The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss (Why Intermittent Fasting Is the Key to Controlling Your Weight)

by Jason Fung

DR. PETER ATTIA is the cofounder of Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSi), an organization dedicated to improving the quality of science in nutrition and obesity research. A few years ago, he was an elite long-distance swimmer, one of only a dozen or so people to have swum from Los Angeles to Catalina Island. A physician himself, he followed the standard prescribed diet high in carbohydrates and trained religiously for three to four hours daily. He was also, by his own estimation, about forty pounds (18 kilograms) overweight with a body mass index of 29 and 25 percent body fat. But isn’t increasing exercise the key to weight loss? Caloric imbalance—increased caloric intake combined with decreased caloric expenditure—is considered the recipe for obesity. Up until now, we’ve assumed that exercise was vitally important to weight loss—that by increasing exercise, we can burn off the excess calories that we eat.