Early in my career, I quickly established a track record of success as a weight loss specialist. But I wanted to do even better for my patients—and, in particular, I wanted to achieve the biggest results in the shortest time for patients struggling with obesity.
Many of the people I work with merely want to lose a dress size or a pants size, but others are dangerously overweight. They’re diabetic, they have heart disease, they have sleep apnea, and they can barely move. So they need to drop weight fast.
As any expert will tell you, fasting is the quickest way to jump-start weight loss. Unlike mere calorie restriction, fasting sends your metabolism into hyperdrive. That’s why I’ve always encouraged my obese or even mildly overweight patients to fast at least 1 or 2 days a week.
But here’s the problem: Fasting can be hard.
Over time, I found that while many people can handle total fasts with ease, many others can’t. They get hungry and shaky. They start having headaches. They can’t focus at work or at home. They get anxious, and they start obsessing constantly about food. So they give up.
No way was I going to let this happen to my patients. For many of them, I’m the “last chance” doctor—and I wasn’t about to let them down. And while I knew my patients could lose weight over time without fasting, I also knew that they needed to see immediate results. Both emotionally and physically, they had to get a quick win.
So I had to find an answer. I needed to create a program that would give these dangerously overweight patients—and all of my patients, including those who need to lose only a few pounds—the immediate benefits of fasting without the drawbacks.
And then it hit me: bone broth.
I was already prescribing bone broth as a core part of my weight-loss program because it’s a high-octane fat burner. So I thought: Why not combine the power of easy “mini-fasts” with the power of bone broth? When I began doing this, I discovered that my patients got all of the benefits of full fasting without the pain. They lost weight and, as a bonus, took years off their skin.
I’d found the missing key.
Why? Because here’s what bone broth does.
Bone broth fills you up without adding pounds. Bone broth is rich, complex, hearty, and soul satisfying. It has virtually zero carbs and very few calories, so it’s sin-free and you can indulge in as much as you want. Translation: no hunger, even when you’re fasting.
Bone broth is packed with the building blocks of collagen. Collagen blasts wrinkles, so you can take years off your face at the same time as you lose weight.
Bone broth detoxifies your body. Like fasting, bone broth helps cleanse your cellular matrix, energizing and de-aging your cells.
Bone broth heals the gut. Weight gain starts with a sick, “leaky” gut. The gelatin and other nutrients in bone broth help heal the gut, curing digestive problems while they facilitate weight loss.
Bone broth heals your joints. One reason people become overweight is that as they get older, their joints develop wear and tear and it becomes harder to move. So they exercise less and they sit more. Bone broth gives you a generous supply of glucosamine, chondroitin, and other nutrients that help heal your joints.
Bone broth is anti-inflammatory. One of the most important scientific findings of the century is that chronic inflammation underlies obesity. Chronic inflammation damages your cells and leads to biochemical changes that make you put on weight. Fat cells are inflammatory, so when you add pounds, a vicious cycle—inflammation leading to weight gain, leading to more inflammation—begins. This sets the stage for insulin resistance and other metabolic changes that cause you to put on even more weight, develop more inflammation, and so on. When you break this cycle by healing inflammation with nutrients like those concentrated in bone broth, the pounds start to fall off. In addition, dry, rough, wrinkle-prone skin—which is an outward sign of internal inflammation—starts to look smoother, softer, and younger.
When my patients do twice-a-week mini-fasts combining the power of fasting with the fat-melting qualities of bone broth, the effect is stunning. They can’t believe how little sacrifice they need to make, how little they’re tempted to eat the junk they used to crave, and how fast they see results.
