Coming up and they get leaney clean
podcast. When you start to switch to processed foods and you switch to say, you know, say cookies, which is highly processed. Of course, you can e like you finish a buffet used could still eat a cookie because there's something about the processing, which sort of bypasses, the natural satiety hormones. The satiety mechanism, which is the point that the processed foods are going to make it much harder for.
Or you to know when you're supposed to stop. So the point is that in any diet. You just want to avoid highly processed foods.
Hello and welcome to the get lean me clean podcast. I'm Brian Griffin, and I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was 5 10, even 15 years ago. Each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results.
This week, I interview. Dr. Jason Funk. He's the best selling author of obesity code a kidney specialist and an intermittent fasting expert. He founded the fasting method.com to provide evidence-based advice for weight loss in managing blood sugars, by focusing on low carb diets and intermittent fasting. We discussed reversing type 2 diabetes with fasting, what's wrong with calorie restriction, along with hunger and fasting, overcoming weight loss, plateaus hormonal benefits.
Fits of fasting can fasting slow aging and his one tip to get your body back to what it once was. I was so grateful to have. Dr. Jason funk in the podcast. I've been a big fan of his since he came out with obesity code in 2016, and I really enjoyed the interview. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening.
All right, welcome to the get leaney clean podcast. My name is Brian grin, and I've dr. Jason Fung on, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. Great to be here Brian.
Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. I your book obesity code and you I know you have a bunch of books. But obesity code was the one that brought me into fasting and learning about and that was what nothing like 2016. That book came out and
Wait, so I'm excited to have you on and you know, I know you have the fasting method.com and a lot of different cool platforms were you know, you're trying to sort of spread this way of healing and maybe tell the audience a little bit about. I know you're in a fog and a frolla gist, how you got into, you know, all things fasting and dealing with insulin and things like that.
Yeah, so I'm a nephrologist as a kidney specialist. So I went to UCLA, I went
The University of Toronto from an internal medicine and then I went to UCLA for my Nephrology and I practiced for the first 10 or 15 years, more or less conventionally. And the problem was, of course, there was a huge epidemic of obesity happening. And then shortly after there's this, big piece of the led to the type 2 diabetes. So, that's what I was seeing a lot of in my, in my office of course and
You know, we all thought that just simply giving medications to reduce blood sugar's would reduce this sort of epidemic of kidney disease, but it wasn't. And in 2008-2009. It was clear that that sort of thinking was completely wrong. And as I started to think about, it really dawned on me that the entire way we had been approaching it as Physicians was quite incorrect.
That is what we're trying to do was correct, the blood sugars, but we weren't really looking at the root causes. So if you simply look at the term, diabetic nephropathy, it tells you what you need to know. That is Diabetes Type 2. And remember that type 2 is like 90 to 95 percent of type of Diabetes overall. So when I talk about diabetes, I'm talking mostly about type 2, but type 2 diabetes was causing the kidney disease. So in order to
You make an impact, you got to get rid of that. Type 2 diabetes. Now, the time, of course, people were saying that guy 2, diabetes was a chronic and Progressive disease. If you had it, you know, just got worse until, you know, you develop all the complications, but even as we were saying this kind of stuff, every single person knew that it was just a lie, because everybody knew that if you lost weight, your type 2 diabetes would either go away or get a lot better and we had tons of studies to prove this, of course.
Course, so the problem wasn't that type 2 diabetes was chronic rest of the never was it was just a big lie that we told ourselves to make ourselves feel better. The problem was that we weren't getting people to lose weight and that's why their diabetes was continuing to progress. So, I got very interested in the question of weight loss because if you lose weight, then you don't get your type 2 diabetes or you work in Reverse. Your type 2 diabetes, then you don't get the diabetic kidney disease. So following that sort of root cause you can't treat.
Things at the kidney disease stage, you're way too late. Your, you know, you've left the horse out of the car. You gotta get it before that happen. So that's where I start to think about it. And and honestly the entire sort of science around weight loss which doctors and dietitians had all been sort of taught was again, very, very simplistic and honestly, like it was what what I learned and all doctors, learn what it's all about.
Calories in calories out, right? So, you know to lose weight. You simply had to eat fewer calories or exercise more and that was accepted standard wisdom. It still is actually to a lot of degrees on the other hand, again, everybody who's in the field knows it's a complete lie because we've been telling people this for the past 40, 50 years and it has helped
almost. So you have a
strategy where you
The success rate somewhere around three to five percent. Say so, 95 to 98 percent failure
rate. It's like, the biggest. It's like The Biggest Loser example.
Biggest Loser. So you can do well for six months, and then they virtually all regain that wait. So again, you have one exception, for example, in the Biggest Loser. Like one person out of like three seasons. My keep that weight off, which is again, sort of 90 Plus.
