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Jason Fung: 3 Rules to Lose 50 Pounds Without Ever Counting a Calorie

60m 39s

Jason Fung: 3 Rules to Lose 50 Pounds Without Ever Counting a Calorie

In this episode of *The Human Upgrade*, Dave Asprey and Dr. Jason Fung discuss the true drivers of obesity, arguing that overeating is not a simple matter of willpower but a consequence of three distinct types of hunger: homeostatic (physical), hedonic (pleasure-driven), and conditioned (triggered by environmental cues). Modern society, aided by advertising, has paired food with nearly every daily activity—watching TV, going to the mall, or driving—creating conditioned hunger akin to Pavlov's dogs. Meanwhile, ultra-processed foods are deliberately engineered to maximize pleasure and minimize satiety, leading to rapid absorption and dopamine spikes that override natural fullness signals. This "food noise" keeps people eating long after physical hunger is satisfied. Fung emphasizes that calorie restriction alone fails because it does not address the underlying hunger problem; instead, reducing hunger—whether through satiety-promoting foods like healthy fats, drugs such as GLP-1 agonists, or understanding the body's "fat thermostat"—is key to sustainable weight loss. Asprey adds that his own experience with starvation protocols led to ravenous hunger, highlighting the need for strategies that turn off hunger signals without relying on willpower. The conversation underscores that obesity is a hunger problem, not a calorie problem.

