Episode
The Psychology of Hunger | Dr Jason Fung
- Published
- Apr 8, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4511
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Summary
Why do diets so often fail... is it discipline or biology? Dr. Jason Fung is a physician, nephrologist, and one of the most influential voices challenging how we understand metabolism, obesity, and chronic disease. He is the bestselling author of The Obesity Code , The Diabetes Code , and his newest book, The Hunger Code , which explores a deceptively powerful question: what is actually driving hunger, and what does the answer tell us about why so many people struggle with their weight? In this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais, Dr. Fung explains why the standard advice of "eat less and move more" isn't just ineffective, it's missing the point entirely. The real question isn't how much you eat. It's why you eat. And the answer, he argues, is far more complex, and far more interesting, than anyone has told us. At the center of the conversation is Dr. Fung's framework of three distinct types of hunger: homeostatic hunger, driven by hormones and biology; hedonic hunger, driven by pleasure and reward; and conditioned hunger, driven by environment and learned behavior. Each has its own cause, its own pattern, and its own solution. And until we understand which type of hunger we're dealing with, we'll keep solving the wrong problem. Dr. Fung also digs into the science of insulin, explaining why it is the master switch of fat storage and release, why ultra-processed foods are designed to spike it in ways that leave us hungry again almost immediately, and why intermittent fasting can be one of the most powerful tools available for driving insulin down and letting the body do what it's built to do. The conversation covers a lot of ground: the GLP-1 debate, the gender differences in fasting, what perimenopause does to appetite, how food order affects insulin response, why wa…