Percent failure rate, everybody else fails and it's always striking to me that people always blame blame the people, right? They always say well those people have no willpower. So like did you watch the show? Like did you see them like, work out until they threw up? These people are not lacking in well power. They just had the wrong information as to how to, really be successful, because they're all following this whole calories in calories out strategy. And so, the science of it was that people were
Focused on calories and said that other issues were not important like, you know, the hormones, you know, in our body. And of course, our entire body runs on hormones. That is if you take two Foods, one, cookies and one is, say salmon the minute, you put that in your mouth, your body responds to it completely differently. So yes, they have the same energy. That's what calories are. It's
food energy. So, yes, they have the same amount of energy contained within that cookie or and contained within the salmon, or the agar, the broccoli, but the, the hormones are completely different. So what your body does with those calories is completely different, your body has a choice, you put those calories in. You could start as body fat or you could burn it as an energy, right? You have lots of energy, you generate body heat, you know here have you want to go running or exercising or whatever, right, so you
Story, or you can use it same number of calories, but what your body actually does with. That depends on the hormone. So say, say, for example, you take 100 calories of a food and insolence very high, your body instantly shuttles that into body fat because it's starring it. That's body fat, is simply a storage form of calories. That's all it is. Not nothing more or less. You take that those hundred calories your insolence, High you shuttle that immediately into your fats.
Stores. Okay. Well your body has no energy. So you're going to want to go get some more energy because you need to, you know, right body heat and you want energy to go for a walk or whatever, right? So it's like of course the hormones are important, but the people who had been talking about cal cal cal have been busy denying that it had any relevance to human physiology. It's like, but human physiology runs on hormones. Everything runs on hormones. So that was the big,
Act. And so that's where I started talking about sort of like the hormones and the insulin and you know, there's a lot of debate of course because people are all about calories, calories calories. And it's like, you know, it's not helpful. That that whole discussion is not helpful and I'd be I'd love it if it was helpful because then I know what to tell people write the same thing. I had been taught, but it wasn't helpful. So we have to learn the sort of nuance and the people just talk about calories. They're so simplistic. They
they just say, oh it's about, you know, thermodynamics. It's like but neither the calorie model or the hormonal model breaks the laws of thermodynamics, but we're saying is that you take those calories, you shuttle it into your fat.
How does that break,
Dynamics? Yeah. Yeah, I had dr. Ben Beekman on and he talked this, you know, about the same thing, regarding obviously, insulin and and the calories in calories out just to too simplistic. The bodies much more intricate and complicated. And why don't we touch on some of the hormonal responses and some of the things that the role that fasting can do on your hormones and how that's different than like calorie restriction.
Yeah. This is the
One thing, so fasting is not only a way of eating fewer calories because they can do that for sure. But it's also a way to reduce your insulin because you're not eating. So that's the natural response. If you don't eat your instance, going to go down when your insulin goes down. There's a certain stereotype response that all human bodies do that is you increase, these counter regulatory hormones and you decrease insulin all of which is basically
Be telling your body to take the calories from your storage and move them out into circulation, right? So remember if insulin tie, you're giving your body instructions to store calories, if your buttons Winslow, you're giving your body instructions to burn calories. So, if you don't eat for a day, for example, say you normally eat 2000 calories for some plastic, you know, calculation 2000 calories. But today you don't eat anything. So you have zero, so your body will take those 2,000 calories from
Your stars of body fat, that's it. That's all nothing else to it. So everybody says that it's all about calories in calories out, but they're completely wrong because if you look at the energy, balance equation, so remember this is the end, it says body fat equals calories in mines calories out. There is no such thing as a caloric deficit, right? There's three variables. There's body fat. There's calories in calories out and that's three variables that
Ways must balance. That's the point. So if you increase the say you decrease your calories and you eat less, right? You could decrease your body fat, but that's only two of the different variables. There's another variable that is your calories out, might go down, so you eat last but you burn less and body fat stays the same. That does not break the laws of thermodynamics, right? So people say, well, you just have to eat less. It's just thermodynamics know.
You those people are so like they think that there's only two variables calories in calories out. But you remember your body fat has a store of say a quarter million calories, just sitting there. So if you reduce your calories in, you could reduce your body fat or you could reduce your body energy expenditure calories out and guess what? Every single study that we've done, like The Biggest Loser studies shows that when
you simply reduce your calories, but don't pay any attention to the hormones, right? Then your calories out actually goes down. That's been shown for the last like 80 years of scientific research. Like so that's the point is, how are you going to reduce your calories in but try to keep your calories out stable while fasting is just a good way to do that.
Right? Yeah, and I think there's this misconception that they eat a bunch of small meals throughout the day that and and calorie.
That's going to do. The same thing is totally abstaining from food and just having maybe eating in a small window. But the hormonal differences are really the key. And, you know, when Megan came out I asked her what would be one tip you could give someone and that would be not to snack and this is what I like you talk about. Your book has changed from like let's just say the 70s till today is we thought we had to eat all the time to feed the brain and you know, have energy. But we have plenty.
Body fat to have enough energy. We have plain body fat stored to have energy where you could fast. You know, hypothetically. If you're if it's right for you, you could fast for days and be completely fine.
