Michael Mosley > Quotes

“There is no reason to be alarmed by benign, occasional, short-term hunger. Given base-level good health, you will not perish. You won’t collapse in a heap and need to be rescued by the cat. Your body is designed to go without food for longish periods, even if it has lost the skill through years of grazing, picking, and snacking. Research has found that modern humans tend to mistake a whole range of emotions for hunger.6 We eat when we’re bored, when we’re thirsty, when we’re around food (when aren’t we?), when we’re with company, or simply when the clock happens to tell us it’s time for food. Most of us eat, too, just because it feels good. This is known as hedonic hunger,”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer

“A pound of fat contains more energy than a pound of dynamite.”
― Michael Mosley, FastExercise: The Simple Secret of High-Intensity Training

“The reality of your life always comes out in pathology,”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer

“Male or female, your waist should be less than half your height.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer

“SRT Once again, I hope you are filling in your sleep diary and that if you are doing SRT, your sleep efficiency is back up to near 85%, despite the fact that you are now spending more time in bed. If it is, reward yourself with another 20 minutes in bed. By now you should definitely be seeing improvements in the quality of your sleep, and you will be finding it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep. You should be feeling less tired during the day, which in turn will motivate you to do more of the exercises that I have been recommending. As I have said, most people will find that four weeks of SRT is enough to mend their sleep problems, although you can continue for up to eight – it very much depends on how you are getting on. Looking after your Old Friends If you have been eating meals from the recipe section in this book, I would also expect your gut microbiome to have changed radically, and for the better. Your levels of “good” bacteria should have increased, reducing inflammation and making you feel more cheerful, while the “bad” ones, that cause inflammation, will have been displaced. So keep munching those legumes! Remember that quite apart from the positive impact that these foods have on your sleep, they will also help cut your risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and dementia. Treat this way of eating as a way of life, not just a quick fix when it comes to improving your sleep. Eating for better health and weight loss As we have seen, if you are overweight”
― Michael Mosley, Fast Asleep: How to get a really good night's rest

“Professor Taylor’s research suggests that it is the buildup of fat inside the liver and pancreas that causes all the trouble. These two organs are responsible for controlling our insulin and blood sugar levels. As they get clogged up with fat they stop communicating with each other. Eventually your body stops producing insulin and you become a type 2 diabetic.”
― Michael Mosley, The 8-week Blood Sugar Diet: Lose Weight Fast and Reprogramme your Body

“The more different types of plants you eat, the more diverse your microbiome.”
― Michael Mosley, The Clever Guts Diet: How to revolutionise your body from the inside out

“Diabetes – the physical costs Hypertension: 70% of diabetics also require medication for blood pressure. Cholesterol: 65% of diabetics require medication to reduce their cholesterol. Heart attacks: Diabetics, even when on full medication, are twice as likely to be hospitalised, crippled or die from a heart attack. Strokes: Diabetics are 1.5 times more likely to suffer a debilitating stroke. Blindness and Eye Problems: Diabetes is the number one cause of preventable blindness in the developed world. Impotence: Diabetes is also the number one cause of impotence. Dementia: Having diabetes doubles your risk of dementia. Kidney disease: Diabetes is the cause of kidney failure in half of all new cases; most people on dialysis are diabetics. Amputations: There are over 7000 diabetes-related amputations done every year in the UK and over 73,000 in the US.”
― Michael Mosley, The 8-week Blood Sugar Diet: Lose Weight Fast and Reprogramme your Body

“research showing how fasting can improve mood and protect the brain from dementia and cognitive decline”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer

“As two leading weight loss experts, Dr Corby Martin and Professor Kishore Gadde from Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, put it, ‘The myth that rapid weight loss is associated with rapid weight gain is no more true than Aesop’s fables.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast 800: How to Combine Rapid Weight Loss and Intermittent Fasting for Long-Term Health

“Research from Yale University found that those who read for 30 minutes a day lived on average 23 months longer than those who did not – the opposite of what happens if you spend the same amount of time watching TV.”
― Michael Mosley, Just One Thing

“I’ve always used books as a form of escapism, so I was not surprised to learn that studies show reading is one of the best ways to escape from the pressures of modern life. It is this aspect of reading that may reduce an avid reader’s risk of developing depression.”
― Michael Mosley, Just One Thing

“Whatever diet you decide to follow, it is vital that you are getting enough daily protein (at least 50-60g a day), otherwise you will lose muscle. You also need to be sure you are getting enough of all the other essential nutrients – you should avoid going on one of those crazy cabbage soup or green juice diets, for example. The menus in this book were created to be safe and sustainable.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast 800: How to Combine Rapid Weight Loss and Intermittent Fasting for Long-Term Health

