If you focus on the hunger, if you reduce the hunger, what happens?

Well, you'll eat fewer calories, yes, and, therefore, you're going to lose weight.

But notice that you're now working with your body instead of against your body.

[music] Hi everyone!

It's Megan Ramos here with another episode of The Fasting Method podcast.

Today, me and my amazing cohost, Dr.

Terri Lance, are joined by Dr.

Jason Fung and we want to dive into hunger.

Good morning Jason, how are you doing today?

I'm good, I'm good.

Thanks for having me here.

We're excited.

We've got a new book coming out, The Hunger Code, by you, this year, and a lot of questions are coming in very early asking, "What about hunger are we going to learn from The Hunger Code?" I think it's a really exciting topic, and it's great to have Terri here because I think Terri troubleshoots this from every single angle [laughs] at The Fasting Method.

So let's dive on in and talk about The Hunger Code.

Yeah.

So The Hunger Code is really an extension of The Obesity Code.

The key point in The Obesity Code was that the idea of looking at 'calories in, calories out' is really quite backwards.

People say, "Body fat (which is really just calories stored) equals calories in minus calories out." Now, that's always true, but it doesn't really mean what people think it means.

People think that if you simply reduce your calories, then you're going to be able to lose weight.

But it actually doesn't mean that because what happens is that your body naturally wants a set level of body fat.

This is the personal fat threshold or the body set weight; people call it different things.

People don't understand this because they hear-- and people have said this all the time, "Oh, our bodies are designed to store calories and get fat.

Now that calories are so easy, we're doomed to get fat." It's completely false and idiotic because if you think about the wild animals, for example, they never become morbidly obese.

Why?

Because if you become obese, you can't run away from predators and you can't catch prey.

So you'll never see a morbidly obese lion or tiger or whatever, right?

So the whole point is that the level of body fat, percentage of body fat is actually very tightly controlled, and it's actually tightly controlled by a number of hormones.

This includes insulin, and cortisol, and GLP-1, and GIP, and all these other hormones that adjust your body fat up or down, and that impacts how many calories you eat, or want to eat, and also your metabolic rate.

Because if you gain weight (and people have done these sort of overfeeding studies), you can force somebody to gain weight.

They did this in the 1960s where they forced people to eat so they gained weight, but what happened is that their bodies started just burning-- like, they're burning so many calories.

They had to give them 8-10,000 calories a day because their bodies were trying to burn it off, because they're trying to get back to that threshold, that body set weight.

So that was fine, but you could force them to gain 10, 20 pounds.

The minute you stopped the experiment, they lost all 20 pounds effortlessly, completely effortlessly.

Why?

Because the body shut down their hunger to such a low level that they didn't want to eat, and then they lost all that weight.

So yes, it comes down to 'calories in, calories out,' but it's really how you control it, just like a thermostat.

So if you think about a room thermostat, the room, you know, you set to room temperature - 72.

If it gets cold, the heat comes on.

If it gets hot, the air conditioning comes on.

You could also say that room temperature equals heat in minus heat out.

And therefore the only thing you need to do to heat up a room is put a little space heater in, plug it in, and turn it on.

Will it work?

No, absolutely not.

Because as it gets hot, the thermostat will sense it and turn on the air conditioning to bring it back.

The idea is that even though room temperature equals heat in minus heat out, it actually doesn't work in time.

But one of the key mechanisms that the body controls this body fat thermostat is through hunger.

So if you don't eat, if you reduce your calories, but you haven't adjusted your thermostat, your body senses, "Hey, your body weight is below what we've set as your thermostat.

I am going to make you more hungry so you want to eat." So, therefore, you're constantly fighting with yourself.

If you simply focus on the calories, calories goes down, hunger goes up.

And all day, every day, week after week, month after month, you're fighting yourself, fighting yourself.

What happens instead is that if you focus on the hunger, if you reduce the hunger, what happens?

Well, you'll eat fewer calories, yes, and therefore you're going to lose weight.

But notice that you're now working with your body instead of against your body.

And the key to managing the hunger is the hormones, right?

There's lots of hormones that are involved.

So insulin, cortisol we talked about in The Obesity Code, but in The Hunger Code we talk about things like GLP-1, GIP, and so on because that's the ultimate lesson of Ozempic.

Ozempic does not restrict your calories in any way, you can still eat as many calories as you feel like.

They haven't wired your jaw shut, right?

Which, by the way, used to be a very common way for people to lose weight in the 70s.

It didn't work at all because that's a physical calorie restriction.

So if you focus on the calories and simply reduce somebodys ability to take calories by wiring their jaw shut, what happens is they get hungry and then they find ways around it; they drink milkshakes, and they do all this stuff, they eat very soft foods.

In the 2000s, of course, you had bariatric surgery and it was the same; it was a calorie focused treatment where they reduce calories.

But what happened?

All that weight came streaming back.

Why?

Because your calories went down, your hunger went up, and you figured your way around it.

