft. Dr. Jason Fung)

Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Horry Cruise.
And I can tell you on today's show you were going to learn
some incredible information thatfor me, I didn't discover until
about 5 years ago. And I can tell you Doctor Jason
Funk is a leader. He is a leader in insulin
science, intermittent fastings in Toronto, Canada.
And he's the man that got me to think differently because when I

(00:28):
wrote some of my earlier books in the early 2000s, I can tell
you the reigning 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 aplace where you're not feeling

(00:51):
your best, I can tell you it is not your fault.
On today's show, we're going to.Set the record straight with
Doctor. Fung and what Jason's going to
do, he's going to share with us this point of view that I think
has not only helped millions of people and as part of his
groundbreaking book called The Obesity Code, but more
importantly, it's going to give you some sanity where you think,

(01:13):
all right, I'm not crazy becauseI have some clients.
I, I have a coaching 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 eight 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

(01:37):
is that calories in and caloriesout is the solution to losing
weight. Now, Doctor 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 theweight 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

(02:00):
carbohydrates, processed foods unit 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,

(02:21):
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 had a high processed or non processed plant
based diet and it's made of onlycarbohydrates, 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

(02:43):
the reason you're overweight andwhy 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 lbs a week. Some people lose even more.
Doctor Fung has an incredible clinic in Toronto.
He has an online program, he hasan incredible YouTube channel.
We're going to put that all in the show notes.

(03:04):
He has New York Times best selling 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 whyyou've been struggling your
entire life. And he shows you the way out.

(03:26):
And I am just so excited for youto watch this show.
And before we start, I want to thank you for your support as
well, for all the feedback I've got.
And I got lots of emails from you guys about 0 Hunger Water.
If you don't know what 0 Hunger Water, it's the Hunger Racer.
It's a project I've been workingon for a couple years.
We had to take a step back abouta year and a half ago, and now

(03:48):
we're moving forward this summerand 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 GOP ones required.
And whether you're on a GOP1 like Ozempic or not, zero Hunger
water will be that solution that'll help quell and and turn

(04:11):
off hunger. So you have control.
And more importantly, on today'spodcast, you're going to 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 going to 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.

(04:31):
Copy and paste the link whereveryou're watching it, whether it's
on Spotify, whether it's an out 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 your care guys. Let's get started with Doctor
Jason Fung and get ready to learn everything you need to

(04:51):
know to finally lose that belly fat all.
Right. Welcome, Jason.
It's so good to see you again. I haven't seen you forever.
It's been at least two years andwe'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 andclarified my thinking over the
years. Because, you know, I started my

(05:12):
first book in 2001. And that's back in the day when
calories were calories and what,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 said about you.
I'm going to read it. It says the Doctor Who invented
intermittent fasting. So before we dive into it, tell

(05:35):
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 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 the show.
But tell us a little bit about your background and how you got

(05:56):
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 the, thecontroversy out there.
But take us back a little bit, Jason.
Tell us a little bit how you gotstarted and what you do.
Yeah, so I'm a kidney specialistactually.
So I train very much conventionally.
You know, I did medical school in Toronto and then I went to

(06:16):
California, Los Angeles for a couple of years to do my
specialty training and I finished around 2001.
Then I practiced, started practicing and of course there
was a lot of increase in obesityand type 2 diabetes over that
period of time. So I became very interested in

(06:36):
the question of diabetes becausediabetes 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.Anybody who who knows the, you
know, knows anybody knows that if you lose weight, that

(06:58):
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 coursethe standard, You know, what I
had been taught, but virtually every doctor was taught was

(07:18):
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°, you
know, opposite way of thinking, but much, much better, right?
So, so I became very interested in weight loss and I started
thinking about it. So again, I was brought up, I

(07:41):
was trained this whole calories in, calories out thing, you
know? And the part that's weird is
that none of that is actually true in any sense.
Hold on. One second introducing.
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

(08:02):
say, oh, if you want to lose weight, what do they tell you,
Jason? You tell me, right?
It's all about, you know, eatingfewer calories than you burn,
right? And, 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

(08:23):
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

(08:45):
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 and 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

(09:08):
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
increase body fat equals calories in greater than
calories out, that's what it is.It doesn't tell you that it

(09:33):
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 and say, well, it's because
you didn't have willpower or youate too much or whatever.
But that's not the case at all. Remember, there's three
variables here that have to balance, so there's never a

(09:54):
caloric deficit. 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 three variables. Body fat, calories in, calories
out. You reduce calories in.
You can balance that equation byeither losing body fat, yes.