Yeah, exactly. And and the this whole idea is that when you fast you're setting up the conditions and you don't have to fast, you could do this with other ways, right? So you can eat three meals a day. Like, in the 70s, you could eat three meals a day and still still access your body fat. As long as you're not eating all the
Yeah,
so the whole point is that, when you're fasting or you're sort of what you're doing is in addition to the calories because it's you're allowing your body to have that access to the store or body fat, right? So if you simply lock away, that body fat and you can't access it and you do that by keeping insulin high, of course, you can do that experimental, but just by giving people a lot of insulin,
Then what happens is, if you think about energy balance equation, that is body fat equals calories in - calculator. So if your body fat is sort of fixed, then you reduce calories in, then your calories out, will simply reduce,
right? So you're slowing, your metabolism is, you will slow your metabolism.
In fact, that's what every single study of these diets as shown for last 50 years. Right? So the the point is that it's very important to keep an eye on both of
Them and, you know, and that's what a lot of the diets do as well. Is that they're better at that because say some food release more insulin than other Foods. We know that that's just a scientific fact or saying is that that is an important aspect. It's not the only aspect, right? Because there's things such as so. There's instant release to food, but there's also sort of your Baseline insulin levels and so on. So
all it means is some foods are more fattening than other Foods, right? And this is just common sense. Like you ask your grandmother. She's like yes cookies are more fattening than x, right. That's just common sense. Like or cookies are more fattening than broccoli. Like who gets fat eating broccoli like nobody ever in the history of mankind, right? So the calories people say that.
Hey cookies are just as fattening as broccoli. Those calories are equally fattening, and it's like it's a stupid thing to think, right? But yet there's people out there like scientific meetings where they just talk on and on about, it's all about calories. Those insulin. People are stupid. Like I don't understand how we can understand like you have to make him think that
what would you say? As far as you know, prescribing obviously, there's a lot of different camps regarding eating, right? That's the one thing that's for like about fasting is
Yeah, I mean obviously if you're eating clean and foods that maybe don't have labels on them, fasting will be easier, but on the other hand, I love fasting. The sense that it doesn't, it doesn't. It's not in one camp or the other, right? You're either eating or you're not you're consuming Cal's, you're not, are there certain like I obviously, you know, key. Do you have the key? Do you have carnivore? You have vegetarian? Is there a certain camp that maybe if you have a client? I know you have with the fastening method. You do you guys do.
A lot of coaching. Is there certain road map that you take people on. As far as types of foods, they should be eating. And in this in like a certain Camp.
The main thing I tell people in. I don't think it's controversial at all. Actually, for Foods is one try to avoid sugar. I don't think that's particularly controversial to eat unprocessed foods, which again is pretty uncontroversial. So, right?
The the whole thing is that it's not simply processed carbohydrates, but processed fats and process proteins as well. Like it's just better to eat Natural Foods. If you eat Natural Foods, your body will know how to handle it. Including telling you when to stop, because everybody thinks that people just eat until they like explode. But that doesn't actually happen. Like, if you go to a buffet and you eat, you know, way too much at one meal and you try to put in another
Mother like pork chop. It ain't happening. You're like nauseated. Like you just can't do it. It's a very powerful sensation to stop. So when you eat Natural Foods, you will stop eating at a certain point because you will be full. You can overcome that. Let's like all those competitions that they used to have. Oh eat this a d, oz, steak and we'll give it to you for free. They're not giving a lot way, a lot of free state because you can't do it because it's a lot of protein and fat. But when you start to switch to processed,
And you switch to say, you know, say cookies, which is highly processed. Of course you can e like you finish a buffet used could still eat a cookie because there's something about the processing, which sort of bypasses, the natural satiety, hormones and satiety mechanism, which is the point that the processed foods are going to make it much harder for you to know when you're supposed to stop. So, the point is that in any diet.
You just want to avoid highly processed foods, so processed foods and sugar in general. So there's different ways. You could even eat a relatively High carbohydrate meal as long as you do that. The other
You know, the other thing of course that fasting does is it provides other than you can. You know, it works with think diet, but it provides you a structure as to when you're supposed to be eating and this is extremely important because if you have no structure then you basically eat. And unfortunately, this is the situation we're in. Now where people tell you first of all that you need to eat. Eat like you gotta eat breakfast. You can't skip breakfast. You're gonna dock if you skip breakfast, right?
And it's like, you know, your body can handle not eating the meal at all. Right because you know again people are like, oh you have nothing in your stomach. But yeah, I have a quarter million calories sitting in her body fat, you know, your body can access those because you have you just finished sleeping right as well and is going to be down, you're going to be able to access as many calories as you want because that's just the way the body works like if
Had to make sure that we got up and put a muffin in our mouth within 30 minutes. Like we wouldn't be here as a species, right? When we were cavemen. There was no muffin for you as soon as you write. It's ridiculous to think that that actually makes any difference. So the whole point is that, you know, you know, you can eat breakfast if you want, you can't, you cannot eat breakfast you want, but the fasting gives you this
The structure where it says, okay. Well, you're going to eat here and not here, right? Breakfast, lunch dinner. There's nothing else, right? Whereas nowadays, you go around, like, and it's like, oh, you can eat breakfast. If you want. You can eat snacks. If you want, you can eat lunch. If you want. You can have another snack. If you want. You can have another snack. If you want. Then you can have dinner. Then you can have an after-dinner snack and then you can have it before bed snack. Well now you're up to like eight times a day and you're eating constantly. And unfortunately when you do studies of
I'll
keep Elite. This is how people eat
today. Yeah, and and I think you've even mention your book like no one's going to promote fasting per se, right? Because they're trying to sell a product and, you know, you know, you see a lot on out companies would like these fasting bars and I don't know, I just think it's a lot of marketing, but what would you say? Because I think some of my clients including myself. I've been doing intermittent fasting for a long time. And, you know, let's just say, someone's maybe plateaued, let's say they've been doing
18:6 where they've been a fascist state for 18 hours and have a 6-hour eating window. And they've you know, maybe they just want to lose more weight or and they've sort of lose more inches around their waist and have plateaued, would you what would you recommend to that individual?
