Reading your book. It was fun and fascinating because i think everybody has questions about why do some people get fat and others not get fat. What dont people understand about this. It seems like its been a problem for so long. Why is it still a problem . One of the things i like about your book is that you have a lot of personal stories. Yourself, scientist, people who are struggling with their weight and i was drawn to the book from page one. I think everybody can relate to it. I thought people might like to hear what your book sounds like so i wondered if you could start by reading page one and stop at the end of that anecdote in page two. It was great. This is my personal story about how i got into writing this book. The prologue is called skinny teen. It was a greedy friday evening in the fall in san diego. I was a biochemist, phd student. I had a strong interest in biology since grade school, particularly in how the body malfunctions and how we treat it. The idea that tiny molecules affected are thought and quality of life was fascinating to me. I was excited to be learning so much about the inner workings of the body. Another interest to that me constantly. My weight. Aside from advancing my career, i measured my success at how well i did and staying thin. Keeping my fat in check was never easily. I watched my weight closely. On this day, like every other, i had counted my calories since morning, i ate a combination of grains, protein investable. I strayed from anything fun. No sugar, carb heavy snacks or alcohol. Nothing fun. I iran for 40 minutes and lifted weights. I knew i was on my way to fitness victory. I had stayed steadfast at dinner with my friends. I ordered salad and water and i knew i would go to bed hungry. That was my secret to keeping my 5foot 3inch frame under 110 pounds and capable of fitting into my skinny jeans. If i could maintain this weight i would maintain control and look like every other college student, be asked out on dates and be confident about my future. Instead, something happened that would forever change how i viewed my body. Something profound that confirmed i was not normal. My best friend ordered a beer and burrito and devoured it all. That event changed everything. She was 4foot 11 inches and 95 pounds bridge she never went to the gym. She drank a sugary latte and ate fast food. She worked in the lab all day like me and hunched over a computer in the evening yet somehow this petite woman was able to pack in a large burrito with sour cream, guacamole, with cheddar cheese, all wrapped in a tortilla and down a beer as if it was nothing unusual. She had no luck of guilt or appearance of worry. She didnt make a comment about feeling sick or how she would have to run on the treadmill. It was just a normal everyday occurrence to eat and 800calorie burrito at 8 00 p. M. And her jeans were smaller than mine. So unfair. It seems like its against the laws of physics, doesnt it. We are told that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie and if you just eat a certain amount you will not be fat and if you eat more than you will suffer the consequences. That is an incredible story and that sets you off on a path of trying to figure that out. Thats right. I had so many of those types of stories. That was college. My life didnt get easier after that. I started a career and had children. What was your career. I was a scientist. I started off in research and went to the business side. What kind of research . I was researching alzheimers. I was looking at memory and learning and things like that and most specifically alzheimers. As i started looking for a job, one of my advisor said if you dont have a burning question, dont go into resech because its a lot of sacrifice. They dont get paid for paid well and its long hours. I like looking at the big picture of things so i got my mba and i worked on Development Drugs for various diseases. Later i had this burning question, it just kept happening i noticed there are people who can eat a lot and not exercise much and they are thinner than me. I went on a number of diets. It perplexed me. I could lose weight and then gain it back. I thought im going to figure this out. I was not going to go on one more diet. My fat was different. I gain it easier, its softer than other people. How do you know its softer. You can tell the way they dress. Some have that stout fat. Some is much softer. I noticed everything. Im gaining faster and it looks different. I dont have the same responses to food that other people have. I thought if anyone can figure this out i can. Was going to figure it out. I spent five years researching knowthing there is to about that. Everything i could find. I pulled out about a thousand articles and looked at 50 researchers around the world regarding their cuttingedge research on fat. What i found that was so astounding made me want to write a book and the secret life of fat is that book. Whats the most surprising thing you found out about that. Fat is not just fat. Its not just calories. Its an organism that releases hormones that are body depends on. Amazingly our brain size is linked to fat. There are people who have defective fat and part of their brain is smaller. Our bone strength is linked to fat. Our reproductive system is linked to fat. Its amazing that there are so many systems in our body that are linked to healthy fat, but because of those hormones