(10:15):
Or you can balance that equationby reducing your body's energy
expenditure, which remember, youdon'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 going to tell my kidney
to burn more calories because I want to lose weight.
You can't do that, right? So nobody can control their

(10:36):
basal metabolic 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 virtuallyevery single study done in the
last 50 years of nutrition, whatactually happens when you reduce

(11:00):
your calories in? Do you one lose body fat or do
you 2 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. So that's the science.
So when the people say, oh, you just have to count calories, you

(11:22):
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.

(11:43):
So there's three 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 and you. Eat more.
Well, everybody knows that. It's called working up an

(12:04):
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.

(12:24):
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.
It makes no sense. Yeah, it makes no sense because
remember Cal energy balance saysit's equal calories in, minus
calories out equals body weight,right?

(12:46):
Correct. So you can see calories in minus
calories out because it's equal,you can replace it with body
weight. Saying that, it's like saying
hurricane winds equal, hurricaneequal winds greater than 74 mph,
right? So if you say, OK, I have winds
greater than what? What causes a hurricane?
And you say it's caused by windsgreater than 74 mph.

(13:08):
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

(13:30):
Oprah Winfrey an aha moment because I feel like you and I've
talked about this for many yearsand 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, pH DS that say if you

(13:54):
want to lose weight, just download my fitness pal, track
what you're eating and make sureyou eat.
What do they usually say 1000 calories less and over a course
of a couple 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 is there was a different way of thinking about

(14:17):
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, OK. And I'm going to tell you
something that virtually everybody knows already, because

(14:38):
what what always bothers me is that you have a doctor, you have
all these doctors out there. Let's say it's all about
calories and calories out. That's all it is.
They say this, I know they say the same phase.
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

(15:01):
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, you know,expertise in calorie count.
They've been looking at labels since they were teenagers.

(15:23):
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 calorie.
It's like there is no greater expert in this room than that
person who has been trying to lose weight.
It's, it's not just, you know, it's, it's horribly like to say

(15:46):
that is horribly dismissive, right?
To these people. Yeah.
It, it, 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, 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

(16:08):
it's like, well, I told you the solution, this calories in,
calories out, which actually isn't, it's the definition,
right? Losing weight is causing, 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, it's a circular
argument. You can't get it.
It's it's sort of like saying, OK, if you have if you have

(16:33):
alcoholism equals alcohol in minus alcohol out, right.
And it's like, go, 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.
Because obviously the question is not whether alcohol in is

(16:55):
greater than alcohol out. The question is why if somebody
is addicted to alcohol, that is going to lead to alcohol in
greater than alcohol out, which is going to cause by definition
alcoholism. OK, so let's let's flip that and
say say you have a food addiction which is causing you

(17:17):
to increase calories in greater than calories out, which causes
weight gain. Is it a calories problem?
Absolutely not. It's an addiction problem.
Say it is alcohol, right? Suppose you're depressed and
therefore you drink alcohol, which causes alcoholism.
Is the problem alcohol in minus alcohol out?

(17:38):
No, that's dumb. The problem is depression.
It's the mindset. Depression, right?
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.

(17:58):
It was the depression or it was the 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 leadyou to the calories in greater
than calories out, which is by definition obesity.
It didn't cause obesity. It is obese.

(18:19):
It is the weight gain that is bydefinition 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,

(18:40):
everybody says, oh, that's the that's the Holy Grail.
Yeah. Like, come on, that's so stupid.
So the question is, why is calorie?
The question is not that calories in or greater than
calories are. The question is why?
So you see that you're trying toget to that deeper level of
understanding. Why is it?
And it's different for differentpeople.
So some people are going to be emotional eaters.
Some people are going to be addicted, you know, there, there

(19:02):
are, there are many, many other things that can cause that, just
like there's lots of things thatcan cause alcoholism, which
leads, which is alcohol in greater than alcohol out, right.
So, so just saying, oh, you should drink less alcohol or
give it more time between drinks.
Like, come on. That's, that's so stupid, right?
Yeah. And the calories and the
calories out is also that stupid.

(19:24):
So the the issue is that if you think about how the body works,
this is what what everybody already knows.
The body has a certain set weight.
OK. And again, this is established
for like 50 years of scientific evidence, but people just choose
to ignore it because they want to go with the simplistic
calories model. If you lose weight, if your your

(19:47):
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 isgoing to try to burn it off.
If you lose weight, your body isgoing to try to to make you
hungry and therefore eat more. So if you take somebody who is a

(20:09):
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 a voodoo
psychology. You can measure hunger hormones,
you can measure satiety hormones.
They are physiologically hungrier than they were before

(20:30):
they lost weight. Why?
Because the body wants them to gain that weight back up.
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 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

(20:55):
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.

(21:15):
So therefore I'm going to burn less, right.
So the, the, the whole thing is that it's, it's, 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, you set a room
temperature at like 72°, for example.

(21:36):
And you might say that, hey, youknow, 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, it's too hot, turns on the air
conditioning. So this is the thing that the

(21:56):
the calories people are like thepeople who say, well, it's all
about heat in minus heat out. So therefore, if you want to
heat up the broom, 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, Iincrease heat in.
Therefore the room is going to get warmer.
Is it? No, it's not.
Why? Because as the room heats up,

(22:18):
the thermostat is going to sensethat and turn on the air
conditioning. Yes.
Bring it back down, right. So the problem is and, 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.

(22:39):
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.
So well said Jason, So well said.
Years. What's crazy is that the the
studies that there was definitive studies that showed
this whole body set weight 30 years ago.

(23:01):
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? Say that one more time, because

(23:21):
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?
Many clients, right? Yeah, it's crazy, but it's,
it's, it's, you know, it's a couple of decades, you know,
but, but really think about it this way.

(23:41):
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

(24:02):
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 becauseeverything 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

(24:23):
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 with your
body fat thermostat. When you give insulin, you
haven't given anybody calories. There's no calories in that

(24:45):
insulin. You haven't increased their
exercise or decreased their exercise.
When you give insulin, you don'ttell 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 lbs, I need to
be 180 lbs. Why am I going to do that?

(25:05):
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, so 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.

(25:27):
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

(25:48):
insulin if we have too much bodyfat, 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. Yeah, it's not that magic, but
intermittent fasting is way to lower.
Insulin, yes. And reducing refined
carbohydrates is another good way to do it because.

(26:10):
Say that again Jason, for everyone at home is 2 simple
ways #1. 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 that. The refined carbohydrates do it
more than anything. Else, and that's number two, if

(26:32):
you can exchange in like give usexample, 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

(26:56):
white bread and you know, that kind of thing.
Bagels. Yeah.
And again, it's probably not my it's probably not new, like
cutting down refined carbs. A lot of people know that that
already causes, you know, weightloss.
In fact, you can see this, you know, even back in books like
150 years old, people were talking about, oh, you know, I

(27:19):
had, I had to lose weight. So I just cut out bread and
sweets, you know, and they lost weight.
So it's not a new idea. Everybody knew it.
In fact, it's actually the dominant idea for weight loss
for most of you know, from 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

(27:41):
that was a time when Doctor 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 weightbecause 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 want to stay on this
boat. Spend a minute maybe.
Was the idea that if you ate toomuch butter and yolks that the

(28:05):
cholesterol would kill you? Right?
And that's been shown to not be true, Correct Jason?
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, 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

(28:27):
about the same level of fat as they were and, and yolks and
stuff 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, you had the smokingand non-smoking section in the

(28:50):
restaurant. You had the total trays in the
air lot in the airplanes, which seems really stupid.
And doctors were promoting it asa way to reduce stress and
anxiety, right smoking. Smoke.
This is 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 disease,
right? Yeah, lots of heart disease.

(29:11):
Anyway you. Know so anyway, super bad for
you so but of course the tobaccocompanies never admitted that,
yeah, so nobody's to keep other than 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 going to clog your arteries.

(29:31):
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, OK, So what studies have definitively proved
that eating fat cause heart disease?
0 There was 0 studies in the last 50.

