The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss (Why Intermittent Fasting Is the Key to Controlling Your Weight)

I am a PA with decades of experience with diabetes and it's ill effects. I have watched through my career, type 2 diabetics listen to medical advice and never get any better. When my daughter, who was a gestational diabetic with her first pregnancy had a fasting blood glucose of 288 mg/dl, it became personal for me. They gave her the usual Metformin script and sent her on her way. Knowing that these meds do nothing to cure the disease and that it would only head her to a life on insulin and further weight gain I asked her not to take the meds, stop all carbs for the moment and let me do some research. That was when I came across Dr. Fung's lectures on the internet. As someone who has been studying holistic medicine for 30 years it made complete sense to me. What makes this book and his lectures so valuable, is that he approaches everything from a medical model and shows why modern medicine is getting it all wrong. He explains the process of glucose metabolism in a way I feel most lay people can understand. It's important for every overweight or type 2 diabetic to understand this process to better understand what they have been doing to their bodies...and unfortunately what we in medicine have been doing to their bodies. What was most valuable to me was him quoting studies that are considered standards in the field of medicine...not studies on rats or studies that have 15 subjects...but studies conducted over years with thousands of participants...like the Frammingham study or the NHANES study. I had seen these studies in the most prestigious medical journals like JAMA...funny how some of the aspects of the studies that he cites just weren't included or stressed in the outcomes. After going over all the metabolism...the studies on why reducing calories and increasing exercise just doesn't work...he presents a series of plans to reverse (yes I said reverse) type 2 diabetes. There are several options and one is bound to be workable for most people. My daughter has a hectic schedule and always complained about diets that required 3 or more meals a day...she doesn't like to eat breakfast and has no time to schedule multiple meals. The four hour intermittent fasting plan worked great for her. After an initial adjustment of about 2 days (headaches which were not relieved by increasing her sodium, my guess was sugar withdrawl), she had no hunger, no cravings and felt great. Within a week her blood sugar was normal. She started this right before the holidays and was concerned about missing holiday dinners...my answer was that of Dr. Fung's: have your dinner, enjoy it and get back on track the next day. She did just that and got through the holidays effortless and satisfied that she wasn't deprived of a thing. She remained on her fasting protocol and just had her meal within that time frame. Her blood glucose was higher the next morning but normalized after one day. She chooses now to have one "cheat meal" each week and for 4 weeks the next morning her blood sugar was higher...but got lower each week and after 4 weeks her morning after a cheat meal her blood glucose was normal! Within 10 weeks she has lost 46 pounds and is thrilled with her progress. Her doctor is shocked and initially thought the diet was nuts but now wants to know more about it...hence why I ordered 3 copies of this book...perfect for the medical mind. This diet is basically a ketogenic diet on steroids...great for so many ailments and used by many cancer patients. I started on the diet myself and found similar results with the exception of my cheat day...maybe because of my age, I do not get into ketoses for days after my cheat day which slows down my weight loss. I have still managed to lose 16 pounds in 3 weeks effortlessly with the exception of the 2 day sugar hangover like my daughter experienced. I have since found a product that will put you into ketoses in a day, but it is very expensive and the taste is...not so great. I use it once a week and it allows me to have that cheat meal once a week without sacrificing my progress. My guess it that Dr. Fung will become villified for several reasons: 1. His plan works without medicine 2. The drug companies will lose a tremendous amount of money 3. No special foods or supplements to buy 4. No added expenses...in fact my food bills are much lower. 5. He exposes the fact that this information has been available to the medical community for a long time and no one has acted on it. I highly recommend this book and highly recommend you read through all the facts and figures he goes over...it makes managing your weight and your diabetes much easier over your lifetime without much thought once you know how your body reacts to food. I also recommend getting an extra copy for your doctor because they will surely think you are nuts when you tell them what you are doing. I will be eternally grateful to Dr. Fung for giving me the tools to cure my daughter and better serve my patients. UPDATE: My daughter continues to do well with blood sugars that remain normal, her biggest complaint is that she has to keep buying new clothes. She has found her weight has stalled and after some investigation I realized why...she had been taking MCT oil, about 3 tablespoons a day in pill form (she doesn't eat breakfast and doesn't like the taste of coconut) and she stopped it at the same time her weight loss halted. MCT oil...and there are several like coconut and hazelnut, stay liquid at room temperature. They can be added to food like coffee or smoothies, even salads. I found that I can get back into ketosis at warp speed when I started using it. Amazon has several brands here and I like the 32 ounce Viva labs coconut MCT. I found that although the craving weren't horrible, I missed my sweets. There is a new book from Martina Slajervoa called "Fat Bombs" that I highly recommend. Tons of sweet treats that are keto friendly. I will say I hate stevia and it's aftertaste, but found Swerve to be a great substitute. I will also warn you that if you don't use MCT oil in many of the recipes and sub coconut oil in it's more solid form, the results are not nearly as good. The chocolate hazelnut smoothie does it for me...sometimes I sub ice for all the water and I get a soft serve like ice cream that tastes like I'm cheating. The MCT oil helps me get right back into ketosis after my cheat days without buying that expensive, horrible tasting powered drink I was using. She also has a book on ketogenic recipes in general that I found very helpful as she has many dinner recipes that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less. I have taken my blood sugar both before and an hour after eating these "Fat Bomb" treats, (I'm not diabetic) and my blood sugar stayed the same or went lower...that was using the Swerve, which is expensive but worth it and a bit cheaper if bought in the 3 pack as I do.

My wife and I love reading books about health and were never that concerned about weight loss but I found Dr. Fung's YouTube videos and blog to be very interesting and decided to pick up his book based on watching those. We were fasting for health promoting reasons other than weight loss and watching and reading about fasting is something to do while into the fast. This is one of the best health-related books we have read in years! Fung's premise and the way he supports it are fascinating and important. I wish we had his perspectives and insights on fasting many years ago. I do not like that he fails to give Dr. Joel Fuhrman the props he deserves for breaking the ground on providing a strong book endorsing fasting about 23 years ago. Reading that book was the first step for me in removing my fear of fasting for more than a day or two, but Fung's book and blog took the fear factor down by another huge notch by insisting that there was no evidence that fasting obliterates muscle tissue or causes overeating as a rebound effect after fasting. He didn't really completely dispel the notion that there is a possible problem with such greatly improved digestion and efficiency in absorbing and processing food that this may result in weight gain, something Fuhrman still suggests. But overall, Fung's whole paradigm about insulin and the reduction of insulin levels seems very well thought out and supported and was very helpful to us after this last seven-day fast. Now we are doing some intermittent fasting, no eating after 7:30 pm for me or before 10:30 am. My wife, who is 105 lbs soaking wet and has a much more physically active job, is using a shorter fasting window but controlling the timing of her eating better than before we read the book. The results for me have been fantastic. I have battled belly fat since abdominal surgery (emergency appendectomy) two years ago that seemed to cause something to go haywire with my gut (maybe scar tissue? adhesions?) and now sticking to the intermittent fasting, my weight seems to finally be cracking and moving downward. We'll have to see if I can actually lower my setpoint and get it down to where I don't feel like I am wearing a sack of potatoes on my belly, and keep it there. I have WAY more energy than I did when eating between 8 am and 9 pm every day. I still have some trouble sleeping and hope that evens out because it is a cortisol jacking problem to sleep too little, but my energy is very high so far. The book has all kinds of interesting facts that I never knew about, like the fact that ANYthing you put in your mouth that is sweet, including artificial sweeteners with no calories (I was using stevia), raises insulin levels! And that the myth of a big breakfast being better for one's weight is not really supported by any meaningful data. The one thing I am still not convinced of is that a high-fat diet is ideal, even though Dr. Fung tells us that fats are the macronutrient that minimally raises insulin. I have a sugar craving that is out of this world--I know that may go down with time if I can get insulin levels down, but meanwhile I need my fruit and lots of it and in my experience, when I eat a lot of fruit and very little else for a few days or over a week (I only did this once--nearly 100% fruitarian for about 10 days), I dropped a ton of body fat and felt phenomenally healthy. That lasted for a few months, then I got voraciously hungry and gained back all the weight and then some. But when I try to eat most of my calories from fat (nuts and seeds for me, being a vegetarian/usually vegan), I am never satisfied, always starving for sugar (fruit). And fat constipates me. When I try to use cheese or dairy fat, I get angina and my cholesterol levels become very unhealthy. So if this topic can be addressed more, I would love to see it. I should add that while Fung has acknowledged (I think this may have been in interviews not in the book) that people can feel "awful" the first few times they try fasting, he paints too rosy a picture of fasting as almost always giving people more energy DURING fasts. This I have found is often very true for SHORT fasts, like intermittent fasting of 12-17 hours a day, but NOT when you get into more than a couple days, at least not for us! And we have now done many, many fasts since 1979. Most of mine were no more than 4 days until last year when we finally did a 10 day fast in Feb., 3 days in April, 3 days in July, 9 days in Sept., 3 days in Nov. (over Thanksgiving!!! imagine!!!), and 6 in Dec. (over Christmas--again, what a feat). We were VERY tired, low on energy most of the time and were just able to do a 20 minute walk every day and that about wore us out. This last fast a couple weeks ago was the first one where I had that burst of energy the fourth night and the fifth morning, but when I tried to do some fast walking or jogging, forget it! The energy did not work when I pushed it at all. Maybe this tiredness is mostly toxins circulating or maybe it is that we don't do well on ketones, not sure why, but Fung fails to warn folks that this may be a major concern. He implies you can just keep working at your normal job, etc. Maybe you can but we sure can't. Even me, and I have a very low-stress kind of work at home. We have found, contrary to what he is suggesting, that you really MUST be prepared to REST and be bored if you are going more than a day and a half. Anyway, strongly recommend this book to those interested not just in weight control but in general health promoting strategies.

Best book about obesity, diet and overall health I've read...ever. It introduces scientific concepts in an easy way, such as everyone can understand it (I'm not in the health sector and I had no problem understanding what was being said). Buy it if you can

I'm shocked by how brainwashed we have been, Dr Jason proves that obesity is NOT a caloric imbalance. It's a hormonal imbalance and it's a multifactorial disease. I recommend it!

Zeer goed boek Leuk geschreven en een eye opener

Excellent book for anyone looking to lose weight and potentially solve health issues. Easy to read, but explains diabetes and obesity very thoroughly. A must-read!

I have heard of Dr Fung from fasting podcasts I listen to, he's certainly an authority on that matter. The book reads easy as it combines science with entertaining historical data. I will purchase the Cancer Code next. Highly recommend this author to anyone who wants to "hack" their insulin sensitivity, get healthier, and rationalize the WHY's of weight loss difficulties.