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Everything in our life becomes paired with food and that's not by accident. It's advertising. Pretty soon you're not eating because of the physical hunger. You're eating because you've been trained to eat, like Pavlov's dogs. You can't restrict calories. It doesn't work. You can do everything in your power. Why are somebody's jaw shut, cut out their stomach, it still won't work. But the minute you give a drug that reduces hunger, now it works. Okay, if let's say someone's got 50 plus pounds to lose. What is the first thing you would tell them to do? I have regolden rules. The first one is. You're listening to the human upgrade with Dave Asprey. Notice your hair thinning. It starts in your scalp at the cellular level. Sinescent cells, also known as zombie cells, will flood your follicles within flammatory signals and that disrupts the growth cycle and then you get thinner hair. And most topicals are just working around that. But one skin's OS1 hair goes straight to the root cause. 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This episode of the human upgrade is with none other than my friend Dr. Jason Fung. New York Times bestselling author of multiple books like the obesity code, the diabetes code. And well, a bunch of stuff around obesity, blood sugar regulation, metabolism, and hunger. So as you can tell, we're on the same team about making it so that you have lots of energy. Blood sugar works. You're not hungry all the time and who knows? You might even be a nice person when all that stuff works, right? Jason, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much Dave. So good to be here. All right. Where are people hungry all day, even though they have all the food they could ever eat? That's a great question. And I think that's actually one we don't talk about enough, right? Because when you talk about weight loss and stuff, obviously losing weight is very important for a number of reasons. But the advice winds up being like, eat less. And it's like, okay, well, that's not very useful advice because you're not getting to the reason why they're eating more in the first place, which is that they're hungry, right? There's like this fundamental truth we eat because we're hungry and we stop when we're full, right? So therefore the real question is sort of not sort of the overeating question is the over hunger question, right? And why is it so much worse now than it's really ever been? Because if, you know, if you look at obesity, it's obviously skyrocketing, but nobody wants that, right? Nobody wants to be like that. How do you solve the hunger problem that you have to talk first about what is hunger and what are the types of hunger? And that's something that actually, you know, I read a lot of books and there's just not a lot out there about that. You know, there's really three types of hunger. So there's the sort of physical hunger. That's the hunger that we all think about, you know, your stomach, growling, you know, you feel like you want to eat something. And that actually, if you really think about it, honestly, is very rare these days. It's not like it's hard to get food. Food is everywhere, right? It's always in your face, actually. You know, no matter where you go, there's food, there's, you know, you go to the hospital, there's a, you know, there's a cafeteria that used to be difficult to get food. But now there's like all these food stalls. You go to the mall, you go to the drive-ins. It's everywhere. So it's not hard to get and people are eating very often. So that sort of physical hunger is just not that common anymore. So therefore, that's not what's obviously driving us to eat. And there's actually two other types of hunger because there's a hedonic hunger. So the physical hunger is really called homeostatic hunger, right? Homeostasis is a scientific word that means balance. So you eat because you're hungry, you stop eating when you're full. So when you eat, you actually activate satiety hormones that tell you to stop. Like you eat butter and tells you, you know, at some point your brain says, okay, you need to stop, right? That's homeostatic hunger. But there's a second reason we eat, which is that it's, it tastes good. But you want to. It makes us feel good, right? And that's like dessert, right? You finish eating. You still can eat apple pie and ice cream because it tastes good and you want it and it makes you feel good. That's comfort food that's dessert. And that's called hedonic hunger. And hedonic hunger and hedonic is a word that means relating to pleasure is eating because it's pleasurable. And that's going to overturn that sort of homeostatic hunger because it's just like dessert, even though you're full, you can still keep going because you're trying to satisfy that. Heedonic hunger, not the homeostatic hunger. It is. Yeah, it could be your board. It could be that you're depressed. It could be you're looking for something to do. But it's actually a huge reason why we're having this problem with obesity, which is that there's a lot of hedonic hunger. And I'll just touch on the third one before I go back to hedonic hunger, which is conditioned hunger. And then the food that's being conditioned is a term used in behavioral psychology where you can pair two things together. So the classic experiment is path-loved dogs. If you show dogs food, they'll salivate. They'll get hungry. Now if you ring a bell and then give them food, very soon the sound of the bell will be compared with the food. And so when you ring a bell, the dogs will start to salivate even though, you know, if before they were trained, they would never do that. So you can link these two things together through pairing them repeatedly. And this is exactly what's happened in our modern day society, right? You wake up, oh, you got to eat, right? You get coffee. Oh, you got to get something to eat. Oh, it's lunchtime. You got to eat, right? It's after school, you got to eat, right? Dinner time, you got to eat. You get in the car, you got to eat. You go to the movies, you got to eat. You get to a sporting event, you got to eat, you go to the mall, you got to eat, right? Everything in our life becomes paired with food. And that's not by accident. It's advertising, it's all this stuff. And so if you get all these conditions where you're stimulating hunger pretty soon, you're not eating because of the physical hunger. You're eating because you've been trained to eat like a monkey, right? Like Pavlov's dogs. And that's the real problem. This is what they often call food noise, right? You go outside, you go for a walk, right? But then, hey, there's a billboard. Hey, you're getting your car, you feel like you need to eat something. You sit in front of the TV, hey, you feel you need to eat something. You go to the mall to get some, you know, where? And oh, you feel like you need to eat something, right? That's the food noise. And it can drive us to keep eating because now you're constantly stimulating hunger. And it had nothing to do with nutrients. It had nothing to do with calories and macronutrients and stuff. But you know, when you really think about it, there's sort of those three main categories of hunger. The homeostatic hunger, which is probably, you know, not as important as it is we think it is because that's a worldwide thing, but also the hedonic hunger and the condition hunger. So why is it so much worse? One of the big things in hedonic hunger is really ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods are actually designed very specifically to give you maximum pleasure, right? It's up your reward systems like nothing else. It's because, you know, food companies want to sell us food. And to do that, they want to make it as pleasurable as possible. And then on the flip side, they minimize satiety, right? So because if you get full eating those foods, you're going to stop, right? So you have to engineer these foods so that you get this incredible hedonic hunger while minimizing satiety. And that's what they've been able to do. The third thing they've been able to do, of course. course is advertise, parrots, right? So you have all these snack foods, for example, or breakfast cereals paired with, you know, toy story and cars and Pixar movies, right? So this whole idea of fun, so every time you go and you see a movie, hey, you want this or you know, you want chocolate or a popcorn or whatever, right? So the whole idea is that ultra-process foods can be changed in many, many different ways. To maximize this, so you got like artificial flavors, artificial colors, they look better, they look brighter, right? This whole thing about food dies, right? In the US, they're all bright and stuff and that their lead based dies. And then in Europe, they're sort of dullish, right? The food loops and stuff. You know, there's ways to do it. They have texturizers, right? To make sure it has the right mouth feel, to have emulsifiers, to make sure that it's moist enough, artificial flavors, flavor enhancers, monosodium glutamate, and you know, maltodextrin, they have things like cariguinin and xanthin gum, they give it that creaminess, right? So there's a million ways that they can give you this increase in pleasure. The other thing is that they are absorbed very, very quickly. So how quickly you absorb something plays a huge role in how addictive it is and how much pleasure you derive from something. So if you think about tobacco, for example, you smoke tobacco, you smoke cigarettes because the smoke goes from your lungs directly into the pulmonary blood vessels. If you eat tobacco like nicotine gum, it's far less pleasurable. That's why you use it nicotine gum to try and break that addiction because you're trying to still get a bit of nicotine but slow down and subsorption. Same thing with heroin, you inject it directly into the veins, cocaine, you sniff into your nose also you can go directly from sort of into the bloodstream without going through the stomach which is slow compared to some of these other things. And it's the same for food. If you can get the food absorbed into the bloodstream right away, you get this massive spike in pleasure because it's a pleasurable activity. And so therefore, what they do is these foods are very easy to eat. So with studies of ultra processed foods, you have to chew them less, right? If you have like, when you eat them, they go through the stomach very quickly. Gets into your test times, gets absorbed very quickly. You get this massive spike in dopamine, massive