(29:52):
Years the big zero there, right?Absolute 0 so that of course it
was actually which is 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.

(30:16):
Butter. They love butter and I love
butter. Butter everywhere.
They're eating all this saturated fat and these
Americans are eating, you know, rice cakes and stuff, right?
Super low fat. But the Americans had three
times the heart disease that theFrench had with all their
saturated fat. And the answer was, of course,
they, the saturated fat wasn't that bad for you.

(30:38):
The Americans were eating tons of refined carbs.
They were getting fat and getting diabetes, which actually
caused a lot of heart disease. And they were eating the
margarine, which turned out to be full of trans fats, which
also. It was even worse, yeah.
That was even worse. So that was a so-called French
paradox then, and by the 2000s people were looking at the
Mediterranean diet with all its fatty fish and avocados and

(31:02):
olive oil and again, a higher fat diet and more meats.
And fish and all that. And nuts and stuff.
Nuts were like so high in fat. Remember avocados?
Nobody ate avocados through the 80s because it's 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

(31:22):
you. Then they had to call it healthy
fats, right? Healthy fats there.
You go. The whole thing was crazy
because but in the meantime because the Americans had
switched to rice cakes and whitebread.
And hydrogenated oils and these and these fake fats, the fake,
the seed oils, right? The seed oils, yeah.
And, and the government actuallyencouraged all these processed

(31:45):
foods because you could process the fat out of them, right?
So they thought they were doing people a favor.
So we're eating ultra processed foods.
We're eating tons of carbs, tonsof refined carbs, gaining weight
like crazy, right? So it was a huge epidemic of.
And the reason being a little side note, Jason, insulin levels
were staying not just constant, but they were going up because

(32:08):
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 OK, well what does what does insulin do right so
if. They talk to us.
What does? Insulin do.
So we know that when insulin goes up, so when you eat,
insulin goes up and this is the normal job.

(32:29):
It's not a bad hormone. This is just a normal job.
It's just that insulin, when it's too high, it's going to
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 upand it does two things to body

(32:52):
fat. It tells you to store body fat,
and it stops you from breaking down body fat.
OK, So if you think, OK, well, now suppose you have a situation
where insulin levels are doubledor tripled or quadrupled.
What's going to happen? Well, your body's going to store
a lot of energy as body fat, andit's not going to burn any
energy as body fat. And you're not going to burn

(33:13):
anybody fat. You're going to store it, right?
So it's only when insulin falls that you can actually burn body
fat. So it's like, OK, well, that's
not too hard to imagine that this is a, this is going to be a
problem if you're trying to loseweight.
So again, let's take a situation2 thou if you eat 2000 calories
in and you burn 2000 calories, OK, so you're equal, It's

(33:37):
nothing. You're not gaining weight,
you're not losing weight. Now you could reduce your
calories in to 1500 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, I've got some
questions people have been asking, but they knew about us
doing this interview. I put it on Instagram and the

(33:59):
questions came in and there are questions you've seen before.
So they'll be a piece of cake, no pun intended.
But so this insulin is really the the it's, it's the
mechanism. Is that right, Jason?
It's it's. You do it all well.
Think about this for a second. Say your insulin levels are
super, super high because of thefoods that you're eating.
So you're eating 2000 calories, but the foods that you're eating

(34:21):
are super, super high refined carbs, which is going to spike
your insulin. So what's going to happen to
those calories that you eat? Well, because your insulin's
much higher, it's going to suck it all into body fat, right?
Yeah. Because that's what insulin's
jaw. Yeah.
All of that. So you eat 1000 calories.
Now your body shoves it all directly into your body fat.

(34:43):
Well, what's going to happen is that your 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.

(35:03):
But why? Why?
Why? That's the question.
You got to get that deeper. Why?
Why? Because you sucked all the
energy into the 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? Right.
Because the refrigerator is the store of, of, of food.

(35:24):
You shove it all in. Now your, your fridge is
overflowing, packed. So 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, right?
So it's like, OK, 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

(35:46):
eat more. Now contrast that to you eat,
you know, lean, you know you eatlow carb foods, right?
So you're going. To so healthy proteins and
healthy fats healthy. Proteins.
Healthy fats. Cut down the carbs in general.
Yep. Yeah, because carbs are just
going to. Spike and what happens?
We then access the stored. Yeah, well, if you eat and you

(36:09):
have all that calories, but yourinsulin's not that high, you're
not going to shovel it into yourstars.
You're not going to shovel it into fat, so therefore your your
body has plenty of energy to useand therefore you don't get
hungry an hour later because your body has plenty of calories
to burn, right? As opposed to the insulin

(36:29):
partitioning it all away so thatyou can't use it.
Same thing when you try to lose weight if your insulin is high.
Say you cut down, so now you eat1500 calories, you're burning
2000 calories. So where are you going to get
you can't that remember this is a balanced equation.
So you that does not balance. If you have 1500 coming in and

(36:50):
you have 2000 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.
So therefore you have 1500 coming in, 2000 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

(37:13):
expenditure to 1500. So now you're eating 1500,
you're burning 1500, you're not losing weight.
The difference is if you allowedthose insulin levels to fall,
say with intermittent fasting, 1500 is coming in, 2000 is going
out. You allowed insulin to fall.
So now you can access the the the stores of energy in your

(37:34):
body fat. You take 500 from your body fat,
you're all done. It's magic, but it's not magic.
It's just it's knowing. And if those if those calories
going in, for example, I'll giveyou scenario A and then B, you
tell me which ones better obviously for unlocking stored
body fat. And I'm guessing it's the one
that's lower in insulin causing stimulation, right?

(37:57):
So say you sat down, you had a banana in the morning and a
glass of orange juice was you want to be healthy, right?
You don't eat your your plant based.
And then for lunch you have pasta and maybe a low of fat
cracker or whatever, right? And then for dinner you have
rice and I don't know, some sortof soy sauce and maybe a little
piece of chicken. You're basically eating carbs

(38:19):
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 Sayyou 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 anotherprotein.

(38:41):
Maybe it's tuna fish with a little the healthy Mayo or
something. No bread.
You're doing it like maybe with a little lettuce, right?
Like a tuna salad. And then for dinner you're
having a rib eye. No.
Almost no Carbohydrates all day does that versus A&B is B More
magical, shall we say, In the sense of unlocking fat, Yeah.

(39:01):
Well, let's, let's, let's go through.
So if you say take your, you know, high carb meal.
So you take a breakfast, you take a banana and orange juice,
right? Yeah.
So you take say 500 calories or 1000 calories, whatever it is.
Yeah. It's super your, your, your,
your insulin spikes way up because it's lots of refined
carbohydrates. So all of those 500 calories

(39:23):
goes right into body fat. Now by 10:00, ten in the
morning, you're like like, oh, I'm raffinously 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 10:00, your weight, you're ravenous.

(39:44):
So you go get yourself a low fatmuffin, 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. 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'reeating, you know, breakfast,
snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack because you haven't been

(40:07):
able to stay full. Versus say you eat a vegetable
omelette in the morning, well you eat the same 500 calories,
but none of that goes into storage because instance knocked
down, right? So all of it stays around for
you to burn. Well, at 10:00, 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,

(40:28):
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, for snack and the pasta and then
another snack in the afternoon. You count that all up and you
go, oh, it's because you ate toomany calories, right.
But the reason, what's the reason you took so many
calories? Because your body is pulling so

(40:49):
many calories into body fat stores because of the insulin,
Yes. So if you say, but at the end of
the day, all these people, they go, oh, look, you're eating all
that refined carbs. That's because you're eat too
many calories. No, it's not.
It's amazing. It's 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,

(41:12):
it just releases it releases it.And the foods that one more
time, the foods, the foods that don't cause insulin to go up one
more time, Jason, for those at home.
And then we're going to get intothis fasting window because I'll
tell you the number one fear andquestion 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

(41:34):
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 up the glycemic
index, for example, because there's been studies, for
example. So the glycemic index of foods
is, is this index where people, scientists take a certain food
and they just give it to like a lot of people and they measure

(41:56):
the average Brys and blood glucose and certain foods are
going to 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 can take oatmeal and you can compare steel cut oats,
which is less processed to instant oats and the difference

(42:16):
is huge. So you can take the same food
which has the same calories, thesame carbs, the steel cut oats,
you see that it's 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.

