Cutting Calories Doesn’t Work – It’s simple Algebra ❌🥗 || Jason Fung
Cutting Calories Doesn't Work – It's simple Algebra ❌🥗 || Jason Fung || Dr. Jason Fung Explains the Truth About Weight Loss & Insulin!
Are you tired of hearing that the secret to weight loss is simply cutting calories? 🧐 Well, in this video, Dr. Jason Fung breaks down why calorie counting has NEVER worked and why it NEVER will! 🚫
Let’s talk about the real reason why we gain weight and how calorie cutting can actually backfire. It’s not just about “calories in vs. calories out” – it’s WAY more complex than that. In fact, hormones, especially insulin, play a HUGE role in how your body stores fat! 🔄🍔
Key Points Covered:
1. Body’s Adaptation: When you cut calories, your body actually fights back by reducing energy expenditure, leading to a weight loss plateau. 😱 This is why calorie restriction alone doesn’t work long-term.
2.Role of Insulin: Discover how insulin plays a critical role in weight gain by telling your body to store fat. 🧬💡 It’s not just about calories, it’s about the hormonal balance that shifts the relationship between calories in and calories out.
3. Circular Logic of Dieting: You’ve heard it all before: "You’re gaining weight because you’re eating too much," but Dr. Fung explains why this is a classic case of circular logic that doesn’t solve the real issue. 🔄🤔
4. The REAL Solution: Instead of focusing on calorie counting, the focus should be on what causes the imbalance – hormones like insulin. Dr. Fung gives insights on how to tackle the ROOT cause of weight gain. 🌿🔑
Forget the traditional methods of counting calories and learn how to fix the real problem behind weight gain. 💥 Understanding your body’s hormonal response is the key to lasting weight loss and better health.
🔥 Watch the full video to learn why calorie cutting isn’t the answer and how you can lose weight more effectively by focusing on the right things! 🔥
If you enjoyed this video, don’t forget to Like, Share, and Subscribe for more health tips and insights from Dr. Jason Fung! 📺👍
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▶️ Timestamps / Chapters
00:00 intro
00:03 why calorie counting doesn’t work
00:29 energy balance equation
01:45 what causes weight gain?
03:17 what causes alcoholism?
04:49 what changed the ratio of CI to CO?
08:30 why does calories In/ calories out seem so intuitive?
09:02 outro
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Check out my discussion of the Body Fat Thermostat – https://youtu.be/SJ74lVPgaHE
Love the fact that your are the ONLY person that says this on record.
Dr Fung is indeed a people doctor, straight and plain talking about and for people health benefits, no monetary strings attached. ❤️🙏
no he’s not.
No he’s not. Most keto/carnivore docs say the same thing.
@@poohbear3027 I don’t care about carnivore bro. I’m 43 years old and look 90% better than those in their 20’s. Cico is a lie. Always has been. We don’t eat real food anymore & it has been like that for over 20 years. Good luck with the measuring cup though.
nope – here are MANY doctors and scientists -over 90 videos that concur https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV7a9vSywKj7Uk8omEtsfetupdL_Zsm1H
Water has zero cals yet it is weight. Wood, coal, gasoline are all also calories. We do not “burn” calories like a bomb calorimeter does
Let’s consider if food calorimetry better approximated human metabolism by using an acid reaction instead of a combustion reaction. Reacting acid with water is exothermic, meaning that water would have a caloric value. 😉
The haters work for big food and big pharma, they want you dieting on Doritos.
LOL.. Some of these comments are so funny. “CICO worked for me. A calorie is a calorie. It’s only calorie deficit.” Guess they’ve never experienced how hard weight loss is with insulin resistance/PCOS/etc. If they could, they’d cry out of frustration because eating less than 1200 cal like a toddler doesn’t work for them long term, nor is it sustainable. It may work shortly, but that weight will almost always be re-gained if insulin resistance isn’t dealt with.