Well, there's certain sort of levers that you can play with, right. So if you're trying to lose more weight, then you can do different things. One is, you can try to change the fasting so you could do it longer. You can do a
Are you can do it time so you don't have to. So what you can do is you can instead of eating, see you do sort of lunch and dinner. For example, when you can move that up and have breakfast lunch, and then sleep dinner is eating late at night. Can be problematic and this is probably again, not news, but you know, if you eat it giant meal like just before bed and then you go to sleep. Well, what's your body going to do with all that? Right? It's sleeping is recovering. It's not using any energy while you're going to start. Alright, so eating late at night.
Is not particularly good for you. So you may want to switch it. So even though if you're doing an 8-hour eating window or for our or, you know, our one meal a day, you can switch to use instead of eating, say dinner, as your one, meal a day, you can eat lunch is your practice is wrong. Okay, so you can do different things in terms of fasting. There's also different ways to do it. There's sort of a classic fasting, which is water only. But there's also these variations with like teas and coffees and bone broth and all this sort of stuff. So you could
Change
it to you, do sort of clean are fast. For example, or you could say I'm going to do like use these fasting sort of training wheels, which is what we call them. Right, and do it longer do it more frequently, right? So there's actually infinite variation with that. And and then
what, what about alternate day fasting is that popular method that you use with clients or patients?
Yeah. I mean, alternate day fasting.
Fasting is just another schedule of fasting. So it's yeah, it's basically what people want to do. Like if they want to, you can like you don't, you don't have to if you don't want to, you know, you want to try and build yourself a routine which gives you sort of the structure. That's what alternate day fasting. Does, you know, so, so that's okay. That's the best thing.
What are, what are some of the other benefits?
It's regarding fasting. Other than just, you know, perhaps losing inches around your waist. What are some of the benefits that you see, with individuals? Because I find, I like it for the mental aspect. Just the mental acuity throughout the day, but what are some of the other benefits that you're finding?
Yeah, so there's actually quite a few other benefits that you can get with fasting. I mean, not only do you have the weight loss benefits for type 2 diabetes, for example, you can,
Control blood sugars. Because if you don't eat, of course, your body's going to burn that sugar. If it burns that Sugar then of course you're going to feel your sugars are getting better. You need less medications, for example, so that's a very good strategy for that. The other thing is that you may feel more energy. And that's something that people are either surprised that they get more energy during fasting. They said, oh, well, I should have less energy. It's like, no again. It's just pure physiology. There's nothing sort of voodoo about
When your insulin goes down, your counter regulatory hormones. Go up including activation of the sympathetic nervous system, so noradrenaline and so on. So when you don't eat your body actually isn't shutting down. It's actually wrapping itself. Huh? So you're going to have more energy when you fast. Same thing for mentally. You're going to be more mentally sharp because your body is actually ramping up not shutting down. So again in people sort of know this instinctively.
Lee but people get told this all the time, you know, I have to eat to concentrate. Well, you know think about a time where you ate a huge meal like Thanksgiving like after your Thanksgiving meal do you feel very sharp or do you want to just sit on the couch for a little while, right? You think about The Hungry Wolf hungry? Both. Is it very sluggish and just falling down and it's like, no it's it's sort of dialed in focused and ready kill. So the sort of mental benefits.
The sort of energy benefits the way they feel. It's really, it's really got a lot of benefits to it and just, you know, there's other more theoretical benefits like, at off of G, for example, a sort of cleansing mechanism within the body. That's a more theoretical thing. I mean, it happens, but what pure benefits, you can sort of tangible benefits. You can say, it's hard to hard to know.
Oh, yeah, do we know this is because self-cleansing at apogee. Do we know is there certain time were where that might kick in? You know, I know the body does it naturally even probably overnight sleeping and stuff. But is there a certain amount of time that perhaps a tapa G my kick in more during fasting?
Yeah, and it's hard to know exactly for sure because it's hard to measure but it's probably somewhere you probably get a little.
Bit overnight, like 10 hours, 12 hours. Remember, people used to eat dinner at 6:00 and breakfast at like 8:00. So you're talking about 12 to 14 hours of fasting, right? So you're probably starting to get there probably by 1820 hours or getting into good levels of talk to we know that because in at apogee is where your body sort of breaks down cells. Sounds really bad face like oh breaking down proteins like well, it's not.