So the point is that you Ozempic does not restrict your calories, it restricts your hunger.

And that's a huge difference because everybody ignores the fact that if their problem is over eating, you have to ask yourself, "Why are they over eating?" And the answer is it's because they're hungry.

You eat because you're hungry and you stop eating when you're full, which is satiety.

So the key thing is that that is what you need to focus on, because that's your sort of root problem.

Then you have to say, "What is hunger?" And this is where it gets very interesting because it's not just what you think it is.

So there's the whole hormonal side of the hunger, but that's not all there is.

If you activate satiety hormones, if you activate insulin, cortisol, leptin, GLP-1, GIP, sympathetic tone, baroreceptors, vagal nerve, all of these are hormonal mechanisms that control that body fat thermostat which will affect your hunger.

It will raise or lower your hunger so that you'll eat more or less, but the way it affects it is through the hunger.

So that's just called homeostatic hunger; that's the body fat thermostat.

But there are reasons to eat that go beyond physical hunger.

There is the whole emotional side of things.

And this is called hedonic hunger.

Hedonic means related to pleasure.

And this simply acknowledges the fact that eating is pleasurable.

People like to eat because it brings them pleasure, it creates reward pathways in the brain.

It's like the only reason people eat dessert, right?

You don't have any physical hunger.

You ate your dinner, so why are you eating dessert?

Well, it's because you want to.

It gives you pleasure.

It looks good.

So you can't simply ignore that, which is what all the calories people do.

They simply ignore this whole issue of hedonic hunger, not understanding that the problem of overeating is better understood as a problem of overhunger.

And this is where ultra processed foods and food addiction research (which has really exploded in the last ten years) comes to the fore and really shows us that, hey, these pathways are affecting hedonic hunger.

Ultra processed foods actually affects homeostatic hunger as well because it creates very little satiety.

But the point is that it creates reward pathways, so people get this massive spike in dopamine.

So you eat comfort foods.

Well, why are they called comfort foods?

Because they give you comfort.

You're not hungry.

It gives you comfort.

So that's the hedonic hunger.

But there's a third one, which is called conditioned hunger.

This stems back to the beginnings of behavioral psychology, which is Pavlov's dogs.

Pavlov's dogs was an experiment in the early 1900s, I think, where the person in a lab coat would bring dogs food and they'd ring a bell.

And so dogs who hear a bell ringing, they don't care, right?

It's just a bell.

However, when the person pairs the ringing of the bell (like a dinner bell) with the bringing of the food, dogs will often start to salivate as soon as they hear the bell.

So notice that the bell previously was a neutral stimulus, but, because you've paired the two together, you've now created, in this person's mind, a conditioned response.

That is, you hear the bell, you get hungry because you're expecting food.

Now you simply take that fact and you realize that, hey, a lot of the reasons that we eat in America today is not because we have physical hunger or even emotional hunger, but it's simply what's expected of us, and we've conditioned ourselves, we've trained ourselves to be hungry.

That is, we've become Pavlov's dog.

It's like, "Ding!" You know, hey, it's breakfast time - must eat.

Hey, it's snack time - must eat.

Hey, it's lunchtime - must eat.

Hey, it's dinnertime - must eat.

Hey, you're in the car - must eat.

Hey, you're at a meeting - must have cookies.

Hey, you're sitting in front of the TV - must eat.

Hey, you're at the movies...

Every single thing.

You go to the mall - must eat, must go to the food court.

There's all these places to get food.

You know, it's so ubiquitous.

It's on your screens, it's on your TVs, it's on your billboards.

All of a sudden-- this is all conditioned hunger.

You might not have been hungry, you might have simply ignored it, but, being surrounded in this condition, you now become hungry.

So those three types of hunger is the sort of deeper exploration of eating behavior, how humans eat.

If you think it's all about the diet and the foods, you've already lost because you don't understand that it's about eating behavior.

And this is something I know we talk about all the time at The Fasting Method.

That's why you have coaches, that's why we have a community, because we've recognized, over these many years, that you can tell somebody what to do, but if you don't give them the support and the coaching and the knowledge to deal with it (and the emotional support, because if they're eating for hedonic hunger, you know, or if they're have food addictions), just telling them, "Eat less calories," is completely useless.

I mean, this is the thing.

If you have a food addiction, then you need help for that addiction.

Just like if somebody is addicted to cocaine, do you just say, "Hey, cocaine addiction equals cocaine in mine minus cocaine out.

Just take less cocaine.

Hey, I solved your problem." That'd be the stupidest thing you could say.

Or, "Oh, alcoholism equals alcohol in minus alcohol out.

Drink less alcohol.

That's your solution.

That is the most scientifically based solution we have." You'd be like, "You're stupid," right?

But if, on the other hand, somebody is overeating because they have a food addiction, you have scientists and doctors who say, "Just eat fewer calories.