“sharpens my senses and my brain.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer

“Will I go into starvation mode? The short answer is an emphatic “no.” This is one of the great dieting myths—the fear that if you cut your calories for even a day, then your metabolic rate will slow right down as your body tries to conserve its fat stores. This starvation mode myth seems to be based on the Minnesota starvation experiment, a study carried out during World War II. In this experiment, young volunteers lived on extremely low calorie diets for up to six months.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer

“Above all, Professor Jebb is frustrated by how slowly things are changing. ‘This is an area of medicine where our understanding has come on in leaps and bounds but practice has not changed. If we had a new drug which had achieved what DIRECT (Roy Taylor’s diabetes study) had achieved it would be screamed from the roof tops… We have something which is effective and which is really cheap. And we are not doing it. I find that unbelievable.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast 800: How to Combine Rapid Weight Loss and Intermittent Fasting for Long-Term Health

“Who would have imagined that eating a baked potato would have as big an impact on your blood glucose as eating a tablespoon of sugar?”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer

“As long as we have plenty of food, our bodies are mainly interested in growing, having sex, and reproducing. Nature has no long-term plans for us; she does not invest in our old age. Once we’ve reproduced, we become disposable. So what happens if you decide to fast? Well, the body’s initial reaction is one of shock. Signals go to the brain reminding you that you are hungry, urging you to go out and find something to eat. But you resist. The body now decides that the reason you are not eating as much and as frequently as you usually do must be because you are now in a famine situation. In the past this would have been quite normal. In a famine situation, there is no point in expending energy on growth or sex. Instead, the wisest thing the body can do is to spend its precious store of energy on repair, trying to keep you in reasonable shape until the good times return once more.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer

“Nuts, seeds, dark chocolate, red wine, olive oil and vegetables like leeks, garlic and onions are packed with the chemicals that microbes love. We should also be eating more fermented foods like live yoghurt, kimchi, sauerkraut and kefir.”
― Michael Mosley, The Clever Guts Diet: How to revolutionise your body from the inside out

“How to boost your M score A simple way to boost your M score is to adhere to the following simple rules: 1. Reduce sugars and starchy carbs Cut right back on sugary starchy foods, such as cakes, sweets, biscuits, chips, fruit juices and soft drinks, as these rapidly turn into sugar in your blood, causing sugar spikes, a surge in insulin and weight gain. Aim to have them less than twice a week. You also need to watch out for foods that get rapidly converted to sugars in your blood, such as: • Potatoes, bread, white rice and white pasta.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast 800

“What is a “Mediterranean diet”? The Mediterranean diet has become incredibly popular since studies showed it can significantly cut your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and possibly Alzheimer’s. It is not a diet that most people associate with the Med. There is no pizza or pasta. Instead, it is a diet that emphasises the importance of eating fruit, vegetables, oily fish, nuts and olive oil. Yoghurt and cheese are warmly embraced. As is a glass of red wine at the end of the day (though this is optional). There are carbs in this diet, but the sort that your body takes longer to break down and absorb. That means legumes (beans, pulses, lentils), not pasta, rice or potatoes. I think it is a fantastically healthy and tasty way to eat. It takes many of the best features of a low-carb diet and makes them more palatable. I go into much more detail about how to Mediterraneanise your diet later in the book. Indeed, what I call the “M Plan” is the crux of the Blood Sugar Diet.”
― Michael Mosley, The 8-week Blood Sugar Diet: Lose Weight Fast and Reprogramme your Body

“People who have at least one alcoholic drink a week have a more diverse microbiome than those who don’t drink at all.”
― Michael Mosley, The Clever Guts Diet: How to revolutionise your body from the inside out

“But surely, I hear you say, that’s crash dieting and crash dieting always fails? You end up putting back on all the weight you lost, and more. Well, no. Like anything, it depends on how it is done. Done badly, a very low-calorie diet will cause misery. Done properly, rapid weight loss is an extremely effective way to shed fat, combat blood sugar problems, reverse type 2 diabetes, perhaps even cure it. I am going to take you through the science and demolish many common myths around dieting.”
― Michael Mosley, The 8-week Blood Sugar Diet: Lose Weight Fast and Reprogramme your Body

“Seventy-five per cent of the world’s food comes from just 12 plants and five animal species.”
― Michael Mosley, The Clever Guts Diet: How to revolutionise your body from the inside out

“There is a lot of initial evidence to suggest that temporary periodic fasting can induce long-lasting changes that can be beneficial against aging and diseases.”
― Michael Mosley, The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer