Avoid fad diets that recommend unsafe practices, such as fasting (going without food for long periods of time) or cutting out entire food groups. These types of diets do not work, can make you feel ill, and are not sustainable because they do not teach you long-term healthy eating habits.

In the short term, most diets produce weight loss. However, dieting alone can’t fix obesity, because dieting doesn’t lower your set weight. Once you fall beneath that set weight, your body will compel you to eat and regain any weight you’ve lost. To lower your set weight, Fung recommends intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern wherein you intentionally stop eating for a stretch of time. Research has shown that regular fasting reduces insulin resistance, lowering your set weight and allowing you to steadily lose fat. Shortform note: Additional risk factors for insulin resistance include smoking and drinking alcohol in excess. Chronic cigarette smokers appear to have a higher insulin response and take longer to clear insulin away, while a rat-based study found that binge drinking as often as one time monthly decreased insulin sensitivity. This effect persisted for 54 hours, and the researchers speculate that this is due to impaired function of the hypothalamus, which communicates with insulin to coordinate insulin sensitivity and set weight.) Step #3: If there’s still excess glucose, it becomes fat. The liver converts any remaining glucose into fat for long-term storage.Follow your doctor's advice about how to take it, and the instructions that come with your medicine. How long to take it for be based on achieving gradual, sustainable weight loss rather than short-term rapid weight loss, which is unlikely to last Maybe someday biology will provide us with a pill that re­adjusts our metabolism so we burn more calories or resets our built-in cravings so we prefer broccoli to burgers. But until then, the best approach may simply be to build on reliable behavioral-psychology methods developed over 50 years and proved to work in hundreds of studies. These tried-and-true techniques, which are being refined with new research that should make them more effective with a wider range of individuals, are gaining new attention. As the NIH puts it in its proposed strategic plan for obesity research: “Research findings are yielding new and important insights about social and behavioral factors that influence diet, physical activity, and sedentary behavior.”

You'll discover how to control your cravings, speed up your metabolism, and burn fat more effectively. Other summaries give you just a highlight of some of the ideas in a book. We find these too vague to be satisfying. Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975 and in the US, three out of every five individuals are overweight and one in five are obese. But what is causing all of this weight gain and how can we use science and research to help us curb this trend? We’re bringing on a good friend of the podcast for his fourth appearance to talk about this and his new book. China's chief epidemiologist, who helped drive anti-COVID-19 measures that suspended access to cities and confined millions to their homes, has died You'll need to eat a balanced, reduced-calorie diet and exercise regularly while taking liraglutide or semaglutide.Summary & Analysis of The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got It All Wrong - and How Eating More Might Save Your Life by Dr. James DiNicolantonio Obesity is complex: Researchers have developed key insights into its metabolic, genetic and neurological causes. But this work has not amounted to a solution to the public health crisis. all appropriate non-surgical measures have been tried, but the person hasn't achieved or maintained adequate, clinically beneficial weight loss Shortform note: In Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss reports that major food producers—including General Mills, Kraft, Kellogg, and Unilever—have intentionally engineered processed foods to produce the effects Fung describes. By manipulating the chemical structures of salt, sugar, and fat, these corporate giants have optimized foods for taste and profit. Recounting a 1999 meeting of top CEOs from the major players, Moss describes one executive’s belief that consumers “bought what they liked, and they liked what tasted good.” Unfortunately, what “tastes good” has come at the expense of nutrition and public health.) The Danger of Added Sugars