That's the most scientific explanation we have." And we don't say, "Oh, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." We say, "Oh, wow, thank you professor." [laughs] You know, it's like, this is why people can't lose weight, because these simple facts just get repeated so often by all these 'authorities' who don't even realize how stupid they sound, right?

It's like if they have an addiction, deal with the addiction.

If they have a problem with ultra processed foods, deal with the ultra processed foods.

If they have a problem with conditioned responses, deal with the conditioned responses.

If they have a problem with insulin, deal with the high insulin.

Don't just say, "Eat fewer calories." It's the dumbest thing ever.

You know, that's why I think there's so many different programs around, because people have always instinctively recognized that there is much more to it than the calories.

And that's where, you know, I think TFM has always been a bit ahead of the game, really been able to help a lot of people with that.

I also think that's one of the reasons that I get the most excited about people coming to TFM is because we don't just look at this antiquated way of making sense of it.

We recognize lifestyle and how our brain works is really what's involved here, and we support people to address those things.

So often people talk in large Community groups, in our coaching sessions, and they feel really frustrated with themselves because they eat when they're not actually hungry.

They know that.

And that makes them feel like something's really wrong with them.

"Why would I do this thing that I know isn't helping me reach my goals when it's not because I'm actually hungry?" And they just get caught up in this self-defeating negative self-talk, then.

Like, "I am really screwed up that I keep eating even though I'm not hungry and I eat beyond when I'm full.

What is wrong with me?".

Yeah.

And this hedonic hunger does that.

We have a hard time stopping.

We get tied up into that dopamine cycle, and there's no time to stop and say, "Okay, I've had enough dopamine.

I think I'm good." [laughter] We just keep cycling through.

And I think it's so empowering, and I can't wait until this book comes out so that people can really stop pathologizing themselves and start really looking at, "There are things I can do to help manage this differently.

First, I need to understand it.

I need to understand my triggers, I need to understand what I am soothing here, and then I can shift out of this food-related behavior to achieve those goals.

" Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that the mindset is something we always talk about.

I don't know that people realize how important the mindset really is, because behavior change really starts with the mindset.

You can change your behavior, but if you don't change your mindset, you'll never really be successful.

It's like somebody who said once, if you think about exercise as simply a way to lose weight, you'll never really be great because your mindset is all wrong, because you're looking at it as a punishment for eating.

You'll never love it.

You've got the wrong mindset.

So you have to change that mindset.

Is it easy?

No, it's not easy, but it can be done.

You think about all those things you used to like or didn't like and then you did it, and then you change your mindset.

And that's where it starts, right?

So again, it's the same thing.

If your mindset is one way, but your behavior is the other way, your mindset is that you hate exercise, but you're doing exercise, you're fighting yourself.

You're going to fail.

If you change your mindset and say, "Hey, I'm happy that I'm going to play basketball," or tennis or whatever, "it's a fun game.

I'm really looking forward to it," you've changed your mindset because it's exercise, sure, but it's your mindset.

Now you play more tennis or you play more basketball.

Now you're working with yourself, right?

It's a huge difference.

It's really the difference between success and failure.

And this is where I think people really don't look at the coaching seriously enough.

I mean, I'm always flabbergasted because we have coaches and we have great results, right?

People get personal trainers.

Nobody says, "Why?

Why do you need a personal trainer?" Obviously, I could get an exercise program from any magazine or online for free, and online I could get it in like 30 sseconds or less, right?

Professionally made exercise program.

And yet millions of people still use personal trainers.

Why?

Because they help you do it.

They keep you accountable.

They correct your mistakes.

You know that if you have a personal trainer on Monday morning at 9 a.m., you are going to show up Monday morning at 9 a.m..

If you're just doing it yourself, you're not going to do it.

People have life coaches, people have business coaches, people have everything coaches.

And yet for weight loss, they're like, "No!" Like, what are you talking about?

Why would you kneecap yourself like this?

You know, instead you get these people who are all like, "Oh, calories in, calories out," right?

It's like, oh no, it's the community, it's the coaching, it's your mentors, it's your peers that actually determine your success or failure.

I don't think people quite understand how important that community really is.

If your friend eats French fries all the time, you're going to eat French fries all the time.

If your friend sits and watches TV all time, you're going to sit and watch TV all the time.

If your friend goes and plays tennis, goes for a walk, goes hiking, you're going to go hiking, play tennis, or whatever, right?

If your friend is always switching the fries for salad, you're going to start switching your fries for salad.

That's the way we are.

This is called social modeling.

That's the other thing we talked about in The Hunger Code.

So conditioning, which is, again, trying to break those habits and so on, but also social modeling because the people around you play a huge role in your life.

That's just reality.

Why don't people acknowledge this fact?

It's actually striking because where you live impacts your weight.

If you take a Japanese person in Japan, their risk of obesity is extremely low.

Take that same Japanese person, plop them in San Francisco, and, within two generations, their risk of obesity has gone up like eight fold.

It's very, very powerful.

