What a family. It's episode 192 of the genius life. Welcome aboard.
What up, family? Happy Wednesday. How you doing? I'm your host. Max Lou, Guevara filmmaker health and science journalist. And author of The New York Times best-selling book, genius foods and the genius life guys. Today. I am pumped to bring today's guests to you. He is pretty well known in the online health and nutrition space partly because of
His strong opinions that he holds about various topics including calorie counting, and macro counting, and the root cause of the Obesity epidemic causes, I should say. His name is dr. Jason Fang. His involving is a nephrologist. He's an obesity expert, he is the co-host of the low-carb MD podcast. He's the author of the Obesity code and the diabetes code and he's the co-author of the complete guide to fasting and the longevity.
T solution. His latest book is called life in the fasting Lane, how to make intermittent fasting, a lifestyle and reap the benefits of weight loss and Better Health, Jason's men, really smart guy, a controversial figure. I will say that, but I don't think there's anything controversial about the conversation that we had over the course of the next, over the course of the next hour, and some odd minutes. We're going to talk about the key to sending type 2, diabetes into remission and eliminating its Associated risks.
We're going to talk about how losing weight and correcting certain types of chronic disease is a matter of controlling your environment rather than a failure of willpower. We're going to discuss. Why calorie and Mac recording so, often fails. And what to consider doing? Instead, we talk about why you should be intensely skeptical of packaged ultra-processed Foods, even those with a red heart healthy label on them. And finally, we talked about the specific hormonal effects of various food items so that you can leverage each for optimal.
The and satisfaction, dr. Phone knows his stuff and he's got the clinical experience to add real credibility to his recommendation. So I'm super excited for you guys to listen to this episode of the show. I had a blast taping it and you could watch it in its entirety if you prefer if you're a more visual learner on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Max Luke of here, before we get Rockin, this episode is brought to you by our friends over at Ned. Ned produces the highest quality full-spectrum CBD, extracted from organically grown.
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Thank you for listening and sharing that episode. If you like that one, you're going to love this one. So strap on your seatbelts. And here we go. Dr. Jason phone. Welcome to welcome back to the genius life. It's good to see you.
Thanks for having me. Of
course. Well, I want to get you on here because you're one of the more prominent voices in the online sort of nutrition space. And you've got a lot of strong opinions about you know, what people should and shouldn't be eating when it comes to improving their body composition.
And you also go into detail and a lot of your work on fasting and the benefits of fasting, which I know a lot of people are curious about. There's a lot of misconceptions out there. But before we get into the nitty-gritty of your of your recommendations, why don't you share a little bit with my audience about your background and the kinds of things that you see and treat in your clinic?
Sure. So I'm a kidney specialist and one of the things that we've been seeing a lot of especially these last few years is diabetic kidney disease.
And the thing about BTS is that most of it like 90 95 percent of it is type 2 diabetes, which is actually a reversible condition. So all of this disease which comes from type 2 diabetes, which is heart disease, cancers Strokes blindness amputation and kidney disease just to name a few. It's actually all completely preventable if you reverse a diabetes, so the key of course is to lose weight. Almost everybody knows that if you lose weight that diabetes either gets better.
Goes away. Completely, for decades. The sort of standard teaching was that it wasn't possible, that type 2 diabetes was chronic as Progressive. Once you had it, it was going on. So nobody ever tried to reverse type 2 diabetes, even though we knew actually, everybody knew that it was reversible. We convinced ourselves that it wasn't. In fact, it was just about lost in the last month that they've published guidelines on how to classify people as remission.
That is if your sugars come down and you're not on medications, you're in remission before that, they just denied that that entire thing was possible. As in, if you had it you always had it for the rest of your life. So it's an interesting progression. So that's how I sort of got into weight loss specifically because it was really something that was key to helping patients. That is if you if you
Diabetic kidney disease. There's nothing you can do about it. Unless you get rid of the diabetes. That's what's causing your disease unit to get rid of it. That's the bottom line, if you're not. And if losing weight, is what you need to do to get rid of it. Then you need to lose weight. And doctors had just sort of given up the entire sort of space, you know, to Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. And there is no science in this whole weight loss Pace. It was sort of
Of like is ridiculous. Honestly, that doctors were not in the least bit interested. Like you didn't get taught in medical school. You didn't get taught during residency, even though we knew that it played such a huge massive important role in causing all the diseases that we see, like, who denies that losing weight, can lower your risk of heart disease, and stroke, and type 2, diabetes, and cancer, and all this thing. There's obesity related cancers, for example, so,
In though, we knew it was a huge, huge part of overall health. Physicians weren't in the least bit interested and that was sort of strange to me. And that's where I started started getting into it. And started talking about these sort of things trying to bring some of the sort of Science and clinical expertise into this field. And one of the things that I started with was like why don't we use intermittent fasting or fasting in general? There? Is this poll?
Idea that fasting was going to kill us even though we were, you know, you know, overweight and diabetic. It's like, you know, it was crazy because I had patience. And I remember this very clearly so I don't blame the practitioners because this was simply the teaching you'd have people like 500 pounds on hundreds of units of insulin and people would be like, even if you're not hungry. You must be well, why, why would
you want to do that?
If you're not hungry and don't eat right? Let your body burn down some of this sugar or body fat because that's the way, the body's way of storing calories. But that was the standard things. Like, you must eat. You must be. You must eat even even to lose weight and it's like that's just, you know, defies all common sense. And then they try to say that it was like going to, you know, burn down your muscle, which was like, well, you know,
It's like you really think our bodies just that stupid, right? If you store calories as sugar and fat and as soon as you need it you burn muscle, right? That that makes sense, right? That's how we survive to become the dominant species on this Earth is by being just that stupid right? It's like that doesn't make any sense. You store the sugar and fat when you need it because you're not eating, you use the sugar and you use the fat and that
The science behind it. And you know, there's all kinds of other misconceptions and was Tracy, was that the truth was actually almost the entire opposite to what people had been taught including myself. So there was this whole rethink of, you know, faxing intermittent fasting me, you know, some people try and say that I painted as a cure-all. It's like, no. It's it's because, you know, it's what needs what we need sort of in this day and age that is. If you look at say,
Say the 60s, when there's just not that much type 2 diabetes. There's just not that much obesity compared to today. It's not that useful. It's a tool for people to lose weight. It's a tool for them to control their blood sugars. If you don't have that then it's not that useful tool. If you do have that and it is a useful tool. So, you know, that's that's that's how I got into it. Sort of.
Yeah, I mean, what a powerful story. What would you say are the key? Sort of, you know,
Like describe the food environment for us that you see as being dry, you know, behind the driver's seat of the epidemic of obesity and kidney disease that you're seeing. Is it the environment?
