My takeaways from the book about fasting: Life in the Fasting Lane by Jason Fung, Eve Mayer and Megan Ramos.
Recently I was in an internet squabble with a woman who declared that pulses (do NOT come at my pulses!) were bad for you and you should never eat them. Then she told me to look up Dr. Jason Fung and I would learn everything. So I did. And because we live in the future, I was able to grab three of his books from the library.
Fung and his coauthors are selling a system they promise will work with your hormones and do not involve a calorie deficit. They will allow you to eat all the food you want. They claim that modern doctors have no clue how to deal with weight loss, and that anyone who tells you calories in calories out is misinformed.
Ok, that’s an interesting take.
They then proceed to teach an intermittent fasting method. In their method you fast for anywhere from a few hours to a week or more. Perhaps the biggest thing that hit me is the emphasis on eating normally* on the days you ‘feast’ (‘feast days’ are just days you eat a normal amount, not a day you splurge, like Thanksgiving). Oh, and you need to cut out all snacks- they want you eating 2 healthy* meals a day, not too large, and that’s it. So what do you get if you go from 2-3 meals a day with 1-2 snacks a day to 2 meals a day with no snacks AND skipping 2+ meals a week?
Say it with me- a calorie deficit!
How they managed to convince the thousands of people who like their program that this is not a simple calorie deficit is beyond me. There’s a lot of talk about hormones and basal metabolic rates and how fasting isn’t going to make your body think you are starving because literally ‘starvation isn’t voluntary, fasting is’ I don’t get. I don’t get how one of the authors ‘cured her PCOS’ by fasting- PCOS is currently incurable. You can reduce the symptoms with diet and medicine, but no one can possibly cure it. I have it. This woman who made this claim is a ‘clinical researcher’, so she ought to know.
Another thing that ‘clinical researchers’ ought to have caught is the authors interpretation of the studies which say that insulin causes weight gain. The studies they referenced watched diabetics gain eight after receiving insulin. The researchers continued to explain that as a result of the insulin, the people studied were more able to absorb nutrients from food, and the weight gain was prevented by reducing calories in a high protein, high fiber, moderate fat and carb diet.
I was also concerned with the ‘don’t talk to your doctor’ suggestion in the book. Saying that your doctor will think fasting is a fad (when it’s been around for 1000s of years) and advise you not to do it is a red flag to me.
Another red flag to me is the attitude towards food through out the book. People are not eating, they are ‘stuffing their faces’. Birthday cake should be avoided at all costs. Eating lasagna is a ‘bad day’. Remove yourself from dinner with the family so you aren’t tempted to eat. These just sound like they are promoting a poor relationship with food. And, of course, saying to avoid my beloved pulses, in addition to not eating potatoes, rice, mangoes, oranges, or bananas, just demonizes foods that are not in the least bad for you.
Overall I found the book to be not helpful. It seems to be a warmed over Keto/Atkins style diet with little advice on how to have a healthy relationship with food.
I appreciate your review.
While I do perceive from experience that many modern doctors – alopathic practitioners – are not experts in dietary approaches, I do feel they are yet an important resource in our health stories. Once a huge advocate for the world of holistic and alternative medicine, from experience I now recognize that we do ourselves the greatest service when we include BOTH categories of study as a source of information to guide us on any health journey. Why not become fully informed? Why not put ourselves in a position where we can access all resources at our disposal for ouroptimal and strategic care?
There is no one-size-fits all and it sounds like this author is dismissing some critical realities for some of its target readers. In my world, the minute someone says to me, “don’t” as in ‘don’t talk to your doctor’ red flags go up and the credibility of this person and what they say next goes down. For example: my body doesn’t metabolize bananas well and yet with bananas—and lots of them– my brother healed and overcame some dangerous celiac complications at a time when the North American medical field did not recognize or know what to do with this disease.
And, I’m with you Gina. Developing and having a healthy relationship with food is so important. It is key to the success of any healthy lifestyle. Our relationship with food can make or break our ability to maintain and sustain our health through time.
Thank you, Gina. Your review reinforces for me, that even though we have so much knowledge at our fingertips as we ‘live in the future,’ we must all become/continue to be vigilant in being advocates for our own health and do the research before embarking on the ‘new’ theories and opinions that present themselves as expert.