spike in glucose and insulin and not a lot of satiety because they've removed a lot of the factors I create the satiety. And therefore, you can just keep going, right? You think about cheese puffs or crackers or something, you just keep going, keep going, keep going, right? Every time you get a little hit, little hit, little hit. And then pretty soon, you condition it because they're convenient, they're cheap, you can have your cheetos or whatever in front of the TV pretty soon, it becomes a habit. Boom, you're toast, right? Because that hedonic hunger, that conditioned hunger, is all sort of baked in, right? And it's the ultra processing of the food. It's not the food itself. It's not something you see on the calorie label. It's something that's deeper that you really have to understand, hey, how is this playing us, right? And that's why if you look at the United States, where 70% of the diet is ultra-pressed as food, it's a total disaster because you're basically set up for obesity, not from the calories, not from the macronutrients, right? They know this, they've played with it, they've got, I've given you fake sugars and fake fats so that there's no calories and stuff, right? But they haven't addressed this sort of ultra-processing that, you know, and that's why everybody's now focused on getting people to eat real food. So that's what this book talks about, the hunger code. It's really about, what are the drivers of hunger? What are the types of hunger? And why you really need to focus on hunger as the main underlying cause of the whole problem? - One of the things that makes me really happy is when supplements kick pharmaceuticals ass, and I've got something for you. It's called C15 from a company called Fatty 15, and it's more effective than metformin or rapamycin. 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"Well, fat, low calorie and therefore low protein." And we could go to the gym, 90 minutes today, six days a week. Man, I was ravenously hungry all the time. And every time I would get those hunger pains, I'd say, "Well, that's just fat leaving the body, complete idiocy, by the way." But I believed it at the time because that was still what was some of the guys out there will still tell you is that that's the recipe that people would never been obese. And usually they're bullies. - That's his point. But anyone who's been really fast, you know what, I can put all the willpower in the world into that. But eventually you always give in because it's physiologically impossible to sit there in the presence of food and for months on end, just never eat anything because it literally drives you crazy and they did some studies like around World War II in caves with people and it's pretty dark stuff but we can't do that. So a lot of my work has been, how do you turn off that hunger signal so that you don't have to rely on willpower? And probably my biggest happy moment was when one of the calorie bullies, the guy named Spencer Nidolsky, like a microwave influencer, bully guy. And he's like, "Well, you know, some of my clients who've been able to keep weight off for five years using my starvation protocols, they started using GLP1 so they'd have less cravings." And I'm like, "That group, your methods don't work." And so what I found though is that there's leptin, right? So you eat some fat and then your body feels full butter is satisfying, shocking and it seems like all of us know that but the other way to get that signal is to stretch the stomach, right? And there's a physical signal of hunger so drink a bunch of water or eat a bunch of sawdust which is the 1970s high fiber way of doing it and both of those will turn off hunger but then they seem to increase cravings later because the body didn't get energy that it wanted. So it's like the combination of energy plus leptin from getting adequate amounts of high nutrient fat and maybe some protein seems like the way to not experience hunger even if you eat less calories. Is that a good way of looking at it? - Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that the whole calorie debate is, you know, sort of to me, anybody who is in that sort of, it's all calories, calories, calories, just sort of doesn't get it. And as you say, there are almost always people who have almost no empathy for people who are trying to lose weight because there's actually a huge difference between somebody who is sort of 160 pounds and somebody who used to be 300 pounds and now is 160 pounds. So it's actually a huge difference, right? And this is what we, you know, it's called the set point or the body, I call it the body fat thermostat, right? It's like, where's your thermostat? Where does your body want to be? What weight does it want to be? Because that's what it defends, right? So if you're overweight, your body is set at a too high a point, right? The question is why, right? It comes down to the hormones, right? Like how did you mess up the hormones? And it could be from the foods you ate, but it could be through hedonic hunger, through condition hunger as well. But yeah, I totally agree with you on everything you said. I mean, there's good data. Like if you stretch the stomach, there's barrel receptors in the stomach, or it respond to stretch. So they get activated. They send a signal to the brain telling you to stop eating. But that's only one of many signals, right? So if you're not getting enough, and that's really the whole point. And you know, there's a concept in the GLP1, this whole thing about GLP1 is very interesting, because it does not restrict calories, right? So there are physical ways. When you think about it from a mechanistic standpoint, there are ways to restrict calories, right? You can wire somebody's jaw shut. They did that in the '60s. Did people lose weight? No, not in the long term. Why? Because they would get really hungry, and then they would drink milkshakes, and you know, they'd get around it, right? And the modern version was bariatric surgery, right? You'd basically cut somebody's stomach, so that's the size of a walnut, right? Or you'd rewire their intestines. Did they lose weight? Not really. If you look at brown-wise bariatric surgery, it peaked in 2010, right? The only reason it peaked in 2010, the only reason you were not doing more of the surgery, is because it didn't really work, right? People stopped losing weight, and then they regained it. Why? Because they were hungry, right? So when you think about this whole calories hunger debate, it's like, you know, calories is the sort of downstream side of things, right? Because if you simply eat the same thing, but less, you're going to get hungry, right? Now you're fighting with your body all the time. But what if instead you focused on the hunger, you know, with nutrients, with foods, with butter, all this sort of stuff, and you reduce the hunger? Well, the calories will naturally follow. But you're not fighting with yourself anymore, right? And that's exactly what I'm saying because done, right? It's showed us that, hey, you can't restrict calories. It doesn't work. Why are somebody's jaw shut, cut out their stomach, you know, do all this stuff. It still won't work. Of course, when you stop it and you haven't learned, you know, how to eat, of course, when you stop the GLP ones, they go back up, which is exactly right. So what you're saying is exactly right. It makes complete sense. Like if you simply count your calories, cut your calories, you're not going to succeed in the long term, because you never figured out the sort of underlying hunger of what was causing you to eat, right? I'm always very interested in sort of root causes, right? And there's a concept and logic called the three-wise. Right? And that's to say, if you want to understand something at a deep level, you need to ask the question, why three times? So if you ask the question, why did the Titanic sing? The wrong answer would be because it hit an iceberg. He might say, well, how's that not true? Well, think about it. If that's the answer, then how do you prevent future disasters? Don't hit icebergs. Well, that's not really useful advice, right? So that's only the first one. That's the most superficial level of understanding. You have my last thing. Why did it hit an iceberg? Right? That's a deeper understanding. It's like, well, because a captain couldn't turn the boat in time, right? And the third, why would be why couldn't it turn the boat in time? Because it was going too fast. And that's the real answer. Because if you now tell people, slow down, slow the ships down when it's when you've got bad weather, now you're going to prevent disasters. Just like if your car was, you know, flew off the highway on an icy stretch, you're going too fast, right? It's not because the force of gravity and the force of friction was less than this centrifugal force throwing you off. That's the stupid answer, right? And that's where calories lives. It's that first superficial sort of don't hit icebergs advice. So you might say, okay, why are people gaining weight? Well, because calories in is greater than calories out, right? That's superficial. That's just moronic, right? Because it's not going to give you the right solutions. Then you say, why is calories in greater than calories out, right? That's what I'm interested in. Not that calories in is greater than calories in. Why is it? But why? And it's because you're hungry. And then you get to the third question is, why are you hungry? And that's the homeostatic hunger, the hedonic hunger, and the conditioned hunger. So you have to attack all three things. So if you attack the hunger with good food and butter and rich nutrient dense foods and stuff and real foods, then you're going to win. Because you're taking care of that hunger, that homeostatic hunger, that hedonic hunger, all of those things. If you simply focus in on the calories, that's the superficial answer. And it never works. And this is what people who have lost weight successfully or unsuccessful, they all know this. Right? So secret, like this calorie restriction thing, like it's a secret, like who hasn't done it, right? How does everybody fail? That's why doctors don't even talk about that anymore, because they know it fails. You can talk to your blue in the face about calorie restriction, because that's what we were all taught, right? Nobody ever loses weight. It doesn't work. Thank you for saying that. The amount of suffering in my life and the amount of less of millions of people from that, oh, you're just not trying hard enough. Like the