The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

by Jason Fung

The basics of good nutrition can be summarized in these simple rules. Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Avoid sugar. Avoid refined grains. Eat a diet high in natural fats. Balance feeding with fasting.

Humans have not evolved to require three meals a day, every day.

Studies demonstrate this phenomenon clearly. In one, fasting every other day for twenty-two days resulted in no measurable decrease in BMR. There was no starvation mode. Fat oxidation—fat burning—increased 58 percent, from 64 g/day to 101 g/day. Carbohydrate oxidation decreased 53 percent, from 175 g/day to 81 g/day. This means that the body has started to switch over from burning sugar to burning fat, with no overall drop in energy.

Alternate-day fasting over seventy days decreased body weight by 6 percent, but fat mass decreased by 11.4 percent and lean mass (muscle and bone) did not change at all.

If a diet is unaffordable, it does not truly matter if it is effective. The price makes it ineffective for those who cannot afford to follow it. This should not doom them to a lifetime of type 2 diabetes and disability.

Fasting is free. In fact, not only is it free, it actually saves money because you do not need to buy any food at all!

It adds simplicity where other diets add complexity.

Head-to-head studies reveal that fasting is actually superior to bariatric surgery in both weight loss and reduction in blood sugars.