Decoding Myths About Hunger
5/15/202613 min
I am so excited to welcome back my friend Dr. Jason Fung, a world-renowned nephrologist and expert on intermittent fasting, to discuss his groundbreaking new book. In this episode, we peel back the layers on why the traditional "calories in, calories out" model is a complete failure and how hormones truly dictate our weight. You will discover the three distinct types of hunger and learn why your struggles with weight are rarely a matter of willpower or discipline. What you’ll learn: (00:00) Why the biggest lie about hunger is that it signals nutrient need. (00:48) What homeostatic hunger is and how hormones control it. (01:35) How emotional (hedonic) hunger drives overeating behaviors. (02:16) Why ultra-processed foods amplify reward pathways in the brain. (03:02) How conditioned habits create hunger even without physical need. (04:25) Why the calories in calories out model fails in real life. (06:23) How sleep, stress, and environment influence how much you eat. (08:40) Why hormonal changes (like perimenopause) impact weight gain. Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXyS30SMzAY Full show notes (including all links mentioned): https://jjvirgin.com/thehungercode Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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First 90 secondsJJ Virgin· Host0:00
So I love this new book, The Hunger Code, and I'd love to just jump in and ask you what the biggest lie has been that we've been told about hunger.
Jason Fung· Guest0:08
Well, I think that the biggest lie really is just because you haven't eaten in a while, or hunger is because your body needs nutrients or something like that, and it's not actually true. Like, there's lots of different types of hunger, and the reason focusing in on the hunger is important is because that's sort of the reason why we eat, right? So you eat because you're hungry, and you stop eating when you're full. So obviously, if you're really, you know, trying to change eating behavior, you have to understand what is causing the hunger in the first place. And people think, well, you know, either it's, uh, people think, oh, it's just because you haven't eaten in a while, or it's because you, your body demands nutrients. And I hear this from nutritionists all the time, and it's quite strange because it's like, if you think about it, if you have somebody who's overweight, say they have 50 pounds of fat, well, clearly those... That's a store of calories, right? So they have thousands and thousands and thousands of calories that they have in excess, not in deficit. So the question is, why are they hungry, right? And that's where it's really important to understand that there's actually not one type of hunger. There's actually multiple types of hunger which drive the reason we eat. And so the physical hunger that we think about, which is, you know, your stomach is growling and all this sort of thing. It's called homeostatic hunger, and that's driven mostly by hormones. And we see this in, for example, uh, the weight loss drugs, the, uh, GLP-1s or things