Just breaking down protein. What you're doing is getting rid of the stuff that you don't need. So if you break down protein, then what you want to do, when you start eating again, is to rebuild that protein, which is what happens. Because growth hormone is a counter regulatory hormones. So when you fast, you break down protein, but your growth hormones High, when you start to eat it, that hits that growth hormone and then you rebuild that, you only rebuild the stuff that you need because you're you.
Body's not going to rebuild protein that you don't need. So therefore that's a way of sort of cleansing and Rejuvenation. And so for example, we've noticed in our clinics that people even when they lose a lot of weight, they don't have a lot of excess skin because they're probably activating that protein burning that off of G and therefore not getting that excess skin because the body doesn't want any excess, right? And wants to be just
perfectly in line with where the environment is. So if you have excess fat, you know, excess skin to cover that fat. Well, it doesn't need it. So it's going to burn it off or energy. That's that's what we've done is we actually have never sent anybody for skin removal surgery, just because they just have so little so much less of that problem. So those are some of the benefits that we've noticed, and it's just, you know, it's just one of the great things about fast.
And I know you notice you've done
Blogs and some YouTube videos regarding longevity and fasting. What will can you comment about that? As far as the mechanisms is regarding fasting and Longevity.
One of the things in terms of animal studies of longevity, is that animal studies. The only consistent thing that really extends like Deputy is calorie restriction and you know, even back in the 40s there.
Was talking about. Hey, if we have a nutritious diet, that's simply restrict calories, then animals, live longer, that might apply to humans. But of course, you can't, ethically, do any kind of study like that. So it's always a bit of an extrapolation, but from animal studies. It's pretty consistent. So, back in the 40s, you know, which is like, you know, 80 years ago, people had to write talked about this problem, and they said well the problem.
Is in Free Living humans, it's very difficult to Simply restrict calories, you know, but eat at the same frequency, because if you're eating the same frequency, say, you have breakfast, lunch dinner. That's your routine and you have the same meals and stuff. Now, you're going to eat like 80% of what you used to eat. While it's really difficult to do that because you need to apply well power because you want to eat a certain amount you want to eat until you're full. Now you have to eat until before your
Full and consciously. Think about that every single meal for the rest of your life. Well, that's not so easy to do when it'd be easier. For example, to say, skip one meal out of every 10 or something like that. Now, you're achieving a 10% reduction in calories, but it's a lot easier because you simply say, well, you know, I'm just skipping this meal and once in a month or once in a year, I'm going to do this like, you know, upcoming we
Lent and Ash Wednesday, so, you know, there are people who are fasting during that period of time and it's like well that's a lot easier as a as a strategy to do fasting compared to every single meal, reducing it because it's just, you know, then you're always thinking about fast and then eat normally the rest of the time. So that's the way to do it. So longevity calorie restriction has a number of theoretical reasons why it might
Right, cause increased longevity and most people believe it does. It's just, how are you going to get to that end goal? And fasting is just a way to do that?
Yeah. I've noticed myself, like, when I started getting in the fasting is
You just get full faster. So, you know, if you skip a meal and let you use, you have two meals a day. Sometimes one. Let's just say I had one meal for that day. Like you think I owe you guys just you know, I'm sure you're going to let us go crazy and eat everything but you really don't you, I find that I actually just get full faster and you know don't go on with you know, go on throughout my day
and this is really important because remember if and we see this all the time people come back to us and clinically say, oh, yeah.
I think my stomach trying, you know, it's like well remember first of all, it's a natural thing and I'll explain how in a second but if you're getting full faster and therefore eating less and therefore more able to maintain the weight loss or lose weight. Well, that's really important because now you're working with your body as opposed to calories in calories out where people are just constantly hungry because you're always like, well, I only eat this
You know, I only have like 150 calories left. So all I can eat for dinner is like this, right? It's like you're constantly hungry. And so you're always fighting yourself. Whereas, with fasting you tend to get full. And the reason is, of course, you're feeding yourself off of your body fat. So, if you skip breakfast and you skip lunch and your body is now feeling itself from that say, quarter million or even half million calories of body fat, that just sitting there right now, you found yourself.
For your body fat and there's plenty of that. But why would you need to eat a big dinner? It simply doesn't it isn't necessary. In fact because you've been feeling yourself through your body fat, you've allowed that through the fasting. Now, your body might say, you know what? I only need like 800 calories because that's all I have left, right? So that's the point is that's all you're trying to do. And remember that, that's what body fat is. Therefore. It's a store of
Trees for you to use when you have nothing to eat. Your, you are literally using it for what it was for and there's nothing unnatural about it. Right? But of course, when I started talking about fasting in 2014, 2015, probably people thought I was
insane.
Like honestly, I got so much flak,
is that changed a lot? Like
like a because most of the one it's become so much more popular and topical. And of course.
A huge knee-jerk reaction from dietitians and doctors all fast and super bad for you. But as soon as they started hearing some of the arguments, it's like well one it's not a fad, right? People have been doing it for thousands of years to it's completely natural and you have stars of body fat. People are like, huh? Well, that's interesting. As in why do you need to constantly put calories into into you? If you have?
