Reddit mentions of The Obesity Code

I started at 425lbs in July 2017. I am now sitting at 260lbs. My first 100lbs came off in 7 months of keto (no fasting at all). I took my foot off the gas pedal when we had a baby in June of 2018 but I'm getting back in gear now. You can absolutely do this but you need to take it easy to start. This is only going to work if you are willing to change the way that you eat forever.

I read Dr. Fung's The Obesity Code in the beginning and it helped me to understand why I was so damn hungry all the time before I went low carb. My advice to you would be to start with keto and just eat bacon and eggs (or some other super low carb food that you like) until you're not hungry anymore.

Once you get your body used to burning fat instead of glucose, you will feel like a bear in hibernation, living off your stored energy supply.

Here are a couple of helpful links. Feel free to shoot me a message if you have any questions at all.

https://idmprogram.com/blog/

https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1536682187

That's extremely good advice, and something I constantly struggle to keep in perspective -- even outside of fitness/weight loss. So, thank you for that.

 

And fasting has been a godsend for me. When I started in August, I didn't stick to a particular plan for food. It was less about what I ate and more about when/how often I ate. Started out on 16:8 to get acclimated. During that time, I ate lots of fast food (with some consideration to reducing carbs, but not eliminating them). Two meals a day. Still lost weight. Kicked it up to 18:6 towards the end of Oct/early Nov. Even lost weight over the holidays, which is a big deal. Stayed at 18:6 through Feb and moved to 20:4, 22:2 (OMAD) in March. 10 lbs a month is nothing to be upset about, and I only started hitting the gym again about 2.5 weeks ago. I've been walking outside on my 30-min lunch breaks at work since January, but that's it. To say it's been a success is an understatement. And it's the simplest plan I've ever managed. And I've tried almost everything.

 

I will never be able to tell a person that they shouldn't try fasting since it has worked so remarkably well for me. I realize that low carb vs high carb, low fat vs high fat etc is very much a case by case, person to person thing. But fasting should be something everyone practices, unless you have a very serious medical condition. You don't have to go apeshit and fast for 2-5 days every week. Just daily IF is plenty (16:8, 18:6, etc). We aren't meant to constantly be in a 'fed state' (with elevated insulin). The only times that elevated insulin is positive is during puberty and pregnancy. Outside of that, you're playing with fire -- skinny, fat, fit -- doesn't matter. But it's especially important for the obese. Elevated insulin blocks fat oxidation. It also leads to leptin resistance, making you hungry all the time even though you're fat.

 

My hunger and cravings are so greatly reduced now compared to August and before. Fasting helped me kick my alcohol habit. My insulin stays low, so my body more easily accesses the energy it stored for later. I don't get as hungry because my body recognizes that it's covered in stored energy/food, whereas before, it couldn't due to the chronically elevated insulin. Therein lies the paradox of the always hungry fat man.

 

Fasting best simulates the 'later' that your body is so desperately preparing for. And it's significantly less torturous than meticulously counting calories, especially if you keep your carb/sugar/junk intake low. Trust me. I've done both. And this wins. I haven't counted a single calorie in months.

 

Fasting is also a cheat code for mental clarity.

 

I get the skepticism. I had it too. Dr. Peter Attia is a great resource on the health benefits of fasting outside of weight loss. Fasting induced autophagy is a hot topic these days. Dr. Jason Fung is a nephrologist from Toronto who got tired of just giving his type 2 diabetic patients more and more insulin until their kidneys completely failed and they died. His book is a gold mine of simple, actionable advice on fasting for weight loss. Those are some good places to start if you have even an inkling of curiosity to know more.

citeste cartea asta, e scrisa de un doctor super smecher si iti explica aproape tot legat de cum sa mananci, ce sa mananci, cand sa mananci, de ce unii oameni se ingrasa si altii nu, ce efect au diverse alimente asupra corpului, de ce a numara caloriile e o aiureală pe termen lung, etc.

e mult mai ok sa iti iei sfaturile de la un doctor nefrolog care lucreaza zi de zi cu persoane diabetice si obeze pe care le ajuta sa slabeasca decat vreun 'nutritionist' sau cine stie ce persoana la intamplare.

asta daca vrei slabit. pentru culturism si a pune masa si muschi si etc, un trainer la sala probabil e mai potrivit.

This book changed my life in 3 months:
https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1536682187

Dr. Fung writes about the science of weight loss and debunks weight loss myths using only human trials as references. Calorie deficit diets have been scientifically proven to not work and we always put the weight back on anyways. Save yourself the struggle, the emotional rollercoaster of starvation, and get the book! 🙏

check this book out first. https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1536682187
it would be cheaper and easier to check your blood sugar and eliminate that as a cause to night time eating. i changed my diet a little bit with less refined carbs (brown rice and lentils instead of white rice and pasta), a glass of milk, and a slightly later dinner time.