I think it is the environment, you know, there's a lot of these sort of people out there that try and sale. It's about willpower willpower require the and I don't think that's true. I don't think the Obesity epidemic is an obesity of low. Willpower. I just
Don't think that's true. I think that it's the food environment that we find ourselves in the teaching we find ourselves in because the, you know, the, the heart of the issue is the way that we've sort of gotten to this stage is one, that's been very strange. So, you know, in the 60s and 70s, there wasn't a lot of UB City. People didn't really watch what they ate. I mean, they're eating cookies or ice cream, you know, I sandwich every day with a juice box and a cookie.
Right eye brown bag that like literally every day for all of high school all of middle school. So like for like 10, 11 years straight. That's what I ate. Right. So that's two slices of white bread. Processed meat juice and a cookie. It's like that's almost as bad as you can get, it's terrible, but I hate that every day and so did most of my friends. So it's not that the foods are
We're great back then either. I mean, but then fireman that we find ourselves in is much different and it started with the sort of low-fat dogma of the 1970s. And, of course, one of the things that people forget is that when you move to a low-fat environment, what they did was they encouraged food companies to bring out a lot of processed foods that were lower in fat, so that we could eat the foods that we normally 8.
Lower in fat. So you had, you know, snack Wells and all that sort of stuff, which was supposed to be good for you because it was low in fat. The problem is highly processed a lot of carbohydrates, but, you know, they added lots of sugar and stuff to make up for the flavor and that wasn't a good trade-off. So, about 10 years later, you started to see a lot of type 2 diabetes. The Obesity epidemic started almost immediately right. After the other thing that happened is that as you started to eat a lot of processed foods,
you get this sort of spike in insulin. So if you eat like two slices of white bread and jam in the morning, for example, your glucose spikes up, your insulin spikes up, then it spikes down. So by 10:30, you're just ravenously hungry. Because you're, you know, all that food has gone into storage because instant is high. All those calories have gone into storage your body's like, hey, I have nothing left here. So let's go eat. So you go get yourself a little fat muffin. And then, of course,
It's sugar spikes up sugar spice down by larger hungry. You could get yourself a big plate, of low-fat pasta, sugar spikes up sugar spikes down by three o'clock, you're hungry again. So you could get some low-fat muffins or, you know, a bagel or something like that. Right? Again, saying thing sugar spikes up sugar spikes down. So this was this, this point in time where people were eating all the time because they were eating highly processed foods if those sort of satiety like if you ate bacon and eggs in the morning, you weren't that
Hungry at 10:30. If you you know, white bread and jam you were and that's where people start to think. Hey, I'm eating six times a day where I used to eat three times a day. I need to go get granola bars all the time because you know, full of sugar and stuff because I'm hungry at three o'clock. And so then people start, but I'm eating low-fat. So, therefore must be good there for eating six times a day must be good, but it never was good. It was just that you're eating highly processed foods that
You know, that that weren't natural foods and that was what was causing it. So that's sort of how that whole thing came about where we started to believe that eating snacking was good for you as opposed to the previous sort of hundred years where snacking was actively discouraged. Like you shouldn't be eating in front of your computer. You shouldn't be eating while reading. You shouldn't be eating in front of the TV. You should eat at a table with other people, with a properly cooked meal right now. It's like grab whatever you can.
You can from wherever you can and it's all crappy food. So that's how we be believed it. Then we started teaching our children. Right? So you look at our, you know, my kids schedules, you know, they'd have breakfast in the morning and then they'd get like a mid-morning snack. Then they'd have lunch, then they have an after school snack. Then they'd have dinner then while playing soccer. In, between the halves of soccer parents were like me. They need to have a snack. I'm like, God that's like six times a day. I remember one time.
My the the school sends home. This piece of paper says, oh the kids are going away on some field trip or something. You're going to be on the bus, you know, coming back. I like for cloth or whatever. They're going through at one after lunch and then coming back. Please pack them to snack. I'm like, why did you not become funds really nice dinner like but but it gets normalized, right? That's the point. I'm not blaming this Schools. They're just sort of responding because normalized that you must eat all the time. Even
Even to lose weight and it's like, that's not true. What you need to do is get back to those natural foods that you're eating, not the processed food because the whole process food, boom was sort of kicked off by this dietary guidelines, which focused us on macronutrients as opposed to Foods. Right? And that was a deadly, deadly mistake. So when you start saying things like you should eat low fat, that means fat is the thing that's bad for you. It doesn't matter if you're highly processed or not. As long as it's low in fat.
It's good for you. That's not true. You, you know, if you eat Natural Foods, it doesn't matter that much. What your macro nutrient, composition is, your body knows how to handle it. That's how you had people eating sort of very high, you know, meat diets versus very high vegetarian diets, and still relatively low obesity. It wasn't. The nutrients is the processing. Our body has been eating meat for
You know, millions of years. We've been eating plans for millions of years. Our body knows how to keep that in check, because the amount of body fat, you carry is very important to you in the wild. If you have too much body fat, you're going to get eaten and you can't catch food. So you're going to die. So if you have too much fat, you're going to die. But if you eat Natural Foods, our bodies will automatically adjust, right? So you if you eat Natural Foods, even if they are high in carbs or whatever, your body will say, okay, that's enough. You should stop eating.
And then your body will adjust. So that's this whole process food thing. So it was tied in. So the two big things I think in terms of diet is eating just highly processed foods as opposed to Natural Foods. That's probably the most important more than any macronutrient, like fat or carbs or protein and that's what you need to focus on, which gets lost in the whole discussion of high carb, versus low carb and stuff like that. And then
The linked part of that is don't eat all the time. Like, you just, it's just not part of a healthy lifestyle. You have to eat when you eat and not eat when, you know, so you can digest that food that you've eaten, you know, the concept is fairly simple. If you're eating your body's going to start calories. If you're not eating, your body's going to use those calories that you took him. So you need to keep them in Balance. If you don't, if you are eating all the time, you're telling your body to store fat.
All the time. So of course you're going to gain weight. Like there's no other way around it. So give your body the time. It needs to use. Those calories that you took in during your meal times, right? And that's what was missing. People said. Oh, you know, you get up, you have to eat breakfast right Edd. And then don't forget your bedtime snack is like, okay, but when was your body going to use up those calories that you're eating all the time, right? It was you know, the whole the whole discussion. I found frankly just
You know, it was, it was sort of ridiculous at the point, at which we got ourselves two.
Yeah, we really need to undo Decades of bad advice, quick. Pause, you guys. Today's program is brought to you by our friends over at athletic greens, the health, and wellness company that makes comprehensive daily nutrition, really, and I mean, really simple, I love to mix athletic greens into my protein shakes. You guys know that I on a fairly regular basis. Take integrate whey protein, I love mixing some athletic greens with it.
