Exercise Doesn't Make You Lose Weight! Doctor Jason Fung

1. 0:00 – 2:17

   Intro

   1. JFDr. Jason Fung0:00

      This calories in, calories out model doesn't work at all. If you're trying to lose weight, what you need to do is ... Dr. Jason Fung.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:07

      The founder of intermittent fasting.

   3. JFDr. Jason Fung0:09

      ... whose influential work could be the key ... To a healthier and even longer life. Every continent is seeing this increase in obesity, but we put the blame on the individual. The problem is there's something wrong with the message we're giving people, and I can go over a few examples. First of all, exercise is really good in a number of ways, but in terms of weight loss, it's actually a very, very small effect. The whole idea that you need to eat as soon as you get up is just false. We know from twin studies that 70% of your risk of becoming obese is due to genetics, but it doesn't explain why the population became much more obese. And we know that you can't cure obesity by saying, "Eat fewer calories." It's about fixing the hormones that are behind the calories. If you want to lose body fat, you actually need to extend the period of time that you're not eating, so you do some intermittent fasting. There's all this data showing that fasting activates the body. It increases your energy, your concentration. ... a treatment available to everybody for free, and it will be healthier for us.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett1:14

      So I need some advice then. What does your fast look like? What food should I be giving my body and in what proportions?

   5. JFDr. Jason Fung1:19

      The first thing you've gotta do is ...

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:23

      I've gotta talk to you about these new injections people are getting to lose weight.

   7. JFDr. Jason Fung1:27

      I think ...

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:30

      Quick one. This is really, really fascinating to me. On the back end of our YouTube channel it says that 69.9% of you that watch this channel frequently over the lifetime of this channel haven't yet hit the subscribe button. I just wanted to ask you a favor. It helps this channel so much if you choose to s- subscribe. Helps us scale the guests, helps us scale the production, and it makes the show bigger. So if I could ask you for one favor, if you've watched the show before and you've enjoyed it and you like this episode that you're currently watching, could you please hit the subscribe button? Thank you so much, and I will repay that gesture by making sure that everything we do here gets better and better and better and better. That is a promise I'm willing to make you. Do we have a deal? Dr. Jason.

2. 2:17 – 6:50

   The Obesity Code: Why I Wrote It

   1. JFDr. Jason Fung2:17

      Hey, Steven. How are you?

   2. SBSteven Bartlett2:18

      I'm really, really good. This book here, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss, why did you write this book? What was the sort of driving motivation behind committing what must have been a very l- long part of your life to this subject matter?

   3. JFDr. Jason Fung2:36

      Uh, it's, it was actually a very interesting sort of journey of discovery for me. So I did my training in nephrology, which is kidney disease, so I'm a kidney disease specialist. And I thought about weight loss sort of very conventionally, sort of calories in, calories out, just watch what you eat sort of thing. And that's what's taught to all doctors is that it's extremely unhelpful for people. It doesn't work at all. It doesn't work for patients, and it doesn't work for, for, for doctors even, right? So doctors who want to lose weight, uh, they don't, they don't use calories in, calories out because it doesn't really work, and we all know this. Um, every person has sort of counted their calories and almost all of them fail to succeed. So the whole point was how to get people to lose weight, and so I started to look into the literature, and I started to read about it and so on. I got very, very interested in it. And again, uh, I started to become very unhappy with the discussion about calories in, calories out because-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett3:38

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JFDr. Jason Fung3:39

      ... the whole point was that people had this idea that it was energy balance, right? And there's this sort of energy balance equation which is, uh, calories in minus calories out equals body fat, right? Because body fat is a way to store calories. But that's not a very helpful sort of description of how to approach the problem, right? The problem is not that people didn't realize that they had to eat fewer calories or increase their calorie expenditure. The problem was why were they eating more calories than they could expend, right? And it's because the body is, is being told to store energy, right? That's the way it is. That's why you're taking in more calories or you're wa- you're storing more calories is because your body has hormones that tell you to store calories. So there's a hormone called insulin, for example, and if you give people insulin, so inject them with insulin, which is a drug for type 2 diabetes, almost everybody gains weight. So if you give somebody insulin, they gain weight. If I gave you insulin, you would gain weight. It has nothing to do with the, you know, your willpower, for example. If I gave you insulin, you would gain weight. Why? Because I'm giving your body the instructions to store energy.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett5:01

      So you're saying that weight gain and obesity in particular isn't a function of calories in, calories out. It is a function of hormones?

   7. JFDr. Jason Fung5:11

      It's a function of hormones, and it's sort of ... You have to think about it in sort of levels, right? So calories in, calories out is true. So body fat is a storage ... It's, it's a way to store energy, which is calories, equals calories in, calories out, but that's not the real question. The question is why are you storing more calories than you're expending? And it's because you're telling your body to do so. So for example, if, if you take another equal ... Uh, I'll give you an analogy. Say alcoholism is alcohol in minus alcohol out, right? Same, same idea. Or if you have a room, it's the number of people, how, how full it is is how many people enter the room or exit the room, right? So same, same idea, right? It's absolutely true. So alcohol in minus alcohol out.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett5:58

      Equals how drunk you are.

   9. JFDr. Jason Fung5:59

      Equals how drunk you are.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett6:00

       Yeah.

   11. JFDr. Jason Fung6:00

       So alcoholism. So can you simply cure alcoholism by tel- telling an alcoholic, "Oh, just drink less alcohol than you expend"?It's like, yes, you can say that and it's absolutely true, but it's not useful in any way because you've never gotten to the really, the deeper understanding of why that person is taking in more alcohol, right? You have to get to that next level and say, well, you know, it's like going one level deeper. Why? Why are they drinking more alcohol? Well, maybe they're depressed, maybe they're addicted. Deal with the addiction. That is the way to deal with alcoholism. You can't cure it just by saying, "Drink less alcohol," the same way you can't cure the obesity just by saying, "Eat fewer calories," because you're not understanding why the body is, is storing more energy.

3. 6:50 – 9:49

   The Scary Rise In Obesity Worldwide

   1. SBSteven Bartlett6:50

      With the amount of information we now have, the amount of science we have, one would expect that obesity levels would be coming down.

   2. JFDr. Jason Fung6:57

      Yeah. Unfortunately, if you think about the way most people think about it, it's mostly still in calories. Even in the academic centers, they all s- think about sort of calories, how to get calories down, how to reduce calories. And I always, and I always say, "Well, it's not about the calories, right? It's about fixing the hormones that are behind the calories." Like, 'cause you can choose to eat fewer calories. Yes, that's true, but you can't... But you have to ask yourc- self, "Why are people eating, um, so many calories, right?" Well, it's because they're hungry. You can't choose to be less hungry, and therefore you have to really c- talk about controlling the hunger and controlling the hormones which are behind the calories that you eat, and that's gonna be much more successful to you. If you take two different foods, equal number of calories, and you eat them, the hormonal response to those calories are completely different. So you eat two slices of white bread and jam, all that energy there, so insulin spikes up because it's very high in refined carbohydrates, all that energy goes straight into your body fat, and you've left none of it for, for, for energy for your day. By 10:30, now you're ravenous and you go get yourself a low-fat muffin, again pure carbs, insulin spikes up, all of that goes straight into your s- your fat stores. Why? Because you told it to. Remember that when you eat white bread or muffins or h- refined carbohydrates, you're gonna have this insulin spike which is going to tell your body to store energy. If you eat an egg, you don't get that spike in insulin, so that, that energy that you've taken, those calories are there, you can use it. And so what happens? Well, that keeps you full during the day. If you're telling your body to immediately store those calories as body fat, well, guess what? Over time you're going to gain body fat 'cause you told your body to do that. If you eat the egg and insulin's not spiking up, well, you haven't told your body to store that energy, so it's gonna be around for you to use all day long.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett8:57

      And you won't be hungry.

   4. JFDr. Jason Fung8:58

      And you're not gonna be hungry because your body's like, "Why do I need to eat again?" Because, you know, you're, y- y- you basically have taken the energy that you need. I've got it available, right? It's sort of like if you go to the, the, the grocery store, right, you can store food in the refrigerator. Suppose you go to the grocery store, put all your food away, lock it away in the f- in the refrigerator. Now you have nothing to eat, right? You're gonna say, "Oh, I need to go out and get some f- more food," right? Same thing with your body, right? So if you take food but you've also spiked up your insulin, you're gonna lock away all those, that energy immediately into, into your fat stores. It's not gonna be available for you to use. Well, you're gonna say, "I'm gonna go out and get more." So you haven't controlled the hunger that's going to lead to the caloric intake which is gonna lead to the weight gain.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett9:48

      People

4. 9:49 – 18:10

   Obesity Is a Hormone-Driven Behaviour.

   1. SBSteven Bartlett9:49

      look at this through a n- a evolutionary lens and say, "You know, we just didn't have this much food, so it's the abundance and, um, ease of access to food, it's the fridges that we now have, it's the, you know, we never had fridges in our home." So people point at it and go, "Well, that's why people are getting, gaining weight and b- you know, we're suffering with obesity at epidemic levels is just because there's more supply."

