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

Complete Guide to Fasting By Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore

If you’ve been a long-time yo-yo dieter, you’ve probably heard people talking about fasting. Usually they are talking about a juice fast or a cayenne pepper and lemon fast or something that sounds like a “just stop eating and you’ll lose weight” fast. I know this sometimes works in the short-term but I know I’ve fasted for a day and gained weight!

In researching why it works, we learn that fasting is not about starving oneself. When done right, it’s an incredibly effective therapeutic approach that produces amazing results regardless of diet plan. In fact, Toronto-based nephrologist Dr. Jason Fung has used a variety of fasting protocols with more than 1,000 patients, with fantastic success. In The Complete Guide to Fasting, he has teamed up with bestselling author and veteran health podcaster Jimmy Moore to explain what fasting is really about, why it’s so important, and how to fast in a way that improves health. Together, they make fasting as a therapeutic approach both practical and easy to understand.

The Complete Guide to Fasting explains

• why fasting is actually good for health
• who can benefit from fasting (and who won’t)
• the history of fasting
• the various ways to fast: intermittent, alternate-day, and extended fasting
• what to expect when starting to fast
• how to track progress while fasting
• the weight loss effects of fasting
• how to ward off potential negative effects from fasting

The book also provides tools to help readers get started and get through their fasts, including a 7-Day Kick-Start Fasting Plan and healing liquid recipes.

Dr. Jason Fung earned his medical degree at the University of Toronto, where he also completed his internal medicine residency before heading to UCLA for a fellowship in nephrology (a branch of medicine concerned with the kidneys). He currently practices as a kidney specialist in Toronto.

During the course of treating thousands of patients, it became clear to Dr. Fung that the epidemic of type 2 diabetes and obesity was getting worse. The prevailing dietary recommendations for reducing dietary fat and calories were clearly ineffective. In response, he founded the Intensive Dietary Management program (intensivedietarymanagement.com) to provide a unique treatment focus for type 2 diabetes and obesity that promotes simple yet effective dietary changes rather than focusing on medications.

To Track Your Fasting on Your iPhone – Try The Zero App

Zero is a simple fasting tracker used for intermittent, circadian rhythm, and custom fasting. Choose your favorite fasting protocol and Zero will track your ongoing progress. Export your data to a spreadsheet for complete control.

Zero supports the following fasting types:

16-Hour Intermittent Fast: Popularized by Hugh Jackman and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a daily fast to trim extra pounds. It is common to fast after dinner to around lunch the following day.

Circadian Rhythm Fasting: Based on the research from Dr. Panda (Salk Institute), participants are encourage to fast 13 hours per day, starting each fast at or before sunset. Zero uses your location to calculate the daily sunset time for the best possible accuracy.

Custom Fasting: Setup a custom program to meet your fasting goals. You choose your fasting hours per day, and days per week.

Download the Zero iPhone app.