Learn To Burn Fat And Overcome Insulin Resistance

Jason Fung, MD

Yes, I think the problem is that things are always very slow to change in medicine. There are a lot of old ideas hanging around. The people who are in charge of academic obesity medicine still mostly talk about calories. You see this in the newspapers and all of this stuff that says it is all about calories in, calories out. All of these calorie denials and nonsense. It is really hard for people to understand that if all the doctors, all the dieticians, and all the university people are saying it is all about calories, all are low in calories, then you think, well, maybe it is all about calories. 

The problem with that idea is that, what I talk about, which is trying to understand the hormonal underpinnings of obesity, is that it does not go against the whole calorie thing. What it is trying to do is go deeper. I will give you an example. We have what they say, that body fat equals calories in minus calories out. They always say: You read this in the newspaper. Everybody who denies this is denying physics and all that kind of stuff.

But that is not the point. The point is not that it is not about calories. What you are trying to do is try to get to that one level deeper. Why is it that calories in, exceeds calories out? It is not that. The question is whether calories exceed calories. That is why it is. Then you have to say, are people eating more because they are hungrier, or is it because their metabolic rate is going down? What is that underlying reason? That is not something that you can decide. Because they say, Oh, it is all about calories. It is a choice. Whereas if you say, Well, they are eating more because they are hungry, then you cannot choose to be less hungry. Or if there is, if they are gaining weight because their metabolic rate is going down, you cannot choose to have a higher metabolic rate. It just is. 

How did people in the 60s and the 70s maintain their weight? Well, they are because it is their hormones that control how hungry you are. Some hormones control your metabolic rate. Some hormones control you when you stop eating. There are lots of hormones. that is what controls that whole calorie issue. It is a way of saying, “What caused, or why did the Titanic sink? If you are a very superficial thinker, you would say, Well, it hit an iceberg. Okay, the answer is: do not hit any more icebergs. Okay? But that is not useful advice. If you told the captain of a ship, Do not hit any icebergs. Do you think that would be useful? He had been. Of course, I am not going to hit icebergs. But the real reason the Titanic sank was that it was going too fast. It was going too fast in an area that had lots of icebergs. The answer is to slow down, and not to hit icebergs.  It is the same with the calorie issue. If you say to me, Just eat fewer calories, that is the same thing as saying, Do not hit icebergs. You are not getting into the deeper reason as to why they are eating too many calories. If the problem is that the foods are too processed. That is junk food. It is very highly processed. But what happens when you process foods? You take out the protein, which creates satiety. You take out the fat, which creates satiety. You take out the fiber, which stretches the stomach and creates satiety. You take out all those issues. All of a sudden, you have gotten rid of all those hormonal satiety factors. 

Now you have junk food chips or something that contains highly processed carbohydrates. Now, all of a sudden, you can overeat them because you do not have the natural satiety signaling. That is the reason you are overeating. But it is not. The problem is not to simply count your calories, because it does not work. The problem is to try to find out: is it because you are eating highly processed foods? Is it because you are an emotional eater, for example? Is it because you are unconsciously eating in front of the TV, in front of the movie theaters? Is it because you are addicted to food? Is it because you are eating too frequently? Many things could cause your calories to exceed yours. You have to get to that deeper level of what is causing it, not just count your calories. Same as if you say, drunkenness equals alcohol in minus alcohol out. You say the answer to your solution to your problem of drunkenness is to just drink less alcohol. That is not useful advice. Same as just eating fewer calories is not useful advice because you have not gone that one level deeper, that is, where, for example, fasting creates a structure for the eating day. 

In the 1970s, for example, people did not generally eat after dinner. You did not eat until breakfast time. That is the very word,  break-fast. By creating that fasting period as a standard habit that virtually everybody followed, you made it easy to have a period where people were fasting. Therefore, if you are not eating, then you are using your sources of stored calories, which are sugar and body fat. But the reason you were able to do that easily in the 70s was because everybody was doing it. Nobody was, if you go to the movies or sit in front of a TV, it is not like other people around you are not eating snacks and chips. When they do, you are going to want it. You have made it difficult for yourself; that is the reason you are overeating. All those calories, folks who keep insisting that it is all about a caloric deficit. Sure it is, but you are not getting the reassurance that you are not getting to this caloric deficit. 