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If you wander through the aisles of the modern Supermarket, you're going to see Health claims on cereals on granola bars on instant oatmeal's on all of the packaged crap that have tons of added sugar to them. But you're never going to see Health claims on a dozen eggs or on an avocado or on a piece of steak for that matter. So your average consumer walks through the supermarket's intending on eating a healthful diet. They see all the
The red heart healthy logos on the cereals, on the granola bars. It's no wonder that's what Americans are mostly consuming.
Yeah, and and, and it's crazy because it's like things like red meat. For example, it's like, you know, we talked about this no red meat, red meat, like you because red meat is new to our diet. Is that why? Like me haven't been eating red meat for the last, you know, million years like everybody sort of knows what to do.
When you eat me like it knows how to handle it without getting sick, you know, because you can't eat that much meat, like, it. It makes you full it there. It's very satiating. Like, it's very hard to over, eat meat. It's you have to process it to get that real, you know, overeating sort of syndrome. So same with eggs, right? It's like we demonize eggs for so long, right? Whole fat Dairy.
We demonize butter. We demonize, right? And it's decades right from the 70s. And this was also a very sad story, right? So we said, oh, butter is high in saturated fat. It's going to cause heart attacks. It's like, but don't don't you realize that? We've been eating butter for several Millennia without causing heart disease. And now, in 1970, it causes heart disease. But anyway, so we demonized butter, which was high in saturated fat, but it was a natural fat. So, it wasn't that bad for you, then.
Polti polti margarine, right? And that's where Bissell and all these other things came out. Turns out of course to make it spreadable and stuff. They use a lot of trans fats. We're actually they were killing you, right? They cause tons of heart disease. So I think there's one study that estimated that switch from butter to margarine cause about a hundred thousand heart attacks per year in the United States. So, think about this for a second, this misguided race to go low fat.
That so that we would have less heart attacks. Actually cause more heart attacks, right? A lot more heart attacks because we switch from the natural fat, which was butter to margarine with trans fats, which actually were causing a lot of heart disease. Like, we know that now that wasn't so evident in the 70s and 80s, but it's it's one of these things where it's this hubris. That we think we can do better than nature, right? We're smarter than nature like we can make a better breasts.
Then breast milk, right? It's like, come on, that's ridiculous. Our bodies have evolved for breast milk. And now of course, and this was again in the 70s 80s, people were being fed formula, even though mothers were perfectly fine had perfectly, you know, adequate sources of breast milk. They were fed formula because there is this whole idea that it was better. Of course, it took Decades of that before. Finally people said, hey, you know, breast milk is actually quite good for you. There's all kinds of good stuff in here.
Here. So then we've gone back to breast as fast and so on. But it's the same idea. Right? We have the same thing with Foods. We can make more Foods healthier by processing the hell out of them so that we can fit some pre-specified notion of low carb, high carb, low fat, low fat, you know, high fat, you know, whatever. We can make it better food than what is naturally there. And it's like, we can't don't think that you can because this is just the way we've grown up.
And, and it's not that there's something intrinsically wrong. It's just, you know, I say, you know, it's like, you know, I use something called the parable of the cow. So two cows when they are, you know, talking in there. Say hey did you see latest nutrition evidence says that we should be eating meat. Garsa diet was done on lions, but there's so the cows start eating meat then they die. And then the lions come in. Hey, you see the latest studies that say, grass is the best course. The study
I was down on cows, right? And then they start eating grass and done. But the point is that you have to eat the foods that you evolve with. It's not that many things intrinsically, good or bad. It's what the foods that we eat. So if we're, if we haven't evolved to eat margarine, that margarines probably going to do us a lot of harm, which it did. If you are evolved to eat butter, then the butter probably is not going to do you much harm and it wasn't so it took us.
Literally, from the 70s, to the 2010, the mid 2010 before butter was sort of acceptable to the two thousands. Avocados were like, whoa, why the heck eating avocados? Why are you eating olive oil? Right? That took decades for us to get back there. Right? If we had just said, look if it's if it's natural, if it's unprocessed, if it's a traditional food. It's probably
Okay, if it's not and that includes beef, that includes, you know, me and stuff right now, but if it's not, then it's probably not. Okay, and that's sort of the most important factor. But again, you gets lost because the food industry doesn't make that much money. Like if you sell broccoli, you sell broccoli, you can you know, put it in a box and try and sell it up. Sell it for twice the price.
Yeah, I mean, stocks of broccoli don't have a big glaring, red heart on.
In the supermarket, begging you to eat them. But you walk through the aisles, which is where we know all the ultra-processed foods lie in. Wait. There's Health claim after
Health:. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, the whole thing is crazy and that's where I started when I was writing the Obesity code, sort of got to where it's like, look, we got to like start to educate people on the basics of nutrition and you
No fasting is part of that because it had gone so far as we were talking about. Oh, you know, there's all these things like tracking your Macros, right? It's huge. So you have to have this percentage fat and this person is like but that's not the way we eat. We foods like you don't, you don't know what percentage carbs, my cauliflower is unless you look it up. So what you need to do is really focus on the foods, but even then that's that's sort of the minority. What you get taught in medical.
Will is number of calories, you know, percentage fat, percentage carbs, you know, it's like that's the wrong thing. Is it natural? That's all you need to know. Are you eating constantly? If you are, then you'll probably gain weight. If you're not, then you probably won't be gaining.
What are the qualities of these ultra-processed foods that make them so prone to driving hunger, obesity chronic disease,
I think is because
It's sort of bypasses, and a lot of our natural satiety signals. And so when you eat Natural Foods there, there there are hormones that go up. So you take, for example, and certain hormones will go up. So, cholecystokinin and responsive dietary fat and py in response to protein.
So when you reach a certain point, your body says enough that your fault, it's like don't need anymore, and it's not easy to overcome that. And that's why you have those restaurants that will say. Oh, you eat this 16-ounce steak and we'll give it to you free. They're not giving out a lot of free steaks because it's just really hard to keep eating when you're full. That's the same thing. You see, in the all-you-can-eat restaurant. So, everybody's gone to one of those you're completely full and, you know, somebody
That's down two pieces of like pork chop. You'll be like, well, you know, I'm gonna throw up, right? It's but those are the same pork chops that you ate at the beginning of the meal perfectly fine. So it's not to do with the porkchop. It's the fact that your hormones are just basically screaming at you to stop and we have that for all natural foods because we've evolved to eat. So if you eat vegetables, for example, it's got bulk and so the fills up your stomach and then that sends out signals, stretch receptors in the stomach will send out.
Signal stop don't eat. So for example, if you have people with bezel ours, which is hair like so some people, you know, or cats or something, the bill, you know, ingest hair accidentally, and their stomachs will fill up. They actually can't eat because their stomach is just full of hair. So and the stretch receptors will tell your body. Hey, stop eating stop eating. So if eating something, which is very bulky, like, salads, or something like that. You can't eat, you can't just keep eating them. Once you start.