I feel like you have all of this backwards. You see hormones – particularly insulin – as the cause of weight gain/loss. But it isn’t the mechanism, it’s the signal. I think we would all be better served by looking at the mechanism and how it interfaces with the signal. That might provide additional insight.
The mechanism, which I’m sure you are aware, is called the Randle Cycle. This describes how cells use fuel in the body. And the very first thing we come to realize is that the body doesn’t burn calories. Ever. At all. Instead, it oxidizes substrate. And past that, how much substrate is oxidized depends on how well the body is setup to oxidize that particular type of fuel. The fuels being glucose or fatty acids. Research has shown that fat adapted eaters oxidize over 3x as much substrate per minute during exercise as high carb eaters. We’re talking about grams of substrate, not calories. So calories is a nonsensical way to look at this from in the first place.
We need to look at substrate. That is, the fuel being used by the cell to create ATP. As already stated, there are two options: glucose or fatty acids.
But the Randle Cycle tells us something interesting: when the cell is oxidizing one type of substrate, it inhibits the other. Meaning, when the cell is burning fat, it retracts the glut 4 transmitter turning that cell locally insulin resistant.
This is information that seems valuable to know but can’t be known just by looking at insulin alone. The reason the individual cell can’t take in glucose is because the transmitter has been withdrawn from the outside of the cell. The signal literally can’t reach the transmitter.
The real problem then is mixed fuel meals. Eating a high quantity of carbs and fats at the same time jams up the system. The body has to deal with both glucose and fatty acids impacting the body at the same time. Now, each cell can determine what it is burning but moving from one to the other is a bit like turning an aircraft carrier. It’s not instantaneous. But one thing is sure, at least some of this glucose will be shut out of the cells because those cells are currently locally insulin resistant.
It’s important to note that the cells are doing what they are supposed to do: protecting themselves. This is not a pathological response.
The effect is glucose pooling in the blood which the body then takes through lipogenesis to create body fat to get blood sugar levels back to normal. Also, this pooling of glucose in the blood can be measured by looking at one’s A1C measurement, which is a measurement of the damage that excess sugar in the blood did to red blood cells.
So you see, insulin didn’t do anything but signal to cells. The mechanisms in the cells is what is most informative. You’ve been beating the insulin drum for quite a while now. It would be nice if you could approach things from the other side, as I’ve just articulated. The Randle Cycle is vastly under discussed and I think you could add value to this discussion.
Hallelujah…,at last someone who understands metabolism ( not that Dr Fung doesn’t btw). I totally agree that not enough people acknowledge the worthlessness of the term “calorie” and how the body actually converts substances in to useable energy.
The problem with obesity is ultimately just insulin resistance; a metabolic dysfunction of the body, even if insulin (the communicator) is not the true root cause, it still tells us what is wrong. Fasting will address these issues 99/100 times. I think your story is accurate and you have solid points, but I think we should focus on offering easy surface-level translations: teach people how to fast, and the results will show.
Tell me you haven’t read The Diabetes Code without telling me you haven’t read The Diabetes Code. He says exactly what you are talking about.
Interesting.. so how do we fix this problem? It seems reducing insulin helps.. but is there something else or something more we can do?
@PearlM38 eat things that only have one ingredient. Except orange juice. Just say away from juice all together. No added sugar, no carbs, over 30-50 grams per day. Concentrate your diet on trying to get 1G of protein per ideal pound of body weight per day. Lift weights 2 times a week. Go for a walk, 5 miles a day min. Personally I also dry fast every day until whatever time I went to bed. So if I go to bed at 9. I wait till 9am to eat or drink anything. If i go to bed at 12, well you get it..:) gl
I do OMAD with a 20 hour fast. I have a four hour window to eat. I don’t count calories as I feel full and don’t feel the need to overeat.
@Kevin_747 I have been doing the same for the past 2 weeks. I’m losing 1-1.5lbs a week. I haven’t lost weight like this since I was 18. I don’t count calories but ball park 1400 cal in 4 hour window. Nothing lost and very hungry on 1400 cal doing 3-4 meals (8-7hour eating window) a day b4 24/4. Female, 41, 5’2, 182lbs.