   2. JFDr. Jason Fung10:11

      Yeah. (sighs)

   3. SBSteven Bartlett10:11

      And the brain is taking advantage of it because once upon a time if we didn't eat that jam and toast then we would've, you know, maybe not have been able to find food for another two weeks or something.

   4. JFDr. Jason Fung10:23

      Yeah, I don't think that's the whole story because if you think about it, uh, and people, again, um, make that assumption that we don't have any control over, uh, our body fatness, right? So they say, "Well, it's available, so you're gonna take it, right?" In fact, that's not true because we actually have a number of different, uh, hormones that tell us to stop eating, okay? So if you eat, you cannot simply keep eating and eating and eating, right? If you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, at some point you have to stop because you're full, right? So there are systems, very powerful systems within our body that tell us to stop eating. So you eat food, there are, uh, stomach stretch receptors, for example, so as your stomach stretches out, it sends a signal to your brain and says, "Stop eating." If you eat a lot of protein, uh, it activates a hormone called peptide YY which tells you to stop eating. If you eat a lot of dietary fat, you activate a hormone called cholecystokinin which, again, tells you to stop eating. And these are very powerful. If you look in the wild, there are no obese antelope, there are no obese lions. Why? Because how much body fat you're, you carry is actually very important. If you are obese as an antelope, you're gonna get eaten. If you are an obese lion, you're not gonna catch any food, so therefore it's gonna correct itself.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett11:49

      So if I overeat now, my body will basically overcompensate by burning off the extra calories to-

   6. JFDr. Jason Fung11:55

      It, it... Absolutely. So if you eat a huge meal, right, you eat, you know, you go to a big wedding or something like that-

   7. SBSteven Bartlett12:02

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JFDr. Jason Fung12:02

      ... you eat a huge meal, the next day you're probably not that hungry. If you eat a giant steak, so you're activating all these satiety hormones, peptide YY, cholecystokinin, you're eating all this food, well, you may not be hungry for the next-... day.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett12:17

      So, that means that my body has some kind of baseline weight?

   10. JFDr. Jason Fung12:22

       Yeah. It will know whether you should eat more or l- less. So, there's a, this concept called the, sort of, uh, body set weight, which is a sort of thermometer. That is, your body sets a weight that you should be at and if you go above that weight, or if you eat too much, it will activate hormonal systems to bring it back down. If you don't eat enough, it will also activate hormonal systems to bring it up. So, it's like a thermostat that you se- you have in your room. For example, you set the, the room temperature. If it's too hot, your, the, the room activates the air conditioning. If it's too cold, it activates the heat. Your body actually acts the same way. If you gain too much body fat, your fat cells, for example, will produce leptin, which is another hormone. The leptin tells your body to stop eating.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett13:12

       That's really interesting. So, in the case of obese people, their setpoint-

   12. JFDr. Jason Fung13:16

       Yes.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett13:16

       ... must just be really high?

   14. JFDr. Jason Fung13:17

       Yes. And that's the f- crux of the matter. Why is that setpoint being overridden? Just like if you have a room that's too hot and you look and you see the thermometer is set for room temperature, why is it so hot in here? Then you can say, "Okay, well what's the problem?" And the problem is not, you know, heat in versus heat out, right? That's, that's a very simplistic way. Same thing, if your body has too much body fat, you gotta then think about why are you overcoming the normal compensatory mechanisms that are happening, that are stopping you from eating? A lot of it relates to processing of foods, of course. So, if you take out... So remember, I talked about stretch receptors in the stomach, right? So, you eat natural, natural foods. There's a natural break. It, it stretches the stomach, you stop eating. Well, what's one way? Pull out all the fiber, process the foods, turn it into say a very fine dust. That means it's absorbed extremely quickly into the bloodstream. So, that means that pure- you've got pure carbohydrate basically mainlining it into your IV l- like, like an IV. Your s- glucose spikes way up, your insulin spikes way up. It's completely unnatural, right? If you eat pure carbohydrate instead of eating it with, you know, proteins and fats, it's gonna go, it's gonna shoot way high. That's unnatural and that's gonna overcome the natural, the tendencies t- for you to stop eating. So, y- you know, you've, you've basically overcome that, that, that, that protective mechanism because you've ultra-processed the, the carbohydrates. If you p- don't eat any protein, if you don't eat any fat, you're not activating peptide YY, which is the satiety hormone. You're not activating cholecystokinin. All of a sudden, you're eating, you know, 500 calories of white bread, but you have zero satiety. Or if you drink a Coca-Cola, or a soda for example, I've always, you know, thought about this. It's like, how can you take 1,000 calories, for example, in one of those giant sodas (laughs) you get at the ball game or something and don't feel full at all? Whereas if you took a steak that's 1,000 calories, you'd be like, "I'm pretty full. I don't really feel like eating." You drink the soda, you're like, "I really feel like eating some chips or popcorn or something." Why? Because it has zero satiety, right?

   15. SBSteven Bartlett15:40

       Interesting. So if I'm, if I've got a baseball stadium, what I wanna do is I wanna make sure people get a soda because then they'll also buy the chips. But if they just eat the chips-

   16. JFDr. Jason Fung15:52

       Exactly.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett15:52

       ... you know, maybe they won't buy anything else. But the soda's gonna, um, increase my revenue because it'll basically just pass right through them.

   18. JFDr. Jason Fung16:00

       It'll pass right through them. They're gonna store the, all that energy as calories, but they're gonna want more because you haven't made them full, right? So, the, the, the whole point is that you have to think more than about the calories. There's more there than just the calorie story. There's this whole hormonal balance.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett16:16

       You're saying that overeating isn't just a choice, it's a hormone-driven behavior?

   20. JFDr. Jason Fung16:19

       It's a hormone-driven behavior. I mean, the whole thing about obesity is, is quite interesting to me because if you think about obesity, if you think about, uh, in the United States, which is where I get a lot of my data from, um, you know, you have maybe 70% of people overweight or obese, and it's going up every year. It's been going up every year since 1977. And (sighs) if you think about that, it tells you that the problem is not willpower, the problem is not the people, the problem is the environment that they find themselves in, the food environment that they find themselves in. 'Cause you can take an analogy. Say you have 100 children. One of them fails. Well, that might be the child. They didn't study. What if 70 of them fail? Would you say it's, it's each and every one of them's fault or would you say it's more likely that it's the teacher's fault?

   21. SBSteven Bartlett17:08

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JFDr. Jason Fung17:09

       I think it's more likely that it's the teacher's fault. So, if we have 100 Americans and 70 of them are obese, the problem is likely not an individual willpower problem. The problem is likely that there's something wrong with the message we're giving people, the information we're giving people, and the food environment that we're finding ourselves in, which is dominated by this sort of calories in, calories out thinking. And what's really unfair, of course, is that we put the blame on the obesity or overweight on the individual. And we say, "Well, they let themselves go and they didn't watch themselves. They weren't careful. It's their fault." And that's the stigma that comes with this whole calories in, calories out thinking because we say it's their fault because they could choose what they eat. It's like, yes, they could choose what they eat, but they didn't choose the food environment that is telling them to eat all this ultra-processed food, that is making all this ultra-processed food available to them, that is telling them that all this ultra-processed food is good for you.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett18:09

       So, leptin

5. 18:10 – 19:05

   Is This Protein Resistance Stopping People From Losing Weight?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett18:10

      is this hormone that essentially brings down my hunger, makes me less hungry.

   2. JFDr. Jason Fung18:16

      Yeah.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett18:16

      Is it therefore possible that...... people are becoming leptin resistant?

   4. JFDr. Jason Fung18:21

      There is leptin resistance. The question, again, is why? (laughs) And the way to think about it is it's sort of this sort of balance, right? So insulin, if you give people insulin, like if you think about causes of obesity, what causes people to gain weight? Well, if I give you insulin, you'll gain weight. If I give me insulin, I'll gain weight. So insulin causes weight gain, whereas leptin will cause the opposite. So it's sort of this seesaw. Body fat is nothing more or less than, uh, a store of energy, right? And you only store energy when your body tells you. Our entire body runs on hormones, right? Nothing happens without the hormonal system being activated. So insulin is pushing us to gain weight, leptin is, is pushing us to lose weight. And what's happening is that one is sort of overcoming the other. Insulin is overcoming the leptin.

6. 19:05 – 23:54

   Do We Inherit Obesity From Our Parents?

   1. JFDr. Jason Fung19:05

   2. SBSteven Bartlett19:05

      If obesity isn't about a lack of willpower, and it isn't just a case of people being lazy or all those things that sometimes some people stereotypically assert, I've also heard the counterargument that obesity is a function of our genetic makeup and our... we inherit obesity from our parents, you know? Is there any truth and merit in that?

   3. JFDr. Jason Fung19:25

      Um, (sighs) uh, i- it's, it's yes and no. So yes, there is a very strong sort of genetic predisposition to obesity. So if you take, you know, somebody with a family history, then look at the genetics, about 70% of your risk of becoming obese is due to genetics, and we know that from twin studies, for example.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett19:47

      What do we know from twin studies?