Same with Keto. Well, if you have Keto, for example, you cut down on a lot of these carbohydrates and eat natural foods, which are naturally very satiating. You are eating steaks, eggs, and other things that make you feel full. You can compare that to, say, eating white bread and jam. It might be the same number of calories, but you do not have the protein, you do not have the fat, and you do not have the bulk to make you feel full. By 10:30, after eating white bread and jam, you are ravenous. You are looking for that muffin. Whereas if you ate steak eggs, it might have been the same calories. But if you are full for the whole morning, you do not need to eat. Therefore, you are creating fewer calories, yes? But you are getting to the root cause as to why you are overeating. 

That is why I always think that people who talk about things like that, like you and I. We often get torn down by these academics and people who are saying, Your thinking is first-order, first-level thinking; you are not getting into the deeper reason; you are just eating fewer calories, which is the equivalent of just drinking less alcohol answer. How many alcoholics have been cured with the advice to just drink less alcohol, buddy? That is the most useless advice. Or, Hey, Captain, just do not hit icebergs. Thanks. That is not useful advice in the least. Because the advice is to, Hey, why are you drinking more alcohol? Is it depression? Let me get you treated. Let me get you counseling because that is going to help with the alcohol problem. After all, you are drinking because you are depressed, for example. Whereas, in that analogy, people would say, Well, counseling does not cure alcoholism in the absence of drinking less alcohol. Of course. duh!  Or slowing down does not help the Titanic. If. If you did not have an iceberg, Well, duh! 

But getting to the root cause, I think that is the simplistic thinking that I still see a lot of. Despite everything that goes out there, people want to grab onto those calories. It is, well, if it worked, I would be fine with it. It does not work at all. Telling everyone to slow down causes fewer accidents. Those people are attacked for saying that, hey, the advice to slow down does not work. If you did not hit anything. But that is the point. It is slowing down, and you do not hit anything. Whereas those people say, I can just tell people to just not hit icebergs. That will do the same thing. No, it will not. It is frustrating because, to me, it is a very obvious thing. We are trying to get to the deeper reason as to why people are overeating calories, whereas they are saying that that is the whole problem. Just, deal with it, there tends to be a lot of these kind of pro-science people who are all about willpower. I think people have the same willpower now as they did 50 years ago. I think the environment is different; we focus on the wrong thing.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes, for sure. It is a very robotic answer of calories in, and calories out. It does not take into account human behavior; it is not personalized enough for humans. However, it does give processed food companies an excuse because, hey, if it is just about the number of calories you can eat, whatever, just get your calories down to a certain level and you can eat our super processed white bread.

Jason Fung, MD

That is where Coca-Cola was found, giving millions of dollars to these universities. This may be where it comes from. All these universities are getting millions of dollars to promote this calorie idea, which is the whole idea: that you can take 100 calories of Coca-Cola as much as 100 calories of an egg. It is the same. They are equally fattening. Cookies are as fattening as broccoli that because of the same number of calories. As your grandmother would have said, you are an idiot if you believe that. It is true, yet this is what comes out of academic centers, universities, dietitians, and doctors. A 100 calories is 100 calories, whether it is from cookies or whether it is from salmon. Okay, the minute you put those calories into your mouth, the hormonal response to eggs versus cookies is completely and utterly different.

One will spike glucose, one will spike insulin, and the other will not. If you have a completely different hormonal response to those foods, why would your body react the same? It makes not even a little bit of sense. The whole calorie argument is completely nonsensical, yet it is frustrating to read that, Hey, this doctor, and this Ph.D., in this thing says it is all about calories. Is it because they are paid to do it? Maybe. But it is because I think it has been ingrained in them over and over again. They believe it to be true. Sometimes these things just take time. These ideas take time to die out.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes. It disregards how the body adapts to the food you are putting in. You talked about this hormonal response. If you are a football coach, you just are. Okay, we are just going to run this one play. We are going to throw it deep to the wide receiver. The defense is going to adapt to it, You are not going to be you. You have to understand how the body is going to adapt to the food that you are putting in it. That is why you have done such a great job with your books: helping people understand that. If you eat white bread and if you drink Coke, you are going to get high blood sugar. You are going to get a lot of insulin. How does that impact your ability to burn fat to fuel your cravings? Going back to the root, you talk about this in your book. You talk about the hormonal effect of insulin as one of the major trump cards in a sense. In the hierarchy of hormones, insulin has its say. Can you explain that in more detail here?