Assessing foods you can get rid of those things that make you stop eating and it's very highly profitable to do. So, of course, because you want people, if you're trying to sell product, you want people to eat. So, what you do when you make a cookie, for example, as you take white flour, so what you do is you take out all the fat in it, right? So flower is almost pure carbohydrate. You've taken out all the fat, you've taken out all the proteins. So you have nothing that actually makes you full. You can keep eating that, almost definitely. You also take out all the
Brr, so all that bulk that you get with the wheat or whatever. Like, you don't have that anymore. So there's no bulk. There's no fat. There's no protein. Well, there's no satiety signaling at all. So, if you think about that, all-you-can-eat, buffet, you can't eat those two pork chops, but you could eat a cookie for dessert, right? Because there's there's no satiety signaling there. You could drink some coke, which is pure sugar. There's a lot of calories there, but there's nothing that is going to scream at you to stop taking
It so you don't, and that's why ultra-processed foods. And their studies on this always lead to overeating because there's no natural breaks on that system. And even if you're not hungry, even if you're completely full, you can still take him down. So if you are full and you're not hungry and somebody says, oh but you must eat to lose weight. So go have something, you're not going to get yourself a pork chop one because it's hard to because you have to go fry it out but too.
You don't want that your body is going to say, oh, I'm nauseated. It's like, you know, if you have lunch and then somebody says, oh, you have to eat a snack at 2:30. You're not going to get yourself a, you know, a porterhouse steak. So you're going to go get some highly processed food like a low fat muffin or a cookie, or a granola bar and that's what's going to happen. So, the two things is that one that leads to overeating in terms of the quantity and to at leads to overeating in terms of the frequency.
See, in which you do it. So, you know, both of those are bad. Like, when you're full, you know, your body is telling you, you don't need to eat. I'm using up the stuff that is coming in. Don't take put any more in, right? Just just use it up. But now, if you need to for something down because of our sort of misguided teachings for the last sort of 30 years, then you're not going to be able to take down something natural. You're going to have to take down something highly process, but that was the problem in the first place. So you
Down that low fat muffin, but it ain't doing any favors because, you know, your body is just going to, it's got more more, you know, more to deal with.
Yeah, and so, interesting. I see you sometimes butt heads with people in the fitness Community, who love to promote the idea that or, or at least imply that calories, are all that matter when it comes to
weight loss or weight gain for that matter. Could you, uh, could you give us a sense of that of that sort of conflict? I believe, it's really kind of, you know, there are some that just promote this idea that so long as you're tracking your calories, you can eat whatever you want and then there are others. But that that, I guess promote the idea that that's actually, you know, a reductionist approach that doesn't really take into account the full breadth of how Foods.
Fact hormones, and as a result Drive feelings of hunger satiety and the like, give us the lay of the land of that sort of conflict, which seems to be, you know, always going on social media nutrition is course.
Yeah, it's always the fitness people and I generally don't engage with them, but they like to, they like to attack me anyway, because what I'm trying to do is try and give people more nuanced approach and you see this with
Doctors to this 000 calories, all that matters. It's like, okay, but that's a very simplistic approach because what's important is the calories this calories, but what's more important is what's controlling? How many calories we take? Right? So calories is sort of a proximate cause, whereas you need to look at the ultimate cause if you're always hungry and that's where you're taking more calories. Well, that is a problem. Right? Yes. It's still the calories.
That are the problem but not and it also gives you this idea that all calories are the same. All calories are going to produce the same satiety. For example, they don't they're nothing alike. You could drink thousand calories of some sugary drink and get zero satiety out of that. So how is it calories? Calories calories? Yes, if you decide to, you know, count your calories down to the last one, you think that you can lose weight, but almost nobody.
He does. Because what happens of course, is that if you eat the wrong foods and you go from 2,000 calories to 1,500 calories, people say, oh you're going to lose weight. You almost never do because they always say caloric deficit, caloric deficit, but they're not understanding that. If you're bought, if you eat 1,500 calories, instead of mm, but your body goes from burning. 2002 burning, 1,500. You still haven't lost weight and that's exactly what happens. We've shown this and study.
Just study almost every study for the last 50 years. Shows the same thing. When you restrict calories without looking at the foods without looking at satiety without looking at all these ultra-processed foods without looking at frequency of food, when you just restrict calories alone. What happens is that your body responds by burning fewer calories in which case your caloric deficit disappears. So technically, it's true. It's about a caloric.
Cassette right? And they always say, well, you're just denying science. It's like no, you're just not understanding that. What's important is not the calories themselves, but sort of what goes, what's going on behind the scenes, the food behind like you want to pretend that a hundred calories of broccoli is equal to a hundred calories of soda in that. They both have a hundred calories. That's true. But look at it this way, our response to the broccoli and the soda.
Completely different to tidy effect, completely different effect on the tablet. Abala crate completely different. So why would you say that the same? Nobody gets fat eating broccoli, almost ever. So, why would you say that? That's true. So you got to get back to the foods. The reason, the fitness people are so gung-ho one is that they are generally very fit themselves. So they want to use it as proof that they're better than you and that's basically it.
Their whole self worth, is based on the fact that they're fit. And therefore, they want that as proof that they have more knowledge and more willpower than you and therefore, they can sell it. And that's basically all it makes them feel good about themselves. When they say, oh, it's all about calories, calories calories. What they're saying? Is that look at me. I'm fit. So you must look up to me. That's it. It's a big ego trip for that. Right? They don't understand the science behind it like,
The body has no calorie receptors. So when you take a hundred calories of cookies versus a hundred calories of broccoli.
The body doesn't know how many calories. You're taking the body, only knows what happens once you eat. And that's the hormonal response, whether it's peptide, why why cholecystokinin insulin cortisol, that complex, interplay of the hormones that are released in response to the hundred calories of cookies is different than the hormones. Released in response to the hundred calories of salmon or eggs or whatever you want. They're completely different. And all that means is that
Those two foods have different fattening effect. Cookies are more fattening than broccoli. Well, does that make sense? Yes, it does. Your grandmother could have told you that cookies, are more fattening than than broccoli. Like, come on. That's the only thing. It means, it doesn't mean I'm denying that foods of calories and calories are not important. It's I'm saying some foods are more fattening than others and they don't get that because they're so invested like,
One, if you spent several decades in the field and they're like, they're grown up on this whole calories calories calories thing and the truth is that it hasn't worked. I mean, if counting calories was successful, you I would be the first guy out here telling people to count their calories. Okay, but if you actually look at the success rate of counting calories, it's about 125 percent. That's the data.
So somewhere between 95 and 90% 99% of people, fail, to lose weight, counting calories. So, why would I recommend that as a strategy? How is that useful to my patient? If I recommend something that has a 99% chance of failure for you and say, I want another doctor, please. And that's why doctors have sort of largely abandoned the field because what we've been taught, which is mostly espoused by this whole calorie thing and the fitness people are just allowed as because they have something.