(42:36):
The instant notes are ground into this very, very fine powder
so that your body absorbs all ofit instantly.
So therefore glucose spikes way up and it spikes way down and
then you actually crash and youryour blood glucose goes lower
than normal, which causes you tobe hungry because symptom of
hypoglycemia, right? So you can take the same food

(42:57):
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 into body fat. So obviously good proteins,
healthy fats, and if there aren't carbs, look for carbs

(43:18):
that are. How are they?
How are they marked if you're shopping?
Or are they just natural like steel cut oats?
How do you mark those? How do you think of those?
Well, yeah, it's hard. It's you just have to look at
how well how how much processingthere is.
So generally if you're looking at foods that are, you know,
highly processed, like instant or whatever that's going to be,

(43:40):
that's going to be a marker things that are, you know.
Low glycemic index is what we'relooking for, right?
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 that glycemic index is
much lower. But you cannot do other things.

(44:01):
So if you add vinegar, for example, that's significantly
lowers the the insulin effect ifyou 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 that can affect not just, it's not just the food,
the carbs, the calories, but it affects how you process assess

(44:24):
it, which affects your hormones,which effects 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 theshow notes and your books and
all that. Let's end with this, Jason,
because I think this is where we're at in 2024.
There's so many people that are doing fasting now, shall we say,

(44:47):
both just the old school way andnow 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 tome is, Oh my gosh, worry.
I feel like I'm only eating oncea day.
Isn't this dangerous? And the truth is, you've told me

(45:08):
over the years that whether you do it with Ozempic or you do it
on your own by eating low glycemic index foods and, and
foods that are high in protein and fats, however you want to
create the fast. Tell us your opinion of, of the
dangers of eating, say, one or two meals a day and cutting
meals down. And you know, I, I, I've written

(45:28):
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 eatonce a day.
Oh, man, right. That's that acronym, one meal a
day that I'm going to lose all my muscle and I'm going to just

(45:49):
destroy my health. Tell us what, what, what you
think about this fasting window and, and how it, it's helpful,
not helpful. And, and whether people are
using Ozempic or not, if that matters.
Tell us your thoughts a little bit on this world of, of, 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,

(46:13):
what's going to happen? Well, insulin is going to fall.
As insulin falls, it's going to open up your fat store so that
now you can take calories out ofyour fat, body fat, which is
really why you have body fat in the 1st 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

(46:36):
there for you as a store of calories for when you don't eat.
When you don't eat, you're goingto take calories out.
So you think, OK, well, how manyare there?
So you take an average person, say they're 200 lbs, and an
average percent of body fat is 25%.
And keep in mind 25%'s relatively lean.
Most people who are overweight are closer to 40 to 50% body

(46:58):
fat. That's right.
Let's say just for argument, youhave £200.
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 lbs of body fat. That's a lot you would think,
you would think, and it is, though it is, right?

(47:19):
Absolutely. And the the number of calories
in a pound of body fat is about 3500 3500 calories calories.
So. If you look at that, you've got
£50 * 3500 calories is 175,000 calories.
You're set. That's like a big budget, right?

(47:40):
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 lbs which meansthat you're actually set for
about 100 days. If you were to fast for 100 days
straight, you would still have enough energy, right?

(48:01):
Because it's about 1 LB of body fat for two days of energy.
So people worry oh I didn't go like 18 hours of eating.
You could have gone 18 days. OK, still would have been fine.
That's why you have body fat nowas a fun.
No, there's other issues, right?But the, if you just think about
calories and then people think I'm going to get malnourished
and think, OK, what, what do youthink you're going to get

(48:23):
malnourished from, right? Is it lack of vitamin B, vitamin
C? Are you going to get scurvy?
Are you going to get, you know, pull?
Or 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.

(48:44):
So if you're burning fat, you'renot 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

(49:07):
the way it's being measured. So when you measure it, you do
this, you either do bio impedance or you do DEXA, both
of them in both of those body water is very similar to body
fat. So when you do bio impedance,
you send an electrical pulse through the body.
Then this is the things where you step on that scale that

(49:27):
tells your body, right, sends anelectrical pulse and it measures
how, 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 fastening, it looks like you're
losing lean tissue, right? So it, it, it the, the, the, the
lean muscle looks like it's being lost.

