Professor Grant Schofield – What the Fast?

Professor Grant Schofield joins me to discuss obesity, low carb, fasting and confusing public health messages. As a professor of public health, Grant focuses on reducing the risk and eventual mortality and morbidity from obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. In this episode he explains the complex role hormones play in our bodies, benefits of fasting/restricted eating and some of his top tips for getting started.

Selected Links from the Episode

Prof. Grant Schofield website
Prof. Grant Schofield books:

What the Fast?
What the Fat?

Unstress episode with Allan Savory on holistic management
Unstress episode with Cliff Harvey on carbohydrate appropriate diets
Unstress episode with Prof. Dominic D'Agostino on keto nutrition
Unstress episode with Prof. Thomas Seyfried on cancer as a metabolic disease

Download the PDF transcription
Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress” where each week we try to unpack another piece of the puzzle we call our modern life. I'm dr. Ron Ehrlich. Obesity, high fat, low carb, fasting, confusing health messages - Just a taste of what we're going to be talking about today. When it comes to public health messages who better to talk to then a professor of public health? My guest today is professor Grant Schofield from The Auckland University of Technology. He's director of the university's Human Potential Centre. His research and teaching interests are in well-being and chronic disease prevention, the theme I'm sure you can all relate to. His focus is on reducing the risk and eventual mortality and morbidity from obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Grant’s motto which I first heard about five years ago when I interviewed him on my old podcast is “Be the best you can be”. Now when I first heard that it really resonated with me and I've appropriated that for my own life ever since. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with professor Grant Schofield.
Download the PDF transcription
Welcome to the show, Grant.
Professor Grant Schofield: Hi, Ron, thanks for having me.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: That’s a pleasure. Grant, there's so much I want to talk to you about but the first thing I wanted to know how does one grow up to be a professor of public health?

Professor Grant Schofield: That's a great question. I've often wondered that myself. In childhood everyone else is often aspiring to be policemen and firemen but not that I'll be a professor of public health. But I think just in the accidental since I was always a kid who was good at science and it was about all I was good at until I stopped trying at school and became mediocre. I enrolled in engineering which lasted about two weeks and then I just ended up doing a series of degrees in physiology and psychology because they seemed interesting. Then I couldn't think of a job so I thought well I should be a psychologist which turns out to be a hopeless profession at least for me because my tendency is to want to do the opposite of what you should do in psychology training which is “shut up and listen” and when the solution becomes obvious not to offer them or help people get to the solution. My natural tendency is to go straight for the solution which I think it's good in science but helpless for psychologists. That's how I ended up in this space and I've always enjoyed fitness and exercise and thinking about what we eat and in those just turned out to be the two major public health problems of our time. It was just lucky… Well not lucky, it's bad luck for humans but for me.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: No, no, no. Let our listener be the judge of that at the end of this podcast. But the solution-driven approach, of course, does lend itself you would think to public health but it's not always as simple as that either isn't really?

Professor Grant Schofield: No because we're still stuck in this sort of old thinking which I think was never driven by science. It's just not about calories,