that fats increase. Because its so important to us nature tries to protect it. It has a direct link to our appetite and metabolism. Fat is almost fighting to come back on to us. We might not value our fat at all. We want it to not come back at all. You have to understand it if youre trying to manage it. You have a story about a girl who didnt have any fat or no fat. That was amazing. I think some people would y thats great. Heres someone who doesnt have anfat. Can you tell us about her life . Theres something that happens if you dont have any fat. This is a story about christina. How did you find christina. I was looking at different facts of not having enough fat or having too much fat. I was looking at the ends of the spectrum to see what happens in those cases. Doctors and researchers all knew about this girl, christina. She was a very normal girl growing up in new jersey and around 12 or early teen she started have a problem in that she was losing fat. First in her face and then the rest of her body as well. At the same time she developed an enormous appetite. She would eat a can of mushrooms or anything she could find. Finally she started getting these blisters on her skin as well. They were painful and became inflamed. They didnt think it was anything unusual that she was hungry and growing but the blisters were concerning. They took her to a dermatologist and her triglyceride level was about 100 times normal level. Her sugar levels were five times normal. He quickly ascertained this was not a dermatologic problem. He center to another doctor and he was treating her for diabetes but she continued to lose weight and her appetite was the same. It didnt help her. He was before though. They finally diagnosed her with the disorder where the person sponneously loses fat tissue. They lose it all over their body. It stays in their hands a little bit, but they really start have almost no fat tissue at all. Because our fat is linked with appetite, we lose some fat and we lose some lipton. She couldnt stop eating. It circulated in his blood endlessly. The nutrients and the blood in the sugar, it had no place to go. The only way to alleviate this is to eat every second of the day which is impossible to do. Her fat was stored in her liver. It was about eight times the size of a normal liver and would protrude into her abdomen. The blisters in her skin were fat filled blisters which made it hard for her to move at time. At first they didnt have a cure for her. They took out her blood and would clean it and the doctor said her blood was creamcolored but it was so sick for of fat and cholesterol. She would have to do this three times a week. Eventually it was discovered that she was able to get the hormone she needed. Then her appetite finally subsided. When her appetite subsided she ate less and was able to resolve some of her diabetes issues because she didnt have these extra nutrients. But she never got the fat. Or fat did not come back. Did she look weird. She looked emaciated. Her cheeks were hollow and she looked older than what she was but e was able to get her health back in order, more or less. These patients have other issues so the never be completely normal and healthy, but they thought she was in for an early death but thanks to the discovery of this and be able to get the injections she need, she is able to go on and she has adopted children and shes married and shes going on. Its a hard life. For anyone who wants to get rid of all their fat, who wishes he could get rid of their fat, i think its a great case study to understand and appreciate what its doing for your body. Its creating hormones and that affects our body as well. That was an amazing story. Did you read write about the girl . Fat is something that sends your brain and tells you you want to eat so if we dont have that what happens . Rather than just sitting there holding our calories its producing leptin and goes into the bloodstream and goes into your brain. Its talking. Its sending out signals and orchestrating. When we dont have enough leptin its a signal we dont have enough fat. We have to start eating. Maybe there fat isnt producing leptin. In any case if it doesnt have it keeps you eating. Before this was discovered this wasnt known. There was a girl in britain and she was four months old and had an enormous drive to eat. Even as a baby. She gained weight and was an obese child. It wasnt a normal drive to eat. She would go through the trash looking for food when her parents restcted it and she was even caught broking into a freezer to eat raw fish. There was something amiss. No one knew the spreadsheet got blamed for it. Her parents got blamed for not controlling their child. At one point they put her to the hospital. They thought they could restrict her calories there and she could lose some weight. What happened, she didnt lose weight. Even on restricted calories she continued to gain weight, just more slowly. It was very perplexing and finally she was sent to the university of cambridge, Steven Oreilly who is an expert in metabolic diseases. Steven oreilly had read a paper on leptin and thought maybe shes actually got this problem, this defective gene. He tested her for it and sure enough she had this defect in her gene that she doesnt make functioning leptin. Once they figured this out they were able to get her leptin like they did for christina. Her appetite diminished. She