Jason Fung, MD

Yes, exactly. Other hormones make you gain weight. But, people talk about, if you are trying to lose weight, the most important thing to understand is what caused the weight gain in the first place. People say it is all about the calories. Again, it is not because if you put calories into your body, calories are a source of food energy. Your body can decide what to do with it. You put 500 calories in your body and can decide what to do with them. It can either start as fat or it can burn it for energy. Your heart, your lungs, and your kidneys, all need energy. What determines that? Well, it is a hormone. Insulin is the major hormone. When insulin goes up, this is just its job, right? Insulin is a normal hormone. When you eat, insulin goes up, and your body wants to store that energy. That is what the insulin is doing. It is because if you store energy when you do not eat, say, after dinner during that fasting period that you really should have every night, then you are going to need to pull that energy back out. Because you are not eating, where are your heart, your brain, and your liver going to get their energy from? 

Well, it is going to be the calories that you store away. The normal situation is that your body has a period that you eat, the insulin goes up, you store those calories, then there is a period of fasting you do not eat, insulin falls, and that energy comes back out. Your body’s either in this fed state or it is in the fasted state, in which case, in the fed state, you are storing calories, and in the fasted state, you are using calories. If you keep those balances, good for you. But different foods are going to have different effects on insulin. When you eat cookies, your body gets this massive signal because these processed foods, remember, do not have natural signaling because we have taken away a lot of these kinds of natural foods. You take highly processed junk food,  eat it, and get this much higher than a normal spike in glucose, which gives you this much higher than a normal spike in insulin, which tells your body to store that energy as fat. Okay, now that you take 100 calories of cookies, all of it sucks into your fat stores because you told it to because that is what the instant does. But where’s your body going to get energy from? 

An hour later, there is no satiety signaling. You are not feeling full in any way, Eating cookies generally does not make people feel full. If you drink Coca-Cola, you do not feel full. You could drink that huge, big Gulp. You did not feel any more for them before, but that is thousands of calories sitting there. It is not the number of calories that you eat that makes you feel full. It is the hormones that make you feel full. You eat a bit of steak; why those satiety hormone peptides? Why is this the closest to kind? They go up, and they tell you, Okay, you are getting full; you drink all that soda. It has a huge number of calories, but there is no satiety signaling. You do not feel full. The problem is that when you eat the cookies, your instant spikes way up. You suck all that energy into your fat stores, but you do not feel full. An hour later, you go eat more cookies. The same thing happens. That is why you cannot eat cookies for dinner. Because you are not going to be full. You are going to be looking for food. If you are hungry, you are going to eat. Then people say you are overeating. Yes, you are overeating. But the reason is that you did not eat the foods that made you full and you spike your insulin. All of it is getting sucked down. Your body has no energy to use because you sucked it all into storage. Now you are going and looking for food because you are like, I need more energy. 

Just if you go to the grocery store, you buy groceries and immediately as soon as you get home, you throw them all into your freezer in the basement. What are you going to eat? You have nothing to eat. What do you do? You go back to the grocery store and get more food because you have nothing to eat. The same thing. You eat these ultra-processed foods, and most refined carbohydrates are the main problem. All this goes into storage because insulin told it to go into storage. Now you have no energy for the rest of your body. I have to go get more. Same thing.  Insulin is a major determinant. If, on the other hand, you eat an egg or something, insulin does not go up well, there are probably energies floating around. Why do you need to go eat? Your body’s, okay, I am being full. I am just going to use the energy here. The difference, of course, is that none of that energy went into storage because you did not tell it to go into storage. 

Hormones are what run the body. every single thing in our body because of hormones. Obesity is no different. If you are trying to fix obesity, you have to say, What is the problem? Well, what causes weight gain? Well, if you think it is calories, you are not going to be very successful because people have done these studies. If you simply overfeed somebody, it is very difficult to overfeed somebody’s natural foods. If you keep eating steak, steak, steak, there is a point at which you have to stop. You cannot eat and eat because those natural foods have satiety hormones. That is not going to work. 