(49:49):
And So what they did in this Buchinger clinic study is they
did put people on a 10 day fast,right?
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 maximum grip strength?
How long can you do this? Grip strength they found was
fascinating because in if you look at non weight bearing

(50:13):
muscles, the strength did not godown.
If you look at I think it was the non weight bearing muscles,
it went up by like 33%. Wow.
It's like OK, you're stronger than you were.
That's part of it from. Fasting.
I love it. I love it.
Because what happens during fasting is that the sympathetic
nervous system actually gets ramped up.
So you actually get get energized through fasting, not

(50:36):
not the other way. 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.

(50:57):
You actually have to lose all the supporting structures.
So you can actually lose a lot of that.
You can. Recoil skin to a certain degree,
right? Jason?
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 it can be pounds and
pounds of skin, right? Yeah, that's pounds and pounds

(51:18):
of tissue that you actually haveto burn.
And that's protein. That skin is a protein.
It's it's it's a. So autophagy is the process that
allows us to recoil the skin in essence.
Yeah, yeah. It gets rid of some of the old,
old stuff and sort of starts theregeneration process.
So it's, it's, it's really, you know, a very, very powerful way

(51:39):
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 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

(52:00):
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 thousands of years.
Like 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

(52:20):
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, I'm going to
start fasting. I, 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?

(52:42):
What are your tips on how to reduce that hunger while we eat,
say, one meal a day? Yeah, the, the important thing
is to understand that it's all, it's all going to pass.
That is, if you think about hunger during fasting, it
actually you, 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

(53:04):
actually just fades. And they've done studies on it.
It's like, for example, when youwork through lunch and you miss
lunch, Yeah, you're really hungry at like 1 o'clock 2:00.
By 5:00, 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 just eaten your own body

(53:24):
fat, and that's a good thing. Would it be hungry?
So when you're hungry, think of it gnawing away at the fat,
right? Yeah, exactly so.
That should make you happy. 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.

(53:48):
You don't have to go to Costco again.
Why? Because you had this.
It's stored. Away you can.
Cook it out of the storage. Well, body fat is the same.
You didn't eat lunch. Your body went into its
refrigerator, went into the bodyfat, 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 like, you know, 4%

(54:09):
body fat or something, but most of us are, are way, way, way
over that, right? Most of us are in that 2535%
range. So therefore it's not nearly an
issue. So therefore, you, 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, over

(54:34):
overnight, for example. So say, 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 reset.
Yeah, Yeah, actually quite an incredible.
And is there an ideal time to have the the one meal a day, if
someone was to do that is about midday, early evening?

(54:54):
I mean, the earlier the better. The earlier the better.
So early, I'd say mid afternoon is probably the better if you
can just do 1, you know, like atbreakfast, sure, but most people
like to have it somewhere in themiddle because they're not that
hungry at, at in the morning anyway.
So you don't want to eat when you're not hungry.
So sometime in the middle of theday that takes care of that.

(55:15):
And then they just go through. So if you're eating a big sort
of one o'clock 2:00 sort of mid afternoon meal, that's probably
the ideal. But it's, it's, it's with
people's schedules doesn't always work out.
But then you think about certaincultures like Europeans and
stuff, right, where they have that giant, you know, they make
their their main meal sort of the mid afternoon.

(55:39):
Yeah. Like two or three, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, Like if you look at some southern, you know, Italy
and Spain and so some people have that big thing and then
they have siesta and then they eat the dinner is like, you
know, at 10, like it's it's always a bit of.
Yes, it's a little late at night.
Maybe we shouldn't do that part right, Jason?
Now that we're trying to lose weight, Yeah.
But the the dinner is often actually very, very, very

(56:02):
little. Like that's the.
Whole point. 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, 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?

(56:24):
Are you allowing those calories to stick around for you to use
them? Or 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 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.

(56:46):
If 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 a positive 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. You have to look for why.
And they're like, oh, but you'reeating more.