To sell, which is themselves mostly and they don't and they've grown up on this whole calories thing and they don't really want to relearn it. And of course, then if course it would mean that their thinness and fitness is not proof of their, you know, that they're better than you sort of thing. And that's what's tiring to me. It's like they're not really
Focus on helping people like if they're focused on helping people why I recommend a strategy that we've been doing for the last 35 years, 40 years, right? I mean, it's clearly clearly failed as a useful strategy for people. So why double down on it? It's like the answer is because that's what they're selling. That's what they're selling. You're selling themselves and and and their Fitness. Their thinness is proof of their
Are there there that, you know, their Mastery of it, but it's not. I mean, it's just it's just that the, the whole debate is, there's not really even a debate. I don't even engage them because it's very hard to make any of them. See the actual point of a lot of this stuff. They don't understand. Hey, you know what you say. It's all calories. So you're saying that cookies are not more fat are as fattening as broccoli or if you say oh you need to restrict or everything in moderation.
And so we should eat cookies in moderation. The same way that we eat broccoli in moderation. I should moderate my broccoli intake. Is that what you're telling me? I don't think I need to moderate my broccoli and take. I don't think I need to moderate my spinach intake and if you think I do.
Like you're you know who believes that, right? It's like that doesn't even make sense. So yes, I mean there are certain things to focus on because when you start restricting everything like yes, you must moderate your intake of every single food on Earth. It's like well, that's a hard diet to follow. I'd rather just say I can eat natural foods. I can eat, you know, meat, I can eat eggs. I can eat everything there that it's not natural. What I want to moderate is the ultra process.
Foods things that are, you know, not natural, like cooking, they're not particularly natural. You don't have cookie trees.
You don't have cookie trees. Nursing never seen a Cookie Tree. Hey guys, quick pause before we jump back into today's episode with dr. Fong. I want to invite you to a live, Zoom call that I'm doing with my genius life. VIP members this Monday, September 27th at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard time. We meet every month to chat about all things nutrition, and health. Honestly, it's my favorite thing to do.
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Now, you know, I think that there's a significant. It's probably a significant selection bias within the fitness Community people who are obsessed with their Fitness. So there's a high degree of motivation of passion of maybe even Obsession for people in the fitness community. And these are people who are and as a result. These are people for whom tracking meticulously. Their macron calorie intake isn't really that difficult. What the problem is.
Did that while that can work for pretty much anybody who follows it it ceases to work, the minute you stop counting and your average person isn't going to be as obsessed or have built in the same feedback loops over Decades of being involved in Fitness being immersed in Fitness as some of these Fitness influencers, some of the more some of the loudest Fitness influencers have been doing Fitness their whole lives. Some of them have even
Add in Fitness competitions. So that to me implies a level of obsession and they make the mistake of of, you know, falsely believing that the masses. The the mainstream dieting population is going to be able to be as invested in in the tracking of calories as they are. And that's why I think it fell.
So consistent.
Yeah, I think tracking calories is not difficult than stays. There's tons of apps to do it. The problem is is its calories and versus calories out and it's true. But calories out is mostly for most people who aren't exercising a lot. It is mostly basal metabolic rate and there's simply no way to track that on a regular basis. Like you can do expensive tests to measure your basal metabolic rate. That's how many calories you're burning. So if you take any
Exercise out of the equation, just for simplicity's sake, you can do the calories that you take in from 2000 to 1500. I have like I have like hundreds of women mostly who have tracked it to a tee. Like they weigh every morsel of food, then they put it into their app and they write down exactly how many calories are taking but they don't lose weight. Why? Because they go down to 1200 calories that they take in, on a
Daily basis but they don't understand is that the amount? They're burning also went down to 1200. They say, I don't understand this Fitness gurus that I just need to to cut my calories, but you didn't you took you didn't take into account half of the equation, which is that whole calories out part. It's not mostly exercise. And yes, if you do six hours a day, then probably you're going to be able to significantly impact that we saw that. I'm all those.
Biggest Loser studies, right? I don't know if you've read them, but they track The Biggest Loser contestants. They all lost a lot of weight, but the problem is their metabolic rates plummeted. So, therefore and they're tracking calories for the most part. So therefore and they made up for it initially with sort of like 10 hours a day of exercise. But as soon as that dropped off their basal metabolic rates, and their basal metabolic rates, never went up with exercise. It was continuing to go down because you can access eyes your
So you can make your liver burn more calories. You can't make your kidney burn more calories. You can't tell your body. Hey, I want my body temperature to go up three degrees. That's all controlled by hormones, which is linked back to the foods that we eat. So you eat low calories of the wrong Foods. Then what happens you can track that you can eat a thousand calories. And I've seen people, whose basal metabolic rates are like 800 calories a day. So they eat a thousand calories.
A day, they're gaining weight. Well, and the people the fitness feel our. Oh that's impossible. It's like that's because you don't actually deal with patients. Like you just you just want people to work out, which is great that you can work out. That's fine. But the whole point is that unless you have both sides, the calories and and the basal metabolic rate. You don't know what's happening like you try and create a caloric deficit but you only see the input. You don't see the output. So, how are you going to create a caloric deficit? You say you need a calorie deficit? Yeah, okay.
But how are you going to create it? Because counting calories does not like I don't have to prove that. It doesn't work. Like who doesn't know that counting calories doesn't work. Like every single person I meet has done calorie counting and almost everybody fails. So why do I need to prove that calorie counting doesn't work? I'd love it. If it were if all I had to do was download an app and take a picture of me.
My food and way it and stuff and nights for sure. Lose weight. I'd be the first one to do it. Why? Because it'll make them healthier if they lose weight, right? Yeah, that's that's that's known. But the point is that it doesn't work and if it doesn't work, then why you keep promoting it. So no matter what all these Fitness people are out there and some of the calories all about calories. Okay. So you took this sort of 40 year old position that has clearly failed as the entire world starts to
Become more peace and you're defending it against people who want to look at, you know, calories in a sort of more broader context of hormones, and satiety and energy expenditure. And, you know, basal metabolic rate and you're saying that, you know, that's, that's false. Just make it simple and make it calories. It's like what the world is not that simple. So, you know, that's, that's I think why a lot of these
These Fitness Fanatics are out there because again, they pretend it's all in your control. Like it's all. It's just a Foods. It's just willpower. It's like no it's not. This will power. There's a whole lot more that goes into it. And that's where a lot of the and, you know, these Fitness, people who say it's kind of kind of kind, they're in part responsible for a lot of the fat shaming that goes on because by equating calories and with fatness, with willpower,
Our what you're saying is not that they're fat. You're saying that these people don't deserve respect because they have no willpower and I don't believe that. I believe that they're doing something wrong. It's the knowledge that they got over. You know, that we taught them is the knowledge that needs to be changed. Its the systems that need to be changed like getting rid of easy-to-access foods, getting rid of ultra-processed foods. It's that it's the knowledge. Not that there's something intrinsically wrong with them. When you say, it's all about
Calories and therefore it's all about willpower. And therefore your thinness is a reflection of you as a person. That's where the fat shaming comes in because you don't respect these people because they're fat because you think that that indicates a character deficit. So while they're out there blustering and blustering, I think it's actually extremely dangerous for them to be talking about this, you know, about that point of view that it's all calories. It's all calories, all willpower. You just got to do it. You know, it's like yeah. You're
Just Brawn, but you're also fostering this entire sort of.