A huge store of calories. It's sort of like if you have you know, you have a car and you have a gas tank, you fill up the gas tank and it's full but you keep pumping. So now you've got gas in your backseat, just sloshing around. And somebody says, you need to keep going to the gas station and putting in that Gap, right? Like why would you want to do that? It's completely insane.
And I also think too when you start doing fasting and you've been doing it for a while and your body starts to it.
Up, you start to like realize what true hunger is and what it's not and like I say to myself, I like do I really need to eat on my I'm not hungry. Now. There are times where I do eat just because you know, I'm not the biggest guy, you know, I probably nine and a half percent body fat. So it's like, do I want to really go much lower than that, you know, probably not. I think I made a good point and but that leads to the question. Are there certain people who maybe shouldn't do fasting.
Yeah, and and certainly
Only if you're malnourished if you're you know, not you know, if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, you don't want to do extended fast, but remember a normal fast, like before people went crazy about this course, was if you eat dinner at 6:00 and eat breakfast at eight, people would say, well, pretty much everybody can do that. Right? That's 14 hours of fasting. Okay, so you're only pushing it by two hours.
You know, if you do that, once, like if you do 16 hours, instead of 14 hours, like it's not a big deal. So yes, there are people and certainly children and stuff. You shouldn't do these longer fast. Like, you don't want to go like three or five days because you need the nutrition. But on the other hand, you know, you think about you think about what people used to do, for example, so remember, you're talking in the 60s, say you had a 14 hour, Fast 6 p.m. Dinner 8.
Mm breakfast. Now if you're a naughty boy, you got sent to bed without dinner. So you went from 12 noon to eat. Like you're talking about a 20 hour fast that virtually everybody had done when they misbehave like nobody died. Nobody got sick. Everybody was. Okay. So people go crazy like, oh, 16 hours of fasting is so bad. It's like it's a natural thing. It's a balance here between feeding and fasting. That's why we have this term in English called breakfast.
Just break your fast, because if you don't fast, you can't break your fast. So fast thing is just a natural part. So when people say who shouldn't fast, it's like, what are you talking about? Are you talking about a 14 hour fast? Well, every single person should be doing that. If you're talking about a 40 day fast like yet very few people should be trying that. Sure, right. So it's like what are you talking about? So, you know, people go crazy, but it's really just, it's really just a balance here.
Yeah.
As far as extended fast go. Is this something that you implement in your life sometimes? Or what is your fasting schedule? Like
I try and fit it into where I can? So, you know, the 16 hour fast is very easy because I very often don't take breakfast and that that wasn't a deliberate thing. That was just because I don't want, I don't get hungry at 3:00 in the morning and to I prefer to sleep. So I don't want to get up and write breakfast and Cena.
Up and eaten all that stuff, right? So that's a 16 hour fast. That's pretty easy. Then sometimes I don't, I don't take lunch. So then it's a 24-hour fast. And then sometimes I do a longer fast because it's easier to do, like, if I have something like a vacation or, you know, Christmas holidays and stuff. I won't, you know, I won't be that careful on my diet. I know that because I'm going out and like
You know, you go to your your friend's house and they have dessert and it's like, oh, there's cookie and cake and, you know, sure, I'm going to celebrate with you, right? I'm, you know, I it's just part of life, right? But then to make up for it. It's very easy to do a period. After the holidays are after the vacation. Like, if you go to a cruise or something like that you eat way too much everything. Yeah. Truth then yeah.
His as I tough on the body. Yeah, but then, but then you can make up for it. Right? And that's the point is that it gives you the flexibility. Then I might do a longer fast just to really say, you know, let's, let's let's, let's at least get most of the way to repairing all that extra weight. I put on over the last month and it happened. It works for everything, right? It works for covid. If you put on some weight during covid, then you do the fasting to lose it. You can do something about it, but it's a
It's again. So if you, you know, this is if you are this say, this is Baseline, right? And then you eat way too much right? For a week because you went on a cruise. Okay, then you go back to your Baseline. Okay. Well, when are you going to make up that area under the curve, right? You have this period of 47 days where you ate way too much and then you go back to Baseline. Well, you can't do that. That's not going to balance. You have to have a period where you eat way too little to balance that period where you ate too much.
Otherwise, it doesn't balance and that's what fast and allows you to do is sort of incorporate that extra extra bit.
Do you have any stories regarding individual? I'm sure you have a lot of stories but regarding individuals who have overcome like type 2 diabetes and and and sort of how that happened. Excuse me. Losing my voice just so people can hear that.
Yeah. Actually we have many many people who have reversed their type 2 diabetes. It's
It's quite striking because, you know, they're often told that it's chronic. It's irreversible. They have to take medications, then they start fasting and realize that it was never, that was never true. And so then, as soon as they start to fast, of course, the sugar starts to go down, so it's very simple really. So remember when you eat your blood sugar will go up. Sooner you eat sort of a Friday of macronutrients. So if you don't eat
Your blood sugar doesn't go up. In fact, it starts to go down because your body's going to start burning some of the sugar. So this is your body can store Sugar as well. Right? So it can, your body will sort of, sort of, at least some of the sugar that startup and your body will burn it, to get rid of it. So over time, we've had probably hundreds of people who have reversed their type 2 diabetes like sometimes in a very striking manner, I mean, it's crazy because they've done
done so much good for their own health. Because if you don't have that type 2 diabetes, you're putting yourself at far lower risk of all of those things such as heart attacks and strokes and cancer and so on and it's all from an intervention, which is completely free completely in your own control. Like it's really just up to you. You really just need to know how to do it. How to do it safely, you know somebody to help you cuz remember
Even though fasting is a great tool. It's not fun. So ride Pizza to, right? It's not fun, but it is something that you can do for your own health and the people who have done it. I've had such honestly it's been crazy, you know, I wrote a wrote a paper, a few years ago and there are three patients of mine actually. So I before I knew I treated them with medications and they were all like 70, 80 units of insulin within a month.
The three of them were off completely completely off their insulin and for the next year, just maintain that as non-diabetic. So they had diabetes for like 10 years. I was treating them. In fact that entire time they could have taken that away if I had known. Now, I do of course. So I recommend it and not everybody will do something about it because there's still a lot of naysayers and stuff. But on the other hand, for those people who want to give it a try. It's worthwhile the other day.
One of the nurses that works with me in the hospital was saying that her son, 20 years old already had type 2 diabetes, but he started watching some videos and he started doing some of the fasting and cutting down the carbohydrates and reverse this type 2 diabetes. Yeah, and then he says, says, says mom or I started watching this, dr. Fung on YouTube. And the mom is like, hey, that's not a
doctor. Yeah. I'm sure there's tons of stories.
Like it the sad thing is, you know kids isn't it? Like type 3 diabetes, they call it now or like that kitten. Kids kids for kids that are getting, it are becoming diabetic. So young
type 3 is refers to Alzheimer's disease. Okay, we'll call it type one and a half
is one and a half. Yeah,
but it's different type 1 and type 2. Diabetes are actually complete opposites of one. Another almost. So type 1. Diabetes is too little insulin type 2. Diabetes was too much insulin.
Sometimes it's very hard to tease out which one it is. The problem is, of course, with kids is that in the past, like 90% of the kids with diabetes were like type 1 diabetes because type 2 diabetes, which is the majority of diabetes
used to be adult onset, right? Yeah,
so used to be all and the adults because those were the people who were obese or eat too much sugar and had fatty liver and stuff. And so it used to be juvenile onset versus adult onset.
And of course with the explosion in childhood obesity, what happened is that you wound up with a huge number of type two children, right? Take two children, with type 2 diabetes, which is on the one hand unfortunate on the other hand. It's good news because that is actually a reversible dietary disease. They have time. Yeah you have time. And the point is that, if you know that type,
2, diabetes is largely a lifestyle and diet disease and we know this of course because if you look at the prevalence of type 2, diabetes has gone way up in the last sort of 40 years. So therefore clearly not a genetic problem. Then you need to bring lifestyle treatments to it. Instead. We brought gave them a lot of drugs. So it's like you can't see a dietary disease with drugs. You need diet Terry.
Solutions for a dietary diseases. Like it's simply as as basic as that we had been giving drugs for a dietary disease and wondering why we weren't successful at reversing it. It's like because you never treated the docket and when you did treat the diet, you gave them a low fat diet with lots of carbs.
You see more. Now, it's become a little bit more mainstream fasting. Do you see more doctors jumping on the bandwagon like you've done a night? Like you started back and
No, 2014. Let's just say, do you see it sort of creeping into, you know, Physicians and yeah,
the Physicians almost instantly know what I'm talking about. When I start talking about physiology. They know what I'm saying is true. It's all basic first-year, medical students stuff, right? It's all physiology human physiology as in this idea that you need to eat. Ten times a day. You ask the doctor, I can ask the doctor and
Okay. Well tell me physiologically. Why the human body requires eight meals a day or 80 Ting opportunities a day? And there they know that there is none. They know that there's no research that supports that they know that humans can eat eight times a day or once a day. It doesn't matter. That's why we have storage, right? You take food star some of the food where you don't have food. You take it out of storage, right? So do you need
To fill up that tank eight times a day. It's like, no, you don't have to well, what if your storage tank is overflowing. Do you need to fill up that tank at all? Like no, you don't have to at all, right. So the Physicians actually instantly know what I'm talking about. So there's actually a huge uptake from that. In fact, there is a survey interesting survey a few year ago where they surveyed like Facebook group of Physicians, and they say, well, what do you do?
Yourself to lose weight. And this is a group of female Physicians. They had lost, I think on average 13 pounds each and they asked them, what do you do to lose weight? And what do you do for your patient? What do you tell your patients to do business with? So what they told their patients, of course, was to count your calories, but they did themselves was intermittent fasting low-carbohydrate diets and extended fasting. So that's not even something that I use a lot of like I use it personally, but the yeah, this
Stuff that the doctors were like, hey one, I know the physiology to, I know it works. So I'm going to do this even though my you know, the teaching is to say that. So, when I tell patients, I'm just going to tell them what I'm told to tell them, which is Count Your calories and right, cut your calories and exercise more. But when it comes to their own body positions were all fasting, because it's like obvious like dhoni.
Let your body burn off that body fat.
Yeah, it's amazing how your body can just heal when you don't give it anything. Even just like their look, there's some studies coming out like interest regarding like inflammation and things like that, like people doing extended fast to heal other ways. Is this something that you see sometimes like with patience?
Yeah. I mean we do get stories. Every so often it's less reliable because some of that inflammatory
Stuff needs a while to get better. But certain people have. We've certainly heard a lot of stories where people started fasting and then a lot of the inflammatory conditions got better. So thyroiditis was very common in that seemed to get better. So people's thyroids improved. Sometimes a lot of joint pain got better. So, you know, you see this and there is some evidence for this anti-inflammatory effect, but it's not as consistent and sometimes it does take a while to
To take.
Yeah. Well, this was good. I usually ask at the end of most of my interviews. I asked Megan's, I'll ask you what? One tip. Would you give an individual, maybe if there are middle aged 50 and above or so, and they wanted to get their body back to what it once was, you know, 15, 20 years ago. What? One tip, would you give them?
I mean other than the no snacking which I think is great advice is to build a sort of routine. So you want a sort of a daily routine where you say? Okay. Well, this is my eating bindo, right? I won't eat it outside of that and try to move that window up a little bit. So everybody has a tendency to go eat late, but you really want to try and eat earlier but build that sort of daily habit because it's the habit.
Make a difference, right? It's it's just like your salary, right? It's what you make day in and day out, not the bonus that you get once a year. So people, you know, they go on a diet and they do it for like 3 months, but that's not what makes you healthy or not healthy. It's that diet that you eat day in and day out. So you've got to make a decision. And one of the things is to sort of cut out the snacks, kind of consolidate your eating window, then we can also have weekly routines. So for example, once a week, you might say,
Okay. Well, I'm gonna go longer on a Monday because I'm busy you have monthly routine say once a month. You say? Okay. Well, I'm just going to sort of do this for this, you know, the beginning of the month to clean out or because I've yearly routine. So every year in January, when I know that I'm going to have, you know, there's that sort of holiday period from November to December. I'm going to incorporate that into my yearly schedule, and then I'm going to do another one after my vacation in.
Moon or whatever people take it because I know again it's going to make up. So you have that sort of routine that that you build into your life.
So that it's not you're not always thinking about it. Like do I do this or do? It is like brushing your teeth, right, you know, every morning thing. Hmm. Should I brush my teeth? Like no, it's just a habit. Right? So it's like, you're eating routines, have to become sort of Habitual eyes, but it's not, it doesn't mean that that's every single day. Right? So, it's like sometimes, for example, for Yom, Kippur War for Lent, or for Ash, Wednesday, or for, you know, Ramadan, it's like, hey, that's just something that
Do because it's routine. Every year it comes around and this is what you do. Well, that can be that, that should be part of your sort of Maintenance as well, so that you don't have to think about it. Like it's about everybody. Thinks weight loss about willpower. It's got nothing, almost nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with your routines. If you rely on Willpower, You're simply going to fail because you're going to expand it. And then the minute that
That, that will power. The stop expending that willpower you fall into your bag routines and you lose all of your progress. That's the biggest loser thing. Right? So you go on this show, you expend a tremendous amount of willpower. The minute life goes on. And you have to do this day in and day out. While you don't have the proper routine to fall, back on to keep you healthy as opposed to the 60s and 70s, where everybody had these routines and nobody had to expend willpower to stay thin or very few people. Anyway, some people.
Obviously,
right. And I think one of the great ways to sort of not have, or not have to rely on. Willpower is just don't buy, like, don't buy certain things. Right? We always say, we're cook for yourself or there's a lot of little things that you can do where you take willpower out because if you don't have it in the cabinets, you don't have that temptation, but know, I love the. I love your tip regarding building a routine and these healthy habits, and I always say, especially with fast.
Eating like you mentioned, like I'll have days where I'm busier. Those are great days to do fasting because you're not thinking, you're on the move. And, you know, a lot of times we fast we don't even realize you skip a meal, you're like, oh did I even you know, you have those busy days. So that that's a good way to build it around. If, you know every Monday is just a crazy day. That's maybe a good day to maybe doing a, you know, a day
fast. Exactly. And these things are great because then after the first three or four times you do it.
It's just automatic right today. Is Monday is my day to catch up on email. I'm not going to eat lunch. I'm just going to answer your emails, you go, go home early and take a long bath, right? That's you know, now you've built your habit and then you get a little reward at the end of it, right? Because you have that extra time that you took they didn't have to eat and and and then everybody knows right? Hey, today is Monday. That's the day that he doesn't come out for lunch because he's going through his emails, right? And it's like, okay no,
All right, everybody gets to know it and that's that's how it becomes sort of, that's how you maintain that weight loss.
Well, this was great, probably could go on for another hour, but I appreciate you coming on. And it's become. It's come full circle because that reading your book in 2016 and a heavy on the podcast. So I appreciate your coming on. Dr. Fung.
Thank you so much. It's great talk.
Thanks for listening to the get lean.
E clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mind, and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes at Brian green.com for everything that was mentioned. In this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member who is looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again and have a great day.