amount of guilt and shame and self-loathing that happens when you're overweight and like it's my fault, no. Like these are signals your body will not ignore, because it's not going to let you die of starvation. That's what the thing's just happening. So the whole calorie thing, it's just mean-spirited bullying from a few people who really got bullied in seventh grade and never got over it. And they're still on the note. So we can just drop that. So if you're overweight, like I was and like a lot of us were, it's all right. It's not where you want to be. And there's ways to get there that don't require suffering and self-sabotage. And you've written a lot of books about it. I have two. And it takes, it takes the whole community of people just talking about it. People who were overweight and are just willing to say no, it's not that hard. It's also, yes, it's important. I think what you're saying is really important. I think people need to know that it's not their fault. And that's really, like the shame is really one thing that the calorie bros have sort of, you know, because they can't admit that their calorie restriction doesn't work, then they turn around and blame the person. Like you didn't try. But it's physiology. When you're trying to fight your physical hunger, your idonic hunger, your condition hunger, try harder is not a solution. You need to figure out what's going on. And I always think this calorie thing is so stupid, like honestly so stupid, because to them, it's the solution to every single cause of being overweight. It's like, okay, so think about it this way. Like if, you know, and it's like to the man with a hammer, every problem is a nail. So if your problem is that you eat too much ultra-processed foods, then the answer is eat less calories. Like what are you talking about? Like why aren't your focuses on the ultra-processed foods? If you're not getting good sleep, the solution is, and that's why you're overweight, the solution is eat less calories. Are you a moron? It's like no, the solution is get more solution. If you're an emotional eater and you're depressed, and that's why you're eating, you're trying to self-medicate to feel better. And that's a legitimate reason. Then the solution is eat less calories. You're like the worst doctor ever, because you never actually looked and said, well, the problem is the emotional hunger. The problem is the depression. Let's do therapy. Let's get a friend. Let's do antidepressive. Whatever it is, that's your problem. It's a complex medical solution. It's a complex medical disease with lots of different causes. It could be that your environment is all wrong. Right? Conditioned hunger. You're trained to eat all the time. Well, you need to undrain that. There's a whole field of behavioral psychology there to help you. Counter-conditioning and extinction. All of these things. But to them, it's like, okay, hammer. I have a hammer. Your problem is a nail. Eat less calories. Eat less calories. Like come on. Like that's kind of the dumbest thing. Right? Honestly, it is. You know it's not default. Because if you have, suppose you have a school with 100 children and one of them fails. You say, well, maybe it is, therefore. But what if 70 of them fail? Would you say it's their fault? Or would you say it's the teacher's fault? It's the learning fault. It's the school's fault. Like, obviously, right? So here we have a situation where 70% Americans are overweight or obese. It's not an individual problem. It's not a well-known problem. It's a system problem. You let all these people eat ultra-process foods, which cause all these problems. You got away from the real foods with real nutrients. You convinced them that it was all about calories. You banged them over the head of this calories thing. You bullied them all to death. And if that didn't get them, you shamed them with fat shaming because it's like, no. But you never gave the right advice. And that always bothers me because it's like, come on. I have all these people who are struggling, struggling, struggling to lose weight. And all they feel is judgment, judgment, judgment. It's not their fault, right? They were never given the right information. And that's what I always feel that you're trying to give people, right? You're trying to give them the right information, give them a path out. I think that's very important because you don't hear that from the medical sort of mainstream. You know, and do you think it's going to change? Is this just all going to be GLP marketing? The GLP is, you know, it's a legit drug, right? There are people that are going to need it. So that's fine. But I think it has. Yeah, I'm close to them for longevity. And if you need to turn off your cravings, I just feel like you might want to try the techniques that you and I talk about that are tried and true and see if that works. And if it doesn't, there's no shame in using those things as long as you take care of your protein needs and all that stuff. Yeah, exactly. I feel the same way. I'm not against them at all. And the thing is that the problem is, of course, when you stop them, if you haven't learned anything, about diets and eating behavior and you go off them, all that way comes back on, right? Because you never learn how to deal with your cravings and stuff. So I feel like it's an opportunity to learn, but I feel like the marketing is like, just take the drug and count your calories. And it's all great, right? Which is not what I think it should be. It should be like, here's, you know, some training wheels. Now go learn, you know, now that we've reduced your hunger, go learn the proper things to eat, the proper ways to eat, you know, it's like learn all that. Like I talk about in my book, the hunger code, like the decent plan is always going to answer the who, what, when, where, and how sort of thing, right? All the questions of the plan, whereas eating less calories, it doesn't tell you like the who, the who, what, the when, the where, the what, right? It could be anything other than calories, right? But it's like, who are you going to eat with? That's important, right? When I eat with my high school friends, my diet, not very good. When I eat with my family, it does, to be pretty good, right? That's just being human, right? So who you eat with is important? What you eat is important. The types of food you eat are important, not just the calories, but the types of food, the ultra processing, where you eat makes a difference. If you're eating anywhere you feel like, right? In front of the TV, in front of the movies, in the car, you're going to create a lot of condition, hunger, if all you ever eat is at a table at a program meal, like a lot of other countries, right? Japan and other countries like that. Like they've never think of, you know, eating on the go like we do. Well, you're going to have a different experience because you're going to have real food that's been prepared properly, right? As opposed to grabbing something from the, you know, convenience store that comes microwave then a little plastic bag, right? So the who, what, when, you know, when you want to try to eat early, if you're eating a lot, big meal late, that's a problem. So all of these are important, but think about the plan they give you. Eat less calories. Does it tell you who? No, what? No, when? No. How? Like how is that even a serious plan? Like you have no plan at all. It's crazy. Yeah. So of those three kinds of hunger, we talked about. Decorate them in order of importance for the average person, which is the, the biggest one. Which is the second biggest. I actually think that the social hunger, which is the condition hunger. So you got the physical, which is called homostatic. There's the emotional, which is adonic and social, which is the condition hunger. I actually think social hunger is actually the condition hunger is the most important. I think, I mean, really, adonic hunger is very close. The ultra processed foods is very close, but ultra processed foods actually cuts both the, the adonic and the condition hunger. Like if you think about social influence, it's a massively important aspect of how we behave, right? How other people behave influences how I behave to a huge degree. And that's why, you know, social media, social influencers, all of these things wind up being so important, right? Like movie stars and all this sort of stuff. Because what they do influences what I do. And you see this because if there's lots of experiments, for example, if you take a military family and you move them and you look at the county that they get posted in, when they get posted to counties with high obesity rates, their weight goes up, right? You look at these social, these other studies, if your best friend becomes obese, your own risk of obesity goes up by like 117 percent or something crazy, like very, very high. Same with the sibling, if a sibling becomes obese, your own risk goes up by like 40 percent or something, like just a massive amount. You know, so this speaks to, and you can look at countries like if you look at Japan, for example, or Italy, both are sort of developed first world nations. They love food, right? Italian's love food, but they eat real food. They differently, right? The social, the social interactions are different there, right? Big families, locked big table, you know, big dinners. But the thing is that there's very little obesity there. They're actually around 25 percent, very, very low actually, one of the lowest in Europe. And you might say why? Yeah, it's because they eat real food, right? And that's important. But they also have this sort of ideal way of eating, which is that you're not eating sort of on the go. You're always eating real food. You're always eating sort of at a meal with other people. That sort of thing, right? That's eating by yourself, where you can tend to just distracted eating, mindless eating. But you take that American, that Italian or the Japanese person, and you just hung them down in the USA, right? In New York City or San Francisco. The risk of obesity just skyrockets, right? It's the same culture. It's the same people. But now the social influence of the American way of eating gets to them, whether it's Japan or Italy, right? And all of a sudden, for Japan, for example, the risk, you take that Japanese person in Japan, their risk of obesity very low, you plunk them down in the United States, their risk of obesity goes up like fivefold in a generation, right? And within two generations, it's exactly the same as an American. It's like, whoa, all of that advantage of that sort of Japanese way of eating, way of living, all that, whatever makes them less obese completely disappears. So it's not a person problem. It's like you plunk them down in the United States. And it actually doesn't matter. Every immigrant group finds this. You get people, you whether you study people from the Middle East or India or whatever. In their home country, they're thin. They come here and they get fat. So it's not an individual problem. It's not their fault. It's the fault of the system that the ultra-process foods the way that we eat, right? So I think that needs a lot of discussion, right? Because you can only start to rectify the solution if you identify it, right? This whole dietary guidelines, which is focused back on eating real food is a great start because I think that that's really going to help a lot, right? I haven't heard a mention of glyphosate in here. Isn't that a major part of what you're talking about when they're in the US? I don't know that there's a lot of data specifically for that, but the ultra-process foods there's definitely a huge link. Now the problem with ultra-process foods is that it's very broad, right? There's lots of ways to define it. And really most of the diet, right? 