   5. JFDr. Jason Fung19:48

      If you take twins, um, and raise them sort of in different environments, you know, they actually turn out very similarly. So we know that there's a, there's a genetic component to obesity. So when they, they sort of do the, uh, calculations, they say about 70% of obesity is sort of genetically related.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett20:07

      So if you take a f- a, a twin that comes from originally a family that were obese, and you put them with a family that are not obese-

   7. JFDr. Jason Fung20:16

      Yeah.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett20:17

      ... the child will still likely become obese-

   9. JFDr. Jason Fung20:20

      Yeah.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett20:21

       ... even with the family that are not obese?

   11. JFDr. Jason Fung20:22

       Yeah. So you, i- th- this was done, and obviously they, they had, uh, twins that were sort of separated at birth, compare them after they've grown up, and say, "What's the sort of correlation between the weight of the two?" And it's about 70%. So y- you have somebody who's very overweight, and, you know, twin A goes into one family, twin B goes into a second family. You know, twin B, uh, is gonna be more prone to gaining weight even if they're with a thin family, right? So the environment has some role, but it's n- it, it's, the genetics have a very large role too.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett20:57

       70%, approximately?

   13. JFDr. Jason Fung20:58

       About 70% is, uh, is, is genetic. So there is. However, the part that's important is that that doesn't explain why we have obesity in the last 40 to 50 years-

   14. SBSteven Bartlett21:11

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JFDr. Jason Fung21:11

       ... because the genetics of the world population has not changed. So if we're seeing more obesity now, and remember, this is not a, a, a USA problem. It's a, it's a worldwide problem. We see it in Asia, we see it in Europe, we see it in America, we see it in South America, we see it everywhere. Uh, we see it in Africa. So e- every continent is seeing this increase in obesity. Therefore, it's not due... Th- this, this recent change within the last 50 years is not due to a change in genetics. So while, yes, it's true that there is a strong genetic component, that explains my risk of, say, obesity compared to yours, but doesn't explain how the population of the United States, for example, all of a sudden became much more obese in general.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett21:59

       So you're saying this is really about a predisposition, which basically-

   17. JFDr. Jason Fung22:02

       Yeah.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett22:02

       ... means your genetics make you more or less likely, for some reason, um, which is a genetic reason, to become obese when you make certain lifestyle choices. Um, but that is a predisposition, which means that... And I guess your work asserts that the predisposition relates to your hormones' response to the foods that we eat.

   19. JFDr. Jason Fung22:25

       Yeah.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett22:26

       So really, it's really a, a r- a genetic response to foods, o- which is based on your hormone response.

   21. JFDr. Jason Fung22:32

       Yeah. We all have a certain genetic sort of predisposition to obesity, right? So all of us have a certain risk. Some people, obviously they eat whatever they want, and they don't gain weight. We all know people like that, right? And some people sort of look at a muffin and they gain weight. So you have that genetic predisposition. So that explains the difference between two people, but it doesn't explain the difference within an entire population. Like, if you take the entire population of the Earth, or even of America, or whatever, the genetics haven't changed sufficiently of that entire population to say why there's more obesity now than before.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett23:08

       So we're inheriting our parents' hormone response in a way.

   23. JFDr. Jason Fung23:11

       Uh, yeah, but we're, we're, we're... The, the hormone response that we have is going to be dependent a lot on genetics, but the food choices we're making are different than our, our parents. So they're eating different things. If you think back-

   24. SBSteven Bartlett23:25

       Yeah.

   25. JFDr. Jason Fung23:25

       ... about what your grandmother ate and stuff, it's different than the food environment that we find ourselves in right now. And that food environment is creating this sort of, uh, i- is sort of increasing the risk, uh, over, over time. That's the sort of, uh, what, what we need to try and figure out, and why we need to have a deeper discussion as opposed to calories, because we've been having this sort of calories discussion for, you know, 30, 40 years. It just hasn't been very helpful.

7. 23:54 – 31:51

   Metabolism’s Impact on Body Weight

   1. JFDr. Jason Fung23:54

   2. SBSteven Bartlett23:54

      You call it a, a deception. You say in ch- part two of your book, you say, "The calorie deception."

   3. JFDr. Jason Fung23:59

      Yeah.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett23:59

      And you say, "There are five wrong assumptions about obesity and weight loss. The calorie calo- calorie in, calorie out are independent of each other, so won't trigger one another." Um, this interesting point about the basal metabolic rate being stable-

   5. JFDr. Jason Fung24:13

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett24:13

      ... is that, in essence, because people... You know, p- people will often say, "I have a low metabolism."

   7. JFDr. Jason Fung24:17

      Yeah.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett24:17

      It's kind of like a word in culture. If someone is, um, obese, often their-... the diagnosis is they have a low metabolism.

   9. JFDr. Jason Fung24:24

      Yeah.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett24:25

       Is there any merit in that? Is that tr- true?

   11. JFDr. Jason Fung24:27

       Oh, absolutely. The question ... So when you think about, so body fat, you think about the energy balance equation. Body fat equals calories in minus calories out. This often leads people to say, "Well, just eat 500 fewer calories and you'll lose a pound of fat per week." It's- it's unquestionably false because every single study that we've done over the last 50 years shows that if you eat 500 fewer calories, then over time, depending on what foods you're eating, eventually your body will just burn 500 fewer calories. So that's your basal metabolic rate, the number of calories that your body is expending in one day. So we see this in almost every single study. We've known about it for, like, 80 years at least. You eat fewer calories, your body burns fewer calories. Well, that's going to limit (laughs) how much weight you're gonna lose, right? So this idea that just eat fewer calories will automatically lead to weight loss is completely false because we know that eating fewer calories leads also to burning fewer calories. So you eat 500 less, your body b- burns 500 less and you're not losing any body weight.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett25:40

       So I go on a diet, let's say, 'cause I'm trying to l- lose weight. My metabolism lowers to meet the calorific restriction that I've imposed on myself.

   13. JFDr. Jason Fung25:50

       Yeah.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett25:51

       What then happens when I come off the diet, does my metabolism stay-

   15. JFDr. Jason Fung25:56

       Generally, yes.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett25:56

       ... low?

   17. JFDr. Jason Fung25:57

       Yeah. So that's that yo-yo dieting effect. So say you start with 2,000 calories in, 2,000 calories out. You're not gaining weight, you're not losing weight, right? Now you decide, okay, I'm gonna go on a diet. So you go down to 1,500 calories thinking that you're gonna burn 2,000 and the body fat's gonna provide 500, right? That's how you balance that equation. However, if you eat the wrong foods and you're eating all the time, so you're eating 10 times a day, eight times a day like people say you should, you're eating low fats or you're eating tons of carbs, you're spiking your insulin. Insulin prevents you from burning body fat, okay? So we've, again, we've known about this for 80 years. So now you eat 1,500 calories, but you're keeping your insulin levels really high. So fewer calories, but lots of-

   18. SBSteven Bartlett26:43

       Hmm.

   19. JFDr. Jason Fung26:43

       ... high carb foods, eating all the time, insulin stays high. You're- you're taking in 1,500, your body is now burning 2,000, but you can't burn any body fat. So the calories that are stored in your body fat cannot be me- cannot be sort of taken out. It's like it's in the bank and the bank is closed. It's, uh, you can't take it out. So what's gonna happen? Well, you don't have a balanced equation, so that cannot- cannot happen. So what happens is that in order to balance that equation, because your insulin levels are high, you're eating 1,500 calories coming in, your body can only burn 1,500 calories. Your metabolic rate has just now gone down by 500 calories. And guess what? You're not losing any body fat. So that's an example of how the whole, the calories idea is completely wrong because if you continue to do that, what's gonna happen over time is that you- you get tired because you're burning fewer calories. You don't have enough energy to generate body heat. So you're cold, you're tired, you're hungry. So you say, "Okay, I'm gonna go to 1,800 calories." So now you're eating 1,800 calories, but you're only burning 1,500 calories. Guess what? You gain weight. And you say, "But how can I gain weight? I'm eating less than I did." Yes, you are eating less than the 2,000 calories you used to eat. You're eating 1,800, but you're eating the wrong foods. You're just, very high insulin foods. So therefore you're going to gain weight.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett28:08

       Hmm.

   21. JFDr. Jason Fung28:08

       In fact, everybody says that and- and all the- all the nutritionists, all the doctors just, they just don't believe them. They say, "You're lying, you're cheating. You're eating more than you think."

   22. SBSteven Bartlett28:17

       So this explains something that happened with one of my friends, which I, always puzzled me. He swears by the calories in, calorie out thing. I've spoken about him a few times. He posts about it online as well. Um, and he- he actually managed to get a pretty much like six-pack abs, pretty much. And at the time, it appears that he was eating a lot of Domino's pizzas.