If your friend becomes obese-- and there's a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

If your friend becomes obese, your own risk of obesity goes up by 171% for the exact same reason, right?

If your friend is always being healthy, and always watching their weight, and skipping snacks, you're going to skip your snack.

If your friend is snacking all day long, you're going to snack all day long.

It's really important.

If you take a military family, take them and move them to an area with high obesity rates, they are much more likely to become obese.

That's just the way it is.

It's true in the United States too.

There are certain states - Colorado and California - where the obesity rates, while high, are still much lower than places on the East Coast, especially places like West Virginia and Kentucky.

But again, what's California cuisine?

Fresh, local, unprocessed, right?

Think about this.

You think about Colorado; people love to go out hiking all the time.

They love to go skiing all the time.

Well, guess what?

That influences you as a person because we, human beings, are social creatures.

So the social modeling is important.

It's the reason why being an influencer is so important.

That's why companies always try and get influencers to promote their stuff, because they know that it has a huge impact.

But it's true for weight loss too.

I don't know why.

Like, we're so siloed.

Here we have something which everybody knows is important - social modeling, social influence - right?

Everybody knows it's important.

It's basically what built Facebook, right?

You know, like you're talking about this trillion dollar business built purely on social influence.

Obviously, it impacts people's lives to a huge degree.

And yet in the weight loss space, we're like, "Oh yeah, social modeling doesn't matter.

It's all calories in, calories out." Good luck with that.

You're not going to succeed.

So that's where The Hunger Code really takes us into that conditioned hunger, all those ultra processed foods, food addictions (which is more related to hedonic hunger), the conditioned hunger, the social modeling, the conditioning.

And again, this is something that we've always talked about and place great emphasis on, right?

Like, you want to know how to fast?

We can give you the information.

That's the easiest thing that we can do.

But actually getting you through and creating those social ties and social influences, that is where the rubber really hits the road.

And that's where you see-- you know, I'm always shocked when I see some of these pictures.

It's like, oh man, people-- like, they're reversing the disease, they're feeling better.

It's crazy.

I think some of the issues that we see is the whole concept of shame.

A lot of these people have been told since they're nine years old and put on a little bit of weight, you know, before starting puberty, or their teenage years, or after their first baby when they didn't necessarily lose all of the weight because they're breastfeeding.

They've just been constantly shamed by their peers, their family members, their health care team.

And even the other day.

I just started a new cohort group that I'm coaching, and one of the women just broke down in tears at the thought of going to the doctor's office the next day and having to stand on the scale (and just beginning this journey) and just the lecture that they were going to get.

Her BMI is just flagged, you know, and like a red circle on the report that they gave her after her last visit.

Even though the American Medical Association says BMI is such a garbage metric, we're still shaming people.

In 2025, we're shaming people about this.

People are told it should be easy.

"You should have control." "Just do better." "Just do better." And they think it's such a personality flaw, willpower problem.

I hear nonstop that something is wrong with them, broken with them because it should be easy.

"Look, there are celebrities that are skinny," "Look, there are skinny people out there on the beach," you know, "They obviously have better control." And then they come to a community and they hear someone who is bold enough to speak out in one of our community meetings, and they realize they're not alone.

And as much as obesity is an issue everywhere nowadays, but especially in North America, people still think it's a them problem.

They're just berated.

Like, I see these broken souls.

And then they come in and they connect with these like-minded individuals, and, to Jason's point, you are who you surround yourself with, right?

And so they make these friendships.

It's amazing.

I've gone out with some of these women, when they've come to visit each other and have been in my neighborhood or my area, or we've gone to Florida to visit my in-laws and we've connected to some TFM folks.

It's amazing.

They go on trips, they build these healthy lives and communities around each other, both online and offline.

And then, you know, through the Community meetings and through the coaching, you learn the skills.

And I think once we can take down the fact that there's shame, it's skills that you need to be taught.

This is especially where coaching can come into play.

Like, I'm going to a prenatal personal trainer, because I want to focus on certain strategies that are going to help with the smooth delivery.

I can read about it.

I don't really know what to do, but I know there are techniques that I can learn in a few sessions that I can practice at home.

And this is a lot of what we do when it comes to hunger in coaching is teaching these techniques.

These are not things that we're taught.

I have a young son.

My son just turned two, and there's those instincts from when I was little and would hurt myself, and my mom would want to offer me like a popsicle or something to help me feel better.

So much of this is deeply ingrained in us at a young age.

And I catch myself, as a mom, saying, no, I'm not going to do that.

You know, "Marcus, would you like a Band-Aid or a cute teddy bear ice pack?" Like, I'm not going to reward this with food so you think food is the comfort.

So even before we had the capacity to start to process, we're being taught to use foods for a whole variety of reasons that have nothing to do with why we need to have food, and then we're berated for it, you know, even starting at a young age.

And think now to the United States, we've got hundreds of thousands of kids a year being diagnosed with type two diabetes under the age of ten, having gastric bypass surgery.