However, if you think that insulin is the major cause of obesity, there is a really simple experiment: if you give somebody insulin, do they gain weight? Absolutely. When you give people insulin, it does not matter who you are. If I give them insulin, they will gain weight. Why? Because insulin is a hormone that tells them to gain weight. We know 100 percent. People say, Well, that does not prove anything. I am looking for causality. If you say insulin causes obesity, the only experiment in which I am interested is; give insulin, do you gain body fat? If the answer is yes, that means it is a cause of obesity. It is not the only cause. There are other causes, say cortisol, for example. But it is probably one of the major ones. Therefore, if you say insulin is a cause of obesity because we know this, then if you want to lose weight, how are you going to lower insulin? Well, eat less of the foods that spike insulin or do fasting, which is ultimately about lowering insulin. It is not about lowering calories necessarily. It is about lowering insulin.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes, really important stuff there. Insulin when it is elevated in the body, will accelerate cell reproduction and can have an impact on inflammatory levels and aging as well.

Jason Fung, MD

Yes. Insulin has a lot of effects; it is also a growth hormone. For a lot of reasons; excessively high insulin levels are not good. Again, I do not know why this is controversial. Insulin is a hormone. It is supposed to be at a certain level, but it is too high. It is not good. If it is too low, it is not good. I am not sure why people do not get that. If it is too high, then you need to lower it. In the state of obesity, we know 100 percent that it is a state of hyperinsulinemia. That is, in people who are overweight, their insulin levels are too high. That is 25-30 years. Nobody doubts it. Same as Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes has insulin levels that are too high. Solution lower that. It is not that complicated. The question is now: How are you going to lower them? You could say cut your calories. But remember, some foods do not stimulate insulin barely at all. If you cut all your fat calories on a low-fat diet, remember that dietary fat does not have any effect on insulin.

If you have a problem of, Okay, my insulin level is too high, I am going to cut calories, but I am going to cut fat mostly because fat is very calorically dense. You have not impacted insulin levels at all. You have not fixed your problem, as opposed to, Hey, I am going to cut all my refined carbohydrates because those are the foods that stimulate insulin the most. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense and is, in fact, highly effective for a lot of people. Yet people will still say, Oh, it is because you cut your carbs and count your calories. It is—no, it is because I cut my carbs. Those are the foods that stimulate insulin the most. But it is a whole other discussion, the calorie counting. You will never convince them. Everything always comes back to the calories for them because, I do not know, it is just hard for them to wrap their brains around anything else. But the whole idea is that you have a hormonal imbalance. The insulin level is too high. Lower it. There are a lot of ways to do it.

You do not have to necessarily go low-carb. It is one of the ways of fasting. Intermittent fasting. Some diets are low-fat you can reduce insulin too. There are lots of different ways to do it. Exercise can be a very effective way. It tends to be a lot more work than changing your diet because it is not primarily insulin’s exercise hormone. It is predominantly a dietary hormone. Nevertheless, the exercise is going to affect it. But there are lots of different ways. There are different ways, even in terms of food. Fiber: you can slow down absorption, you can use vinegar, and you can change the order of your foods. There are a lot of different things you can change. In meal timing, such as eating early rather than late. All these kinds of things are important because they affect the hormones, not necessarily the calories.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes. If we want to be healthy, we want to be at our optimal weight. We want to feel great regularly; we want to live a long life as free of chronic disease as possible; and we want to control our insulin levels. You mentioned several different strategies there. Now, you have a lot of experience using fasting. I know that as a nephrologist, you work with a lot of people with diabetes, kidney issues, and chronic diseases. How do you get them started with a lot of these strategies, including fasting?

Jason Fung, MD

Yes, I think that the simplest is fasting because it is very easy for people to understand. It has been used for thousands of years. The problem with changing diets very often is that people are very fixed on the foods that they eat, which is normal. If you simply say, Do not eat anything, then it is easy to conceptualize that and it is easy to know what to do. Because if you just say, Okay, eat this Ketogenic diet, that is fine. But then you get all these questions; Is this Keto, is this Keto? 