   23. JFDr. Jason Fung28:38

       (laughs)

   24. SBSteven Bartlett28:38

       A lot of pizzas. And I was thinking, "How is this guy eating all these pizzas, but he's using this calories in, calorie out thing?" Uh, and then when the pizzas stopped-

   25. JFDr. Jason Fung28:46

       Yeah.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett28:47

       ... there was this yo-yo effect-

   27. JFDr. Jason Fung28:48

       Yeah.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett28:49

       ... where he managed to get to basically what I'd describe as a six-pack or there- thereabouts, and then, um, stopped eating all, s- uh, stopped the diet per se, and then there was this big yo-yo effect, which I imagine is what you've said there. What he's done is he's lowered his metabolism-

   29. JFDr. Jason Fung29:04

       Yeah.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett29:04

       ... and then when he goes up just a little bit...
8. 31:51 – 35:55

   Exercise Doesn’t Help Weight Loss

   1. JFDr. Jason Fung31:51

   2. SBSteven Bartlett31:51

      You mentioned burning calories there. One of the thoughts around the calories in, cal- calories out model is that you can just exercise, and if you burn 1,000 calories exercising, then that gives you a little bit of a reserve there to eat more, for example.

   3. JFDr. Jason Fung32:06

      Yeah. And it's probably a very, very small effect for, for a couple of reasons. So we know that, uh, if you exercise, and I, and, and I say this, uh, exercise is really good for you in a number of ways, flexibility, strength, core, all kinds of things. So very, very important. But in terms of weight loss, it's actually very, very small effect. Why? Because one, the amount of calories you burn during exercise are simply not that high. So if you look at, you know, if you do walking, I mean, if you did eight hours of high intensity exercise, yeah, you're gonna burn a lot of calories. But most people I deal with which are sort of middle-aged and higher, you're talking about sort of a quick walk or, you know, 45, half an hour three times a week sort of thing, and if you ever go on the treadmill and you ever watch the (laughs) calorie counter on the treadmill, you know it goes up very, very slowly, right? You'll do half an hour and it'll be up to like 120 calories or something like that, right? So that exercise really didn't burn off very many calories. It's the amount that you'd get in a couple of cookies, for example, right? So it's, it's just numerically it's just very small. So if you're, you're taking in... If your body is normally using 2,000 calories with your brain generating body heat, your heart, your lungs, your liver, they're using 2,000 calories, and now you go up to 2,100 calories. Well, percentage wise it's not a huge deal, right? The other problem with exercise is that it tends to actually cause you to eat more. So, uh, again, we've had decades of study for this. If you exercise, during the exercise you have a loss, uh, reduced appetite. So you have exerc- it's called exercise-induced anorexia. So in the middle of a basketball game you don't suddenly go, "Oh, wow, I'm really hungry." Right? 'Cause your, your blood is flowing in your a- you know, in your muscles and so on. Uh, you're not thinking about the hunger. So hunger actually goes down during exercise, but after exercise we see this rebound. So we see that people are actually more hungry after exercise. And if you're hungrier after exercise, it's gonna cause you to tend to gain more weight. In fact, there's this very interesting study that was done a few years ago in Harvard where they measured the sort of calorie difference that you get with, uh, for, for children, um, in certain activities. So they said, "Okay, what if the child is watching TV? What's the average, uh, caloric difference?" And it was like plus 100 calories per hour. So for every hour of TV, they're sort of positive 100 calories over time, right? And that makes sense. You're just sitting there. When you look at mild exercise, it's about the same. It's about positive 100 calories. So the only way that happens is that if that exercise is causing you to eat more, right? And you say, "Well, why are you eating more?" It's like well, because you're, you're hungry. Like the exercise is inducing you to eat more, and that's gonna make it difficult to lose weight. So-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett35:09

      You say in the book, in chapter four, that 95% of weight loss is diet.

   5. JFDr. Jason Fung35:15

      Yeah. A- a- and that's the reason why exercise, it's very hard to exercise enough to lose weight. And, and, and that's not to say that you shouldn't exercise. It's, it, you really should exercise. Everybody should exercise. But if you're trying to lose weight, you still gotta focus on the main topic, which is the foods that you eat, which is not just the calories. It's about the types of food that you eat, which is going to affect the hormonal balance, and also how often you eat. If you're eating all the time versus if you're eating, only eating very infrequently, then you're going to have a different hormonal balance that is going to affect your weight as well.

9. 35:55 – 38:59

   Modern Eating Habits & Why We Eat More

   1. JFDr. Jason Fung35:55

   2. SBSteven Bartlett35:55

      An American survey of more than 60,000 adults and children revealed that in 1977 most people ate three times a day. By 2003, most people were eating five to six times a day.

   3. JFDr. Jason Fung36:08

      Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, this is the whole idea of sort of eating all the time, and this I find fascinating because it was this sort of inadvertent change in our diet that we never talked about, right? So in 1977, we told people, "Eat lots of carbs." Okay? So we know that. That's in print for sure. The American government said, "Eat 55 to 60% carbs, eat less fat." What happened is that, you know, in 1977 people ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner.No snacks. If you wanted an afterschool snack, your mom said, "No, you're going to ruin your dinner." If you wanted a bedtime snack, your mom would say, "No. You should have ate more at dinner," right? No problem. But what happened is that as we started to eat sort of a lot of carbs, what happened is exactly as what we discussed before. You eat two slices of bread in the morning with jam, you have no satiety, insulin spikes way up, glucose spikes way up, but then it crashes because-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett37:10

      So you get hungry again.

   5. JFDr. Jason Fung37:10

      ... then you get hungry at 10:30. So you go around looking for a low-fat muffin. And it was because y- you know, a- a- and, you know, your, your, your, your sugars are going down, your insulin's going down, so now you're eating midmorning snack. Then you eat a big plate of pasta. Then you get, ah, ravenous at, like, 3:00, so you go find and stuff some crackers or something like that, right? And then so now, you're having a midmorning snack, you're having mid-afternoon snack, then you're having a bedtime snack. And that's the average American by 2003 is eating six, five to six times a day. But they're saying, "Hey, I'm eating so low fat, this must be the right way to eat. This must be good for me." So now the snacking becomes institutionalized, whereas pre-1977, snacks are an indulgence, right? It's not something good for you. It's something bad for you, but, hey, once in a while, y- y- y- you indulge. Then it becomes institutionalized as something that every single one of us should be doing and we should never be without food for more than an hour and a half. Let's think about this very simply, okay? So if you eat, your insulin's gonna go up, your body's going to store calories because you told it to. If you don't eat or if you fast, your body is, your, your insulin's gonna go down, you're going to bring those calories back out of storage, right? So you're gonna burn calories. You eat, you store calories. You don't eat, you burn calories. Very simple. So why would you want to eat all the time? That makes no sense at all. If you want to lose body fat, you actually need to extend the period of time that you're not eating. In other words, extend your fasting period and get rid of all the snacks in order for you to have enough time that your insulin is low. When insulin is low, it's gonna allow fat burning, which is gonna allow you to pull those calories back out.

10. 38:59 – 43:47

    The Ancestral Key to Losing Weight That You Made Viral

    1. SBSteven Bartlett38:59

       You're cited as being really the founder of modern intermittent fasting. And I've heard people talk about intermittent fasting on this show over and over and over and over again now. But the internet says that it really came from you.

    2. JFDr. Jason Fung39:13

       (laughs) Well-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett39:14

       I know that intermittent fasting's been happening for thousands of years-

    4. JFDr. Jason Fung39:17

       Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett39:17

       ... but the idea of it as a tool for weight loss, they say came from you.

    6. JFDr. Jason Fung39:21

       Yeah. It, because in 2013, 2014, really nobody was talking about it from a medical standpoint. Like, what's happening in the body? Why is it good? Why is it bad? And really, I was, for years, sort of this one voice in the wilderness that was saying, like, "Hey, this is a tool for us. If you want to lose weight because it's important, then you can just set aside a period of time that you don't eat." At the time, people thought it was extremely bad for you. And I, I looked through all the literature and I said, "Well, why is it bad for you?" And they had all these reasons. There's all these myths about intermittent fasting and how it's gonna cause you to gain weight and be tired and hungry and all these sorts of things. I said, "Well, no. There's actually a lot of data here over the last, you know, 2,000 years that we've used intermittent fasting, and they're simply not true." And I can go over a few of those. But that's why there was nobody talking about it at the time, and that's where I started to sort of bring it into the, uh, sort of public consciousness that this is a tool.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett40:19

       Were-

    8. JFDr. Jason Fung40:19

       That's all it is. You can use it-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett40:20

       Were you attacked for that at the time?