It's okay to shame fat people because they did it to themselves. Sort of idea which I find very distasteful. I mean, I think it's more that the knowledge has to come like, you know, other tools like intermittent fasting and so on need to be tried and so on as opposed to, to that. So, yeah, that's why I have a problem with the calories. Sort of people. It's one is like
It's just doesn't work and two. It's actually super unhealthy for us to be to be talking about it in that way. It generates disrespect for people who don't deserve it.
Yeah, I'm largely in agreement with you. I think it's, I think it does a massive disservice to people that get caught in that net, where maybe they will see somebody on, for example, the explore page on Instagram, go over. And then they get
Sucked into this. Vortex is a universe where all that matters, our calories in, calories out, calories. Deficit, yada yada. I think it's, it's harmful unless you unless you're putting ahead of that, the the facts about how food affects Behavior, how the quality of the food, and what you choose to eat, ultimately dictates how much you eat because otherwise, you're just going to be spinning your wheels caught in this endless Vortex of
Of hunger.
Yeah, and it's that acknowledgement that they often don't have. That is, it's all about calories. It's like so, you know, but if I were to eat, you know, just a lot of broccoli and not track my calories, but that work is like sure, of course it would work. Right, but the the whole thing is, you know, it's to me. It's and the reason I don't engage is it's usually a firmly held position that
Almost impossible to dislodge them from that. It's all just calories. And, you know, a hundred calories of cookies is the same as a hundred calories of broccoli like in, no, physiologic textbook. Would you ever find that? Like, no doctor would ever say that, but they do, right? They they're like, yeah, it's the same. It's the same cookies. Are as fattening as broccoli. Broccoli is the same as cookies, and psych. No, not at all. There's nothing the same. So, please don't treat them.
But they do and because they have, you know, they get supported by all the other supporters who are again, very into fitness and therefore wanting to flaunt that thinness as their superiority over other people. Right? And it's that sort of feeling that they feel that they're superior, but that anybody can do it. Therefore, they're entitled to make fun of others and I don't, I don't like that. And it's, you know, to me it's very distasteful. You see it, some people, these people are extremely
he like,
You know, extremely negative towards other people. Like then it gets them views. Like it gets them. A lot of views, it gets them on two. Very prominent shows. That's about it like that. That's great for them. I don't see that. It's helpful for most people but, you know, they can do it if they like them. I don't tell them what to do and
we all just get along, you know, I mean, you helped so many people and I'm sure that they help their tribe as well.
I just the vitriol within the online nutrition space. I think is sometimes
I agree with you because the thing is that if you look at, I mean, I have a lot of detractors about, you know, because what I talk about is a lot more nuanced than calories. It's all about college, but I never say anything bad about any of those people who say that. Like if you want to do that go ahead but they feel no compunction about saying bad things about me. So they're like, oh, this guy's an idiot. This guy's a quack.
Don't think I ever say that on my Twitter feed or anything. It's not useful. It's not helpful. And if people want to believe something, they can believe something. It's not like, if it works for you, good luck to you. I don't care either way, like, don't don't end. I'm not going to engage with them. I don't believe in that. But you see this negativity and again, it's because it's the day, you know, it's the age of social media where all that, super negativity gets you followers because they're like, oh, that's great. So then
then it encourages these people who just want a slag other people. It's like but some people are helped by what I do. So, you know, so why like some people are helped by what they say. So that's why I don't say anything bad about them. Like what am I going to say? I don't respect them because there's just so negative all the time. But like why do you need to do that? It's like, yeah, I'm you help the people that you help and I hope the people that I have. If they want to listen to me, that's fine. If they want to listen to you. That's fine, too. I don't care. Like I don't have anything to sell here.
Like my I have this podcast which are for free, and I do the YouTube, which people can watch for free. They can get my books, which you can get from the library or there. Tell you, there's a ton of, you know, pirate copies of stuff and Pad. I've seen them. All right, if you wanted to read any of the stuff, it's free. It's all on my blog, everything in my book is on my blog and it's all free. So then they're like, oh, these selling something. It's like what like, you know, it's all for free.
Free. It's like you can you can do it if you like but it's, you know, but for them, it's just a way of getting attracting attention. It's very helpful. I think nutrition Twitter and stuff. Is it gets a little bit too much sometimes because the victory all it's not necessary. You don't need to do that.
I agree. I want to talk a little bit about basal metabolic rate because you mentioned it a few times and how the, you know, the calorie counting diet or is going to see a
Up in their basal metabolic rate, which is, of course, going to affect the calories outside of the calories in calories out equation. I think a question that many people Ponder is, how do we increase? How do we improve our basal metabolic rate? I think there's this this conception. Maybe it's even a misconception that as we age our BMR, our basal metabolic rate tends to decline. Although there was a study that came out recently that showed that it wasn't really all that.
Second. But, yeah, talk to us about how we can increase our metabolic rates.
Yes, increasing your metabolic rate. The, the science behind that is too much harder because you can't point to a study that says, hey, you do this and your basal metabolic rate will go for. There's actually no studies that do that because if it was, everybody would not go to be a huge study. But what we know for sure, is that, if you follow a calorie restricted diet, if you can
Calories and cut out, 500 calories a day, then pretty soon, your body will burn 500 less. That's why your weight plateaus. There's no doubt about it. And this has been shown over and over and over again. At least for 15-20 actually the 90s. So at least for 25 years, we've known this to be true and that original paper was Rudy libel and the New England Journal of Medicine. Although the data actually goes up much much further that so minimum.
Um, for 25 years, we've understood that if you simply count your calories, keeping the same diet your, your basal metabolic rate just goes down and it's a survival response. Your body says, I'm eating 500 calories, less. I'm going to burn, 500 less so that I'm Back in Balance. I don't want a deficit. So that's why calorie counting doesn't work, despite what? All the sort of gurus to calories say, it almost always fails because they don't measure the calories out. That's what we know how to make.