Whereas fasting is a much cleaner, simpler solution. It is a very powerful solution because, of course, you cannot eat less than zero. Therefore, it is the ultimate in terms of diet and the fastest way that you can reduce insulin levels. You really cannot go lower than zero; you really cannot go lower than fasting. It is the most powerful. It is the simplest, it is not fun. I never said it was fun. I just said it was useful. For people who are very sick, it is a very good tool. The thing is that a lot of people, over the last 20 to 30 years of society, have gone the other way. As opposed to, in the seventies, where you did not eat after dinner, you went through to breakfast. You had 12 hours. You eat dinner at seven, and you eat breakfast at seven or nine. Say that is 12 to 14 hours of fasting that every person does every single day without thinking about it. Nowadays, people think it is crazy to go more than 3 hours without eating. We have gone far the other way that we have to eat, eat, eat all the time, even to lose weight. 

Now I was thinking, How does that work? How do you eat to lose weight? You really cannot, because it is the opposite. It is like you jump in the lake to dry off. No, you really cannot do that. You cannot eat to lose weight. Fasting is the thing that I tend to focus on because it is simple. All you have to do is start slowly because I am dealing with a lot of older people, a lot of people who are very ill, and who are on other medications. Gradually ramp your way up. You can start again; do not eat after dinner. Make sure you go through until breakfast, then you can gradually lengthen that period if you need to. A lot of people do well anyway, but if they want to lose weight, then they can start experimenting with going longer instead of either eating breakfast later or eating dinner earlier, and gradually even dropping one of the meals. Because the truth is that if you do not eat, people will always tend to overthink things. Things are not that complicated. 

Body fat and blood glucose are two ways that the body stores calories. If you have too much glucose, which is diabetes, or you have too much body fat, which is obesity. Then you have too much, stored food in your body. If you do not eat, your body will use the calories that are stored as body fat or as blood glucose. That is it. That is all that happens during a fast. Why are people overthinking the fast? Why is it bad to fast? When you fast, your body will use body fat. That is what it is there for. You are using it for what it is there for. Why not do it? Do not overthink these things. After a fast, will you be more hungry? Yes, you might be. In this case, you must control what you are eating. But on the other hand, you just have to understand that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with not eating. That is the reason that your body has these sources of energy. We would not have survived if we did not have a way to store energy. We die in our sleep every single night, but we do not. Therefore, let us just use it for what it is there for.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes. Our ancestors, going back thousands of years ago, did not have refrigerators, pantries, or things like that. It was very common, for them to go through feast-famine cycles when food was available to eat as much as they could. It was a very satiating food you talked about, high in fiber, fat, healthy fats, proteins, and things like that. They were satiated, but they could not store much. There were times when they did not have a good hunt or a good harvest; therefore, they were in a season of fasting, and their bodies had to adapt to it. Sometimes they would go days without food instead of getting weak and just laying there because they did not have any energy. Oftentimes they got stronger, and their senses were heightened because of all of the hormonal mechanisms that took place, such as elevated growth hormone or epinephrine, different things that, gave them a bit greater ability to go out and hunt, be more, and a higher probability of being successful because their senses were heightened. It is interesting what happens.

Jason Fung, MD

It is interesting. It is all physiology. People, this is all the basic human physiology that we have understood. It is first-year medical school stuff. When you do not eat, insulin is going to fall. Your body is going to start liberating some of the energy that is stored. Glucose is going to go into the system and it is going to use body fat; that is fine. But other hormones go up: growth hormone goes up, which preserves lean mass, or epinephrine goes up, which is going to increase your concentration abilities. It is going to increase your senses and give you more energy, which is why we have all these studies. For example, they will measure, say, metabolic rate. After four days of fasting, what they measure is that the metabolic rate, the number of calories the body is burning, is up by 10%.