    10. JFDr. Jason Fung40:22

        Oh, absolutely. Like, I got, I got attacked from all sides. I got, you know, doctors were coming after me, dieticians were coming after me. Everybody thought I was gonna do so much harm. And the funny part was that, you know, as I think back, a- a- as I spoke to a lot of colleagues, a lot of colleagues would say to me, "You know what? I used to do that when I was in training. We did that all the time. We'd go 24 hours without eating because we're in the OR or we're in the ER or we're busy. So we did that constantly and nothing bad happened." And I remember thinking, "You know what? As a doctor, I actually tell people to fast all the time. If you have to go for surgery, you need to fast. If you're after surgery, you need to fast. If you do fasting blood work, you need to fast. So why is it that I'm actually telling people to fast all the time, and yet for weight loss, you shouldn't fast? That doesn't make any sense." And physiologically, from a body standpoint, it doesn't make any sense. Uh, one of the things people talked about was, you know, it's gonna make you eat more later. It's gonna make you more hungry. Your basal metabolic rate's gonna go down. This was one of the big myths of intermittent fasting, that it's gonna cause the so-called starvation mode, right? And this is the idea that your basal metabolic rate will fall so low that when you do start to eat, you're gonna gain weight again. So I said, "Well, let's think about this. You can do a study where you take somebody, say you, for example, and you could fast them for four days and measure how much, how many calories they're burning, their basal metabolic rate on day zero, before the fast, and measure them four days into the fast and see how many calories you're burning." So on day zero, they say s- you're, you're burning, say, 2,000 calories a day. On day four of zero food, you don't eat any food for four days, they measure how much calories you're burning, your body is burning 2,200 calories. Your basal metabolic rate didn't go down. It went up. Your body's activating itself during fasting, which is fascinating because if you're trying to lose weight, dropping that basal metabolic rate is death. Like, if you drop that metabolic rate, (laughs) it's so hard to lose weight. That's what the calorie restricted diets did. That's what the low fat diets did, the eating all the time did. But when you actually fast, your metabolic rate went up. And we see this in study after study. And the reason is actually basic physiology. It's actually medical physiology, like first year medical school stuff. When you don't eat...What happens in your body from a hormone standpoint is that your insulin's gonna fall, you're gonna allow your body to start using the calories that are in the body. At the same time, other hormones go up. So the sympathetic tone goes up, which is your fight or flight response, your cortisol levels go up because, again, it's an activation, and your growth hormone goes up because those hormones are gonna start telling your body to start pulling calories out. So you're actually activating yourself. Think about in the wild, if you see a hungry wolf, is that wolf just sort of, "Ah," you know, (laughs) all, like, lethargic? No, he's activated. He's actually more dangerous than any other wolf, as opposed to, say, a lion who just ate. Because when you just eat, you just wanna lie there, you know? You, you wanna digest your food. You have no energy. So people say, "Well, your, your, your metabolic rate's gonna go down if you fast." No. The, the truth is actually the opposite. It goes up.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett43:46

        You've got

11. 43:47 – 48:50

    The Lies Around Breakfast.

    1. SBSteven Bartlett43:47

       me thinking about food as an instruction I'm giving my body, because if I eat this food, it's gonna have this impact on my hormones-

    2. JFDr. Jason Fung43:53

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett43:53

       ... which is gonna have this impact on my body. So if we view food as an instruction to the body, we talked a little bit about the timings of eating and a little bit about fasting, I wanna get into that a little bit more, but breakfast. I read that you didn't think most people need breakfast.

    4. JFDr. Jason Fung44:09

       Yeah, the, the whole idea that you need to eat as soon as you get up is just false. So there's this whole, um, thing about breakfast. Now, you will always break your fast. Think about the actual word, right? Break, fast. It's the meal that breaks your fast, which tells you that, in the English language, we accept that your body should have a fasting period every day. Why? There's a period of time that you're supposed to feed, you eat, insulin goes up, you store calories. Then there's supposed to be a period of time that you fast. That's after dinner until the next day's meal, which is breakfast, right? So say you stop eating at 6:00 PM, you eat at 8:00 AM, that's a 14-hour period where your body is not eating, it's fasting, and therefore, it's gonna use calories, right? But the word breakfast tells us that that's actually a normal pattern, this normal cyclical pattern. You feed, then you fast, right? If you eat all the time, your body's just gonna store energy and never have a period to burn energy. So, okay, (laughs) well, what's gonna happen? You're gonna gain weight.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett45:17

       I read as well that breakfast eaters averaged 539 extra calories per day compared to those that skipped breakfast, and that's a finding that's consistent with other trials. That was on page 132 of The Obesity Code.

    6. JFDr. Jason Fung45:31

       Yeah, so the more often you eat, in general, the more calories you take in. So if you eat three times a day, you, or six times a day, then y- you know, if you eat three times a day compared to two times a day, for example, you'll, in general, eat less because it's harder to eat that, you know, big meal. So say you eat once a day versus three times a day, if you eat once a day, it's not always easy to eat three meals worth of calories all in one sitting because you get full.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett46:01

       Do you fast?

    8. JFDr. Jason Fung46:02

       Oh, I do that regularly, yeah. So-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett46:04

       And what, what does your fast look like? 'Cause I've heard of all these different types of fasting, 36 hours, 72 hours-

    10. JFDr. Jason Fung46:09

        Oh, yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett46:09

        ... 14 hours.

    12. JFDr. Jason Fung46:10

        Yeah. There's no rules for fasting. You could do, you know, it could be 16 hours. So 14 hours, remember, is sort of a baseline, 12 to 14 hours, right? That just means you're not eating after dinner. That's it. Um, and so if you wanna lose weight, that's probably not strong enough to make you lose weight because 12 to 14 hours is sort of just this baseline that people had in the '70s. Um, so you can go to 16 hours, for example, and you shrink that by either eating breakfast a little later or eating dinner a little earlier. But you can do more than that. You can do, say, a 24-hour fast. You could eat two meals a day, say, eat between 12:00 and 6:00. That's a six-hour eating window. Or you could eat once a day, which is like a 24-hour fast. Or you could even go multiple days, uh, without eating, because again, your body is smart. Like our, your body knows what to do. If you have all those calories sitting on your body, right, 100,000 calories sitting in body fat, and you don't eat for three days, well, you need 6,000 calories. Well, you have 100,000, 200,000, so what's the problem? Take it out of your body fat. Let your body eat your body fat. That's what fasting is doing for you. And it's totally natural because that's what it's there for. That body fat is not there for looks. It's there for you as a source, as a store of calories. So fasting just lets you use that. There's nothing wrong with it. People talk about hunger, for example, but again, hunger is very interesting because people think it's the amount of time that you haven't eaten, but it's not true. It's actually hormonally mediated. So if you think about hunger, I actually found this really fascinating. So if you look at studies of when people are the most hungry and the least hungry, on average, people are the most hungry at 8:00 PM and the least hungry at 8:00 AM. So in the morning time, you are actually the least hungry that you will be all day. That's just an average. And at 8:00 PM, in the evening time, you are the most hungry. So 8:00 AM is the period of time that you've gone the longest without food. So why are you the least hungry? It's because it's hormonally mediated. When you wake up at 5:00 AM, your body actually has this surge of hormones, growth hormone, cortisol, and, uh, sympathetic tone, which is already getting you prepared for the day. It's starting to release some of the stored glucose from your body fat, from your sugar stores at 5:00 AM. So your body has already prepared you for the day ahead.... without you even doing anything. That's why people, in general, are not hungry at 8:00 AM.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett48:49

        I've gotta talk

12. 48:50 – 52:39

    The Drugs Making People Lose Weight.

    1. SBSteven Bartlett48:50

       to you about these, um, these new injections people are getting to lose weight-

    2. JFDr. Jason Fung48:53

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:54

       ... and the role that they must be playing in our hormone balances. What are those bloody things called? The, um-

    4. JFDr. Jason Fung48:58

       GLP-1s.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett48:59

       GLP-1s. There's another name for it, isn't there?

    6. JFDr. Jason Fung49:00

       Yeah. Uh, well, the, it's, uh, the, there's the drug name, which is, uh, Ozempic is the, uh-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett49:06

       Ozempic, that's it, yeah.

    8. JFDr. Jason Fung49:06

       ... is the American name, and these are all a- in a class called GLP-1s. And essentially, again, very interesting because they essentially really reduce the appetite, which goes to show you that... A- and people lose weight, like, a lot of weight, and they keep it off. So it's 17%.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett49:24

       I know very smart people that are using 'em.

    10. JFDr. Jason Fung49:27

        Yeah, yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett49:27

        I mean, like a, a billionaire friend of mine that's very big in a certain industry uses Ozempic. I know Elon Musk came out and said he uses-

    12. JFDr. Jason Fung49:35

        He said he used it. Yeah, that's right.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett49:36

        ... Ozempic as well.

    14. JFDr. Jason Fung49:38

        Um, I don't... I'm not... I, I, I don't have any problem with the Ozempic because, again, if you think about it, what it's telling you, the, the lesson it's teaching you about weight loss is that it's not about controlling the calories 'cause the Ozempic doesn't burn any calories. It's about controlling your hunger. It's about that one level deeper. Why are you taking so many calories? So if you simply reduce the hunger, you're going to naturally eat fewer calories, which is gonna cause weight loss. And that's what this Ozempic does. It, it really reduces your appetite to very low levels.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett50:12

        How?