Go up. It's just a lot harder to stay on a on a
You know, there's no there's no data there. So after after that, it's really hard. I think one of the things that helps maintain it and you get this from studies of fasting is fasting so fasting and we know why. So what happens during fasting is that insulin tends to fall, but other hormones go up. So these are called counter regulatory hormones and sympathetic nervous toned. Noradrenaline. Growth hormone are some of those counter regulatory hormones and cortisol, so
These ones are going to maintain your metabolic rate. So if you look at studies of fasting where they take people and fast them for four days and they've done this, of course, and measure your been appalling rate. And these are short-term. That's the problem. So at the beginning, you measure their metabolic rate at day 0, measure them after four days of no food, and you think that they're bent metabolic rate will go down. But in fact, it goes up by about 10 percent, so that is very,
Be interesting because we know the mechanism, which is this counter regulatory hormones. We know exactly why it should go up and we know that it does go up, right? And so that's very powerful. But we don't have data really, odd is sort of fasting strategies that will make it. Go long-term. So certain people do these fasting studies and part of it is that some of these studies are done by people. They do fasting studies, but then they don't do it in a clinical.
Clean meaningful way. That is what they do is they say okay, you fast for 16 hours and then you eat whatever you want. It's like you can't eat whatever you want. Like you can't fast for 18 hours or 16 hours and then eat just a whole bunch of junk food and you know, cookies and brownies like that ain't going to work. You're not going to lose weight like that. Then when they don't lose weight, they go see fasting doesn't work. It's like you forgot that part where you actually let them eat whatever they want because that
I was one of the studies that I've done on fasting, that proved that fasting doesn't work. They, if you read this actual study, they actually let them eat ad libitum, which is a technical term for E. Whatever you want. So, we had no idea what they were eating. And unless you know what they're eating, you're not going to have any idea of whether they should lose weight or not. So fasting appears to be in the short-term, a strategy that has some data behind it, in terms of raising your metabolic rate. The nobody knows in the long term.
Whether or not you can what type of fasting strategy that looks like, is it one meal a day? Is it extended fasting? Is it 16 a what? Exactly is it? There are several studies where they've compared sort of calorie restriction to fasting, you know, on a on a longer basis and it there is a little bit of a drop in Calgary. You know, how many calories you use but not as bad as calorie restriction on how restricting really drops it. A lot, intermittent fasting strategy.
Generally tend to drop it a little bit. So that's one sort of very interesting way to go about it because the there's there's a sort of a mechanism a way that is plausible. Why your metabolic rate should go up during fasting, these counter regulatory hormones sympathetic nervous, tone. Noradrenaline, growth hormone. They should be supporting that metabolic rate and what you're doing is
Not you're not shutting down the body. What you're trying to do is flip the switch so that you're burning body fat for energy and supplying you know, the needs of the your body through the body fat as opposed to shutting the whole body down in the first place
from an evolutionary standpoint. I mean, why would the body's metabolic rate go up once seat, Foose food ceased to be available, wouldn't it? I mean, it's kind of counterintuitive.
No, actually, it's a very good survival.
Why there's a good reason for that because if is no food and your body starts to shut down. So you lose concentration, you know, you have no energy. Well, so say your caveman, it's winter. There's no food. You don't eat for a day. Well, you have no energy. You can't focus every day. Just becomes harder and harder to get food you're going to die. So that doesn't happen. What happens is that the body is like I said, it's just not that stupid. What it does is it says, okay.
I'm going to switch. I'm going to start using my stores of food, and then I'm going to pump up the system so that I'm going to give you lots of energy. I'm going to give you lots of concentration, you know, mental ability. So you can go out and find food. You think about The Hungry Wolf, a hungry world is not like no. I'm about to Keel over and die. I can't focus. Right? The Hungry Wolf is zoned in and ready to Sprint after food, right? So you don't want to add, you know what you're saying, which sort of makes sense at first, is that?
That when you are hungry, you should be lethargic and lose concentration. It's actually a total opposite. It's a survival mechanism, right? You think about Thanksgiving, he ate a huge meal. Do you feel really energized or you want to just sit on the couch for a while and watch some TV? Right? If you're really hungry like, oh, I'm hungry for something. Does that mean that? You know, I'm hungry for Success. I'm hungry for a promotion. Does that mean that you're lethargic and unfocused? No, it means you're zoned in and ready.
To do whatever it takes. So that's what the hunger me because, you know, that the hunger gives you, this energy gives you this Focus gives you this ability to concentrate. That's why there's that expression, but we know why. Again, it's these counter regulatory hormones. So no, it's not it's you know, it seems a little counterintuitive at first you think oh, you'd want to conserve your energy and that does happen probably when your body fat stores go down very low.
Since most of us are not in that position, the body is saying, you know, think about it this way. So your body wants 2000 calories to feel normal. Your body fat stores have like 200 thousand calories. Why would you say I'm going to start shutting down the machine. It's like, why don't you just use all this stuff? It's like, if you have, you know, a coal burning plant, right? You burn, you know, a hundred tons of coal for energy. You have this huge Warehouse. That's
Lasting for we have like 300 days of core and you don't get your shipment of call that day. What do you do? Okay, shut it down, boys, power down. It's a blackout or do you just go into your stores? Take it out and say Here's today's allotment. Because why else would you have body fat? That's what it's there for. Let your body using up and it can do it without the detrimental effects of the calorie restriction, which is a very artificial sort of constraint like it's not a natural way to lose weight.
Eight people didn't count calories in the past and yet they still stayed slim. Like, it doesn't make any sense that we have to count our calories in order to say slim like the margin of Errors. So low in terms of most people's week. So anyway, that's the sort of The evolutionary side of things as to why the hunger assuming you have adequate body fat is, is actually something that's going to make you more. Energized is going to give you more Focus.
And keep your metabolic rate high.
Yeah, you haven't really talked much about about macros. It seems like you're the primary argument that you're making is that people should really look to increase the quality of the food that they're consuming. And to steer away from ultra-processed, industrially created shelf-stable, packaged convenience foods and to steer more towards towards Whole Foods, minimally processed foods foods with one or two ingredients in it. Might as well.
That statement.
Yeah. Yeah, and I think that the problem when you start getting into macros and again, it's not that macros are unimportant. The problem is, when you say, oh I need this percent, this fat or carbs or whatever. Then you start making trade-offs by eating unprocessed Foods. So you say you want a high protein diet and you can only get there by taking process whey powder. It's like, okay, but now you're Trading.
Off here, you're getting high protein, but you're taking an ultra processed food or if you want low fat, but to do low fat, you have to eat ultra-processed foods that removes all the fat and put something else instead in, or you want low carb. Then you go to a low-carb food that sticks, all this other stuff in. Well now you're making trade-offs, right? So once you start saying the macros are the most important, then you start accepting that you can process foods to make them.