I was skeptical when I first heard about fasting and even intermittent fasting. I thought that the main benefit was discipline from the restriction and had not idea about the hormonal effects that make it successful. Someone recommended I read The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist in Canada who runs a practice that treats obese diabetics through fasting.

In the book, he provides a breakdown of every aspect of how fasting works, with cited studies and also discusses why fasting produces better results for his patients than the current standard nutritional advice.

https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1536682187

While reading the whole book would answer all your questions about safety and optimal nutrition while fasting, there is a summarized version available on Blinkist that you can read if you sign up for a free trial (I don’t get any referral rewards but it’s an option).

https://www.blinkist.com/en/books/the-obesity-code-en

He also wrote this extended guide, which goes over fasting in detail (totally free with no trial):

https://www.dietdoctor.com/intermittent-fasting

The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung.

It is life changing for me.

The Obesity Code

>Are you getting that info from the full study? It doesn't show up in the abstract.

Read the full study.

Both groups were able to improve health markers such as BMI, body fat percentage, waist circumference, blood pressure, and fasting insulin and glucose levels to a significant enough level to induce clinically-important health improvements. At the 12-month mark, LDL-C had significantly decreased in the low-fat group and increased slightly in the low-carb group. However, the low-carb group also saw an increase in HDL-C (2,64 v 0,4 mg/dl in the low-fat group) and large reductions in triglycerides (-28,2 in the low-carb and -9,95 mg/dl in the low-fat group).

Resting energy expenditure decreased from baseline for both groups (-66,45 for low-fat and -76,93 for low-carb, despite low-fat losing more fat and a lower quantity of muscle than the low-carb). Both groups saw metabolic syndrome reduced in severity, and some subjects saw it disappear despite weight loss being insignificant to you.

Weight loss was strongest in the period where a diet was prescribed and compliance was maintained, no one entered ketosis or fasted in the experiment, and weight loss plateaued at the new level after people were allowed to adjust their diets to a level they personally decided would be maintainable for them.

This illustrates quite well the health benefits of weight loss, that a small amount of weight is still good to take off, that people are able to lose and keep off weight, and so on and so forth, no matter how insignificant you personally may deem this loss. It is an improvement, no matter what you're going to say.

>You have claimed this, yes. But you've provided no evidence for it.

Because anyone interested in nutrition should be aware of this, especially before attempting to debate the matter. It isn't pleasant to enter a conversation adversarially and unprepared, as you've done here.

>Personal experience, anecdotal evidence and evidence from studies all seem to suggest that once one has ever gained substantial weight it becomes extremely hard to keep lost weight off. I don't believe there is any evidence to suggest it gets easier over time, though I would be glad to hear it if you had any.

This is a proof positive that you have not researched the subject in any way becoming of someone that wishes to debate the subject. In point of fact, it's almost insulting.

Sumithran et al., 2011 states: "One year after initial weight reduction, levels of the circulating mediators of appetite that encourage weight regain after diet-induced weight loss do not revert to the levels recorded before weight loss." Thus, the hormonal roots of hunger appear to adapt to cause a person to homeostatically adjust -- rebound, as you've said.

In the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, individuals were, at first, fed a diet of 3200 calories per day for three months. After this time, they were fed 1570 calories per day for six months (adjusted down and up for men to lose 1,1 kilograms per week). The foods were high in carbohydrates and meat was rare. Everyone complained they were too cold, muscle mass loss was evidenced, and the men reported being ravenously hungry -- they became obsessed with food.

Later, a man lost 125 kilograms by taking a multivitamin and drinking water for one year, and eating nothing else. The report reads: "A 27-year-old male patient fasted under supervision for 382 days and has subsequently maintained his normal weight. Blood glucose concentrations around 30 mg/100 ml were recorded consistently during the last 8 months, although the patient was ambulant and attending as an out-patient. Responses to glucose and tolbutamide tolerance tests remained normal. The hyperglycaemic response to glucagon was reduced and latterly absent, but promptly returned to normal during carbohydrate refeeding. After an initial decrease was corrected, plasma potassium levels remained normal without supplementation. A temporary period of hypercalcaemia occurred towards the end of the fast. Decreased plasma magnesium concentrations were a consistent feature from the first month onwards. After 100 days of fasting there was a marked and persistent increase in the excretion of urinary cations and inorganic phosphate, which until then had been minimal. These increases may be due to dissolution of excessive soft tissue and skeletal mass. Prolonged fasting in this patient had no ill-effects."

