The Complete Guide to Fasting
Jason Fung with Jimmy Moore · 2016
The Complete Guide to Fasting (2016) is a book by Jason Fung with Jimmy Moore on health & the body. Nephrologist Jason Fung makes the medical case for intermittent and extended fasting as a safe, ancient tool for reversing insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and stubborn weight, reframing obesity as a hormonal, not caloric, disorder.
A Toronto kidney specialist rehabilitates humanity's oldest healing tradition, arguing that when you eat matters as much as what you eat, and that lowering insulin, not counting calories, is the real key to fat loss.
Three of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of The Complete Guide to Fasting pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first three.
- Obesity is a hormonal problem, not a caloric one: the true driver of fat storage is **insulin**, and because fasting lowers insulin more powerfully than any diet, it unlocks stored body fat that constant eating keeps locked away.
- The body runs on two fuel tanks. Fung's **'fridge and freezer' model**: glycogen (the fridge) is easy-access but small, while body fat (the freezer) is vast but only opened when insulin falls, which is exactly what fasting does.
- Fasting is the opposite of starvation: starvation is involuntary and uncontrolled, while fasting is a deliberate, reversible practice you can stop anytime, the same physiological state our bodies evolved to handle daily.
The other 4 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 8 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- The Oldest Cure Modern Medicine Forgot
- Why Insulin, Not Calories, Makes You Fat
- Fasting Is Not Starvation
- The Failure of 'Eat Less, Move More'
- Reversing Type 2 Diabetes
- The Curse of Constant Eating
- The Fasting Toolkit: Protocols That Fit a Life
- Beyond Weight Loss: Autophagy and the Deeper Payoff
Finish The Complete Guide to Fasting tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.