    16. JFDr. Jason Fung50:14

        It, it, it's, it's this, this hormone called GLP-1, uh, which is a natural sort of hormone. It's, it's released mostly in the intestines, in the distal intestine and the small intestine. And in response to certain foods, it, it goes up, right? So when you eat, the body has a homeostatic mechanism. So again, remember, you know, people think that we're just eating machines. We eat until, you know, we explode sort of thing, but that's not true. When you eat, you actually activate the GLP-1, a- along with other hormones. There's multiple hormonal systems, but GLP-1 is the one we're interested in. You activate GLP-1, which then sets into motion the, the, the instructions for you to stop eating, right? So the act of eating sort of sets in motion that whole, uh, feedback loop to stop, right? So this is homeostasis. We're just trying to keep things at a proper level.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett51:05

        Does that mean if you eat slower-

    18. JFDr. Jason Fung51:07

        Uh, there-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett51:08

        ... you'll be less... you'll eat less?

    20. JFDr. Jason Fung51:10

        Mm. There's probably not, uh-

    21. SBSteven Bartlett51:12

        Because it'll give it more time to come out.

    22. JFDr. Jason Fung51:12

        Yeah, probably it's true. Um, you know, although it's probably mostly true that if you eat really, really fast that you don't have enough time for this sort of homeostatic mechanisms to kick in, so you don't have enough time to stop eating. Um, but the GLP-1s then go to the brain. So they do certain things. They help with digestion, so they increase insulin response, and then they go to the brain. It crosses, um, the, the, the blood-brain barrier. So the GLP-1s gets released by the act of eating, goes into the brain, crosses, and is active, um, in the sort of mid-brain area that tells your body to stop eating. What these GLP-1s do, of course, is that it's a, uh, it, it gives you the hormone that tells you to stop eating, even though you haven't eaten. It's sort of that's, that's the way the drug works. So then what people tell you is that, you know, they're just not hungry. And if they're not hungry, then they don't eat. And when they don't eat, of course insulin falls, and you start to burn calories and lose weight. But it wasn't about controlling the calories. It was about controlling the hunger. That was the important part of it. It's the hormones, right? Every successful drug to gain or lose weight, right, is a hormone. It's a hormone base because that's instructions to the body. Food is energy, and food is instructions. You change the instructions, and you, you change the hormone.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett52:38

        This whole

13. 52:39 – 55:06

    The Role of Fibre in Managing Body Weight.

    1. SBSteven Bartlett52:39

       history of fiber thing has been so interesting to me because, uh, uh, in the last six months, so many of the nutritionists I've spoken to have really impressed upon me that we are fiber deficient, and I'm wondering how that happened.

    2. JFDr. Jason Fung52:52

       Um, well, I think it was part of the processing, uh, thing. So taking out fiber is a great way to make foods more appealing, if you will. Um, so what happens is that if you take, um, flour, for example, and you have a lot of fiber in it, then the digestion is slowed. So what you get is a slower rise. So you take flour, and you put a lot of fiber in it. Well, instead of, uh, having this huge spike in insulin, what you're gonna get is a much slower spike in insulin. When you have the huge spike in insulin, it basically overloads your system. And it makes you feel, you know, gives you this big hit, sort of like if you have, like, cocaine, for example. You know, it's, it's turned into a very fine powder, then you snort it, so you got this massive sort of spike. Same thing with, um, you know, carbohydrates. If you don't have any, uh, fiber, you, you pull all the fiber out by processing, you get this massive sort of unnatural spike. And your body says, "Oh, that's great. It tastes great. I really love it." And you get people who are sort of addicted to it because that big spike is go- then going to release dopamine, and dopamine is a pleasure hormone. So you eat, you know, cookies or whatever, highly processed foods, you get this sort of pleasurable response, and that makes you crave it. If you have a lot of fiber, it acts almost sort of an, like an antidote to that carbohydrate because you're slowing down that release.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett54:24

       What foods are high in fiber?

    4. JFDr. Jason Fung54:26

       Well, mostly unprocessed foods, so the, the things like beans. And if you're having... if you're eating, uh, whole grains, for example, compared to others, then it's gonna have a reduction in the speed of absorption. So it's, again, not about the calories necessarily or even necessarily about the carbohydrates because you're still eating the same amount of carbohydrate, but you're slowing down the speed at which it's ab- absorbed, which is going to change the instructions that you give your body. If you have a massive spike in glucose, you get this massive dopamine surge, right, and your body's like, "Yo."... love it, right? (laughs)

    5. SBSteven Bartlett55:02

       What about-

    6. JFDr. Jason Fung55:02

       Then the next time, you're like, "Okay, give me that refined carbohydrate."

14. 55:06 – 57:05

    Is Protein Good for Weight Loss?

    1. JFDr. Jason Fung55:06

    2. SBSteven Bartlett55:06

       What about protein? 'Cause we, we tend to think of protein as something that, you know, is super great for weight loss.

    3. JFDr. Jason Fung55:12

       Yeah, protein is probably, uh, sort of inter, i- i- it's not bad. I mean, the main thing is cutting down the carbohydrates, but, you know, in The Obesity Code, I really talk about cutting the processing down because, uh, proteins usually don't come as pure protein, right? In nature, you never find, like, you know how you have, like, whey powder protein or whatever-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett55:35

       Yeah.

    5. JFDr. Jason Fung55:36

       ... you get? The only way you can do that is by processing the heck out of food to get some kind of pure protein. It doesn't exist in nature. Like, it almost doesn't exist in nature. Maybe there's a few examples. But when you eat meat, you think, "Okay, there's a lot of protein," but there's actually a lot of fat in there too, right? Um, if you eat anything else that has protein, it's, it's rarely, uh, all protein. You know, very lean meats like chicken breasts and stuff are gonna be higher in protein, but there's still a lot of other stuff in there. And it's very rare that somebody will eat just all pure 100% protein. It, it tends to be hard to eat. Like, the fat brings a lot of flavor and so on. So it's a bit of an unnatural way to eat. Sure, if you, if you were to eat a lot of protein, it does spike insulin, so it does have some effect to gain weight, but it's actually a very, um, inefficient, uh, macronutrient. That is, your, there's three nu- macronutrients. There's carbohydrates, there's, um, fat, and there's protein. Your body stores energy or calories in two ways. There's carbo- glucose, which is carbohydrate, and it stores it as body fat, which is fat, right? It doesn't, protein is not a way for the body to store energy. So when you're eating a lot of protein, it's very difficult for it to turn it into a storage mechanism like, you know, so you eat glucose and you eat fat, you can store glucose and you can store fat, but you, you eat protein but you don't really store it as a source of energy.

15. 57:05 – 57:55

    The Best Way to Actually Lose Weight.

    1. JFDr. Jason Fung57:05

    2. SBSteven Bartlett57:05

       So if all foods then increase our insulin levels, I guess the best solution is to fast.

    3. JFDr. Jason Fung57:11

       Uh, fasting is certainly one way, but just changing the foods to, uh, other ones, because if you look at the insulin, uh, release in processed foods versus unprocessed foods, there's a huge difference. So if you eat sort of, uh, highly refined foods like white bread, for example, then you're gonna have a very different response in insulin compared to sort of, um, a, a whole, a whole food. So, uh, unprocessed foods in general, your body knows how to handle. Like, we've been eating them for thousands of years. Um, but certainly anytime you eat, your insulin's gonna go up. You're giving your body instructions to store energy. So the solution is to eat less often.

16. 57:55 – 1:02:18

    Does Juice Fasting Work?

    1. JFDr. Jason Fung57:55

    2. SBSteven Bartlett57:55

       What if you do a juice fast?

    3. JFDr. Jason Fung57:56

       Juice fast, of course, is not a real fast because you're, you're taking a lot of sugars. Um-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett58:01

       What do you think of juice fasting?

    5. JFDr. Jason Fung58:03

       Um, I'm, generally, I, I, I think it's less effective than regular fasting, and it really depends on how much juice you take. If you take a lot of juice, you could easily get, you know, thousands of calories plus a lot of sugar. If you do it, you know, cucumber juice and stuff that's very low in sugar, and kale juice, then it could be very, very healthy for you 'cause there's vitamins and stuff there. So it all depends on how it's done. However, the, um, the fasting is a way for you to sort of clean out the body. So you can clean out the glucose. If you have excess body fat, you're, you're gonna use it, right? So again, way to clean it out. And then there's this whole process called autophagy, which is just fascinating. And autophagy is this, um, so it's been very topical 'cause in 2016, one of the key researchers was given the Nobel Prize in Medicine. So it's, it's a very important process that's been relatively recently discovered. And what they discovered is that when you don't eat protein particularly, but when you fast, your body activates this thing called autophagy, and it breaks down some of the subcellular organs, which sounds really bad.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett59:06

       Subcellular orga- organs?

