In a nutshell, Dr. Fung recommends to eat more fat and less carbohydrates (because those are responsible for high insulin levels that trigger weight gain and diabetes) and condense the times you eat into as small a time window as you can stand. The minimum time between the last meal of the day and the first meal of the next day should be 16 hours or more. That is called intermittent fasting.

The first time I followed Dr. Fung’s method, I ate once a day from Monday to Friday and kept carbohydrates (see picture on the left) to a minimum. On Saturday or Sunday, I allowed myself to eat bread (the one craving I had) and ate three times a day (late breakfast, normal lunch, early dinner; keep in mind that Germans usually eat a cooked lunch and bread for dinner). I did not touch any alcohol.

What surprised me most was that I did not feel tired and that I did not crave food all the time. My energy levels were up, I was alert and felt well rested even if I slept too little. My blood pressure and heart rate went down too (I kept measuring those because I also have high blood pressure). At the end of my first time (taken out of context that phrase suggests something completely different, grin), I’d lost 10kg/22lbs without a struggle and all of the health parameters I’m controlling improved.

But why? Well, the reason is insulin.

With the constant availability of food, sweetened drinks, and alcohol, people started eating more than 3 times a day and increased the average intake of sweet drinks and alcohol. That forced the body to produce insulin 24/7. The bad thing about insulin is that as long as it’s there, the body cells will get less and less receptive to it. An insulin resistance develops = Diabetes II!

Also, insulin is responsible for the storage of energy. The more insulin a body produces and the longer it’s in the blood, the more energy will get stored in your fat cells: weight gain!

Therefore insulin is responsible for obesity and diabetes type II. Dr. Fung’s recommendation to eat more fat (which triggers a much lower discharge of insulin) and less often (reducing insulin levels to zero between meals) helps in both cases.

At the end of the summer, after being completely certain that his method is the solution to both of my problems, I decided to go about this a little more scientifically. I’ll tell you all about it next week.

Truly spectacular was the reconstructed housing complex. The new houses were built over the foundations of the original Roman houses but with a security layer so the originals wouldn’t get harmed in any way. The whole complex was surrounded by roof covered sidewalks. The ground of the sidewalks differed from one property to the next since every home owner had their preference. They were allowed to use different sorts of paving or stamped earth.

Visiting the houses brought to life the way humans have lived so long ago. Each house had a little garden with a shed or another small building on it. The outhouses usually contained the toilet and rooms for the slaves, equipment, and provisions. In the main house the family rooms were on the first floor. The ground floor consisted mostly in a shop that was open to the paved road outside. Only a wooden counter separated the shop from the sidewalk.

The houses were built of tamped loam and decorated prettily with bright colors. The roofs were mostly tiled, only a few of the sheds were shingled. An interesting fact is that none of the houses had chimneys, even though every room had a small fire place, and the houses of the richer people had floor heating. The view from a rear window or balcony resembles those of a serial house today: long, narrow garden, walls (today it’s fences) between the properties, and grass (often with a few bushes) on the ground.

The rooms of the family on the first floor were beautifully decorated but sparsely furnished. Romans were very fond of bright colors and regular patterns. The room in the picture would have been the bedroom of a whole biological family (there was a crib in the other corner but it didn’t fit into the picture and I didn’t dare move it), most likely the home owner’s. The parents would sleep in the double bed, the children in the spare bed, and the baby in the crib. Servants slept on the same floor in rooms with less decoration. Everyone owned a trunk for their belongings.

Only the slaves did not stay in the houses over night. They had a separate platform above important equipment and/or provisions. All slaves slept on the platform in bedrolls.

I found it surprising how much comfort the Romans already had. Their lifestyle wasn’t all that different from ours. When one thinks of the Iron Age, one doesn’t expect this kind of lifestyle. The recreated houses impressed on me how much the Germans missed out on when Arminius defeated the Romans. True, they weren’t exactly easy masters, and freedom is important. However, the kind of civilization they would have brought might have changed my home country in a way that would still matter today.

When I kept to the dietary recommendations of the doctors I’d been talking to, I hated every minute of loosing weight (although I was happy with the result). The constant hunger made me think of food all the time, and the added sport ate into my writing time until I began to loathe it. Enter Holly Lisle, writing coach extraordinaire. She’d been battling tongue cancer and beginning diabetes successfully and recommended two books by Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist (specialist for kidneys) who had decided it would be better to battle diabetes than handling the fallout (kidney failure with dialyses).

So I bought The Obesity Code and The Complete Guide to Fasting by Dr. Fung and read them both. They were eye opening and pointed into a direction I’d been unconsciously aware of for a long time.

Like all other doctors I’d consulted, he recommends weight loss to battle diabetes. However, he said that reducing fat and carbohydrates was the wrong strategy. And the reason—how surprising—is the body’s reaction to such a diet: the permanent craving of food. His solution is as simple as it is logical.

Reducing fat and carbohydrates forces the body to live on proteins, and they do not provide enough energy. Since carbohydrates are what’s causing the biggest insulin problems (I’ll talk about that next week), the amount of fat in the diet needs to go up.

When I was studying in Scotland (about x years ago), I was always pressed for time. So my main dish was bread with fried cheese and some cress or salad. Naturally the bread dripped with fat. I lost a lot of weight back then, an unforeseen but welcome effect. Unfortunately I drew the wrong conclusions thinking the weight loss a result to the stress at university, especially when it came back after returning to Germany. With Dr. Fung’s finds, I finally got the right perspective.

Dr. Fung also said that the time a person eats has a significant influence on how the body reacts to food (read the books for proof). Since that was exactly what I found when I monitored my diabetes, my initial skepticism melted away and I set out to see if his method truly worked.

Right before the summer holidays, I followed his recommendations for six weeks and lost 10kg/22lbs without feeling hungry once. During the holidays, with the kids at home, it was impossible to keep this up, but I did manage to keep my food intake to two low carbohydrate meals a day. I did not gain a singe gram over the summer (something I normally find very hard to do). Next week I’ll tell you more about the method and why it works.

For more information watch Dr. Jason Fung’s videos on YouTube.