70% of the American diet is ultra-process foods. So it's very difficult and there's all kinds of stuff. It's actually closer to 25% in Italy. So that's, I think, one of the big reasons why they have less problems. But it could be that. It could be the things like cariguinin and xanthan gum and maltodextrons. It could be the way it's processed. It's very soft. It's very easy to eat. It's very light feeling. So they have something called vanishing caloric density, which is that when you eat something that's very light, like a potato chip or a cheese puff. It doesn't feel like you've eaten anything and therefore creates very little satiety, right? But there's a lot of calories in those, right? Potato chips or whatever. So you can keep eating them because you're not getting full. You know, portion sizes plays a role because, you know, how you see foods dictate how much you eat and so on. So there's a huge, there's a huge amount of complexity, but it's good because these are all aspects that now you can sort of focus on and say, hey, this is, like, it could be different problems for different people, right? For one person, it could be ultra processed foods. For another could be food addiction, for example. And therefore you must treat it differently, right? So food addiction is another topic that has really been, has had a lot of research in the last few years. And it's clear that people can get addicted to ultra processed foods, right? And people say silly things like, oh, well, it's all natural. How can food be addictive? It's like, well, you know, cigarettes come from the food. They come from tobacco plants and, you know, marijuana comes from like marijuana plants and morphine and narcotics come from poppies. It's the way you process them, right? When you process them by taking the addictive component and concentrating it, then it becomes addictive. And you can do the same with ultra processed foods. So, you know, people also say things like, well, you know, you can't not eat food. I'm like, I'm not asking you not to eat food. I'm asking you not to eat the food that you're addicted to, right? And people know, like they say, they'll tell you, I'm a carbatic. I'm a, you know, I'm addicted to pizza. I'm addicted to french fries. I'm addicted to bread. You know, you hear this all the time. There was last time somebody said I'm addicted to broccoli, right? Natural foods. I'm addicted to salmon. Like, have I ever heard that? I don't think so. Can you talk more about carer genia or carer genia? So people say talk about why that causes hunger and how nasty it is. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure specifically for carer genia, but there's a whole group of chemicals basically that are to do with sort of the creaminess, mouth feel, right? So emulsifiers and texturizers of which I think Xanth and government carer genia are sort of the most common. They just basically fool you into thinking that something has this really great mouth feel so that you'll eat more of it. So there's no calories in it, of course, but that's not the point. It creates more pleasure because you've got the proper mouth feel of it. And therefore, it's going to create more of this sort of hedonic hunger, right? But it's all fake, if you will, right? So instead of having a naturally creamy thing like avocado or something, right? You've got this fake thing, which is making you creamy, but with no calories, but also no satiety and it's also not doing anything to satisfy your hunger. So you can just keep going, right? Keep going. I remember there's this drink I used to drink years ago. It was very, very ultra processed, but I would be like, I can't believe this is so good. It's full of camera. Right. I think carer genia was one of those things. It was so smooth. I was like, this is amazing. This was years ago. Now I know. But it was like, I can't, I don't know how this is so good. And it's like, yeah, it's all fake. It was all just artificial stuff. It's kind of absurd. We're like, Oh, I'm going to trick my body into believing that I got a bunch of highly energetic food, which the body wants because the body runs on energy. And then when the body doesn't get it, it's going to be like, Hey, I was queued up to get what I needed. And then I didn't get it. So now I'm going to give you some signals. They're something's wrong. It's called hunger. And carotgenins, particularly nasty because it also irritates the lining of the gut similar to the way gluten does. And when back when I was a vegan, like, Oh, yeah, I'm going to give me some Irish sea moss. It's full of minerals locked up in a matrix where they can't come out of it. So I would actually intentionally eat a whole bunch of sea moss because it made things all silky and smooth. And it just wrecks your gut. It doesn't give you the minerals. And then it doesn't matter if it's natural sea moss or it's industrial carotgenin. Don't put it in your food and your gut lining will work better. And you're not trying to trick the body. Like if you want your body to feel full, eat some fat. And then the whole system is like, Oh, I sense fat. No, I'm not hungry. But like, oh, I thought I ate some fat. And I didn't get the calories. No, I'm really hungry. Well, that's a great point because remember there is that fake fat, a lestra, right? From a little. That thing with the. And then there is the chips with the fake fat and stuff, right? So this was a fat that your body basically didn't absorb. So basically ran through you, right? Then there is this little problem of anal leakage that sort of screwed the whole thing. So anyway, so there is this fake fat called lestra that was, I think big in the 90s, honestly. So it was, I think the potato chip companies really went crazy on this, was promoting it like crazy. And everybody thought it was a great idea. Did it cause weight loss? Not even a little bit. And what's hilarious, I think, is that some other. The David bar now is full of this fake fat. I'm like, geez, did you not remember all this stuff about anal leakage? This thing. You know, isn't the only fake thing about the David bar given recent trends? You know, just stay in here. Something's an ugly appear. But. Yeah. And the same thing with fake sweeteners, right? Same thing. You're getting something sweet. Your brain is primed to. I'm getting some good food here. But then you don't, right? And it's like it's so stupid because there's all these people that are like, oh, diets, sodas are great. If they're so great, why do we have an obesity epidemic? Right? It's not like diet coke is brand new. It's been around for years. All we had to do was eat fake fat and fake sugar. We would have solved this problem, this obesity thing. 30 years ago, it would never have gotten to this point because we had fake fat and we had fake sugar and it didn't work. Every so often, some other influencer just trought some other calorie bully, troughts it out and says, oh, you can drink fake fat and fake sugar and it'll be fine. It'll be great because there's no calories. I'm like, it really debts. I've often thought that maybe we should rename that anal leakage effect from bad advice and we should just call it biolane as a name. That seems like a real, a really good scientific way of making calorie bully. It seems like it would, sounds like it fits. It's kind of funny because Ouestra is not good for you. But for people with mold illness, there's actually a usefulness of using Ouestra to cause bile secretion. I actually tried to buy some of those fake potato chips so I could eat them to get rid of biotoxins. It's useless. It's just useless for weight loss and it makes you feel bad. It's this weird thing. I have to have this mouth feel and this taste even though I'm going to fill my pants afterwards. It's dumb. No one on earth needs that and if you really wanted it to eat some ice cream, just take some baguettes and some heavy cream and mix them up. I deal it with all you loves or something or just real sugar, just not too much. And eat that and wow, your blood sugar won't go up as much as your like Ouestra oatmeal overnight oats or some crap and you'll feel good at least. And you know, ice cream for weight loss seems like a dumb idea and it kind of is but if the sugar is low, it's not the worst because it's cream right? It's mostly cream. It's actually, you know, honestly, people have been eating ice cream for a long time. Right. And they've been able to do it not a lot. Like I'm not talking about, you know, a pint every day sort of thing. Like that's definitely going to be a problem. But like they have been eating ice cream for thousands of years, right? And you know, you look in Europe, like everybody, like they love ice cream over there. Right? Everybody thinks they have the best ice cream over there. But they've been able to do it because you have to balance all these other things, right? It's not just calories, right? So it's the real food, like you've got the cream in there. So you've got the fats and you've got the, you know, full dairy fats, right? It's not like some artificial fat with artificial sugar, right? So you are, you are going to satisfy that hedonic hunger because you got real food and then you don't have to keep eating it over and over again. I mean, there certainly are