turned into a normal child. She went from an eating machine to someone who could function normally. She lost weight and within a couple years she looked pretty normal. These kids usually die an early death from complications from obesity. Having this leptin and discovering that fat is not just fat. Its not just a reserve of calories. Its a very important organ that we have in our body. That discovery has helped people like layla and christina because they can get the hormone that fat makes and they can live a pretty normal life after that. So fat is really important as like something that is sending signals to your brain and your body. Its not just something inert. Then that leaves us with the question that you started with, why are some people fatter than others. Why arent we all perfectly uniform in the amount of fat . Why are some people fatter. That was a question that sent me on this long research. I know, thats why i asked it. Now that we know fat is a reserve of calories as well as an organ, the question about why some people have more fat, theres all kinds of reasons. Some people eat too much or dont exercise. What if you eat too much. You just talked about a girl who didnt have any leptin but she couldnt stop eating because she had a signal telling her to eat. What is too much . Your brain is telling you how much to eat. Too much is where youre getting more fat they are not healthy anymore. Thats what i would define as too much fat. There are people who can be fat but fit. I write about that as well. I know we vilify fat. It is associated with some diseases. Not all fat is created equal. It depends where its at. There is fat under our skin and visceral fat which is the more unhealthy fat around our organs. That fat can get inflamed and interfere with signaling. That is tied to diabetes and Heart Disease. I do talk about sumo wrestlers who are fit but fat. They eat 4000 calories a day and easily weigh 400 pounds. Actually they eat up to 7000 calories a day, but they exercise six or seven hours a day. Another trick that fat has is it releases a hormone that helps keep our blood clean of fat. It is fats way of saying please come home to a safer deposit of fat. It keeps us healthy. Because of all the exercise they do, these sumo wrestlers, they have a high level that keeps them healthy. All that fat we have, they dont have as much disease as one might expect. When they come off the diet and the exercise they do. Do they deliberately get that heavy. Yes. You had some stories in your book about people at Rockefeller University and other stories that did the reverse. Some stories were people who were very heavy and lost a lot of weight. They were put in a metabolic ward at a hospital. Other stories were people that agreed to try to lose weight for the experiment or try to gain weight or have a normal weight, and it doesnt look a like its that easy to control your weight. Can you tell us about experiments where people were fat and made to lose weight and people who were normal weight and made to lose or gain weight and what happens when people try to be at a weight that is not what their brain wants him to be. Yes, thats very interesting. That gets back to the leptin story again. When we lose fat we be become almost leptin deficient in a way. Its almost like the case study we discussed. When we lose fat we lose some leptin and then we have a drive to want to eat more to replace the fat. It also binds with our muscles and our thyroid gland. It drives metabolism lower. Our muscles get more efficient when we are low on leptin. That combination of having a higher drive to eat and lower metabolism, it is making the fat come back. There are studies looking at brain activity were people who are shown images of food after they lost a percentage of weight are a bit more aroused or excited by it. At the same time there are areas of their brain diminished. They are having more of a drive to eat and less control. All of that is a recipe to get fat back. It takes an enormous amount of strength and will to maintain not for a long time. People love lost 10 of their weight have to eat 22 fewer calories than someone who have not had the loss of weight. Someone who is 170 pounds and lost 120 pounds will have to eat 20 fewer calories than someone who is naturally at 150 pounds. I think the downside, its not that you want to eat and youre driven to it and its harder, its people dont realize and they give in slowly. You think you can diet for six months and you lose some weight and youre good to go. The thing is youre not good to go. This effect has been observed and its not certain that it goes away for everybody. Whatever diet you pick, you have to stay on it permanently. Your biologically different after youve lost weight. What about people who gained weight in the experience, made themselves that when they went fat to begin with. What happened to them . Its pulling the wrapper band in the direction you wanted to come back. They have the more than someone whos naturally at the weight. Someone whos naturally 150 and someone whos naturally at 130, they have the more calories than the person who is at 150 pounds naturally. You have a set point in your body. Your body wants to stay there. It takes a l of effort to try tohange that. I dont know that its impossible to change and they think it is possible, some people gam gain weight permaneny and some people lose weight, but its