Now they're talking about GLP-1s under ten-year-olds as the main line of defense.

It's just mind blowing.

It's terrifying raising kids around here.

Shame is a really important topic and it's because of the whole calories thing, right?

It's this whole, "It's all about calories," which equals, "It's all about willpower." So if you can't lose weight, it means that you are weak, you have no willpower, and that's it basically, right?

It's your own fault.

And it's like, oh my God, it's so bad.

And that's why I keep saying this whole focus, this obsession with 'calories in, calories out,' it's so destructive.

And I always keep saying, "Oh, it's so stupid," because I think people need to hear that, which winds up, you know, attracting [laughs] a lot of, you know-- [laughter] people attack me for that, and they're like, "Oh, you think calories don't matter." I'm like, no, I think that calories is not everything.

I think that there's so much more to physiology than calories, but I think people just need to hear that it's so destructive and so stupid because it doesn't actually-- it doesn't follow any human physiology, right?

Like all the hormones; our body runs on hormones.

Calories is not about hormones, right?

And it's stupid because, if you think about it, everybody knows that calories are not all the same.

So therefore there's good calories and there's bad calories, right?

So you eat steak and eggs in the morning, 800 calories, you're full until lunch, you're maybe full till dinner.

You drink 800 calories of Frappuccino, you're still hungry five minutes after you drank it.

In fact, you're probably more hungry than you were before you drank that Frappuccino.

Everybody knows that's true, right?

It's all this sugar and stuff, and then you're looking for something to eat.

So how can you possibly say they're the same thing?

One of them created satiety and got rid of hunger.

One of them increased your hunger.

Which do you think is going to cause you to gain weight?

It wasn't the calories.

It was the hormones created by that.

Now you go and add that to, oh, when you're feeling a little down, you get a Frappuccino because you've conditioned yourself to reward, "Oh, you scraped yourself - here's a popsicle," "Oh, you're not feeling good - here's some cookies or some ice cream." Now you've conditioned yourself to want that because you're saying, okay, any time you want to feel better, this is the lesson - go get food - right?

There are other things you can do.

And then you're creating horrible habits because you're eating in front of the TV or whatever, right?

There's all these other aspects of behavior that are so much more important than the calories.

It's mind boggling how simplistic-- it's completely simplistic and idiotic to think that calories are all the same, all calories are equally fattening, right?

They blend it into this whole, "A calorie's a calorie." Sure, a dog is a dog, you know, a cat is a cat.

So what!

What does that actually tell you?

Are all calories equally fattening?

No!

Some for calories.

Cookies are fattening, broccoli is not.

That's the truth.

Why doesn't anybody actually acknowledge that?

I've seen books where a doctor said, "Oh, you could eat ice cream for dinner because they're the same number of calories." It's like, no, you idiot!

One of them will make you full, the other one won't.

It's the hunger that matters, because it's the hunger that drives you to eat.

And when you're full, that's what drives you to stop eating.

These professionals and doctors simply don't understand that.

They all fall back to this default of oh, this and that, right?

They completely ignore the effect of friendships, social modeling, communities.

And yet, at the same time, look, there are places in the world that have very low levels of obesity.

Italy is actually one of them.

And yes, they love their food, they famously, you know, love their food, right?

And yet their obesity rates are actually one of the lowest in the world.

You know, they eat lots of carbohydrates too.

How is it that they can get away with that?

It's not that they're getting away.

They've understood that, hey, you don't eat all the time.

You eat with your friends, you enjoy it.

You know, you're always mindful, right?

The mindfulness is another thing that I meant to talk about, Terri, that you brought up.

Like, you're eating when you don't even know why you're eating and you're eating past the point of being full.

Why?

Because you weren't mindful of it.

Whereas they're always mindful.

I know some people-- they love food, they go out for food all the time, but they're always like, "Oh, this is so good, this is so good," but they'll eat like three or four bites and then they're like, "Okay, I'm full." And it's like, that's great.

You basically ate until you were no longer hungry, and then you were like, "Okay, that's enough." But you' were mindful of it.

And that mindful eating and avoiding things like distracted eating, those are such key, important facets of eating behavior.

I talk about that in The Hunger Code as well.

And it's like, okay, where does 'calories in, calories out' come into this?

Not at all.

All of these things are completely outside the purview of this 'calories in, calories out.' But it's this idea that the 'calories in, calories out' is the be-all and end-all, scientifically, most important thing ever that creates that shame you're talking about.

And yeah, I feel sorry for people because you know that if you were to move some of these people to other places in the world, they would actually just lose all that weight because it's the environment, it's the food supply, right?

Now we're talking about ultra processed foods with-- California schools are banning ultra processed foods in school lunches, which I think is terrific.

San Francisco is suing ultra processed food makers.

It's basically the new tobacco, and I think it's a good start.

The social modeling is also important.

I do live in Colorado, Jason, [laughter] and people here, they don't go out to eat together as their primary way of connecting and spending time together.

They go uphill skiing.

They climb the mountain [laughs with their skis on, you know?

So they do social things that are revolving around activity, and time together, and movement versus that hedonic thing of food.

I was thinking, when you were describing, even in Italy, you know, food being social.

And I think that's one of the big challenges many of us face is we think that, because food

is social, we have two choices: we can either focus on our health and our weight, or we can have good relationships and have fun.

Like these two things have to be completely separate from one another.

And yet, in order for it to really work, we need to be able to have both.

We need to be able to take care of ourselves while having important social connections.

And, going back to the dopamine, if the whole reason I'm sitting there is to get the dopamine from my food, I'm not going to see when I'm done.

Like you said, if I'm not doing it mindfully, I'm not going to get that satiety signal.

Instead, if I can also focus on I'm getting some dopamine hits from being with people I care about, or being in a conversation that I'm enjoying, it doesn't have to be dopamine-cycle related just to more and more of that food.

I think these are those kinds of things, that awareness, that we create at TFM in our Community meetings, when people get to listen to each other, talk about how they navigate these things.

In our coaching.

My coaching obviously is very geared toward the mindset and the behavior focus of this, but all of our coaches really help people recognize, yeah, you're not eating just out of that homeostatic hunger.

We get that.

Let's look at the other reasons and let's look at what you can do to set yourself up differently, to change the mindset, to change the behaviors.

That's what our coaches are experts at doing.

And like you said, I think sometimes people just think, "I shouldn't need a coach for this part of my life." And again, going back to what you said, Megan, the shame.

It's kind of shameful.

I'm not going to tell my husband that I need a coach to help me with this thing that I should be able to just manage on my own.

And they come in and they find that they can learn things and they can start to do things differently, and they release that shame.

And then they find that they're getting the results they want for long-term results, not short-term results.

We've all learned to diet for short-term results, but when people really dig in to what we're talking about, it's about long-term results, not get there quick and then backslide.

Yeah, I mean the mindset-- again, I just don't think people talk about it enough.

In the book, I talk about my mindset around sugar.

I don't eat no sugar, but I don't eat a lot of sugar.

So years ago, Megan, you'll know, that Tim Hortons was famous.

[laughter] Tim Hortons is a coffee chain that's like the most Canadian thing ever, [laughter] even though now it's owned by somebody in the US.

But anyway, Tim Hortons, the famous way you drink it is the Double-Double, okay.

And it's two creams and two sugars in a small cup of coffee.

It's so sweet, but everybody used to drink it.

I used to drink it.

This is like 20 years ago.

I just had it again recently just to try it, but it's like, oh, that's way too sweet.

But the point is that you could do one of two things.

You could have a mindset that, "I love sugar, but I shouldn't eat it because it's not good for me," right?

So again, now you have a mismatch.

You want the sugar, but you're not going to take it.

Now it's a deprivation mindset.

You're hurting yourself, harming yourself because you want it, but you can't have it, right?

The key to change is to change your mindset.

So I started thinking, "Wow, sugar is really bad for you.

Sugar is like poison, basically," right?

Now the mindset changes.

You don't want the sugar because it's poison.

Now your sugar intake goes down.

Now you're not fighting with yourself again.

It makes all the difference in the world.

Just like the exercise, just like the fasting.

Fasting was considered super bad for you.

So again, if you're trying to fast and your mindset is that the fasting is super harmful, you're just not going to do it.

But if you think back 100 years, 200 years ago, people were all like, "Fasting is so good for you.

Fasting is a cleanse.

It's so good." So again, maybe you don't have fun doing a fast, but your mindset is that, "Hey, this is something that is healthy for me, that I'm going to be able to lose weight, I'm going to feel better, my mind is going to be clearer." Your mindset has completely changed.

Now you can fast because you're not this, "Fasting is bad for you, but I'm going to have to do it because of this," right?

Because I need to lose weight.

You're going to be like, "Fasting is good for me.

Not always fun, but good for me." And now I can do it because you've changed the mindset.

It's just like the Ozempic because Ozempic is boom, lower your hunger, then the calories follow.

The mindset is exactly the same thing.

You've got to train yourself.

You know, you're a psychologist, Terri, you know there's lots of things you can do to change your mindset deliberately.

You want to change your mindset to sugar is poison, you just have to keep thinking, "Sugar's poison, sugar's poison, sugar..." Eventually that seeps in, right?

It's the mindset that starts it.

Why?

Because the mindset changes your attitude, which changes your behavior.

It's a whole chain, but it starts at the mindset.

It doesn't start at restricting sugar.

Restricting sugar, but now you want the sugar, right?

It starts with realizing that the sugar is really bad for you, so therefore you're going to eat less.

Now, when you eat less, you're in sync with what your own attitude has told you.

So it's so important.

I just don't understand why nobody really talks about it at all.

[laughs] Like, I've read a lot of diet books, okay, because I like to know what people are saying.

The stupidest people are the calories people.

They're all like, "It's all calories.

It's all calories.

It's all calories.

It's all energy balance," which is a hideous term because it's not about energy, it's about behavior change, which is far more-- like, just because you tell me I shouldn't eat cookies doesn't mean I won't eat cookies, right?

The fact is that you have to change your attitude.

You know, as kids, do we give them a lot of cookies and stuff, right?

But it's like you can change.

Because if your attitude is that cookies are a real indulgence, then it's like, "Okay, I will have a cookie once in a while, but not all the time because it's not good for me." Whereas if your attitude is like, "It's just calories, so I'll have the cookie, but I won't have the broccoli.

Same calories." You're not going to be successful losing weight with that type of mindset, which is the 'calories in, calories out' mindset.

It's the worst possible mindset.

And you look at the success rates of these people who do these calorie based diets.

It's abysmal.

It's actually worse than abysmal.

I actually break it down in The Hunger Code.

The actual data is that, if you look at the number of people who follow these sort of calorie based diet things-- first of all, every scientific study has shown that it doesn't work, right?

The Women's Health Study showed it, the Look AHEAD study showed it.

But the actual success rate of calorie restriction, in the real world, the failure rate is something like 99.7%, something like that, a success rate of like 0.3%.

This is why people can't lose weight, because they get the advice to simply focus on calories, which has a 99.7% failure rate.

And yet, when they fail, we berate them for having low willpower, and we shame them because we're like, "Oh, you should be able to do this." Well, you didn't give them the right advice.

It's as simple as that.

It's like having somebody take a calculus exam, but, for all of the course, you've been teaching them English.

And then it's like, "Oh, here's a calculus exam." It's like, well, what the hell did you think they're going to do, right?

You gave them this advice that was focused on calories and they weren't able to change their eating behavior.

It's like, that's insane.

Why would you shame them for that?

It's the same thing.

It's a very-- it's a very sad sort of regular state of affairs.

And I think that's what we're trying to change here is, like, we want to bring a bit of sanity back to the whole discussion, right?

Think about your mindset.

Think about mindfulness.

Think about your community.

Think about your friends.

Think about your mentors.

Think about your coaches.

It's insane not to.

If you're trying to become a mechanic, would you just go on YouTube and try and do it or would you go to school and try and learn it properly?

Right?

So if you want to learn how to lose weight, and deal with all the ultra processed foods, and the food addictions, and the mindsets, and the habits (habits is another whole topic that is so important that nobody talks about), well, why don't you go to somebody who knows?

Like a coach, obviously.

Yet nobody does it.

It's like, "Oh, we don't do that." It's like, why not?

That's why you're not successful.

The mindset is something that we have so much science on that says that we can change with structured thought processes and strategies that we can change at any age.

This isn't just reserved for the youth [laughs] like we think.

Any age you can change it.

I understand, I hear people because myself, all of our team, we've walked the walk here, we've been there.

And the mind can feel so powerful, especially the longer we've had of shaming and these battles in the past of doing the wrong thing, being given the wrong advice, and not getting results, and then being shamed for it over and over again.

But the mindset is something that, if we practice-- like we practice the piano, like we go to the gym and we have the goal of fixing something, or we want to learn any new skill, or we want to knit, we can work with our mindset and we can change our thought processes.

And we can give ourselves this food freedom concept moving forwards.

Yeah.

And it's not something that's too overwhelming.

It just takes practice.

It takes some structured strategies and guidance.

And I mean, that's so much of what we do at TFM.

Yeah.

Most recently, I mean, people talk about ultra processed foods, and there's so much data on ultra processed foods now.

But I've just recently changed my mindset too, because it's like now, every time I see guar gum, or carrageenan, xanthan gum, or whatever on these ingredient lists, you know, before I was like, "Oh, whatever, potassium sorbate." But now when I look at it, I think to myself, "Whoa, that's ultra processed.

That's gross." Right?

And every time I see that, I think to myself, or I say to myself sometimes, "Okay, that's so ultra processed, I think I need to not take that.

That's gross." So after a while you just repeat it to yourself.

Now, when I look at it and it's like, "Oh, it's got guar gum, it's gross," right?

And I put it down.

But the point is that I don't want it anymore.

Whereas if you don't change your mindset, you want it, but you won't buy it.

Now it's just, "I just don't want it." To me, it's really gross.

My mindset has changed by learning about it, but also by repeating it, right?

Just like fasting.

You can change your mindset into thinking it's something good as opposed to something bad just by repeating it to yourself and changing it.

And it's very, very powerful.

And really, I think it's the key to lasting change.

Your habits and your mindsets are probably the most important things nobody talks about in weight loss, truly.

We talk endlessly about calories.

We talk a lot about macronutrients, carbs and proteins and stuff, and I think that there probably is some validity there.

You know, everybody loves protein these days, right?

And I think it's because they don't understand this whole homeostatic hunger.

It's like, okay, you look at protein.

What does it do?

Well it stimulates a lot of GLP-1.

Okay, well that means it creates a lot of satiety, which means that it's going to change your eating behavior because you're going to be full.

It's like yeah, duh!

Of course that is good.

That's the whole point, right?

So it's like, yeah, if you cut down carbs, which have very low satiety, especially refined carbs, have almost no satiety.

They don't have GLP-1, they don't have GIP, they don't stimulate cholecystokinin.

They're refined so they don't stimulate baroreceptors.

So there's that, right?

We talk so much about calories, yet there's all these other things like homeostatic hunger, like the mindsets, the habits, You know, crazy, because we have a whole field of behavioral psychology that has already dealt with-- like, they've done research.

It's been-- like, there's so much expertise in behavioral psychology, but we insist it's about calories and it's not about eating behavior.

It's like why?

This makes a difference.

The problem is that the food industry has employed all of those people who are experts in that.

[laughter] Yeah.

We know how to get people hooked on foods.

We know how to create certain food behaviors based on this hedonic hunger, based on the conditioned responses.

You know, a lot of my clients come to a point where they recognize, "Hey, you know what?

I think one of the helpful strategies I'm going to do is I'm going to not eat in my car." Yeah.

Because what do we eat in our car?

Things we get at the drive thu, things we get at the gas station, things we get at a pharmacy.

They're not food, they're not meals.

And so that conditioned response, "I'm in my car.

I should be eating something.

This is when I drink my Double-Double," right?

Or whatever you called it!

[laughter] I used to love the Double-Double.

[laughs] And so again, industry is brilliant at using our mind to create the behaviors that serve them.

Yeah.

And I think at TFM, what we're really expert at doing is helping people to understand how to use their mind and those behaviors to support them, not the food industry.

I think you're absolutely right.

I mean, if you think about ultra processed foods, they're actually singularly destructive.

And everybody-- all the calories people are like, "Oh no, but this ultra processed food is the same calories, so it's the same." It's like, you people are idiots, right?

Because, think about the food company.

What do they want to do?

They want you to buy more of their food.

But if it's a natural food, you can't just keep eating because you're going to get full.

It's like if you eat a pork chop or a hamburger patty, like, you can eat one, it's delicious.

Can you eat 20?

I don't think so.

Almost nobody can eat that much.

Why?

Because you've stimulated all that satiety hormone.

So if you want to sell a lot of food, you've got to get that satiety way down.

At the same time, you've got to bust up and blow open the dopamine reward system.

Why?

So you can feel good while you're eating it, but not get full as you're eating it.

So I always-- [laughs] I'm going to get sued by Cheetos because I always say, "Think about the Cheeto," right?

You could eat the whole bag.

I don't think anybody would have a problem to eat a whole bag of Cheetos, truthfully, because there's almost no satiety there.

And yet you eat it, there's all this chemicals and stuff, your dopamine is getting flooded, your insulin's going way up, but you have no satiety from it.

It's because it's light, it sort of melts in your mouth.

It's called vanishing caloric density.

That's the technical term for it.

But you could just keep going.

And that's what the food company wants you to do.

So they are trying to stimulate your hedonic hunger and, at the same time, create zero satiety so that you can keep eating it, which means you'll buy more, which means they'll make more money.

Same thing with things like diet sodas and stuff.

It always strikes me as-- it's like the calories people think diet soda's fine because they're all about the calories.

Do you know how many people just get off of their diet sodas and then lose a bunch of weight?

Why?

Because the diet soda was probably stimulating a lot of hunger.

That's why every study of diet soda shows that it doesn't really work.

Why?

Because it's not the calories that matters.

It's the hunger that matters, which is driven by all these hormones, right?

I see it all the time.

People pounding down six, seven diet sodas a day.

You tell them to stop, then they lose 30 pounds.

It's like, why?

The calories were zero.

There was zero calories, but it was the hunger that was the problem.

And on that, I can give my own testimony.

I drank diet soda from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to sleep.

It was sitting on my nightstand every night.

And removing that one completely, from who I am as a person who eats and drinks things, has changed things drastically for me.

And again, it wasn't because I was drinking sugary drinks.

I was drinking something that just kept my hunger and my desire going all the time.

So again, this is one of the reasons I can't wait to get my hands on this book and get to work with you in the masterclass as well, Jason.

I'm really looking forward to that.

So on that note, we've had a lot of exciting things coming out to support and celebrate the release of The Hunger Code.

If you preorder, there's so many great perks and benefits, and one of them is going to be access to Masterclass featuring Jason and our amazing team at The Fasting Method, guiding you through hunger and strategies.

And we'll be combining it with whatever our 5-Day Fasting Reset challenges later this March.

So we look forward to everyone joining us and tackling hunger this year, releasing that shame, and addressing their mindset.

Thank you all for listening today.

Jason, thank you so much for joining us.

And Terri, thank you, as always.

We'll see you here next week for another episode of The Fasting Method podcast.

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