Transcription
People lose weight, like a lot of weight, and they keep it off. But it wasn't about controlling the calories. It was about controlling the hunger.
Every successful drug to gain or lose weight, right, is a hormone. It's a hormone base because that's instructions to the body. Dr. Jason Fung is a world-renowned fasting expert and author of The Obesity Code, who shows us the real secret to unlock fast, natural weight loss by activating your fat-burn hormones through specific foods and dietary habits.
Well, why can't you burn the fat that's on your body? Cuz there's 200, 300,000 calories of body fat. It's because you haven't activated the right hormones so that you can access it.
>> Hormone one, the fullness amplifier. What if there was a natural way to shut off hunger the same way weight loss drugs and supplements do? GLP-1 is the hormone behind blockbuster drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro. But guess what? You can trigger it naturally with food.
This hormone called GLP-1, uh, which is a natural sort of hormone. It's, it's released mostly in the intestines and the distal intestine and the small intestine. And in response to certain foods, it, it goes up, right? So when you eat, the body has a homeostatic mechanism. So again, remember, you know, people think that we're just eating machines. We eat until, you know, we explode, sort of thing. But that's not true. When you eat, you actually activate the GLP-1 along with other hormones. There's multiple hormonal systems. The GLP-1 is the one we're interested in. You activate GLP-1, which then sets into motion the, the, the instructions for you to stop eating, right? So the act of eating sort of sets in motion that whole, uh, feedback loop to stop, right? So this is homeostasis, which is trying to keep things at a proper level.
Trigger GLP-1 naturally by eating high-fiber foods: beans, oats, chia seeds, protein-rich meals, especially whey or fish. Fermented foods: kefir, kimchi. These signal your brain you're full before you overeat. The GLP-1s get released by the active eating, goes into the brain, crosses, and is active, um, in the sort of midbrain area that tells your body to stop eating. What these GLP-1s do, of course, is that it's a, uh, it, it gives you the hormone that tells you to stop eating even though you haven't eaten. It's sort of that's that's the way the drug works. So then what people tell you is that, you know, they're just not hungry. And if they're not hungry, then they don't eat. And when they don't eat, of course, insulin falls, and you start to burn calories and lose weight.
>> Hormones two and three, the satiety duo. Why do some meals keep you full for six hours and others leave you starving an hour later? It's about how your body reads volume, fat, and protein, not just calories.
So, you eat food. There are, uh, stomach stretch receptors, for example. So, as your stomach stretches out, it sends a signal to your brain and says, "Stop eating." If you eat a lot of protein, uh, it activates a hormone called peptide Y, which tells you to stop eating. If you eat a lot of dietary fat, you activate a hormone called cholecystokinin, which again tells you to stop eating. And these are very powerful. If you look in the wild, there are no obese antelopes. There are no obese lions. Why? Because how much body fat you carry is actually very important. If you are obese as an antelope, you're going to get eaten. If you're an obese lion, you're not going to catch any food. So therefore, it's going to correct itself.
Want to feel full longer? Front-load meals with protein and healthy fats like eggs, steak, salmon, and avocado to produce more peptide Y and cholecystokinin. Skip liquid calories like soda or juice. They don't trigger peptide Y. Eat slowly to allow these hormones time to activate.
If you eat a giant steak, so you're activating all these satiety hormones, peptide Y, cholecystokinin, you're eating all this food, well, you may not be hungry for the next day.
This is how you naturally reduce hunger without counting calories.
>> Hormone 4, the fat-burn thermostat. If your fat cells produce a hormone that says stop eating, why are so many people still overeating? Leptin is a hormone released by your body fat to suppress appetite. But in obese individuals, this signal gets ignored, called leptin resistance.
If you gain too much body fat, your fat cells, for example, will produce leptin, which is another hormone. The leptin tells your body to stop eating.
That's really interesting. So in the case of obese people, their set point must just be really high.