The man was able to get the weight off and keep it off, and reported little hunger after the beginning of the fast. But, this is just a case study. Jason Fung in his The Obesity Code writes that, in comparison to fasting, caloric restriction results in less weight loss, more lean mass (muscle) loss, and more hunger. In Upton Sinclair's 1911 The Fasting Cure, he writes: about his first few attempts at fasting: "I was very hungry for the first day -- the unwholesome, ravening sort of hugner that all dyspeptics know. I had a little hunger the second morning, and thereafter, to my very great astonishment, no hunger whatever -- no more interest in food than if I had never known the taste of it." He recounts other examples of benefits, but that's something you can find from consulting the text. Addressing concerns about fasting, he writes: "Several people have asked me if it would not be better for them to eat very lightly instead of fasting, or to content themselves with fasts of two or three days at frequent intervals. My reply is that I find it very much harder to do that, because all the trouble in the fast occurs during the first two or three days. It is during those days that you are hungry." Then he says, "Perhaps it might be a good thing to eat very lightly of fruit, instead of taking an absolute fast - the only trouble is that I cannot do it. Again and again I have tried, but always with the same result: the light meals are just enough to keep me ravenously hungry." He says that you will know when you've finished fasting, because your hunger will return; this was something recorded among many of the people who wrote to him as well.

This is adequately explained by the hormone "ghrelin," which Natalucci et al. (2005, linked just before), found to follow a circadian rhythm over the first day or so of a fast. It spiked at normal meal times, and it immediately went away. One easy way to lose weight, then, is to just ignore this impulse for about an hour til it passes and you'll feel less hungry. To disprove the absurd notion that hunger is simply not eating + time, note that ghrelin was lowest at 9 -- the longest period of not eating. This is because ghrelin, which comes in circadian waves, rises at normal lunch, dinner, and breakfast times.

To throw more weight into this, Espelund et al. (2005) analysed what happens when you fast for a few days. In both men and women, ghrelin levels fall, the longer you fast. Ghrelin levels of people that were fasting followed similar rhythms each day, as described in the study discussed above, but, each day, ghrelin fell to an even lower level - going longer without food, actually made people less hungry. Interestingly, growth hormone also increases while fasting, but not due to ghrelin (so, throw out your MK677 if you're using it).

So, via fasting, you can achieve hormonal regulation, consistent fat loss (especially because ketosis shifts you to using ketones instead of glucose for energy, and you, resultantly, lose more fat and less muscle, even via gluconeogenesis, over time), and an easy diet, since your hunger disappears with time. So, what about refeeding? Korbonits et al. (2007), found that refeeding improperly -- i.e., low sodium (which is VERY harmful for you -- current US and WHO guidelines are about 3x below the amount of sodium people actually need) and carb-heavy refeeding -- led to a rebounded hormonal profile and increased hunger. How odd, that eating led to more hunger (said no one that has ever fasted for more than three days).

>via heroic amounts of exercise (say, an hour a day, forever) and by counting every calorie.

>Heroic

If you think this is heroic, and not simply a normal amount of exercise for healthy individuals, then there may be something wrong with you. I, personally, exercise for about an hour each day, if not a little more. For one, my affective response is quite pleasant, and for two, I enjoy looking good so I have to do it.

>Were it really the case that keeping weight off gets easier over time as hunger decreases, wouldn't at least ONE of the 14 big losers be able to stay thin?

As you should have inferred, their hunger did not decrease. They moderated when they dieted, and they still ate carbs when they should not have. Such a method is bound to see rebounding, because the hormonal profile does not adjust. This is very plain to anyone that has put the time and effort into understanding nutrition and the HPTA/&c.

>Wouldn't people like Oprah or Steven Seagal (who had truly massive incentives to stay thin and lots of resources to help them do so) have been able to remain thin?

Gluttons will be gluttons, and if they receive bad advice (like the type Oprah and her entourage hock), then it's no wonder they've rebounded.

Megan McArdle is not qualified to speak here. She has nothing useful to say and the comparison to height is invalid because one facet can be changed and the other cannot. You have already tried this. She is dim.

Please read the dr. Fungs obesity code https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1536682187 its not your fault you are regaining! Your body is designed so, that you would get your lost weight back! The insulin level needs to be adressed. You had probably slowed down your metabolism with cico and now you overeat eventhough you are eating normally. It just is boubd to happen. Try IF, fasting and remove sugars with refined carbs. And please read the book.

Actually, its very hard to make someone obese based on calories. Our bodies do an amazing job of regulating calories. Its actually refined carbs. You can actually eat a deficit of calories but if you stick to refined carbs, you'll still gain weight. I suggest reading The Obesity Code, it talks all about this