Dr Jason Fung

Dr. Jason Fung completed medical school and internal medicine at the University of Toronto before finishing his nephrology fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles at the Cedars-Sinai hospital.

He now has a practice in Ontario, Canada where he uses his Intensive Dietary Management program to help all sorts of patients, but especially those suffering from the two big epidemics of modern times: obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Fung uses innovative solutions to these problems, realising that conventional treatments are not that effective in helping people.

Dr Fung produces very long complex lectures for doctors, that are available on Youtube.

He agrees that weight loss is all about the control of insulin, and reducing insulin resistance.

He thinks that the body adapts to eating the same diet every day, in a way that can become unhealthy. Fasting intermittently, breaks that cycle, it keeps your body alert, and adaptable.

Dr Jason Fung - Fasting

Take Out a Meal

Intermittent Fasting

Dr Fung says that busy doctors can't spend time education people about low carbohydrate diets. Far too many people have Lipophobia, and once again the doctor just doesn't have time to be bothered "educating people."

There is a simple solution. Everybody knows what a "fast" is. So tell people to fast.

Then they ask how often, and how long. Fung tells his patients to fast every second day. There is plenty of evidence from his practice that this works even when people fast poorly.

The Take-Out Diet

Many of us eat five to eight times a day. Some dietitians even recommend that, but it's not good practice and indicates that our diet is faulty. Dr Tim Noakes tells us that 500 years ago in England it was normal for most people to eat only once a day.

Dr Hugh Butler has also experimented with fasting. He says we are adapted to days when food was plentiful and days when food was scarce, and we can cope with that very easily.

In August, 2012, Dr Michael Mosley, a BBC Horizon science reporter, produced a documentary series on eating styles and future health. In the process he was faced with the sort of fasting Dr Fung recommends, but Mosley modified it a little, deciding that fasting two days a week, would fit into his lifestyle much more easily. And so he presented the 5:2 Diet, sometimes called The Fast Diet.

Today there's lots of evidence that it's safe, that it works to reduce weight, and that there are many additional health benefits, if carried on for a long time.

On the 5:2 diet, on the diet days, you can eat up to 500cal of protein or fat, but zero carbohydrates. On the non-diet days you eat normally. (Although in practice it's been found that people eat less.) Dr Butler thinks the 5:2 diet is an excellent way to begin your weight loss programme.