(57:07):
That's the bottom line. It's like, no, that's not the
bottom line. That wasn't the root cause of
it, so. Powerful, Jason, and for folks
that are using GLP one drugs such as Ozempic, what are your
thoughts briefly on that? Briefly, yeah.
So GLP, one 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,

(57:31):
people gain 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 to spend and you still gain weight.
Cortisol, which is like a stresshormone.
You give people cortisol, they gain weight.
GLP one moves it in the oppositedirection, so you give GLP ones,

(57:51):
it goes down. Sympathetic tone, you give
people sympathematics. So things that increase
sympathetic tone. So the sympathetic nervous
system is like the activation ofthe nervous system, right?
So you're energized when you give drugs that increase the
sympathetic tone. This includes Fen Fen, which you
might remember from a while ago.Sure, sure, way back when.

(58:14):
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 one drugs they seem
to be OK for the most part and. GLP ones are OK, but GLP ones
are working the opposite and they move that thermostat.
Down and no heart problems. No heart problems and it seems

(58:35):
to be a very safe medication. I agree.
So 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 ones.
Why actually give GLP ones? It moves it down or or
sympathetic nervous system activators of Fenfen nicotine

(58:59):
actually activates the sympathetic nervous system.
So again, it moves that thing down.
So remember when you give Ozempic, when you give, when
people smoke and stuff, you're not giving or taking away
calories, you're affecting people's hormonal hormones,
which moves that thermostat up or down, right?
So you give that. That's the bottom line.
Moves that thermostat down, theylose weight, which is fine.

(59:20):
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 bestaffirmation, your best positive
mindset where they can do this and have confidence and feel

(59:43):
like no, they're going to be fine.
Yeah, your body is very, very smart.
So if you only eat once a day, that's fine because insulin's
going to fall, your body's goingto take it the calories out of
storage and you're going to be able to use it, which is good
because that's how you lose bodyfat.
Your body stores energy is fat. So when you don't eat or eat

(01:00:04):
once a day, your body is going to take the energy out of those
fat stores. So that's what you want to do,
right? It's just not fun.
And that's how the GLP 1, the Ozempics.
Which 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

(01:00:25):
playing here when it comes to weight loss and it's a hormone.
And if you're going to use it, Imean, more power to you if you
can afford it and if you can utilize it in a Safeway and
maybe it's 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 the main problem is that the the

(01:00:50):
way it works is it also causes alot of nausea.
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, I
have nothing against it, but I, I, I also don't think it's going

(01:01:13):
to be a magic bullet. It it, it reminds me of when
people were so enthusiastic about bariatric surgery,
remember. Yes, you know, of course.
The the their sleeve gastrectomy.
And there is the. Rule on why bypass gastric
bypass. Everybody said, oh, it's going
to cause, it's going to cure obesity.
A. Huge wave of enthusiasm for the

(01:01:36):
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. Ozempic, maybe because it's a
drug, has less of that, but it'sit, it, to me, it's following
the same thing, you know, huge wave we're in that huge wave of

(01:01:57):
enthusiasm part. Eventually we're, 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.
And 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

(01:02:17):
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 no, no, absolutely. Well, Jason, I can't thank you
enough for your time today. This has been 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 yourinformation briefly if you want.

(01:02:39):
All this will be in the show notes, guys, but follow Jason.
Go ahead, Jason, tell them whereyou're at.
Yeah. So you can follow me on Twitter
at that's Doctor Jason Fung, Dr.Jason Fung.
You can have a lot of stuff on YouTube, which is just under
Jason Fung. And yeah, you can also.
I have a blog on bdm.com and we'll follow.
I love that we'll put all the links in there so that people

(01:03:00):
can access you and your YouTube channel.
Thank you so much, Jason, for your time.
And you have so many best selling 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, 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

(01:03:24):
on. It's, it's really destructive to
think about it as a calories andcalories problem.
And I think that that's that's why people have had such trouble
because they've been had it beaten into them that it's all
about calories. So therefore eating 500 calories

(01:03:45):
of ice cream is the same as eating 500 calories of chicken
salad. It's like there's nothing the
same about those. So true.
I mean, I can't thank you enoughJason for being this guy.
Who, 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.

(01:04:05):
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 watchingit 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, the system, but for standing tall and strong on

(01:04:28):
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 I can't wait to meet you in person one of these days soon.
All right. Yeah, for sure.

(01:04:48):
Be great. All right, buddy.
Hey, thank you so much.

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