    7. JFDr. Jason Fung59:07

       Yeah, so, uh, you know, these are sort of like the organs within the cell. So it's not like the liver, but, uh, there's something called organelles within a cell, and some of that is broken down. So basically these proteins and so on within the cell, your body gets rid of that, and you think, "Oh, well, that sounds really bad." But it's not. It turns out that it's very, very good for you because it's an opportunity for your body to get rid of all this old protein, old junky protein, and at the same time, remember that you're fasting. Your growth hormone levels are shooting up through the roof. So like a, you know, two, three-day fast, your growth hormone levels might have go up five times. So you're getting rid of all the old stuff, then when you eat again, you're actually got growth hormone to produce new proteins. So in essence, you're getting rid of the old, you're bringing in the new. It's basically the process of rejuvenation. Could this be a very important way to get rid of some of the chronic illnesses of aging? And there's lots of data, uh, you know, talking about, uh, you know, Alzheimer's disease, there's talk, people talking about cancers, there's people talking about just general aging, you know, Dr. Chris Palmer talking about mental disorders. We're all talking about insulin and overeating and diet as a really important component of not just diabetes and weight, but all of these diseases, mental illnesses, uh, you know, chronic, uh, illnesses like Alzheimer's disease, neurologic illnesses, and there's all this data that suggests that autophagy and fasting as a way to activate autophagy could be actually extremely beneficial for you. Which is fine when we used to do it. And, and, and, you know, what's so interesting (laughs) is that people seem to have already known about it. Like, you see it in almost every major religion. There's periods of fasting, right? It's like, why did they do that? Because it was good for them.... through trial and error, whatever, they realize that, hey, periodically abstaining from food makes us stronger. If you eat all the time, constantly, day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, that's not that good for you. There are periods that you should feast and there are periods you should fast. So religions set days or weeks or months even where you should fast. So it's like, "Whoa, why did they do that?" And are they just way ahead of us in terms of understanding the human body? Like we get so, you know, enamored of our own, you know, intelligence and science and so on that we think they're, you know, that they didn't know what they're talking about. Maybe they knew more about what they're talking about and science is just catching up and saying, "Oh, this process of autophagy that you activate with fasting, this could be really important for longevity, uh, for other things." I'm not saying you should do it, like, every month or whatever. If you look at the way that people do it, they don't do it, like, you know, they don't do it, like, five days a month or something. It's, th- they do it once a year or once every few months.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:17

       How long does

17. 1:02:18 – 1:06:00

    What’s Autophagy?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:18

       autophagy take to kick in? Is it s- 72 hours did you say?

    2. JFDr. Jason Fung1:02:21

       Um.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:22

       Whoa.

    4. JFDr. Jason Fung1:02:22

       Nobody knows, but probably it's, it dep- and it depends on probably how much protein you eat. Protein is the key, um, sort of when you eat protein, autophagy just stops. So low protein, you can activate it, and it's probably somewhere around 20 to 30 hours. So you'll see a lot of religions, for example, they'll have, like, a 24-hour fast, right? One day that you're not supposed to eat or something like that. And maybe that's the way to cleanse your body, not just of the glucose and the fat, but also the excess proteins that w- are, are, are old, they're junky. I mean, you think about renovating your bathroom or something like that, right? The first thing you gotta do, you gotta throw out the, you know, 1970s tub and the avocado green toilet. That's the first thing you gotta do. You gotta get rid of it. You gotta break down before you can rebuild better. Well, autophagy might be that way to break down some of the stuff that you actually can't break down any other way. If your body's full of all this junky protein, you can't get rid of it.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:22

       Is there an evolutionary explanation for the role of autophagy, do you think?

    6. JFDr. Jason Fung1:03:26

       I think there is actually. I think there's a huge, uh, number of reasons why people, uh, do it. One of it, um, this whole idea that fasting actually activates the body, for example, um, is, is very interesting because I think it's like if you're a caveman, for example, or a cave woman, and it's winter and there's nothing to eat, if your body starts to shut down, then evolutionarily you're gonna die, right? Because you have less energy, you can't go out and hunt. So our body's just not that stupid. So what it does, it says, "Okay, well, I'm gonna give you more energy, so I'm gonna activate the body, but then I'm going to, uh, change where you're getting your energy from." You're not gonna get the energy from the food, you're gonna get it from your body fat stores, which is your stored food, right? You stored food for a reason. So that's why I think d- some of the, the fasting has lot of evolutionary benefits because it increases your energy, it, it, it lowers the glucose so if, if you look at the blood glucose, the blood glucose goes down. So in times of stress and so on, your, your body actually naturally fasts. If you get sick, you get a flu or something, you stop eating. First thing you do, right? You just wanna drink some water and stuff. Why? Because your body wants to lock down the glucose because the bacteria love glucose. Your body can run on fat, but the bacteria want the glucose, so you fast to lock down the glucose. So there's a lot of evolutionary reasons why the fasting might be good for, you know, bacterial infections, taking care of things, increasing your energy-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:56

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JFDr. Jason Fung1:04:56

       ... increasing your concentration at a time that you're not, like, when you're not eating, you're actually getting m- more mental capacity and more energy because you need it in order to go hunt.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:07

       Interesting. As you'll know if you've listened to this podcast before, I'm an investor in a company called Huel. I'm on their board and they sponsor this podcast. And I have a very exciting announcement to make. This product called Daily Greens is one of the most highly requested products at Huel, but it's never been sold in the UK before, until now. It's often difficult to get all of the greens into our diet that we need to have a healthy gut microbiome and a healthy body, and with Huel's Daily Greens product, with one scoop every morning, a very, very delicious scoop, you can get 91 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source nutrients into your diet. The most important point here is I genuinely believe it tastes delicious. It's maybe my favorite Huel product ever, for all the reasons I've described. So if you want access to this product, the link is in the description below. It launches in the UK in January. Because of the demand, I'm pretty sure it's gonna sell out.

18. 1:06:00 – 1:11:53

    Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Naturally.

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:00

       What is, what is the most interesting thing or the most, you know, you use the word interesting a lot or fascinating. What is the most fascinating thing that we haven't talked about?

    2. JFDr. Jason Fung1:06:11

       I think, to me, the most fascinating thing is, uh, other than for intermittent fasting, because a lot of the stuff we thought about it was wrong. Uh, in fact, the opposite. But th- the most interesting thing, I think, is in the field of type 2 diabetes, because it's such an important disease. Um, if you look at the number of people being affected with type 2 diabetes, it's skyrocketing. So we had, since the 1970s, an increase in obesity, then we had an increase in type 2 diabetes. And I think the most fascinating thing, the most promising thing I've heard in a long time is that you can actually start to reverse this disease by changing the diet. And I think what's interesting is that you have to understand that type 2 diabetes is largely a dietary disease.And so we treated it with drugs for a long time. And if you give drugs to a dietary disease, well, you're never gonna fix it because you haven't identified the core problem and fixed it. You need to, uh, change the diet to fix that dietary problem, then the disease goes away. And now we have data on intermittent fasting, for example, and also, uh, low carbohydrate diets. Dr. David Unwin published his data in the, in the UK on reversing type two diabetes with, uh, reducing carbohydrates, which is showing that you can reduce about 50% of the people and put them into a completely drug-free remission state. Like, basically cure 50% of those type two diabetics who are at risk of cancer, at risk of heart disease, at risk of strokes, at risk of blindness, at risk of kidney disease, nerve damage, infection. All these people you can fix just by changing their diet, either cutting down their carbohydrates or using intermittent fasting, and it's free and anybody can do it. I'm not talking about a drug that costs thousands of dollars. I'm not talking about a surgery which is only available to the, the, the 1%. I'm talking about a treatment, which is intermittent fasting, which is available to everybody in the entire world for free and yet has the power to completely reverse their disease and make them so much healthier. So the question is, why don't we do it? (laughs) I couldn't answer that question for you.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:40

       (laughs)

    4. JFDr. Jason Fung1:08:40

       I try to do my part to tell people, but you know.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:43

       Did you know I was gonna ask you that question?

    6. JFDr. Jason Fung1:08:45

       Uh, no. (laughs)

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:46

       I was gonna ask you, why don't we do it?

    8. JFDr. Jason Fung1:08:49

       (laughs) I, I-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:50

       Number one is systems, incentives, money.

    10. JFDr. Jason Fung1:08:53

        (sighs) I think it is. I think it's-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:55

        From big pharma.

    12. JFDr. Jason Fung1:08:57

        You know, the real reason is, I think, that people are slow to catch new ideas. Like, when people hear about new ideas, and I'm talking about academic doctors and so on, there's an intrinsic resistance to change. So I started talking about intermittent fasting, say, 2016 when The Obesity Code was published. I talked about it, about reversing type two diabetes around the same time. Um, and, uh, it's just they're just very slow to say, "Hey, this makes a lot of sense." Because for them, they've invested so much in this calories in, calories out model. They've built their entire careers on saying that it's, it's your fault that you're fat, right? It's, it's the foods that you ate, it's the calories that you ate, instead of trying to get to a deeper understanding. So people are very reluctant to change. In fact, I mean, it's been 10 years and you see the public, the interest in intermittent fasting has skyrocketed, and yet most doctors still won't prescribe it. They won't talk about it. They know nothing about it. There's... How much teaching do doctors get about intermittent fasting and why it might be helpful? Probably zero. Like, why? We have this amazing tool and people, you know, doctors call it a fad, right? It's a fad diet. Well, it's been around for 2,000 plus years. That's a long, long, long fad, right? It's, it's proven effective. If you don't eat, you're gonna lose weight. What's simpler than that? If you don't eat, you're gonna use up your blood glucose, your diabetes will get better. What's wrong with that? It's not hard to understand.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:32

        The Diabetes Code, I've got the Diabetes Journal here in front of me, and put simply, it talks about step one being to put less sugar in and step two being burn the sugar off.