harder than what the diet industry leads you to believe. They say just cut out carbs or do these simple steps and if it doesnt work for you youre doing something wrong because this is math, calorie and, calorie out, but theres all sorts of reasons some people get fatter than others. If you yoyo diet, you are going to need fewer calories than somebody else. Any program, jenny craig or something might be too much for you and you have to be aware of that. There are studies in genetics and bacteria and viruses and all Different Things that lead to fatness. Gender, its having 2x chromosomes has something to do with it. Why do women get fatter than men. Thats not fair. Its not fair, watching my husband eat ice cream every night is not fair. I said im gonna figure out why you can do that. I had to go and look for this research. This is very interesting. Girls, even from the time they are born, have more fat than boys. There have been studies where they collect birth data around the world. At any age, girls have more fat than boys. It continues into life. There are a couple reasons. One is nutrient partitioning. For example if you eat 100 calories, women might put 3e putting a little more into fat compared to men. Women interact with their fat differently. We dont use it the same way. If we are fasting or exercising a t, womens body will reach for fat more. We use it. You think this would be so great. Men reach for protein more. But, women store fat more efficiently than men. Were putting more back into fat at a higher rate than men do. In a way its healthy because we are cleaning our blood and its stored in the fat which is a good thing, but it does make us a bit softer compared to men, although women, up to a certain point, they have less metabolic disease than men because of this effect. Women dont react to exercise the same. When we do a really hard bout of exercise like burning 600 calories, we release a hunger hormone that comes from the stomach. We have a 33 increase of that hormone and we will be hungry. Even after we eat it stays elevated to 25 . Men dont have that response. We are driven to get that fat back on us after we exercise really hard. Women have to reproduce and nurse and theres all sorts of evolution rules that could apply. We do get more fat. It is keeping us a little healthier and there is some good to having some of this fact. Wow, that is pretty amazing. So come out i guess its hard to lose weight because your leptin is making you eat more and women are fatter than men because they partition their fat differently and its used differently and they get hungrier faster. Theres a lot of unfairness going on. I have a couple other questions i wanted to ask you. Where are they . Okay. Oh yes, this is a great one. Bacteria and viruses. Do they have anything to do with obesity . You wouldnt expect it, but your book makes you think maybe they do. Yes, there are a lot of different components as to how we get fat. Gender is one but bacteria is another. This is pretty surprising to people. Its been known in animals for quite some time. There are vaccines who have caused fatness in mice and rats. Some people then hear about it happening to humans and become concerned. So if you stay around a fat person you could get fat . Theres all these things. When we talk about gender and genetics and how its related to fat and hormones and bacteria and viruses, they will affect your fatness and how easy it is to get fat. All of these things dont mean you have to be obese. In the end you can control it but it will be harder for you. I talk about a virus that was detected and a man who had worked pretty hard at it to lose the fat. Its called 8036 and was discovered in india. There was a virus called s and m1. It was affecting the poultry industry but Nothing Happened when they got the virus. They gained fat. He thought this was very unusual. Usually when you get sick, things lose fat. He decided to study it as his phd thesis. He would infect other chickens and when they would get the virus they would gain fat. Then he did a test where he looked for people who had had this virus and he noticed people with the virus had a much higher likelihood of being fat compared to people who didnt. He got so excited about this research. He wants to come to america and devote his life to researching viruses and obesity. He moved to the u. S. And packed up his wife and children and his biography is so interesting. Thats a great story. Once he gets to the u. S. He cant get a job for a couple years and just before he comes to india he gets a job in wisconsin. He is very excited. But then he couldnt get the virus. The u. S. Doesnt let him import the virus from india so he has to pick another one and that virus was 8036. Through studying it, the way it works, what they determined is that it actually helps absorb glucose out of your blood. [inaudible] what happens is once you get this virus it affects the absorption of glucose. You create more fatty acid. The fat cells you have are getting bigger and stem cells turn into fat cells. So youre making more fat cells and the fat cells you have are getting bigger. The stem cells we have can be converted to bone or fat were all kinds of things. When people go from a size six up to a size 20 so with this virus, you make new fat cells and they fill up with that . Yes, its easier to do than someone who doesnt have the virus. Overall its double