Yes. And that's the crux of the matter. Why is that set point being overridden? Just like if you have a room that's too hot and you look and you say the thermometer is set for room temperature. Why is it so hot in here? Then you can say, okay, well, what's the problem? And the problem is not, you know, heat in versus heat out. Right? That's that's a very simplistic way. Same thing, if your body has too much body fat, you've got to then think about why are you overcoming the normal compensatory mechanisms that are happening that are stopping you from eating. A lot of it relates to processing of foods, of course. So if you take out, so remember I talked about stretch receptors in the stomach, right? So you eat natural, natural foods, there's a natural break. It stretches the stomach, you stop eating. Well, what's one way? Pull out all the fiber, process the foods, turn it into, say, a very fine dust. That means it's absorbed extremely quickly into the bloodstream. So that means that pure, you've got pure carbohydrate basically mainlining it into your, like an IV. Your glucose spikes way up, your insulin spikes way up. It's completely unnatural, right? If you eat pure carbohydrate instead of eating it with, you know, proteins and fats, it's going to go, it's going to shoot way high. That's unnatural. And that's going to overcome the natural tendencies for you to stop eating. So, you know, you, you've basically overcome that, that, that protective mechanism because you've ultra-processed the carbohydrate.
You can re-sensitize your body to leptin by cutting out ultra-processed carbs, getting seven to eight hours of sleep, which also has multiple anti-aging benefits, practicing intermittent fasting, 16 to 20-hour fasting windows. When leptin works, our body self-regulates hunger. We stop chasing food.
>> Hormone 5, the overnight fat burner. What hormone burns fat while you sleep and actually increases during fasting? Growth hormone, GH, doesn't just help kids grow. In adults, it's a powerful fat burner, especially during intermittent fasting.
When you don't eat, what happens in your body from a hormone standpoint is that your insulin is going to fall. You're going to allow your body to start using the calories that are in the body. At the same time, other hormones go up. So the sympathetic tone goes up, which is your fight-or-flight response. Your cortisol levels go up because again, it's an activation. And your growth hormone goes up because those hormones are going to start telling your body to start pulling calories out. So you're actually activating yourself. Think about in the wild, if you see a hungry wolf, is that wolf just sort of, you know, all lethargic? No, he's activated. He's actually more dangerous than any other wolf as opposed to say a lion who just ate because when you just eat, you just want to lie there. You know, you want to digest your food. You have no energy.
Boost growth hormone naturally by sleeping deeply. Growth hormone spikes during early night sleep. Fasting 16 to 18 hours. High-intensity resistance training as brief sessions to also increase your fitness levels. This hormone helps preserve lean mass while burning off fat stores.
Dr. Fung says there is one hormone you should absolutely avoid activating if you want to burn your body fat in a fast manner.
>> The fat storage commander. Why do two people eat the same calories, yet one gains weight and the other burns fat?
That's the way it is. That's why you're taking in more calories or you're storing more calories is because your body has hormones that tell you to store calories. So there's a hormone called insulin, for example. And if you give people insulin, so inject them with insulin, which is a drug for type two diabetes, almost everybody gains weight. So if you give somebody insulin, they gain weight. If I gave you insulin, you would gain weight. It has nothing to do with the, you know, your willpower, for example. If I gave you insulin, you would gain weight. Why? Because I'm giving your body the instructions to store energy.
So you're saying that weight gain and obesity, in particular, isn't a function of calories in, calories out. It is a function of hormones.
It's a function of hormones and it's sort of, you have to think about it in sort of levels, right? So calories in, calories out is true. So body fat is a storage, is it's a way to store energy, which is calories equals calories in, calories out. But that's not the real question. The question is, why are you storing more calories than you're expending? And it's because you're telling your body to do so.
Dr. Fung says it all comes down to one master hormone, insulin. When insulin is high, your body locks fat away. When it's low, your body can finally access that stored energy. To lower insulin, prioritize foods that keep blood sugar stable: eggs, meat, leafy greens, olive oil, avocado. Avoid refined carbohydrates like white bread, pasta, muffins, and sweet drinks. They spike insulin hard. Incorporate intermittent fasting, even 14 to 16 hours. Lower insulin levels mean the body has access to fat, resulting in fat burn.
But you allowed insulin to fall, which allowed you to burn body fat, right? It's the hormonal signal that says, "Please take energy out. Open up the doors so that body fat can come out." And this is the piece that's missing because people are all, all like, "Well, I'm this, I'm that." And it's like, "Well, why can't you burn the fat that's on your body?" Cuz there's 200, 300,000 calories of body fat. Why can't you access it? It's because you haven't activated the right hormones so that you can access it. So now, if you do intermittent fasting, you eat 1,500 calories, you take 500 calories out, your body is burning 2,000. Now, all of a sudden, if you go off your diet and you go back to 2,000 calories, guess what? You don't gain weight. You don't lose weight.
If you're over 50 and serious about fat loss, you need to watch as weight loss guru Dr. Jason Fung explains which five daily foods burn fat faster than Ozempic.