    14. JFDr. Jason Fung1:10:42

        Yeah.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:43

        And, and step one, whi- which relates to putting more sugar in, is all about, um, low carbohydrate diets, right?

    16. JFDr. Jason Fung1:10:51

        Cutting down the carbohydrates, uh, yeah. That's, that's one effective way of cutting down the type two diabetes. In fact, the American Diabetes Association, in their sort of, um, nutritional journals, they talk about it having the most scientific evidence of any diet. There's no diet with more evidence for reversing type two diabetes than cutting down the carbohydrates.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:11

        And then step two, about burning the sugar off, and that's where fasting comes into the picture.

    18. JFDr. Jason Fung1:11:15

        Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, there's, there's... It's, it's not that hard to understand. Everybody can understand it. You don't eat, you're gonna lose weight, right? I mean, it's, it's such a simple, powerful tool, but it, it threatens the whole apple cart. All these doctors, all these professors which have built their entire reputations, all these, uh, systems that are in place for people-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:43

        Personal trainers.

    20. JFDr. Jason Fung1:11:43

        (laughs) Yeah, personal trainers work on a different level because they talk about more exercise, um, whereas I talk about-

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:49

        And calories in, calories out. I think-

    22. JFDr. Jason Fung1:11:51

        Yeah.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:51

        ... when, when we talk about calories on this

19. 1:11:53 – 1:18:50

    The Myth About “Calories In, Calories Out”

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:53

       show sometimes, I think the people that get quite offended tend to be, um, personal trainers because I think they would say they've got case studies of telling one of their clients to monitor their calories and they saw a reduction in weight. So they-

    2. JFDr. Jason Fung1:12:10

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:10

       For them, that means it works, this calories in, calories out model.

    4. JFDr. Jason Fung1:12:14

       Um, it... Again, it, it is that, but it's a simplistic understanding. That's, that's, that's my whole point.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:21

       Yeah.

    6. JFDr. Jason Fung1:12:21

       It's sort of like if I were to say to you, "Why did the Titanic crash," right? And most people would say, "A hidden iceberg." Well, that's very simplistic. That's not the right answer. The right answer is, "It was going too fast," right? If you think the right answer to why did the Titanic crash is because of hidden iceberg, you'd say, "The solution is to hit less icebergs," which is the same as eat less calories or drink less alcohol. That's a very superficial understanding. You have to get to the deeper level, which is say, "Why did the Titanic hit that iceberg? It was going too fast and there was all these icebergs, and it was going too fast for where it was." So then you say, "It needs to slow down."Now, you've identified that deeper understanding. Same as with calories. You can say, "Eat less calories," and for some people it'll work. But for some people, it's like, why are you eating so many calories? Is it because you're hungry? Why are you hungry? Is it because all those calories that you're eating are going immediately into storage? You're eating white bread and jam and sugar, and all of it's going directly into storage, which is leaving you hungry, which is making you eat too many calories. So in the end, yes, you are eating more calories, but that's the sort of first order thinking and not the second order thinking that we need to be doing. And that's what the Ozempic and so on starts to address, is the hunger issue.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:41

       And this is really what all your work addresses, and it's really the first time I've had someone talk to me about obesity and weight gain through the lens of hormones.

    8. JFDr. Jason Fung1:13:51

       Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:51

       Never really, I've never heard that before. And reading through your work was really illuminating because it allowed me to change my frame. And it's as you say, when we're just focusing on the surface, it's very easy to fail because we need to understand the first principles of what's going on underneath the surface for that long-term success to stand a chance of occurring. And I think everyone listening to this who's struggled with weight or obesity or whatever else, um, can relate to this idea that something's not working and, you know, d- if there was any diet that worked, there wouldn't be 1,000 of them, right?

    10. JFDr. Jason Fung1:14:25

        Yeah. And I think the other thing is to understand that it's not the personal failing that-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:33

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JFDr. Jason Fung1:14:33

        ... we make it out to be, which is ex- I think extremely unfair, because obviously there's something within the system, within the food environment, within the system of how we're framing it-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:44

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JFDr. Jason Fung1:14:44

        ... which is making a lot of people overweight, but it's not because they don't have willpower or because they're weak or these other number of reasons that we stigmatize obesity. Because we look at it from that calories in, calories out framework, right? We say, "You're eating too many calories, you must be weak." As opposed to, "You're eating too many calories. What... Why is it that you're eating too many calories? Why are you hungry all the time?"

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:11

        In a word then, if you had to describe what you think about this idea of calories in, calories out, what is that word?

    16. JFDr. Jason Fung1:15:20

        I would say that it's shallow. It's correct if you don't think about it too hard. Anybody who focuses in on thermodynamics and calories hasn't really thought about the problem enough. That's what I think, so in the end, it is correct, just like alcohol in, alcohol out, you know, hitting the iceberg. Yes, it did hit an iceberg. That's why... But it was going too fast, right? Or alcohol in. Yes, if you drink less alcohol, you'll cure your alcoholism, but you won't cure the PTSD that caused you to drink.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:55

        Correct, but not helpful.

    18. JFDr. Jason Fung1:15:56

        Exactly. That's exactly right.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:58

        Agree.

    20. JFDr. Jason Fung1:15:58

        It's, it's, it's... It is correct, but it's sort of not getting to that root, deeper cause that we need to-

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:08

        Mm-hmm.

    22. JFDr. Jason Fung1:16:08

        ... in order to help people. And that's causing us to blame them. So what we're doing, which I think is very unfair, is blaming the victim. Like, do you think (laughs) this person who's trying to lose 50 pounds needs you to tell them they need, need to lose 50 pounds? Absolutely not. That's only gonna be the 10,000th time they've heard it.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:30

        It's interesting, 'cause one of our guests talked about the role of compassion and kindness in weight loss, and now through the lens of understanding cortisol, now I can understand how kindness and gratitude and being happy-

    24. JFDr. Jason Fung1:16:45

        Yeah.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:45

        ... you know, for lack of a better word, can help us lose weight. And when we're not happy, when we're resentful, when we're low in gratitude, um, when we're bitter-

    26. JFDr. Jason Fung1:16:55

        Yeah.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:55

        ... we're more likely to gain weight.

    28. JFDr. Jason Fung1:16:57

        And, and, and other things help too, because if you think about things like a sense of community-

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:02

        Mm-hmm.

    30. JFDr. Jason Fung1:17:03

        ... it's very important. So-
20. 1:18:50 – 1:22:19

    The Last Guest's Question.

    1. JFDr. Jason Fung1:18:50

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:50

       Jason, thank you so much. We, um... I feel like we could talk for hours 'cause I'm so... There's so many sort of s- s- I was thinking about it like spiderwebs, but there's so many little branches we could go off on a- as it relates to hormones and the impact of hormones on the human body. You have this other book as well called the PCOS Plan, um, preventing and reversing polycystic ovary syndrome, which is a, you know, a whole nother conversation for another time. But these books are so wonderful because they provide a new lens on an old conversation, and a conversation that's lacked the depth th- that's required to make any...... significant progress on these subjects. As we've seen, obesity levels and other issues with weight have gone in the wrong direction for the last couple of decades, and I think it's a more systemic understanding of these issues that will give us any chance of reversing it, and that's exactly what your work does. Um, everyone knows where to find you, Dr. Jason Fung. We'll link all of your work in the description below. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last, last guest leaves a question for the next guest without knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you is, what is your greatest gift to the world?

    3. JFDr. Jason Fung1:20:00

       I think (sighs) if, if, if, you know, I, I suppose (laughs) it sounds very arrogant, um, but I really hope that my, my work helps people sort of, uh, reverse the type two diabetes, 'cause that is really sort of one of the most close things that I deal with, because I deal with it professionally sort of every day, um, and helps break the stigma of, not just the stigma but the understanding there like, uh, you know, stimulates more thinking about weight loss, how to lose weight, more than calories in/calories out. Uh, I mean, it's so sort of pie in the sky, because, you know, it's, there's a whole, you know, worldwide sort of institutionalized, fossilized almost, mm, you know, thinking around calories, it's all calories, uh, sorta thing. So, so for me to upset it seems ridiculous, but (laughs) I hope that I can at least start that conversation to say, "Hey, let's think about these things. Let's think about the hormones. Let's think about reversing type two diabetes. Let's think about all getting together and helping each other to become so much healthier, not through drugs, and not through more surgery, and not with, you know, weird and new things that you've never heard of, but with the tried and the true sort of oldest thinking that has been there," right? It's, it's, to me, it's, I, I sometimes think about this. I go crazy. I'm like, "Why do I think I can even do that," right? It's just ridiculous. It's so much hubris. But, you know, uh, I, I can only try, right? Because I, I see in my own practice how much good it's done for some people. So it drives me to say, "I need to bring it to more people. I need to, to, to explain it to them. If they want to be helped, they will be helped. But if they don't want it, then, then, so okay, I- I'm not trying to force myself to do anything." But, you know, that's what I hope my greatest gift will be, um, but at the same (laughs) time, I sort of think, "That's just, you know... You're crazy if you can think you can do that." But-

Episode duration: 1:24:39