Eat more fat , meat u will loose 2 3 lb or more , eat less carb or no carbs .
I have reduced 20 lb in 40 days without any experience not even walking today I have consumed 100 gm butter, 300gm meat, 200 gm animal fat , small 50 or 100 gm curd. And after eating this much I m looseing fat Alhamdulillah
@@kristhal5
Glad you got your channel back
What? He lost his channel? YT is really turning into a tyrannical platform lately
How did he lose it???
“Tesla US” hacked the channel last September 26, 7pm.
@koreappinesmusic wow I didn’t know, I thought it was a sponsored video.
I would have like to see a “now that we’ve debunked xyz, here is the way forward”
Instead of leaving us with “calorie counting and restriction don’t work, roll credits, good luck out there.”
Watch the rest of his videos. Better yet buy his book if you really want to understand it in much less time than watching all of the videos. Two words. It works.
U really need people to spoon feed you huh? You can’t even Google his name. Whatever you are now, you should stay that way. 😊
If I eat to much even keto/ carnivore I gain wait. You can eat to much.
You can and that is covered in his book. I will say however that if you are doing IF there is much less chance of gaining weight overeating on a keto based diet.
Iv started a high fat keto/ carnivor and stopped eating after 7pm and .the weight as finally started to drop, you have to balance hormones
But what Dr. Fung says here is true. The true cause of weight gain is what your body does with those calories and what it can burn. Someone with the above problems that cause increased CI, can store fat on even 1200 calories, whereas someone eating a ketogenic diet can be burning fat at over 2000 calories.
So, what I learned is that counting calories will be useless if you don’t let your insulin drop, coz the body will adapt and will decrease your metabolism instead. Hence, you will certainly reach plateau.
And once your insulin is low(normal) then your body will switch over to fat burning mode and still consume the exact amount of energy it needs. This is they key to weight loss.
counting calories will be ALWAYS useless, regardless what you do with your insulin
You learned well.
You just ride 60 miles a week on a bike. And watch the weight fall off you. Everyone wants the easy way to lose weight.
@@stevemann1299 agree 💯
Feast and Fast is the key 😊 -400lbs weightloss “the fasting methode” ( Fung) and doing Carnivore
This has been working for me – 2-5 consecutive fasting days per week, bracketed by high-protein, fermented food, largely keto weekends, with weight training and emphasis on “just moving more.” Down about 75lb this year.
I do fast and feast with high carb. Works great as well.
I was a 455 lb. Vegetarian and now I’m a 210 lb. Carnivore
Congratulations!
I can’t pass an algebra class to save my life. But I do know that calorie county doesn’t work. Intermittent fasting has been the only thing that has worked for me.
I do OMAD for weight loss. 100g of meat, a bowl of broccoli, a bowl of blueberries every day. Also, 2-3 times weekly a can of sardines. Working really well for me.
Have you tried to add longer fasting such as 48h or 72h ?
I use calorie counting as a way to estimate how much I eat to make sure I am *eating enough*. I don’t count strictly. But I feel it is kind of important to make sure that my meals have enough calories so I don’t get hungry later in the day. For me this works great.
it works because you match an arbitrary number with a specific amount of food. Calories don’t work
The EQUAL sign in that equation ONLY applies if ALL calories are metabolized equally with the SAME (or energy equivalent) pathway in the body.
The food industry said because “ALL calories are EQUAL” that 100 calories of sugar (from Coke) is equal to 100 calories of something else like Butter or broccoli. Amazing, they pointed out the fatal flaw with their own absurd argument.
Food’s energy cannot be evaluated solely on calorie content, (note: I said energy, not nutritional content), the different macronutrients get processed and metabolized differently with hormones. And, we have different pathways for making energy, ATP. On the other hand, calories are measured by setting them on fire and burning them… our bodies don’t do that; so a calorie is not a correct model for humans, but it might work for car engines that burn fuel.