People have known this forever. You think about the hungry wolf, the wolf who has not eaten for a while. Is it just falling higher? No, it is focused and energetic. That is what you want to be. You want to be the hungry wolf. You do not want to be that lion that just eats, is sleepy, in a food coma, post-Thanksgiving, Oh, I just need to lie down feeling, that is not energy. That is because you ate, and you need to digest. Hunger is not that, and fasting is not that. It is always strange that so many people are against it sometimes. It is less now than when I started. When I started, it was completely different. People are telling me all about this. Read your basic physiology textbook, man. It is not anywhere close to what is happening out there. The whole idea about burning muscle, I think, is way overblown, too. It all depends on your clinical situation because I see that sometimes people are out there saying, Oh, it makes you lose protein and stuff. It is; losing muscle is the one I was just looking at. It is ridiculous because they do these DEXA scans or something before and after fast. They say, Oh, I lost 10 pounds of muscle. 

In other words, you think the human body is so incredibly stupid that when you are storing energy or body fat when you need that body fat, you go burn your muscle. Do you think the body is just that stupid? Of course, it is not, because when they study, why is it that the muscle looks like it goes down? They took these men, put them through a 10-day fast, and said, There was a huge amount of muscle loss, according to the scan. But when they broke it down, it was all muscle, glycogen, and water that was being lost because, if you were to measure these people after they lost all this muscle, a week later they had magically regained all this muscle without doing exercise,

It is what you think that people just lose 10 pounds of muscle for no reason while maintaining muscle strength and then regain it without doing exercise, I wish. What was interesting about the study where they did a ten-day fast is that when they measured strength, strength went up in certain muscles by about 33%. They were not losing muscle. They are much stronger than they were before. It may have been the sympathetic tone that was elevated. But in other words, No, you are not burning muscle; if you are at 3% body fat, Sure, maybe you will. But I am mostly treating people, Well over the average, which is 20 to 25% body fat. For somebody who weighs 200 pounds, you are talking about 50 pounds of body fat that is sitting there. That is for an average person. 25% is not really, and they do not look overweight. The people who look overweight are 40% body fat. It’s 50 pounds of body fat, do you think the body is just that stupid and is just going to start burning muscle? I do not think so.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes. Again, it does not take into account the hormonal effects. Growth hormone is a very powerful hormone in the body. It is going to say, Hold on to that lean body tissue and help preserve that you have elevated branched-chain amino acids. When your body starts to burn fat, the insulin goes down, which tells the body, Hey, hold on to that muscle tissue. We want to preserve that because we need to kill something. We need to go hunting. We need a harvest. We need to find food. We need that muscle tissue from an ancestral perspective. Of course, you have that noradrenaline as well, and then we are epinephrine that comes out. That would be why everyone would be stronger after a 10-day fast. Fascinating. 

I think probably the only way you might lose muscle is if you are someone who has built a lot of muscle from resistance training, then you just start it. It is more about stopping the resistance training for an extended period. You are going to have natural atrophy just like you would if you were eating. You would have atrophy as well because you built extra muscle tissue. Oftentimes, when we are fasting, we are not doing resistance training because it might stimulate more cravings or things like that. If everyone is doing an extended fast, that is certainly possible. But the hormonal impact is powerful. We know growth hormones have incredible effects on aging as well. They call it the quintessential anti-aging effect. When we just stop eating, when we fast bring insulin down, we get this nice rise of growth hormone that can have powerful anti-aging effects.

Jason Fung, MD

Yes, for sure. The thing is that it has many benefits in many different areas. Not just metabolic health, of course, but people talk about autophagy. People often talk about Cancer, for example. or MTHFR and Insulin are both growth hormones. They are nutrient sensors, They go up when you eat. When you do not eat, they tend to go down, but they also tend to be associated with a lot of Cancers. Obesity is associated with Cancer. Can you reduce your risk? Maybe all of these things are, but they are not for sure. But there are a lot of really important benefits that go along with fasting. It is an amazing, and free intervention. It has been used for thousands of years as a pro-longevity, pro-health supplement. People did not fast for fun. They fasted because they thought it was good for them. I think maybe they were on to something. It is crazy to think that we are out of the loop and that we think we are smart when people in the past did not necessarily know why it would help them. But they realized it would help them, and that was enough for them. They just said, Okay, well, it is enough to help them. They did it, It is incredible.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes.  the insulin effect on chronic disease, I always think about it. There may be a genetic, toxicity, or other component that is the spark on a fire that lights the fire. But the higher your insulin, the more you are pouring gasoline on it. You are now allowing that spark to take life. When you control your insulin, you are no longer pouring the gasoline. Now the body has a chance to bring that fire down and under control.

Jason Fung, MD

Yes. It all depends on your underlying situation. If your insulin is too high, then yes, bringing it down perfectly is going to be very beneficial. In somebody who is not high, and people who are underweight, or even malnourished. Is it helpful? No, not at all, because insulin levels are low. Why would you want to lower that? It all depends on your situation and understanding of how to use fasting. Where to use fasting? I think that is the most important thing. It is just a tool. It is just a knife. It is either good or bad. It can be, and it can kill somebody, sure. But it can also heal if you use a scalpel to cut out a Cancer or something. The whole idea is that you have to understand these things; sometimes it get lost in the hysteria of people who are just dogmatic about them. It is all in how you apply it.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes, absolutely. It is just refreshing to be able to converse with you on this. I know you are in the medical world, conversing with a lot of people in that world. That is probably why you have this perspective of, man, I just wish people would get it and understand this better. It was refreshing to hear that. In my space, we are talking about this stuff all the time. Sometimes I forget that there are a lot of people who are just resistant to that message, but we are starting to make some headway. I think just conversations like this—getting these things out to the world, your YouTube channel, your books—have made a big impact on a lot of people; they have gotten that message across. 

I just want to take a moment to acknowledge all the great work that you are doing. Guys, definitely check out Dr. Jason Fung. Check out his website as well as his books and YouTube channel, where he is giving out great information we talked about today. Dr. Fung, thanks again for this great conversation. Any last words of inspiration here for our audience?

Jason Fung, MD

I think that one of the things people have to understand is that it can change their lives.  Because of a lot of these things, if you have Type 2 diabetes, you are at a high risk of lots of bad things, okay? Heart disease, Cancer, strokes, infections, blindness, kidney disease, and amputations. A lot of people in the United States have either Type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes; well over a third of the population has prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes. That puts them at huge risk of really bad things. The point is that it is all reversible. Yes, maybe fasting is not the most fun thing in the world. It is something to think about. It is a way of doing exercise. A lot of people do not exercise, but they do it anyway because they know it is good for them.

It is the same thing as fasting. It is something that is part of your daily life. Brushing your teeth is not fun, but we all do it because it is something you have to do to stay healthy. Fasting is the same. It is just something you need to do to stay healthy. Now, if you are far on that pathway to Type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, Well, then you need to do more to get you to work your way there. But if you do it every day, you simply keep at it. Then you can get to it. For people with Type 2 diabetes, particularly, you have to understand that it is a reversible disease. You have to put in the time and effort. It is not just about knowing that you should do it. It is about getting the motivation, getting the help, and getting the community to help you. We are all in this together; we can help each other. There is no reason to do it alone. It makes it more difficult to do it alone. It is something that is just a part of everyday life that has been neglected too. You may have to make up for it; do not think of it. As for me, people think of it as a weird, crazy fad diet; No, it is not.

It is just part of everyday life. You may need to do more if that situation is like that. Just to think of it that way rather than, something you can do once. I remember these studies that people used to do: If you fast for 16 hours and eat in an eight-hour window, you can eat whatever you want. It is, since when did anybody say that? yet the studies were done using that exact principle, saying fasting does not work. It is, Well, there is nobody I know who said you can do a 16/8 and then eat pizza and French fries for 8 hours straight and you will be fine. Nobody has said that. Yet the studies say that if fasting does not work, there is a lot of bias against it, almost. Do not think of that. They think of it as just another tool, something you have to think about every day.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yes. It is a core component of a healthy lifestyle for longevity and health optimization. That is the way you have to look at it. Well, thanks again, Dr. Fung. Guys, check him out again. doctorjasonfung.com and check him out on YouTube and all of his books. A great one is the Diabetes Code as well as the Obesity Code, and your upcoming book is; The Cancer Code as well. I look forward to that. Thanks again.

Jason Fung, MD

But that one is out already. The Cancer Code.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Oh, it is. Yes. Great. The Cancer Code is out guys, check that out. Thanks again, Dr. Jason.