A Conversation with Cynthia Thurlow | Jason Fung

@perserverance333 says:

First. IF with low carbs, I’ve lost about 20 lbs in 8 months, down to 172 from 192. My face is thinner and I look younger. I also eliminated processed foods and added sugars. Meat and eggs baby!

@Kyarrix says:

I love listening to her. As a professional woman I appreciate her use of language. She doesn’t sugarcoat things, she lets her vocabulary flow and she states things emphatically and clearly.

I do have a question though, more of a concern. Why would I want to eat carbohydrates at all? There is no physical need for carbohydrates. Our bodies make the glucose we need through a process called gluconeogenesis. We are, most of us, healthier not eating any carbohydrates and certainly not processed ones, ever.

The issue with most plant food, fruit, vegetables grains, any of that, is that it is now grown in depleted soil. We don’t rotate crops as we used to, we don’t have animals grazing in the fields and fertilizing them. We do it now with chemical fertilizers and we use pesticides and glyphosate, we pick crops before they are ripe, resulting in more oxalates. All of this adds up to a burden that we do not need.

If you can get seasonal, locally grown, organic produce from a farm that practices sustainable agriculture and if you are not already sensitive to those foods from a lifetime of eating them with pesticides, then have some. When I can find seasonal organic blackberries or blueberries I’ll eat some. But if they’re imported, if picked before they’re ripe, if they are grown in soil that is depleted, the benefit does not outweigh the detriment to our health. Most people would consider blackberries and blueberries to be whole foods but not the way we grow them today. Comparative analysis shows that fruits and vegetables grown today have a fraction of the nutrients they used to have. There is significantly more downside as a result of the depleted soil, the chemical fertilizers, the pesticides, the oxalates and naturally occurring anti-nutrients in these foods. The nutrients naturally occurring are less biologically available to us. The fact that these foods no longer contain much in the way of nutrients and significant anti-nutrients renders them a bad choice.

Eat grass-fed and grass-finished meat. If you can’t afford it any meat is better than processed foods. Eat eggs from pasture raised chickens. Some butter is fine for most, some full fat dairy and generally stop there. You can have fish or poultry but primarily eat meat, fatty meat.

For the ethical people out there, I care very much about the well-being of animals. I used to be close to vegetarian because of that. I have learned though that our planet and the animals are better off when we practice sustainable agriculture. Mass agriculture as it is practiced today results in far more death to animals than the older cow eaten by a carnivore over the course of 6 months.

Combines in fields kill tens of thousands of animals everyday. Mass agriculture results in the destruction of habitats. Glyphosate and other pesticides destroy millions of animals every year poisoning them and us.

There are a number of good books on this topic from people who started out vegetarian or vegan. The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith is a good example, I highly recommend it.

@MsDeeVee says:

I credit Cynthia Thurlow’s Ted Talk for my discovery of IF, which led me to you Dr Fung and to Dr Mindy Pelz. I lost 60 pounds doing IF and changing my diet and am stable since end of last year. I am so grateful!!!

@mcdade7489 says:

This was so informative!! Dr Fung is my absolute fav!!

@anaalanis1043 says:

Thank you for your help .🙏

@holymolar says:

Dr. Jason is da Boss of all bosses. I got Funged about 8 years ago. Now at 70 y.o. my only medications are B,B,B, and eggs.

@LinditaPedersen says:

Thank you Dr Fung 🙏 you make so much sense. Keep up the good work