indulgences that you can have because you can also make up for it, right? You can do fasting where you're going to be able to let your body burn off a whole bunch of, you know, energy as well, right? Which is the calories, right? But calories is only the energy part. It doesn't tell you anything about the hormonal part of it, right? So how your body responds to those calories because, you know, the whole thing about the energy balance equation is like they're so, you know, the way. It is the energy balance equation says that calories, the calories you store, which is body fat equals calories and minus calories out, right? So that's where they all say just eat fewer calories. That's completely wrong because if you eat fewer calories, you could lose body fat or you could simply burn less calories, right? Either one will. Is what happens, right? Yeah. It's 30s. Always what happens. Every study has shown that everybody who's ever tried to lose weight has shown that, right? So the point is that, you know, it's like it's like money in your bank, right? Money in your bank equals money in minus money out. But the money you make is not the same as the money you save. They're two fundamentally different things, right? So the calories you store as body fat is fundamentally different from the calories you eat because your body can adjust how many calories you burn. So if you simply rearrange the energy balance equation and you say calories in equals body fat plus calories out, that tells you for every calorie you eat, your body could decide to either store it as fat or burn it. But which one does it do, right? And that's all up to the hormones. So it's all up to the hormones. It's not the number of calories. It's what your body does with those calories. So food not only contains the energy, which is the calories, but it contains instructions, information of what your body is supposed to do with those calories. So natural foods will tell you, like if you're eating ultra processed carbohydrates, then you're spiking your insulin. You're telling your body eats a store body fat, right? If you're eating same carbohydrates, oatmeal, like, you know, steel cut, well, insulin is not going up nearly as much. So you're going to not store as much and you're going to burn it, right? And you're going to feel full, right? So if you're eating fats, right, insulin is not going to go up as much. You're going to feel full because you've got all these calories floating around, right? So the whole point is that, you know, by focusing only on the calories and excluding the other stuff, you're missing like the whole story of what's happening. And it's been worked out for years. I mean, it's not like a secret. Like you can measure if you eat 500 calories of cookies or insulin will spike, if you eat 500 calories of Sam and it won't, right? That's a measurable difference. Why would you simply ignore that and say it's irrelevant, right? A calorie is a calorie. Like why would you say that? Like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Like honestly, it's just complete idiocy. These people who just talk about it's all about calories, all about calories. It's like, you know, "Oh, you guys are not very bright." You know, that's all I owe. I always just think that's like, you're thinking is so shallow. It's like, "Woo, don't eat, you know, it's like donate icebergs, donate icebergs." - Okay, if, let's say someone's got 50 plus pounds to lose, you know much else about them. - Yeah, so I have in the Hunger Code, sort of three golden rules, which I consider sort of the most important things. And the first one is really cutting out the ultra-process foods because what you're fine when you start eating real foods, right, is that the hunger sort of disappears, right? And I think that's what you found and you've talked about quite a bit, right? It's like, once you go, you know, get rid of the fake stuff and eat real food, you find you don't have to eat as much. And that's great because, you know, now you're going to work with your body instead of against your body, right? So that's sort of my golden rule number one. Number two is make sure you have an adequate fasting period. Like, don't just eat all the time, right? Because you don't need to, right? That's the reason we have body fat because we can store calories. Otherwise, you'd die in your sleep every single night, right? Your body has the ability to store some of it so it can release some of it too. And most of the time you're snacking all the time, it's just condition hunger or hedonic hunger. It's not the physical hunger. You could eat twice a day and be perfectly and never know those hunger pangs and growling stomach and stuff. It's because you're trained to eat all the time. You have this food noise, there's billboards, there's TV ads, there's product placement on Netflix, you know, you know, with all the foods. That's what's triggering all that, right? And that's the problem. And so you do have to fight it because it's sort of ubiquitous in our society. But, you know, that's number two. Make sure you have adequate fasting period. And number three is really redesign your schedule and your physical environment so that you will succeed because that's important, right? It's the environment is so important because, and we saw this during COVID, right? Everybody's suddenly working from home. If you don't have a big place, you're working at the kitchen table and guess what? Like you're just eating all the time because when you're bored, you know, the pantry's right there, right? But it wasn't the willpower. It was the physical environment. You're so close to all the food. It's so right there, right? So that's really the culprit. And you know, to blame somebody for lack of willpower is wrong because that wasn't the problem. The problem was their physical environment. They didn't, by working from home, they didn't have less willpower, but you put them in a place where it's impossible. There's food noises, a conditioned hunger, right? You're at the kitchen table working, but you're conditioned to eat at the kitchen table. So all of a sudden you're like, why am I hungry? Because you're sitting at the kitchen table, right? And so this like, this became very obvious during COVID that tons of people were having issues with that. Is there a way to like to undo some of this conditioned hunger? I can think of a couple ideas, but there must be a way to do program yourself from that. Yeah, so there's two strategies. So counter conditioning and extinction. So counter, counter conditioning is where you pair a noxious stimulus. I knew you were going to say that. I knew. And I said, I read in the book like so, luckily extinction works equally well. So we won't be getting the electric cattle prods out, because you can do that, right? So and people have done it. So if you want to say you have a addiction to potato chips or something like that, right? So every time you think about a potato chip, you then think of something noxious, right? Say eating bugs or something of that, picking up dog poo or something like that, right? You deliberately do that. So you deliberately pair that. Every time you think of this, you think of this, right? So there are strategies that you can do that, right? And then therefore you get that sort of little revulsion with the dog poo and then you think, okay, so that's counter conditioning. We're pairing a noxious stimulus with what you use to think. The other one is extinction. So extinction is basically you keep doing what you're doing, but you don't do the other thing. So, you know, and one of the more successful strategies is not to go cold turkey, but to simply switch. So if you're conditioned to eating in front of the TV, then a lot of people are, right? Now what you do is you acknowledge that you need something, but instead of eating a snack, you're gonna make yourself a big part of tea or something like that, green tea. And you have that ready for you like immediately, right? You have it all set up. So then the next time it's super easy to get it, right? You make sure it's easy to get, right? Now you've got something in your mouth. I mean, it's the same thing with smokers, right? They always chew gum because it was a substitute. Your substituting habits rather than completely going cold turkey. So that's called extinction. And there are certainly ways to do that. Fasting is another great way because by setting yourself that rule that you're not going to eat for a period of time, you're actually gonna break a lot of these really, really bad habits. And then the great thing about fasting is that you're really gonna feel what that physical hunger, that homeostatic hunger feels like. And you'll realize that it actually is not a major driver of why we're eating these days. It's actually very rare. I do some of these longer fast like five days and stuff. And it's like, wow, it's like, I don't feel this that often. Like really, I only feel it, you know, when I do this. Most of the days that I am around, but I actually don't feel this, you know, this really, really hunger that we all imagine is driving eating behavior, but it's not. It's actually the other stuff. - There was a company I invested in about 10 years ago called Pavlock, which is kind of funny. And the founder of Pavlock, he hired a woman on Craigslist to come to his house and slap him every time he wanted to use Facebook 'cause he was like, I'm addicted. And classic example of this counter-conditioning thing you're talking about. And he's like, well, this is kind of expensive and kind of hurt. So we ended up making this little device called the Pavlov Plus Lock. And the idea was that if you got a craving for potato chips or cigarettes or whatever, or if you didn't go to the gym, that either you could shock yourself or he had it wired up. So it would text your friends if you didn't go to the gym so they could shock you, which made it even worse. And it's good. It was a very small investment, more because it made me laugh than because I thought it was gonna be amazing. But he did find profound results even in stopping a cigarette smoking. Just because the nervous system hates that little tiny spark, it's like a static shock. It's not a big deal. But it's just enough to interrupt the brain before he get into your head. And I've often thought, look, if every time you go somewhere and you're like, I have to eat a potato chip or I'm gonna die, every time you go to shock yourself or put snow in your pants or whatever it's gonna take. You know, how do you have