Closer to the, to hit those macros and that may not be a good trade-off, right? I think in most cases. It's not a good trade-off.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, we don't have a lot of time left. You know, this has been this has been fascinating and I'm really glad that you, you know, that we were able to have this conversation. I just want to talk a little bit about exercise, I guess before you wrap resistance training. That's I mean, that's an exercise modality that I've long thought as being something that can help boost metabolism. And
And help preserve ones basal metabolic rate as one diets. Is that something that you routinely? Prescribe
one? I think resistance, exercises actually extremely beneficial for most people and probably one of the things that got ignored in the whole cardio. Boom. Right is to not do weights. I think that's actually a mistake. I think you should probably do both. However, the thing about the metabolic rate, is that when you do resistance,
Exercise, you are only focused on skeletal muscle so you can exercise and it will raise your metabolic rate. Like if you have more muscle than you are going to need more calories for that, but just keep in mind that there's a whole lot of other stuff that you're not influencing with that skeletal muscle. So you're not influencing your heart, your liver, your kidney, your brain, your brain may or may not burn more calories as you exercise, right. Your body heat generation. That's it.
Huge amount of, you know, calories that it needs to generate body heat, like you take these swimmers for example, there in cold water, for hours these Olympic swimmers. That's why they eat a lot of
food. They
have to, because they're immersed in cold water, their bodies have to generate heat all the time. So the thing is that while resistance exercise, I agree with you very good for you and it does play a small role in.
Metabolic rate. It can't do anything for everything else, like body heat, brain, heart, liver kidneys, smooth muscles, you know, your lungs, like, it doesn't do anything for the how much energy does use. So yes, you are affecting the one system the skeletal muscle system, but you're not affecting the other sort of like 10 systems that also use energy in the body, some of which are much much higher than the amount of muscle you carry like
Temperature. For example, like if you if you live in a very cold temperature and you don't wear clothes and yeah, you're going to need a lot of calories to generate that body heat. I mean, I don't know if you've ever watched some of these shows like naked in a live, like one of the shows there in this cold weather and they're just burning calories. Like, you couldn't believe because there's so much body heat generation going on. They couldn't exercise because they had to say, that our, he's right, it was because they had not much to eat, but they're just
Losing weight at an incredible rate because they couldn't, they had to generate heat to stay alive, which necessitated burning just a ton of weight. So yes, I know. Yes exercise. Important resistance exercise. I think very, very important too. But you know, overall, for metabolic rate. It's only one of a number of systems.
What are some other tools in the toolkit? I mean, I'm glad you mentioned cold water thermogenesis.
Are there other modalities that can that can be used to boost the metabolic rate of, you know, of the vital organs of the brain. Do you do recommend to patients that they spend more time and cooled environments?
I don't, I don't know that there's a lot of data in a cold environments and you know, some people really believe it has a few advantages that
You know, it's not super comfortable. So I don't know how much as people take it up anyway, but you know, there's this whole data on the Browning of white fat that is really, very interesting. So, you know, most fat is this this white fat which is just a storage, but you have this brown fat, which can actually turn, you can turn you, you know, white fat into Brown, fat through sort of cold adaptation and it will start to act
Generate heat. And that's one of the things that's going to take a lot of energy. So presumably it will be very beneficial for you. If you are spending a lot of time in cold temperatures, but you know, it's like I think that's probably useful if you really wanted to take it to that extreme. I think it would be good for you. But you know on a population basis, you know, got 70 year old people with five medications. It's like am I
Really going to tell them to dunk themselves in cold water. You know, I don't know that they do that, but it's probably useful.
Being a kidney doctor, has made you a realist. It's like poor. Not gonna, it's the crazy people like me and others. In the sort of, you know, online health and wellness, again selection bias, right? We're highly motivated were interested in this. We like putting ourselves through environmental sources of hormetic stress, but for
Average person. I think you're right. It's kind of a, it's kind of a big ask to ask them to willingly subject themselves to cold ambient temperatures.
Yeah. I mean, it's just a different population. Like, you got to understand and I think this is, you know, a lot of people who attack me just don't understand that the people I'm treating are not like a 20 year old with like, you know, they want to go from six percent to 4 percent body fat. It's like know a lot of these people have arthritis a lot of
I have chronic pain. They have chronic medical conditions. It's like, you know putting them on very intensive things is it's not they can't do it like it's because they have there's a lot of other things they have to they have to deal with like they might have doubts and they can't do it like yeah, you know, it's just not doable. So you have to be a realist in terms of what they can and can't do like they have so much discomfort in their lives, and I'm going to put them into more discomfort.
It could but will they do it? Like unless there's clear evidence that it's going to benefit them. It's like it'd be a big ass. That's all
that makes sense. Were there a few studies that showed that just drinking water can increase metabolic rate. Maybe that's if you're dehydrated
probably small, I would guess be a small effect. I mean, most of us drink water. I mean, sometimes these these studies get blown out of proportion because it's like, you know,
But we all drink water. It's like it's not a new thing. So it's like if it had a huge effect, I'd probably know about it. Like we'd all know that people drink water.
Yeah. Drinking water. Probably not the solution to the Obesity crisis. Although when you're deep when you're dehydrated, you tend to get hungry, which is very interesting. If you consider the fact that you know, for a hunter gatherer, when water cease to be available, where is the next place that they would look for their water? Hydration needs food.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you gotta gotta stay hydrated. Well, this was really fun. Thanks for taking the time jumping on with me. Always good to connect with you. One last question to ask you, but before we get to that, we're can listeners find you on social media. And where can they find your books?
Yeah. So my folks are you can get them an Amazon you again anywhere on Twitter? It's dr. Jason Fung on YouTube. Just look under my name Jason Funk and
You can find me there.
Yeah, you put a put out a lot of great content. Um, last question that gets asked everybody on the show, dr. Phone. What does it mean to you to live a genius life?
You know, I think that to me it's about trying to help people as much as you can. Like, whether it's through, you know, so exposing them to a new idea, a new tool like fasting a new way of looking at things.
I think that's that's what it means. Like, you can take the same problem and look at it from a different perspective and hopefully learn something. I mean, if you look at it from the same perspective all the time, like, you know, we're just going to look at obesity from a pure calorie standpoint and we've been doing that for a long time. Well, you're not going to learn anything new because you've been doing it for so long, which I have to do is look at it from a different point and maybe that'll give you some useful information. It doesn't make you popular. That's for sure.
Sure, but it may give you some new information, you know, to tackle the problem,
love that. Well, I'm grateful for you for the record, you know, happy that you're out there, putting out your books, reaching people. I think that the online nutrition Community benefits from a plurality of voices and ideas. So yeah, grateful for your work, keep doing what you're doing. Welcome back anytime and again,
Thanks for being here to everybody listening. Share this episode of the show would really appreciate that. Highlight your favorite quote from dr. Fung or I tagged us each would really dig. You. Helping us grow what we're doing here and spread the word text me to let me know what you thought about this episode of the show. 310 2999 401. If you have any questions. Etc, I'll catch you on the next episode. Peace, everybody.