Thus a calorie is not a calorie… the equation is broken, and proof of that is demonstrated after 100 years of trying to make this model work, it has failed and essentially it’s a falsified hypothesis. So, to continue to reason “Food Facts” on nutritional labels with calories is junk science, we’ve reached a dead end here. Q.E.D… the scientific method says we must let it go.
I think people also have different absorption rates of food. Two people will metabolize the same food differently.
@@censoredeveryday3320 Sure, you are correct: two people will metabolize the same exact meal differently, take an extreme case of one person who is fat-adapted and produces ketones vs a diabetic; they will have radically different responses to it.
We look to medical science to educate us and inform us, and what we’ve got is horrible advice. I appreciate Dr. Fung, and other doctors, that are trying to make a difference in the world.
I hope that if I poke holes in that calorie myth it will open eyes. BTW: this is not my original idea, Dr. Robert Lustig, Zoe Harcombe, Nina T, and many others, think calories are useless!
@@raymitchell9736 Fantastic reply, thank you. This honestly clears up a lot of confusion I had about metabolic differences between people.
I lost weight when I cut out carbs. My hunger shut down and I started losing weight.
me too 🙂
Love your work Dr. Fung however, as a logician, I feel compelled to highlight an issue with your argument: You are applying symbolic logic (Bertrand Russell) to something that classical logic (Aristotle & Socrates) should be used for. There is a neglected aspect fallacy at play where your equation “neglects” the temporal aspect of the dynamic: CI>CO MUST precede increased body fat, thus they are not equal temporally – you are making a false equivalency between cause and effect. Yes, the body may adjust, but this does not fundamentally change the relationship CI>CO=Fat materially nor temporally. If what you were saying were true in the strict sense you are presenting it, If someone fasted, they would not lose weight, their body would downregulate their caloric consumption until they just died at the same weight that they started at. I hope that makes sense.
Too complicated. The doctor prefers the simplicity of waving his hands and making noise.
@@EnFuego79 I slept through that class
Instantly though that, great explanation
“If what you were saying were true in the strict sense you are presenting it, If someone fasted, they would not lose weight, their body would downregulate their caloric consumption until they just died at the same weight that they started at”
However, we must take into account the role of insulin here. Dr. Fung is speaking more of eating in a caloric deficit, with insulin playing a part. Fasting is different than simple ‘caloric restriction’. Fasting turns down insulin so your body draws what calories it needs from your fat stores instead of lowering your BMR to compensate for the lack of ‘calories in’ (i.e., what you ingest).
@@guibox3 The doc is waiving his hands and making a lot of noise in a remarkably undisciplined, unscholarly, and unprofessional way. All he is doing is confusing people.
I know a guy that lost 100 lbs. I asked how he did it? He strictly counted calories.
A 2nd guy I know lost significant weight on Atkins. Guy #3 lost 40 lbs eating salads. A 4th guy lost 40 lbs doing carnivore. Guy #5 lost half his weight. How? He never changed what he ate. Just ate smaller portions. What do all these have in common? Each one made significant cuts.
You can gain body fat and water weight on all those ‘cuts’ – it just depends on one’s starting point HEre are over 90 videos with doctors and scientists who concur that CICO is an antiquated notion that can not be applied to the Science of Nutrition Clever concept and theory, but too many fallacies https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV7a9vSywKj7Uk8omEtsfetupdL_Zsm1H
@@KJB0001😂All of those you mentioned are low carb pushers😂! Nice try though. I appreciate the comedy.
when I was boxing, to make weight I just ate less…cut calories, it worked and always worked and still does, no fasting, keto, carnivore, vegan, etc, if any of those work for you then good, go for it.
With all due respect doctor, counting calories work. I know where I stand with a running tally in my mind. Just like keto OMAD eliminated my 12.4 diabetes and now going to 10%bf