The obesity code by Dr. Jason Fung gives some great insights into what we know, and in the end it's quite simple. Our body regulates weight through insulin, so try to keep the insulin levels as low as possible and have extended periods every day where you don't eat.

Respectfully you are coming from a certain frame. There is always the possibility that other frames exist that may be a more accurate representation of reality. If you are open, check out The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung.

I enjoyed the Obesity Code which focuses on fasting and insulin resistance, would work well with other books on diet composition.

Yes.

Fructose loads your liver. Sucrose breaks down into glucose (which can be metabolized by many cells) and fructose (which is only metabolized by the liver). They're both bad when over consumed.

This laid out pretty well in The Obesity Code by Jason Fung (a real doctor).

It sounds like you're already doing the right thing (congrats!), but if you're interested in the subject "The Obesity Code" by Jason Fung is an incredibly good book. It delves into why/how of type 2 diabetes and how it can be cured/managed.

/r/keto on reddit is a great community to start from. They have a FAQ and so on.

For books, I'd actually start with The Obesity Code by Dr. Fung. It's not a keto book but it's very close, and you'll figure out that keto is metabolically very similar to fasting.

As the article notes, eating less than you burn is effective for a while until the body works to get back up to a previous set point to maintain homeostasis.

An excellent book on this topic is The Obesity Code by Dr Jason Fung

Some of the best info on this can be found in the book, The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung.

Also, here's a short video by him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk

For a diabetes/obesity focus on this point, read anything by Jason Fung. For instance, "The obesity code" is thoroughly researched and persuasive.

As a diabetes researcher myself, it makes sense. While I do not investigate type 2, I understand that having a decent stretch of time where the body's insulin levels drop is a really good thing.

The Obesity Code by Jason Fung M.D.

Completely changed my world view on how to lose weight.

I just finished reading 'The Obesity Code', 'The Diabetes Code' and 'A Complete Guide to Fasting' by Dr. Jason Fung. I'm on my third week of intermittent-fasting + keto and those books have been full of insights.

He also has several talks and interviews on YouTube worth watching as well. I believe his book, The Obesity Code, is also a good read.

He treats a lot of diabetic patients. I've integrated his stuff into my keto diet and lost a ton of weight.

The Obesity Code is a good primer on weight loss being a hormonal imbalance rather than caloric imbalance, the things that cause this imbalance and how to resolve it. Fasting is a chapter that he expands upon in The Complete Guide to Intermittent Fasting ("CGIF")

My first reaction to your statement about it being "just marketing material for some fitness coach" was "that's absurd" but then as I reflected a bit more I can see how some people may have taken it to be him trying to pitch his clinic in Toronto, but I don't think this is the right interpretation. He is a practicing nephrologist who refers in his book (like many books written by doctors) to many case studies. I didn't at any point think "Gee, I should fly to Toronto and get into this program" but rather thought the case studies lent some context to his claims.

I suggest reading the book and forming your own opinion. I was fasting before I read the book, but the book helped me understand some of the science, pitfalls, and protocols.

Read The Obesity Code by Jason Fung. A real doctor using real medical studies but with a different view to explain in common language why diets fail and why old practices work.

1: 12 Rules for life, Jordan Peterson
Ignore the controversy, this book will change your life for the better. Get the audio version Peterson narrates and it adds an extra dimension.

2: The Obesity Code, Dr Fung
Probably the most eloquent and effective breakdown of how and why obesity comes to be and what to do about it. As a bonus, it’s really funny!

3:Not Alone, Craig Falconer
I picked this up on a whim and enjoyed it more than any other work of fiction in the past year. It’s a first contact story that focuses on the media and politics.

4:Measure what matters, John Doer
This book has transformed how my team runs. Anyone in any kind of management role should read this book.

5:Win Bigly, Scott Adams
I’m going to be controversial with this one. It’s an interesting story that provides more practical tools for persuasion than any book I’ve ever read (and I’ve read every popular book on the topic). If you want to know how to apply influence read this book.

I recently read The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung and in it he states that bariatric surgery is little more than surgically enforced fasting. Most people can fast without doing the surgery.

I highly recommend the book. It's more like a science book about dieting than a diet book. Now that I understand that when I eat is as important as what I eat, I've been able to lose 20 pounds (and still going). And, yes, sugar (especially fructose) and refined carbs are bad.

I was reading a blog post by Dr Jason Fung that compared LCHF with IF. Conclusion was that LCHF is around 70% as effective as IF on insulin levels. You are still maintaining a low insulin level even on eating day, with a significant drop on fasting days. This should, by logic, have greater impact on insulin sensitivity due to long periods of low insulin levels.

His whole blog is quite interesting. His book, The Obesity Code, is a great and easy read.

https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/power-comparison-fast...

Calories, although the simplicity of the thermodynamics analogy seems simple are not the only factor at play here.

The basic reason is that your body can increase or decreased its energy expenditure drastically in response to increased or decrease consumption of calories.

I'm reading The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung right now and he presents a very strong argument that the cause of obesity is insulin resistance.

In the book he cites both overfeeding studies where subjects were fed very large numbers of calories but did not gain weight, as well underfeeding studies where subjects ate only 500 calories a day but didn't lose weight.

After reading this I'm pretty damn convinced that the diet problems facing us are: highly refined carbohydrates, sugar and sugar substitutes, and alcohol (I haven't come across this in his work, but if you look at the stuff by Dr. Lustig you'll see sugar and alcohol are incredibly similar metabolically)

Think about this: for most of human history we did not count calories and yet we were not obese.

It's the highly processed western diet of breads, cakes, cereals, soda, etc that are the culprit.

Jason Fung is Canadian nephrologist. He's been working with obese and type 2 diabetes patients for years. He's been advocating fasting and time-restricted eating for years to fight obesity and diabetes. He's mostly known for this book "The Obesity Code" in which he details how modern eating habits are wrong and the main cause for the obesity epidemic.

I hope I summed it up well. You might want to look him up on Youtube, he has some really interesting talks.

All systems of the body follow a circadian rhythm. Following the body’s circadian rhythm and adhering to a time-restricted eating pattern (i.e. intermittent fasting) is even more important than explicitly only restricting calories. Secondly, avoiding processed carbs and sugars is more important than explicitly only restricting calories. Combined, those two principles directly impact your insulin sensitivity, which is very influential in telling your body how to process the calories you eat, when to feel hungry/full, and to what degree.

Of course, by following a time-restricted eating pattern, you naturally consume less calories, but in general, calories are largely irrelevant when you are adhering to a consistent circadian eating cycle and eating clean, whole foods. Healthy insulin resistance directly negates fat/weight gain by telling your body to simply dispose of the excess energy rather than storing it as fat. Calories-wise, the body only uses what it needs and gets rid of the rest. To keep insulin resistance in a healthy range though, you obviously need to not consume things that will spike it and reverse the feedback loop. Following the body’s natural circadian rhythm contributes to keeping it in a healthy range as well, and it is significantly easier to adhere to than restricting calories only.

For the curious, here are a few resources that I have found super helpful in learning to better control my diet and health.

The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, MD
http://a.co/7MHTlmU

Found My Fitness Podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/foundmyfitness/id8181983...

The books which I have read which have had a profound impact on how I think and improve what I do are:

1. Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us - Daniel H. Pink

2. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance - Angela Duckworth

3. The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck - Mark Manson

4. Be Obsessed or Be Average - Grant Cardone

5. High Performance Habits - Brendon Burchard

6. The Obesity Code - Jason Fung

The summary of what I've taken out of this is really fall in love with the intrinsic reward of doing things, take on the challenge but work at it pragmatically and patiently. It's okay to be a little crazed at what you want, do it for you, and always reflect, learn, adapt and try again.

No offence taken :-)

I'm not a professional, and I didn't track anything except my body measurements and weight during this process so I don't know exactly where all the results came from. I wasn't chugging bottles of Coca-Cola, but I was having processed sugar in my multiple cups of coffee every day.

As for calorie counting, my research indicated that calorie counting is a myth (see The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung). Certainly, I always struggled with a calorie-restricted diet, so I knew that if I always felt hungry, anything I did wouldn't work. I know it sounds odd but during the 16 hours I am fasting, I just don't feel that hungry. If I feel a little hungry I just drink some water and I feel fine.

I think the key was satisfying the ghrelin by eating as much as I liked during my 8-hour feeding window. I know it sounds crazy that you can eat as much as you like and still loose weight but it happened.

It really is the food. America was as car dependent in the 70s as they were in today, but if you look at photos then, you'll notice how uncannily THIN everyone was.

If you dig more into it, you'll find the obesity crisis started around the late 70s with a change in dietary guidelines and medical guidelines saying basically 'fat & meat bad' and 'carbs good' along with the widespread introduction of vegetable oils, leading to too much insulin and other hormonal effects slowly increasing diabetes & obesity in our population. Also food companies honing on what obesogenic combos of food lead to people to eat more, buy more and thus get better sales.

Read "The Obesity Code" if you want a more detailed description with a lot of links to papers and studies for more info. [0]

[0] I said this yesterday too in another article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25767604

> It "works" exactly like calorie restriction, there's no magic to IF.

"there's no magic to IF"? Well, literally speaking, I tend to agree. For example, I've never actually made out any mustachioed magical monkeys monkey-patching methods in Ruby on Rails.

Seriously though, I think I disagree with the intent behind your sentence, which I interpret as downplaying the difference between IF (intermittent fasting) and CR (calorie restriction). Based on reading the Obesity Code, my understanding is that IF leads to substantially different biological responses relative to CR.

This diagram below, or something similar to it, is a nice way of understanding the core principles in The Obesity Code by Fung which promotes IF. Sustained durations of fasting help lower insulin levels for long enough periods that insulin resistance itself can lower. (CR doesn't do this, to my knowledge.)

  ASCII Diagram version of
  https://thefastingmethod.com/wp-content/uploads/HOT-Fatty-Liver2.1.jpg 

                         ┌────────┐                       
  ┌───────────┐          │  high  │          ┌───────────┐
  │  glucose  │────┬────▶│insulin │────┬────▶│  obesity  │
  └───────────┘    │     └────────┘    │     └───────────┘
                   │                   │                  
                   │                   ▼                  
            ┌────────────┐      ┌─────────────┐           
            │  insulin   │      │    fatty    │           
            │ resistance │◀─────│    liver    │           
            └────────────┘      └─────────────┘           
                                       ▲                  
                                       │                  
                                       │                  
                                ┌────────────┐            
                                │  fructose  │            
                                └────────────┘

I would contest that. If you dig more into it, you'll find the obesity crisis started around the late 70s with a change in dietary guidelines and medical guidelines saying basically 'fat & meat bad' and 'carbs good' along with the widespread introduction of vegetable oils, leading to too much insulin and other hormonal effects slowly increasing diabetes & obesity in our population.

Read "The Obesity Code" if you want a more detailed description with a lot of links to papers and studies for more info.

"The End of Dieting", Joel Fuhrman, MD.

"How Not to Die", Michael Greger, MD.

"The Obesity Code", Jason Fung, MD.

"The Obesity Code" by Jason Fung goes into all the issues from the article in more detail. He references studies that seem to prove sugar substitutes cause weight gain rather than correlate with weight gain:
Sucralose raises insulin by 20 percent, despite the fact that it contains no calories and no sugar. This insulin-raising effect has also been shown for other artificial sweeteners, including the “natural” sweetener stevia. Despite having a minimal effect on blood sugars, both aspartame and stevia raised insulin levels higher even than table sugar.

Fung, Jason. The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss (p. 172).

Intermittent fasting. (See "The Obesity Code" by Jason Fung, MD.)

Avoid artificial sweeteners during fasting. The incretin effect from tasting something sweet will cause you to produce insulin, reduce your fat metabolism, decrease gluconeogenesis, and cause your blood sugar to drop.

Usually it's recommended sticking to water, coffee, tea, and sometimes bone broth for longer fasts to supplement a little protein and electrolytes.

For more information, Dr. Jason Fung wrote two books on this: "The Obesity Code" and "The Diabetes Code". Both are VERY much worth reading.

https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Jason-Fung/e/B01BT8K6FK?ref=sr_ntt...

I just listened to The Obesity Code by Jason Fung and my mind is kinda blown. Everyone you've said matches what the book covers.

The takeaway points are:

- Raised insulin is the key driver in weight by preventing the burning of fat and triggers the storage to fat. Insulin is the hormone that tells allows cells to absorb glucose

- Type 2 diabetes is caused by insulin resistance, which happens over years of prolonged periods of raised insulin without periods of lowered insulin. Carbohydrates and sugar convert to glucose, insulin resistance prevents it being used by cells, triggering the ask for more glucose by those cells to be available, by way of asking for more insulin. Raised insulin and glucose contribute to more fat being stored.

- The western lifestyle is based around eating evenly throughout the day reducing our fasted state. This means our insulin levels don't have a chance to lower.

- Fasting is a way to give your body a break from raised insulin, use up the glucose energy first, then switch to fat burning (Ketosis).

- Sugars and carbohydrates do not trigger the hormone that says we're full when compared.

If this is of interest to you, I highly recommend the book. I'm still learning all the specifics so some of the above may be incorrect.

I very much plan to start reducing my sugar and carbohydrate intake and introduce intermittent fasting.

Credit to Jason Fung (author of The Obesity Code) for the tips!

And I can very much relate to not being able to stop once I start eating something. I find this especially hard with processed/refined carbs, which I believe play some tricks on our hunger related hormones so our body can't detect when we've had enough food. If I stick to mostly more protein/fat and unprocessed carbs I find it much easier to control how much I eat.

It's interesting to hear your success with an extended fast. I haven't ventured beyond the 16:8 but am intrigued to experiment with something a bit longer this year.

If you want to reverse diabetes you need at least some fasting. Keto can do a heck of a lot to help, however the incretin effect will cause insulin levels to increase during mealtimes sabotaging the necessary reduction in insulin resistance for your liver and pancreas.

Dr. Jason Fung, a kidney specialist, runs an intensive dietary management program in Canada and has written a book called "The Diabetes Code" that describes the methods they use to reverse Type 2. I would recommend that anyone with Type 2 diabetes read at least that book and maybe also his other book called "The Obesity Code."

I've read a book[1] -- by an actual doctor -- saying the exact opposite. If you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, our ancestors would have had many times when food accessibility was scarce and they would have needed to maintain their strength through a long fast. An animal that burned muscle/protein over fat is an animal that wouldn't have survived long, that would be a terrible evolutionary disadvantage. The design of our body isn't stupid -- we store fat for a reason, so that we can burn it in times when food is scarce. Burning fat for energy is both normal and totally healthy.

From a personal standpoint, I barely eat any carbs and I've lost zero strength despite dropping 25 pounds. Apparently the diet that has made me thinner and increased my energy and mental clarity is the "dangerous" one, and the diet that has made everyone obese is "healthy" and "balanced".

[1] The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung

Jason Fung explains his theory of type 2 diabetes / metabolic disorder, and how it is addressed by fasting, in detail in episode #59 of Peter Attia's "The Drive" podcast [1].

The review of Fung's "The Obesity Code" on Red Pen Reviews [2] details some serious flaws in the scientific claims in the book related to calories, insulin, and fasting, and their relation to obesity and fat loss.

Relating to nutrition/health/longevity, they aren't books, but I've found the podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos, and even tweets by Rhonda Patrick (FoundMyFitness), Peter Attia (The Drive), Stephan Guyenet, and Chris Masterjohn quite enlightening.

[1] https://peterattiamd.com/jasonfung/
[2] https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/the-obesity-code-unloc...

There is a lot of research supporting how much the when of intermittent fasting matters even when the what and how much are held constant. How the food is distributed over time matters for insulin which affects weight gain / loss.

There is widespread misunderstanding that obesity is caused by caloric imbalance while it is actually caused by hormonal imbalance.

Dr. Jason Fung has written extensively (research, blog posts, books) covering how IF impacts insulin and insulin sensitivity, and how that downstream leads to obesity [and how IF helps reverse obesity]. I highly recommend his books such as The Obesity Code.

https://www.dietdoctor.com/my-single-best-weight-loss-tip

I recently read The Obesity Code and it has completely shifted my understanding of weight gain. The bit that got me was diabetic patients being given insulin, which has a known symptom of weight gain - the very thing contributing to type 2 diabetes.

So the same calorie diet and the same amount burned can behave differently at storing fat because of a small pill. This for me flies in the face of calories in/calories out. A pill, or insulin can really screw that up.

I was thinking of saying the same thing about item 2. It goes along with my book recommendation from the book recommendation thread: The Obesity Code, by Jason Fung M.D. (And/or his Aetiology of Obesity YouTube videos.) For one thing it made me realize why my original "scientific" (I thought) plan for weight loss by counting calories compared to what FitBit thought my calorie expenditure was didn't actually work. For one thing, I didn't know that if you're eating insulinogenic foods (which isn't the same as high glycemic foods), eating frequent, small meals, your energy expenditure actually can decrease. That's something those BMR calculators don't consider at all. But if you are fasting, it actually goes up.

Ah, I see you are also familiar with the snake diet guy. He's a bit out there sometimes. (Last weekend he did a live video of eating several pounds of raw beef.) Where he is aligned with Jason Fung, I can get behind him.