Podcasts are great. You simply download them onto your mobile device, and you can listen to it anywhere – walking around, in your car, at your desk – whatever. This explains their rising popularity in the few short years since introduction. Radio programs have been around for decades, but podcasts are the future. Podcasts affords the unique opportunity to learn from the best minds on the planet, all at your own pace, on your own time. It’s a very empowering medium for change and self improvement. The right information can change the world. The best part? For listeners, it’s completely free. That’s why I’m so excited to share news about a brand new project – The Fasting Method Podcast – focused on evidence based nutrition especially as it applies to weight loss, type 2 diabetes, dietary fat, sugar, metabolic syndrome and fasting. With all the unnecessary suffering caused by the twin epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes, it’s time to stand up and make a difference. I hope this podcast will consistently provide useful information about the science of weight loss and nutrition.

I started medical school in 1992 at the age of 19. Obesity was spreading, and the epidemic of type 2 diabetes was gaining momentum. Medical school taught me many things, not all correct. Some important lessons are only learned with experience. One of the things medical school taught me was this: nutrition was not part of the doctor’s lexicon.

As young medical students, we quickly sorted out what was important and what was not, based upon the medical school curriculum. If anatomy and pathology and biochemistry were the subjects being taught and the subjects I was being graded upon, then that’s what I studied and learned. That’s what I thought was important. Nutrition was just barely on the curriculum. So I learned, or inferred, that nutrition was not an important health issue, compared to say, chemotherapy drugs, pharmacology or X-ray interpretation.

After finishing medical school, three years of Internal Medicine residency and another two years of fellowship in nephrology (kidney disease), I started working as a specialist physician. Type 2 diabetes is by far the leading cause of kidney disease. And year after year, the number of patients kept going up and up. There was so much illness, so much suffering and it was getting worse, not better.. And I had a very queer thought. Why? For me, the one question that I always needed to understand was ‘Why’. I am obsessed with understanding the root cause of a disease because without that critical information, you cannot properly treat the disease.

The kidney disease was caused by type 2 diabetes, which in turn was largely related to obesity. So, logically, the solution was not to give more drugs and dialysis, it was to solve the obesity problem.  I had always believed that the rudimentary nutritional knowledge I gained in medical school was sufficient. ‘A calorie is a calorie’, ‘It’s all about calories’, and ‘ Eat Less and Move More’ was the only answers I knew. And they were dead wrong, because the problem was getting worse.
So the crucial, crucial question remained: ‘Why do we gain weight’? If we get the answer here wrong, then everything downstream will be corrupted. If you think the problem is excess caloric intake, then our facile answer, is ‘Eat less calories’. But the exploding supernova of obesity and type 2 diabetes said that this answer was wrong, dead wrong.

A  few experts and doctors looked beyond the facade, to glimpse the new nutrition paradigms evolving over the last few decades. Following the work of these brave thinkers, I realized that obesity is a hormonal, not a caloric imbalance. This changed everything. If I was to be a good doctor, to heal people, to keep them well, I needed to fix this obesity problem which was so misunderstood. Five years ago, Megan Ramos and I started the Intensive Dietary Management program (TheFastingMethod.com) to treat patients using only proper nutrition. Our goal was not to prescribe more medication, it was to reduce it. Our goal was not to manage type 2 diabetes, it was to completely reverse it. In 2016 I released two books – The Obesity Code to discuss these principles and The Complete Guide to Fasting, which introduced the use of therapeutic fasting for obesity and type 2 diabetes.

But there is still so much work to do. As I wrote The Obesity Code, I realized there was virtually no easily accessible information discussing the underlying hormonal causes of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Most nutrition advice was just warmed up iterations of the failed ‘Eat Less, Move More’, Caloric Reduction as Primary approach. People needed to understand the disease of obesity and how to treat it.

The result of this effort is a new podcast – The Obesity Code Podcast: Lessons and Stories from the Intensive Dietary Management Program. I joined with veteran podcasters Carl Franklin and Richard Morris from 2KetoDudes and asked the top experts, the brave thinkers, the paradigm shifters from around the world to join me in a single podcast that would have the ability to explain the new nutrition rules.

All are professionals in the sense that health, nutrition and predominantly obesity are what all these experts deal with, day in and day out every day of their professional, and often personal lives. All have spent over a decade (and sometimes multiple decades) in this field. There are doctors, surgeons, researchers, professors, and journalists to give all perspectives. But all agree on one thing – the time has come to shine the bright light of evidence based science upon nutrition. Instead of only having these experts on once every few years, we have access to their deep knowledge week in and week out. I realize this is a new format for most nutrition podcasts, but ultimately, I think it will be more useful to the only person that matters – you, the listener.

These featured experts (in alphabetical order) include:

• Dr. Peter Brukner (Australia) – Physician, specialist sports medicine, Team Doctor – Australian national cricket team, author
• Dr. Gary Fettke (Australia) – Physician, specialist in orthopedic surgery
• Dr. Jason Fung (Canada) – Physician, specialist in nephrology, Author
• Dr. Zoe Harcombe (United Kingdom) – Obesity researcher, PhD in public health nutrition, Author
• Dr. David Ludwig (United States) – Physician, specialist in pediatric endocrinology, Professor in Nutrition and Pediatrics (Harvard University), Author, Founder of Optimal Weight for Life program
• Dr. Aseem Malhotra (United Kingdom) – Physician, specialist in cardiology, Author
• Professor Tim Noakes (South Africa) – Physician and Researcher sports medicine, Author
• Megan Ramos (Canada) – Clinical medical research, IDM program director
• Gary Taubes (United States) – Science and health journalist, Author, co-founder Nutrition Science Initiative
• Nina Teicholz (United States) – Science and health journalist, Author

In addition to this expert commentary, clients and patients from the IDM will share their stories about weight loss and type 2 diabetes reversal. What’s the ultimate goal of this ambitious project? To remove the sword of Damocles hanging over our world. To prevent this tsunami of obesity of type 2 diabetes that threatens to sweep over humanity. We have only one weapon against this threatened disaster – knowledge. This podcast is a means to disseminate the knowledge necessary to back us off the precipice.

While you may think that this podcast is about the aetiology of obesity, reversal of type 2 diabetes, clinical nutrition and performance athletics, that’s not my vision. Truly, I think that the main theme of this podcast is hope. Hope for those who want to lose weight. Hope for those who have type 2 diabetes. Hope for those with heart disease. Hope for those with Alzheimers disease. Hope for those who have cancer. Hope for those who want to improve their athletic performance. This is a podcast for you, the listeners, not for us. None of us receive money for this. We do not accept any advertising on this podcast. We donate our time, our skill, our knowledge, our proficiency for only one reason. To make the world a better place. The rest is up to you.

You can listen to the pilot episode here on the 2 Keto Dudes podcast – http://www.2ketodudes.com/show.aspx?episode=84

Episode1 of The Obesity Code Podcast will start (hopefully) October 9th.

By The Fasting Method

For many health reasons, losing weight is important. It can improve your blood sugars, blood pressure and metabolic health, lowering your risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer. But it’s not easy. That’s where we can help.