someone to pop you if you're into that? It doesn't matter. And it doesn't take very much of that before you go, oh, okay, I just rewired my cravings, some of my thoughts, but my cravings. So the thought is, oh yeah, I actually do like potato chips, but you didn't get an urge to eat one right now. I think that's under emphasized because it's not politically correct, but I think we're kind of wired that way. - I think you're totally right. I actually don't think it takes very much. That's why I think you could actually do it yourself without even the physical, like even thinking of something bad, right? Like that probably is enough to, it's, you're just looking for that little break, right? It's not a lot. - Right. - And I think it's also due to the mindset, right? So if you think about mindset, that's really where it is, right? And everything depends on mindset because if you look at something like sugar, for example, you know, people used to love sugar. I mean, obviously it has intrinsic rewarding things, right? Babies love sugar and so on. But the thing is that it's gone from, you know, something people want. I remember in the 80s, they were talking, you know, the cereals called sugar pop, they're like proud of the fact they had all this sugar and cereal because this is a good thing, right? And now it's like everybody's trying to hide the fact that they have sugar. So everybody's got like, you know, all those bars and David bars, they all fake sugar, fake fat and stuff. Saying with the low fat, right? Everybody was all like the mindset was really anti-fat, right? Then it switched, right? Now it's like, oh, you got it more than fast. But it's a mindset because the way you look at these foods now, you're like pringing, you know, remember before, it's like, oh, you got to take the skin off the chicken breast and this and that, right? Oh, you can't eat this, you can't eat that. Avocado's, ooh, gross, right? But you can program that mindset. So this is one of the things that I think is really important about the real food movement, which is, you know, the last dietary guidelines is that they're trying to help people reframe that, you know, so that their mindset is that, oh, this is like really fake food. That's gross, right? And I've done that to some extent because, you know, because I'm very aware of all this sort of stuff now, like for example, when I went to the grocery store, I put it the example that there's the sour cream. And if you look at it, sour cream should really have two ingredients like cream and bacterial cultures, right? There, a lot of the sour cream, you'd be surprised. Has a lot of other stuff in it, right? Milk protein and guargom and zanthin and so, like just all this junk. So now when I read this, I'm like, I'm a little bit revolced, right? But it came from my mindset, right? And my mindset is that this is very ultra-processed, therefore very bad and I'm repulsed, but, right? As opposed to just trying to not take it, right? it, which is then you get a deprivation mindset that is, you know, I want this, but I can't have it, right? You don't want that. You want to change your mindset. And that's along the same lines, right? You're just trying for that little break, right? To try and, you know, flip that little switch because it's not a lot. And, you know, you see this in other countries where they really just have poor some of the stuff, like the stuff that Americans put in their food, right? There's, there's actually thousands. I think there's like 4,000 chemicals that are approved for use in the United States. That is banned in Europe, right? So they look at it and they go, that's disgusting, right? It's like, how can you eat that, right? But it's all from their mindset because obviously people can eat it, right? It's funny you mentioned sour cream. I found 20 years ago when I was really getting on this weightlusting, the sour cream I buy, so I feel like crap when I eat it. I get brain fog and I get so hungry. And then if I eat like cream fresh or something that's actually real sour cream, no effect whatsoever. And I just realized it's the chemicals. So when I see stuff like that at this point, I just see it and my brain says not food. And I drive past a Taco Bell or something or McDonald's every day. I don't actually perceive it. It's like, like, if unless I want dry cleaning, I don't know that there's a dry cleaning store there, I have to look it up. And if you're going to say, oh, it's probably the McDonald's, I'm like, there's McDonald's in it. It's because my brain is no longer recognized that is food because it's not. And it's probably five years of just consistently going, why would I want to feel that way before something rewired internally? And it makes you really easy to walk into a 7-Eleven and say, there's no food in here and walk out with a bottle of water because genuinely, even if I'm hungry, there's nothing I would put in my body that I would identify as food. Exactly. And that's the right mindset, right? But the behavior change follows from the mindset, right? With your mindset is that I really want this McDonald's, but I can't have it because it's too high in whatever, right? Then you always feel like you're missing something, right? Whereas you don't feel like you're missing something because you never perceived it. But that was all, it all stems from a change in the mindset, which is so important. Like, this is what I mean. It's this other aspect of eating behavior. Because if you think weight loss is all just about your diet, you're sort of already lost, right? It's all about this other aspect of eating behavior. Like whether it's the foods, the chemicals, the hedonic hunger, the social hunger, the all that stuff is really important. The family, the friends, the social connections, all of that is really, really important. And we don't talk about it enough. From a weight loss standpoint, because you got all these calorie bullies just yelling in some of the calories, it's all about calories. And then wondering why they're so unsuccessful, right? It's like, I can tell you why. It's like, because they didn't do that. The ultimate hack for those guys is I usually just repost whatever they say and then I use their Instagram handle as a discount code on my website. And it works every time and I usually make another 10,000 in sales and then I donate some of the money to victims of childhood bullying and their name and they usually go away. But it's like, guys, if you're listening to this and you probably are laying, get a therapist. It's okay. Like literally. We're working on helping people and we don't do it by yelling at other people and shaming them because it doesn't work except the against that's okay, right? Humor, humor, I was a vegan too, make it fun myself. You've got a lot of wisdom here. You've really done a lot of work and I appreciate you being willing to go out there as a doctor and just talk about like, this is how it's really working. And there's a threat of caring about how people feel in your work. That's really important because even if you lose weight and you feel like some of the fitness influence, especially women, I've worked with, they're like, I never looked better and felt worse in my entire life and I've lost my monthly cycle and I'm just feeling anxious all this time and I look great. Who cares? We don't want to bring anyone there. So it's like, how do you sustainably have the body in mind you want without suffering, without undue willpower and just by knowing what to do? So there's an easy path and then there's a self-flagulation path. I don't think we need to do that unless, again, you're into that because it's half of my last book on why brief intentional conscious exposure to pain, like why monks would flage late, do an ice bath instead. It's one minute of pain and you have more willpower. But if you learn how to eat the way Jason talks about, you don't even need willpower to eat the right way because you eat to get willpower instead of spending willpower on eating. And that changes your whole life because the willpower that's left over, it goes into parenting or into your career or meditation or something. So thanks for sharing your work. I think it's really meaningful. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much Dave. Thanks for having me on and like I appreciate what you're doing and you know, you've been talking for years. I mean, it's been like, it's been a journey, right? It's been, you know, you get laughed at at first and you know, everything's so crazy. But then, you know, in the end, it's like people are like, hey, this actually helps, right? It's like, okay, well, there you go. Like, let's open people's mind a little. Very good. Every good thing that's ever happened in the world, the first time I was invented, it was always by someone. Everyone's that was crazy. So if you're looking at this and people are saying you're crazy, either you're crazy or you're on to something and we'll know in five years. I don't know. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Hopefully at the biohacking conference at the end of May in Austin, will you be coming this year? Oh, no, I don't. I have, I have a few other things scheduled. What? Yeah, I don't. I knew he's spoken there a couple times, but I'll be seeing you in the room. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you so much, Dave. See you next time on the Human Upgrade podcast. The Human Upgrade, formerly bulletproof radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider, carefully read all labels and heed all directions and questions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast is not endorsed or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. 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Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. There are three types of hunger
  2. Modern society pairs food with almost every activity (e.g., movies, malls, TV) through advertising and habit, creating conditioned hunger that drives overeating.
  3. Ultra-processed foods are engineered to maximize pleasure and minimize satiety, leading to rapid absorption and dopamine spikes that fuel hedonic hunger.
  4. Restricting calories alone fails because it doesn't address the root cause of overeating: excessive hunger; instead, reducing hunger (e.g., via drugs like GLP-1 agonists or satiety-promoting foods) is more effective.
  5. The body has a "fat thermostat" (set point) that defends a certain weight, making long-term weight loss difficult without addressing hunger signals.

Summary:

In this episode of *The Human Upgrade*, Dave Asprey and Dr. Jason Fung discuss the true drivers of obesity, arguing that overeating is not a simple matter of willpower but a consequence of three distinct types of hunger: homeostatic (physical), hedonic (pleasure-driven), and conditioned (triggered by environmental cues). Modern society, aided by advertising, has paired food with nearly every daily activity—watching TV, going to the mall, or driving—creating conditioned hunger akin to Pavlov's dogs.

Meanwhile, ultra-processed foods are deliberately engineered to maximize pleasure and minimize satiety, leading to rapid absorption and dopamine spikes that override natural fullness signals. This "food noise" keeps people eating long after physical hunger is satisfied. Fung emphasizes that calorie restriction alone fails because it does not address the underlying hunger problem; instead, reducing hunger—whether through satiety-promoting foods like healthy fats, drugs such as GLP-1 agonists, or understanding the body's "fat thermostat"—is key to sustainable weight loss.

Asprey adds that his own experience with starvation protocols led to ravenous hunger, highlighting the need for strategies that turn off hunger signals without relying on willpower. The conversation underscores that obesity is a hunger problem, not a calorie problem.

FAQs

The three types are homeostatic hunger (physical hunger for balance), hedonic hunger (eating for pleasure), and conditioned hunger (eating triggered by learned associations, like Pavlov's dogs).

People overeat because of conditioned hunger from advertising and habits, hedonic hunger from ultra-processed foods designed for pleasure, and minimal satiety, not just physical hunger.

Ultra-processed foods maximize pleasure with flavors, textures, and fast absorption, while minimizing satiety, leading to constant eating without feeling full.

GLP-1 drugs reduce hunger, making weight loss possible when calorie restriction alone fails due to physiological hunger signals.

The body defends a certain weight range, making it hard for people who were obese to maintain weight loss without addressing hunger signals.

Eating adequate amounts of high-nutrient fat and protein can turn off hunger signals by providing energy and leptin, avoiding reliance on willpower.

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