The fact COVID-19 preys on the obese has made it more important than ever to get ourselves out of that condition. Why is clear. How has always been complicated, fraught with clashing opinions and claims founded on little or misinterpreted science and a whole lot of anecdote, conjecture, and falsehoods.

I’m partial to the new(ish) science around the ancient teaching of the healing power of fasting. I’ve followed a relaxed low-carb-medium-fat-no-sugar way of eating for the past five years. It’s how I’ve suppressed a couple of autoimmune disorders – Rheumatoid Arthritis and Hashimoto’s, an attack on the thyroid – that arrived with menopause. That’s my N = 1 experience, of course, not to be construed as medical advice. This episode is not that.

If you’ve explored fasting as you look to optimise your health, you’ll know my guest by name and reputation. Megan Ramos is co-founder, along with Dr Jason Fung, of the Toronto clinic Intensive Dietary Management and The Fasting Method programme. There’s an exploding online community around what they do, helping countless people recover from metabolic illness.

Links

• Megan and Jason’s Toronto clinic Intensive Dietary Management
• Jason and Megan’s site for The Fasting Method
• ‘Practical Fasting’: The Use of Therapeutic Fasting in a Clinical Setting – Megan highlighting the inequality around access to healthy, real food in her speech to the 2019 Low Carb Down Under event in Australia
• Therapeutic use of intermittent fasting and ketogenic diet as an alternative treatment for type 2 diabetes in a normal weight woman: a 14-month case study in the British Medical Journal – June, 2020 – authors Charlene Lichtash, Jason Fung, Katherine Connor Ostoich, Megan Ramos
• Therapeutic use of intermittent fasting for people with type 2 diabetes as an alternative to insulin in the British Medical Journal – Sept 2018 – authors Suleiman Furmli, Rami Elmasry, Megan Ramos, Jason Fung
• The Fasting Method’s free Facebook page 
• Megan on Twitter

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