the risk of obesity. It doesnt mean you have to be. But thats scary that there is a virus thats doing this. Where is the virus found . You said it was originally found in poultry. Did chicken farmers get this and then get fat or who is getting it. Thats a great question. I dont know that we know the answer yet. I do know one patient who had it. In his mind he connects this together, but it hasnt been studied enough to know. Knowing about chickens in india, he kind of tied this together but he struggled with his weight for decades. Around that time he had a hard time keeping his weight down went back and forth. Finally he got to 350 pounds. A doctor referred him to the university of wisconsin. The people were studying the virus and they tested him for the virus. He was a carrier. At some point he had gotten the virus. It was a Big Education program. They told him how it affects people and how left and fx fat. After learning all of this, this patient named randy felt so empowered and understood why he had all these problems. Its a great case of the knowledge of power and knowing how to use it. . He is around 63 years old now, he is 62 and in great shape. Did the gastric bypass surgery get rid of the virus . No. That is a shame. I asked if you could get it from people and they cant tell me no. These researchers are not re. As it does feel scary because there is so much prejudice against fat people and if people think they can spread their obesity to them that is going to make the discrimination worse. From that perspective, they think around 10 of people or more have it. It is not tiny but it sunday everybody. If you have it, you dont have to be obese or fat. It means you might gain weight easier. That is not what anybody wants to hear. I am concerned because there are people that shun people who are fat and you dont want anybody to think if you get around a fat person you will get a virus and get fat too. We have all worked with people, lived with people, who have real weight problems and it doesnt always rub off on us. I dont think there is that near. I am hoping this doesnt have an effect. My point was to illustrate the different ways i just get worried about the discrimination because that is the last acceptable thing to discriminate against. I just wanted to ask you about that because i was a little worried. What about, we have all known people who the older they get the fatter they get. So many people were thin when they were young and then by middle age they have gained 2030 pounds. What is going on . Your brain says how much your weight. Does it change as we get older . As we age, it is almost like a force of nature to accumulate more fat. As we age, we lose growth hormones that help regrowing tissue declined with age. Testosterone declines and that is another fast buster. That big plate of food at 22 will make you fat as you get older. It isnt just the level of fat that is affected but the distribution. Women gain fat in the hips and thighs and men get more belly fat. It affects both of those things. One study done on male runners, 5,000 male runners, and they noticed no matter what mileage they were running every week with age they gained weight. He ascertained to keep weight low you have to crease your weekly running miles by about 1. 4 a week. Someone running 10 miles per week at 30 then they should be running about double that. I think i want to reserve that but the reasons is hormones is one of them certainly. There is the possibility fat gets more protected as we age. There is the obesity paradox where they find people who have diseases like Heart Disease and diabetes sometimes if they are slightly overweight they do better than underwait or overweight weem. It seems like on the death overweight having traumatic issues, people with fat have a lower mortality rate. We vilify fat and think we have to get rid of it but Research Shows fat is not just fat. It is doing things in our body we are not aware of. That is another sign there is more to fat than we think. One thing is women, as we look at menopause, we have less fat coming from the estrogen and that might be why it is hard for women to lose after menopause. That is interesting. So it is probably a good thing people may not like the way they look but for their health it is probably good to be gaining weight as you get older. It certainly might be. Bone density is linked to fat. And i have had relatives who were thin and they were told by their doctors to gain weight. Were they able to do it . You made it sound like it isnt easy to gain weight just like it isnt easy to lose weight. Two reasons. Their habits are well ingraed. Thats one reason. They gained a bit of weight but got the joy of eating an awful to do so. You mentioned people can fat and fit. Can you tell us about people that are fat but fit and what takes. I think it depends on where your fat s. We are learning not all fat is equal. There is subcutaneous fat, fat in the belly and brown fat and brown fat produces heat and burns energy. So you have to be aware of the fat you have, the different deposits and what it is doing. The visceral fat linked to the cardiac disease and diabetes and the sumo wresters can be fat but fit. They store that fat in their subcutaneous layer. People who exercise have more fat in that area. They have Research Mice with higher levels of al punekton and that is something that keeps the blood clean and puts it in the subcutaneous fat which is a safer deposit of fat and these miles with the higher levels are very fat but they are healthy as well. They dont havthese mebolic diseases. Exercise is something that produces the chemical and sumo wrestlers exercise for 67 hours a day it is in their subcutaneous so they dont have the diseases how much exercise do you need to do to be fit and fat . I found one study showing 20 hours of aerobic exercise a week or was it 20 miles . 20 hours . That is a lot of hours. 20 miles. I got that wrong. 20 miles of running a week was able to increase the levels and reduce visceral fat. The other one was three bouts of hits a week. If you do high intensity Training Like one person does 20 seconds of intense exercise, ten seconds of lighter exercise and do that for eight cycles, four minutes a week. People do that did that three times a week were able to get that as well. Suppose you do more running or high intensity exercise. Would that make it better or have you reached whatever you will get by doing that much . I dont know if there is a firm answer on that yet. We see sumo wrestlers exercise a lot and they are heavy but fit. They show what kind of exercise and i didnt see a followup story where they tried it for more. I think because it is new and we are opening our find at fat and hopefully looking at the science of fat and saying it isnt just gluttony. I think the obesity epidemic put more Research Dollars into studying obesity and what is it. We have gotten great signals about how fat is an organ and an endocrine organ. The question people always ask and i am not sure there is an answer but why is it people have gotten fatter these days than they used to be . Here is so many answers to that question. I think everybody has an answer to that question. One thought is there is more hidden carbs and you are provoking insulin and that makes people fatter. But you know what . When i was a kid people ate junk all the time. My husband growing up in wisconsin they called him bakery like baked goods and his family had bakeries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So i wonder about the stuff we are eating now i say wait a minute when i was a kid we ate a lot of soda and they didnt even have diet soda then. We only drank the fullsugar stuff. Well, that is one. Another one is genetics are at play. Not everybody responds to food the same way. There is interesting researching coming from israel where aaron siegel took people and had them eat food and measured their blood sugar and some people eat sugar and sweets and dont have a spike and other peoples eat small amounts and have the spike. We are all programmed differently. I am sure genetics plays a lot of a role. One population, the indians, have a genotype who through their evolution they have famine and the people that survived had this type that helped them endure toward times of no food and water and adverse conditions. When those people get on to western diets they gain more weight than someone on the same diet. The indians had ten times the obesity rate. It it just them. There are other islands where they are finding the same thing. I thought it was one of my issues i had is i am eastern indian and yes, there was famine in that area. We are a melting pot, sharing gene pools and that could be one thing. Food is so much more abundant and cheaper. Does that make a difference . It is like it has never been so cheap so you dont have to be hungry . I dont know about that. Food has been accessible for a long time. It could be. It could be it is convenient food. I think we are busier. I grew up when they invented tv dinners. We had convenient stuff. I feel like every hypothesis you can say butbutbut. It is a difficult question. Epigenetics has been brought into this. The way your genes methylate. It is almost like what we do is impatterned on our dna. The study where people exercised with lun leg and not the other and when they xarped the imprinting on the dna it was different. Your genes are expressing differently based on what you do. And are people inheriting these methylation patterns and are we passing on obesity from one generation to the other. It could be viruses and bacteria we get, it could be genetics, it could be more fast food and sugar, it could be epigenetics. The thing is what do you do and i think there are interesting things on the horizon. If you had leptin therapy you would thick your brain into thinking you are fat when you are not. You trick the tissues to say no, go away. We dont have it yet though. Individualizing diets is another thing and understanding peoples biome. Couldnt you keep trying one diet after another and try to find one that works for you . That is what i did. What did you do . Tell us about how you did this . You find these Great Solutions off in the horizon. You could do hor mamone replacet therapy, diet pills you could take but the obvious is diet and exercise. That is the one thing no matter what is going on, genetics, viruses, that is something we have to work with. I know it is mundane and not exciting but there are lots of diet books on the shelves saying they have the magic answer. If it works for you, by all means stay on it and do it. The rest of us experiment. So what i did was started a spreadsheet of everything i did. I started writing down what i ate, when i ate, rough calorie count, how much exercise, how much coffee did i have and started tracking everything. Just through the evolution of observation i started understanding when i do gain weight and dont. You had your weight, how much exercise, what you ate. Even medicines like aspirin. How long to figure out the pattern . It probably took me a couple months to figure out what was working and what didnt. I discovered it was stubborn fat that doesnt leave me. And being a female doesnt help, being eastern indian, and i think my genetics are at play. I think it is easy to say look at this great food and you dont have to be hungry and people buy it because they are hopeful and want to buy it. I found the truth which is i cannot eat that. My body is different. And i dont know what normal is anymore but if normal is what is defined by the diet industry or food guidelines i am not that. I have to eat a lot less than mose people. How mucis a lot less . When i was battling stubborn fat i ate around a 1,000 calorie diet. Very low is considered 800 or less. I eat more but i went higher and rationed it back. Were you hungry all the time . For a while i was. I started doing intermittent fasting. If i ate at 6 00 or later but ate dinner around 3 00 and skipped the hours going into the nighttime i could bust the st b stubborn fat. What did your husband say . It was concerning at first, put a crimp in date night. At the beginning, yes, i was hungry. I talk about my own personal experience of what this felt like. I fantisize about food. I was driven to eat. My body was working hard but i understand my fat now. What was different about this time is i knew every trick playing. It was withholding leptin, making me hungry and my metabolism was speeding up so i had it down and i could fight on the same term as my fat was fighting. Once i understand it, i felt like knowledge is power. I enjoyed the hunger. It took about six weeks to subside. I do intermittent sting ani am not even hungry at night. I can cook dinner for my kids, catch them eat and have a couple spoons but i dont eat at night now. It does get easier with time. Keep an open mind to your body needs. Do you suggest other people do the spreadshet sheet you did . I think it is good for everybody. There is not one diet that fits all. The diet has to work biologically and your body has to respond and depending on genetics, bacteria, age, hormone level, you may have to modify it. I think having this knowledge helped taylor my diet that worked for me. I am not as severe as i was when i was trying to lose. But i can eat foods that are nonoes on the diet. Like what . I can have a chocolate or a vanilla latte. They dont make be gain weight. If i have a Chocolate Cookie instead of chocolate i will gain a pound overnight. Chocolate has fat in it. It is. It doesnt have a lot of flower. I find white flower, there is something in my body, at least, tat makes me gain weight. I n haveure sur in small amounts but i cannot have Something Like a brownie or cookie. That helped me figure out where i can cheat. Everybody wants to come off once in a while. It is very hard to stay on a strict regimen and that is why diets fail. When you come off, you want to know what kinds of things you can do and that worked for me. I think a spreadsheet approach is really good and it will help you tailor a diet to suit you or create your own like i did. A diet has to work socially and psychologically. That is why i asked what happened at dinner. Are you there are a glass of water . For me to say there is no sugar allowed i am an a ketogenic diet and it worked but i wanted Something Sweet and couldnt stay on it. I dont have a job where i have to entertain clients a lot so i can do this. There is a number of other diets out there. A number of them work. Pick one that works biologically, socially and psychologically. It will not just be for six months. Whatever you pick. You will be on this for years. I know exercise at the beginning of the diet, and experts tell people not to overdo it because it creates a hunger strike. You put it i slowly and add extra to it. I have found that the other 20 you have to add exercise. You are increasing your brown fat when you introduce exercise. For all kinds of health reasoning, i think exercise is important to add. I do about 40 minutes 45 times a week. What do you do . High intensity training. I make sure to add the four minutes of high intensity. It works wonders. My extremely stubborn fat will have to give in and i lose it. But i do, you know, aerobics too. So i will do 40 minutes of a run or elliptical machine. I have a few questions. One of them is what about kids . You going to put them on spreadsheets and tell them they are not supposed to eat dinner . No, of course not. Diet has to work in all kinds of ways. I am a middle aged women. I uld never put a kid on that kind of diet. That is a tough one and i think more of the puzzle. Why are these kids getting much fatter. You know, when i take my kids to school they are not Skinny School but all the obesity epidemic isnt at this school but it is in other schools. There is a mix of genetics and lifestyle, i think. I think you should consult a doctor first. I did my own plan and, you know, i had the education to be able to go on it. My doctor had a blessing on it, too. I think the types of food you eat. We can be smarter about what we are eating. We can eat for our microbiome. We didnt touch on this but we have different bacteria in our gut and some extract more calories out of food than other types. The more we get rid of the fats and carbs. You cant possibly do the spreadsheet but you would try to do everything that people have suggested to make sure they have a lot of ruffage and Healthy Foods and hope for the best because there is not an easy answer. The parent could do the spreadsheet. You can look at what is associated. What is my kid gaining and not gaining. One last question. This is going to sound crazy. Why did you care . Why didnt you say my body wanted to be fatter . Why do you care . I think some of it was the scientific question of how and why. I tried to get this wrong all the time and why isnt the diet working for me. My brain had to know the answer. So the burning question during my research da in graduate schools i had this burning question now. There is something amyis. Part of it was wanting an answer. The other part was being in middle age there is no going back. You are either going to fix it now. I am never going to fit in the dress again or throw it away. So the decision of do i want to go on like this or get back to how i used to be. My blood sugar was getting high also. There were health effects. It was starting and i was at the stage where this was going to happen. It was now or never. I had the tools to research and i could get the answer. I am going to solve this once and for all. I tell people whatever motion you have use to your advantage. Some emotion i had was anger, to tell you the truth. It was like what is this fat . How dare it crawl on my body . That is the question you started the book with. How come your friends can eat so much and you cant . What is going on with you . Yeah. I am going to be in control. It is me. You are a ver very stubborn person. Very willful. I have a will of steel. I have gained weight time and time. Christmas just happened and i gained a few pounds. I talk about the psychology of loosing weight and there is something where people come off a diet and they will keep coming off. It becomes a slippery slope. One of the keys to be healthy for the long term is you will come off every now and then gut you to get back on. There is psychological tricks where you can make it easier for yourself. It is not a decision or sacrifice every time. It becomes happy. So maybe you accept the fact at christmas you might gain a few pounds and it isnt like the end of the world. You already know from your spreadsheet what to do to get to come off again. And for other people, there might be other kinds of solutions that work for them. But at least you are, i guess, you dont have a magic solution but you are encouraging people to try to find something that works for them which sounds to me like given the knowledge that people have now makes a lot of sen sense i would think. Yeah, just take control for yourself. There is a lot of people selling things and i write about the history of fat at some point when people became fat conscious at the turn of the century there were all these entrepreneurs that came out with really weird diets. Poisons people could ingest to lose weight and i feel like we have not come out of that yet. No, there is a lot of gimmicks and out there and people do a lot of crazy things as we know. At least you are the scientific book of reason here and your book goes through what we learned and how. That was interesting how all we learned these things, who learned them and why are they accepted. There is a lot of facts i would guess people just dont know. I think understand your fat. Once you do, you will appreciate your fat and understand the great role it has in your body, know why it is hard to lose and at least be empowered to pick a diet that works for you, or change one, or live with your fat if you want to. That is another choice. There is a whole movement about living with your fat. And for some people, if you can do it it is hard because there is a lot of prejudice but on the other hand, it is not the end of the world to be fat. A lot of people are. Hopefully this will change peoples thinking about fat. Fat is really important. Once people have it it isnt as simple as eat less and you will lose it. There is a lot that goes into it. The successful dieting programs meet with their patients every day. You cant tell an obese person to just stop eating. People who are successful treating obesity meet with patients weekly and it is a team effort to do this. It is one of the hardest things as a doctor you ask a patient to do. It takes a lot more support you think. Fat comes back and you have to see people for years and prevention of it will be another thing. We wait for people to get really heavy before insurance pays for treatment but if you can, more preventive measures and making people educated. And just the thought of i have to lose a hundred pounds. I mean that is daunting. If you have to lose ten pounds that is a whole different story, i would think. Well, it is an interesting it is interesting to see the whole thing laid out with all these an dotes. You have real human beings who struggled and the scientists who discovered it like the guy who found out about the viruses. At least it tells people there are individuals behind these things and they are individuals who suffer some of the consequences, too. It was fascinating. Thank you. I hope it really enlightens people. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider