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Dr. Cate Shanahan’s book: The FatBurn Fix

Why the new book? What’s the new info?

Deep Nutrition promises “This book describes the diet to end all diets.”

If you read Deep Nutrition,  you know that Luke (my co-author) and I describe the ultimate, gold standard, global, you’d-see-it-everywhere-you-go Human Diet, the diet that sustained human health until the modern era and that, from the moment you adapt it, starts fixing nearly every chronic medical condition–including overweight.

Deep Nutrition focuses on gaining health more than on losing weight.

Deep Nutrition does not address the special problems that a person who struggles with weight must overcome.

Deep Nutrition was intended to help readers free themselves of medications and look and feel better about being overweight. It teaches that too much sugar and unhealthy PUFA-rich seed oils (PUFA=Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids) sets us up for serious chronic health problems. And it teaches the four pillars of the Human Diet, the essential food categories that support optimal health at every age.

Deep Nutrition also was inspired in part by my personal history as an athlete prone to injuries that I didn’t know came from a poor diet as a child, devoid of ‘meat on the bone’ (one of the Four Pillars of the Human Diet).

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Kobe Bryant

It helped. I feel great.

"It’s helped. I feel great."

Kobe Bryant
NBA baskeball player
megyn kelly

This has been life changing

"Let me tell you this has been life-changing. I have all of her books, in audible and ebooks! I have gotten rid of all the hateful 8 oils. I have trained my body to eat its own previously toxic body fat. Download that pod it's a game changer!"

Megyn Kelly
Jesse Watters

Life changing

Deep Nutrition changed my life.

Jesse Watters
Fox News Primetime host

Saved my life

I would like to thank you for literally saving my life. Back in February, I had to be hospitalized while on vacation in Phoenix with an A1C of 11% and had to start taking 2 types of insulin and 2 other meds. I read the Fatburn Fix in April, and followed the program to a tee, and I’m down by 15 pounds, 6.8 A1C, and only one once weekly diabetes medicine. Prior to reading the book, it was almost impossible for me to lose weight as a diabetic. 

Leontyne Tompkins

I feel free

For the last month, I have really been reading all labels on everything. I have completely remove those 8 oils you talk about. I must tell you, I feel great! I have more energy and I am now 197 lbs (have always been around 205 to 210lbs). I eat potatoes with real butter, grass fed steak, pasta with the right toppings. I eat everything! I seem to crave less sugar. I love it! 

Robert Kirkendall

I feel so much better

I had terrible aches and pains everywhere in my body, my hands, shoulders and knees. I feel so much better and the way I feel is motivating me every day! Thank you

Mike Deb Wootan Burcin

Better than ever

I am an anesthesiologist in Orlando and a huge fan of both of your books! I have been incorporating your principles for the last 10 months and feel that my health is better than ever.

Marnie Robinson, MD

My allergies disappeared

The biggest difference for me (and a surprising one) is that my allergies have almost completely disappeared! This is a big deal for me, because I’ve had allergies most of my life and they have often affected what I do which is a teaching music in [a public school district].  In general, I feel much better and have more consistent energy throughout the day.

Erica Turrell

Heart Palpitations have Stopped

I’ve lost 20+ pounds (also fasting 16-24 hours daily) and haven’t had palpitations except for one occasion — I had a mini bag of Fritos for the first time in July. And, I feel better now on a daily basis than I ever did all through college.

Mike Wright
Deep Nutrition and Fatburn Fix reader
Mitzi Wilkinson Champion

I’ve lost over 50 pounds

I’ve lost over 50 pounds. I’m 56 years old. Cutting processed food and unhealthy fats from my diet was one of the first things I did on my health recovery journey...I went cold turkey off the bad oils. Emptied my pantry into the trash and just started eating real food

Mitzi Wilkinson Champion

Knowledge I didn’t know I needed

Your Fatburn Fix book is amazing, my friend. Thank you! I’m an Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and I know my stuff. This is the extra layer of knowledge I didn’t know I needed. Well done!

Jennifer Dillman
Fatburn Fix reader

Lost a solid 20 lbs and my bloodwork is great

I have lost a solid 20 lbs and my bloodwork (after 3 months of eating your way) was even better! I was metabolically healthy (per your book) before I read your book, but barely. Lowering my weight, sealed the deal! I have been talking about you and your book to anyone who will listen...Thank you for all you’ve done and what you continue to do! You are changing lives for the better!

Missy Cramer
FatBurn Fix reader

Lost 20 lbs I could never shed

I love your Fatburn Fix!  Has helped me so so much!  I have had the dreaded weight all my life - 20 or so pounds I could never shed.  I have lost that now. I only eat 2 meals a day lunch and dinner with a glass of milk or cappuccino around 4 to hold me over. No snacking and not bad oils.  It has been the key to unlocking my fatburn.  I work out in the am and believe I am burning fat for energy not from food!

Lauren Smith

I feel great

My waist is four inches smaller. I feel great and many of the minor aches and pains that I had (knees and lower back) are gone. Also, my muscle tone is amazing, even though I have not increased my workout routine.

Richard Janelle
Completed Dr Cate's online course
Kent Matthes

The go-to for strength and conditioning coaches

Whenever I advise my clients about eating to perform I go straight to what I have learned from Dr. Cate. Her book Deep Nutrition has become the go-to for strength and conditioning coaches across the country.

Kent Matthes
Major League Baseball Agent with WME Sports
Ken D Berry

Dismantles the lie

Dr. Cate dismantles the lie that seed oils are healthy, which may the biggest lie about nutrition and health because it’s so insidious.  

Ken D Berry, MD
Author of Lies My Doctor Told Me
Dr. Drew Pinsky

She knows the chemistry

Dr. Cate alerts us to the harms of seed oils and she’s convincing because she knows the chemistry better than anyone.

Dr. Drew Pinskey, MD
Globally recognized internal medicine and addiction medicine specialist, media personality, LoveLine Host, and New York Times bestselling author
Kelly Starrett

No one is better at communicating nutritional truth

Dr. Cate has had the single greatest impact on how we talk to people about fueling for both performance or durability. While we all are a little unique, the foundational principles of human nutrition are immutable. If you are looking to create a more durable, resilient body, no one is better at communicating nutritional truth than Dr. Cate.

Dr. Kelly Starrett
Physiotherapist coach and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author
Brian Lenkzes

Highly recommend The Fatburn Fix

Dr. Shanahan has had a significant impact on my practice of medicine. I am known as a Low Carb Doctor, but I never really appreciated the negative effects of processed seed oils on the health of my patients. I highly recommend The Fatburn Fix to my patients and have a loaner copy in my waiting room. It is amazing how quickly blood sugars and overall health improves with cutting seed oils. It is not just about the carbs!

Dr. Brian Lenkzes, MD
CEO of LowCarbMD San Diego, co-host of Low Carb MD Podcast and host of Life's Best Medicine Podcast
Chris Kaman

Respected in the sports world

Dr. Cate reordered my diet when I was with the L.A. Lakers, and the benefits, for me personally, were felt immediately and have served me to this day. I’ve come to take real food so seriously I started a small family farm. I know of no M.D./nutritionist more respected in the sports world than Dr. Cate Shanahan.

Chris Kaman
NBA Player
Mark Sisson

Brought seed oil issue front and center

Cate brought the seed oil issue front and center. Healthy fats matter. So much so that I created an entire product line to swap out bad fats with good.

Mark Sisson
Founding Father of the Primal/Paleo Movement
Dallas Hartwig

Optimal health starts with food

If you want to understand how optimal health starts with food, start with Dr. Cate. Her book Deep Nutrition leaves you with an appreciation of the profound relationship between our genes and the planet, inspiring us to be good shepherds of both.

Dallas Hartwig
Attribution author of The Whole 30
Dwight Howard

Helped me with endurance

Deep Nutrition really helped me with endurance. I started to feel better as a player. I was able to run more, I was able to be more active …and I just decided to keep going with it to this day.

Dwight Howard
NBA Player
Paul Grewal

Silver bullet for me

Dr Cate’s teachings helped me lose 60 pounds like it was nothing. It was like a silver bullet for me.

Paul Grewal, MD 
Dr Grewal Internal Medicine, MD, author of Genius Foods
Joesph Mercola

Radically improve your health…

Dr. Shanahan has provided a solid reference that deserves a place in the library of anyone who is seriously interested in nutrition. Her perspective on the vital role that healthy fat has in our diet is novel and, if implemented, can radically improve your health.

Dr. Joseph Mercola
Author of Fat for Fuel and Founder of Mercola.com
Dave Aspery

Pull up a chair…

I have based my work on the idea that getting the right kinds of healthy fats into your body and avoiding the worst fats is essential to optimal health. I've interviewed dozens of the world's top experts about this, and I know of no one who speaks more eloquently on this topic than Dr Cate. If she’s talking fats, pull up a chair. Take notes.

Dave Asprey
Author of the Bulletproof Diet

The key to unlocking my fatburn

I love your Fatburn Fix!  Has helped me so so much!  I have had the dreaded weight all my life - 20 or so pounds I could never shed.  I have lost that now. I only eat 2 meals a day lunch and dinner with a glass of milk or cappuccino around 4 to hold me over. No snacking and not bad oils.  It has been the key to unlocking my fatburn.  

Lauren Smith

Saved my life

I would like to thank you for literally saving my life. Back in February, I had to be hospitalized while on vacation in Phoenix with an A1C of 11% and had to start taking 2 types of insulin and 2 other meds. I read the Fatburn Fix in April, and followed the program to a tee, and I’m down by 15 pounds, 6.8 A1C, and only one once weekly diabetes medicine. 

Leontyne Tompkins

> Tears of joy

 I'm crying tears of joy and appreciation for all you've done for me and my health! Without Deep Nutrition and Fatburn Fix, I would literally still be in the vicious cycle I'd been fighting all my life! In a nutshell - I am no longer a compulsive overeating addict suffering under the crushing 'thumb' of all food and alcohol.     

Penni Wicks

 

One chapter, called “Beyond Calories,” discusses how the standard advice to “eat less and exercise more” never worked for my patients, and how focusing instead on the information in our food helped revitalize people’s health. But for the most part, weight loss took a back seat because not all of my patients had weight trouble, and those who did experienced so many health improvements before they lost much weight.

The FatBurn Fix extends the “beyond calories” conversation. The book takes you along for a deep dive into the unexamined relationship between the ridiculous amount of PUFA now in our diets, and what that does to our metabolism. It explores how your metabolism affects your mood, your energy, and your risk of diseases. It talks about when calories matter and when they don’t. And most of all, it talks about how PUFA in our body fat interferes with our ability to burn body fat, thus turning your body fat from a source of energy on demand to an inflammation-prone burden.

The FatBurn Fix focuses on helping you burn your body fat

FATBURN FIX cover

Most people intuitively feel their weight has something to do with their medical problems. And that losing weight will help.

The assumption is that losing weight is the first goal; that weight loss alone helps people’s health. But that’s exactly backward. 

It’s true that weight gain and diabetes and conditions like gout, arthritis, fatty liver and auto-immune diseases all run together. But we’ve got our cause and effect reversed. The reality is the process of developing diabetes starts before you gain weight.  It starts the minute you begin to lose your natural ability to burn body fat. When you can’t burn your body fat, you gain weight. Inability to burn body fat makes you feel like eating more and exercising less. And that makes you gain even more weight.

It’s not you that wants to overeat. It’s not you that doesn’t have the energy to exercise. It’s your metabolism. If you’ve gained and been unable to lose or lost multiple times and regained, it’s your metabolism that’s the problem. Not YOU. Not your willpower.

The FatBurn Fix also shows you that even aside from weight gain, even if you gain very little weight or none at all, once you’ve lost your ability to burn body fat, your metabolism begins a downward spiral of worsening health.

Or course, you can easily fix your metabolism. It’s a no brainer.

That’s why I wrote the FatBurn Fix

Between 2010 and 2013 I traveled the USA to visit the top weight loss MDs in the country. What I saw was not good. Most people were only able to lose a portion of the weight they wanted to lose before dropping out of the program and eventually coming back even heavier. Every last person blamed themselves for their failures and although the doctors kindly told them that it’s not their fault, it didn’t really help the fact that they felt like failures. The philosophy of these practitioners was that obesity is a disease and, like asthma or gout or so many other diseases, you can have flare ups.

I became convinced those ‘flare ups’ occur because of something we’re overlooking.

I found my answer when I starting paying attention to how having all that PUFA in our body fat disrupts our ability to use it for fuel. If you can’t burn your body fat, you’re going to have a really hard time losing weight. In fact, you’re not ready to lose weight until you can burn your body fat between meals.

Essentially, your body fat becomes less and less visible to your cells.

So your brain thinks you’re starving and forces you to go eat

When your body can’t ‘see’ your body fat, you feel tired and hungry and have a series metabolic problems that set you up to develop not just morbid obesity but also serious metabolic diseases including heart attacks, cancer and degenerative neurologic diseases.

When you’re not good at burning body fat you can’t jump right into an exercise program and expect to start burning fat, nor can you cut your calories for long enough to lose much weight before you get overwhelming feelings of extreme hunger or fatigue–or other problems. Losing weight without a healthy metabolism is an ordeal filled with deprivation and fatigue. That’s why its best to focus on getting good at burning body fat first, then focus on cutting back your calories.

That probably sounds surprising.

But I don’t think it surprises anyone for long. After all, it’s intuitively obvious that you have to be able to burn body fat before you are ready to lose body fat. Most people assume they’ll be able to burn body fat by exercising. But exercise does not burn much fat when your metabolism is damaged.

What happens if you try to lose weight with exercising or low calorie diets when your body fat is still invisible to your cells?

If you can’t burn your body fat, calorie restriction and too much exercise can make you feel so bad that you give up. It may also worsen prediabetes.

How can exercise backfire this way?

What’s happening is that your body resists burning body fat even during exercise because your body fat is loaded with pro-inflammatory PUFAs from a lifetime of eating seed oils. To get energy your body must burn more sugar than your bloodstream is designed to handle. When your body needs so much sugar, you feel hypoglycemia (brain fog, shaky, etc.) after certain meals or after you’ve been very active. What happens to you next is your body starts converting muscle protein to sugar. In fact, this can even further damage your ability to burn your body fat and turn a prediabetic into a diabetic.

If you’re healthy enough that you’re really good at burning your body fat, you can exercise and the weight will melt off. You can intermittent fast. You can also jump right in to a low carb or keto diet. Losing weight is relatively quick and painless.

How can you burn ‘invisible’ body fat?

You can fix the problem of ‘invisible’ body fat very easily. You can eat foods that help your body ‘see’ the energy stored in your body fat. You’ll start by learning which foods sustain your energy between meals and that will very quickly revive your body’s ability to burn fat for fuel. The Fatburn Fix also teaches you what kinds of foods  give you the feelings of satiety, so you can cut back on calories and never feel hungry. You’ll soon find that you actually get more energized the longer you go without eating.

The exact foods you need to eat to begin with are different from person to person. The tool I use to help identify what my patients need to eat is a quiz that give you a number between 0 and 100, something I call your FatBurn FACTOR. Knowing your FatBurn Factor is one of the tools you’ll get in the FatBurn Fix book that enable you to match your foods to the current state of your metabolic health.

In fact, you can take the FatBurn Factor quiz for free, right now, right here.

Whether you need to lose weight or just want to boost your energy and optimize your health, the FatBurn Fix will help. I hope you find it fun to read and useful.

PUFA in your body fat can have toxic effects that make your cells want more sugar

With over two decades of clinical experience and expertise in genetic and biochemical research, Dr. Cate can help you to reverse metabolic disease and reshape your body.

Please note: Please do not share personal medical information in a comment on our posts. It will be deleted due to HIPAA regulations.

This Post Has 59 Comments

  1. Hi Dr. Cate.

    I’ve read all your books–huge fan. I know in Fatburn Fix you mention some fats are better than others. Obviously I’ve been excluding industrial seed oils (not easy to do, BTW, especially when eating out). But I was wondering if it matters how you get your fat, assuming you’re following the basic guidelines. I think part of my brain is just making me feel guilty for eating so much cheese, bacon, burgers, etc. Should I be striving to keep saturated fat below a certain percentage? Is it really ok on my liver, kidneys, pancreas, etc. to eat 100+grams of fat a day?

    Thank you.

  2. I am working my way through your The Fatburn Fix downloaded using Audible through Amazon. I have run into an issue with the PDF link not working.. Is there any way I can get this PDF sent to me? Thank you so much, love your book so far. Thanks

  3. Hi Jacquie! Glad you are staying on target even if you fall off the wagon once in a while. It’s hard to answer for sure without taking a history and so on but in general yes a major relapse can be reflected in labs for a while, especially if it was associated with weight gain. Best wishes to you for more success 🙂

  4. Hi again. I have been following the advice in the Fatburn Fix and I have some questions. 1. How long is someone typically in phase 1? 2. I’ve been at this since June 1, 2020 but fell off the wagon in November and December. I’ve been back on track since January 1st. I just had labs done and my fasting insulin was 11 in June before starting the diet and it is now 15. My HDL also went down slightly and the LDL went up slightly. I’m most concerned about the insulin. Could these numbers reflect my bad eating in November and December? (A1C stayed the same at 5.3). Thanks for your input!

  5. I am a physician (Pathologist) at a US Allopathic Medical School and would like to incorporate some of your topics in my lectures on Nutritional Pathology. However, I am finding it very hard to verify many of your claims in The Fat Burn Fix”; can you help steer me to some of the peer-reviewed research you reference? Some particular topics of interest include mitochondrial function, reactive oxygen species, and epidemialogical trends you mention regarding PUFA’s and obesity. Thank you … I can be reached at userapc@gmail.com

  6. We’re working on it, should be within the year. Won’t have a charming British accent though. And thank you for your support!

  7. Hi Dr. Cate, I have multiple lipomas all over the body. I have belly fat from many years and developed chest fat this pandemic.

    Will the fatburn help the lipomas ?

    Regards

  8. Try adding more salt to your foods and be sure to get the supplemental vitamins and minerals I recommend. I hope it helps!

  9. I’ve been in phase 1 since June 1st. I do not snack but still get hungry for dinner. My morning blood sugar is still about 100. I’m just wondering about how long would one expect for the body to start seeing the stored fat? How long do most people take to get to phase 2? Also, if the stored fat is made up of the PUFAS, will it be an efficient source of energy? Thanks!!

  10. Hi Dr Cate

    Have heard to much about the Fatburn Fix, but I’m based in South Africa and don’t seem to be able to buy a e-book or audio version of your book, which makes it very difficult for me to get hold of a copy. Any idea why these aren’t available in the Amazon US or UK shops to me? I haven’t had this issue previously?

    Thanks and kind regards
    Thea

  11. I would attribute these findings to malnutrition, and that would be based on feeding slaves cheap high-carb, low-protein/nutrient value foods and royalty eating too much of the expensive honey and fruit. Possibly smoking as well or at least inhaling a lot of smoke. I don’t think we can diagnose insulin resistance in mummies! That said, if you try hard enough, lots of empty calorie foods and not enough protein/minerals/vitamins and so on, you can probably achieve IR without seed oils but with seed oils, it’s an inevitability and far moreso than is the case with sugar, in my view.

  12. I’ve heard about this interview from others so you are not alone. The issue was malnutrition. The Egyptian slaves who ate a lot of cheap high carb wheat bread and the royalty who enjoyed too much expensive honey and fruit likely got too little of a variety of key nutrients. I doubt they had insulin resistance, though.

  13. Hi Dr Cate!
    I have been reading Fatburn Fix. I am astonished. I have suffered migraines for 53 years and even a Neurologist specializing in headaches could not figure out what you did. I definitely think I was prediabetic. I have had hypoglycemia symptoms for years. I am making good progress increasing healthy fats, cutting carbs, and cutting out snacks and unhealthy fats. I have felt well but all of a sudden I have a headache I can not get rid of and I feel kind of terrible. Is this the “Keto flu”? I am hoping it is a temporary signal that I am starting to burn some toxic fat reserves as I grew up on Canola oil and now see that the Hateful Eight are in EVERYTHING. Thank you in advance and THANK YOU for being the one who is changing my life <3

  14. Wow! I could only wish to have your numbers! Find a holistic or integrated medicine physician. Your HDL is exceptional! As are your triglycerides!!!

  15. Hi. The ratio is actually triglycerides-to-HDL. You divide the trig by the HDL. Under two is pretty good, and under 1 is very good. Over 2.5 is a significant indication of insulin resistance. (Page 115 in Fatburn Fix)

  16. Hi Dr. Cate. I have a question. How long does it take for the body to heal and start burning body fat? I started phase 1 on June 1st. At that time, my HOMA-IR was 2.6 and my HDL/trigl. ratio was 1.97. I’ve been very strict on phase 1. It’s hard to know if I’m ready for phase 2. I certainly don’t get hungry for snacks but I do still feel the need for 3 meals (breakfast is only coffee with coconut oil and cream). Additionally, I don’t feel very energetic (could be the covid blues). I’m just curious about how long to expect to be on phase 1. Thanks in advance!

  17. Ah, yes the carbs are best consumed with the evening meal in all phases. And yes most people do better with fewer calories, or calorie restriction, with breakfast than they do with calorie restriction at dinner.

  18. Thank you, I’m on the 2nd reading of your Fatburn Fix, so I understand the need for quality source foods. I’m ready to move to Phase 2. I just wondered if there was an optimal way to divide up the macros over just two meals a day. For example, would it still be best to eat most of the carbs with the evening meal? And for Phase 2, still restrict the calories at breakfast and eat the greater meal for dinner?

  19. Please don’t focus on macros, focus on food source quality and freshness. That said, to get you started, most calories should be coming from whole food fats and good oils, like 50-80%. We need 60-120 gm protein daily, from whole foods not veggie burgers loaded with “protein” powders and isolates/hydrolysates, and 0-40% from slow digesting carbs. Lots more info in the book, of course!

  20. Natural flavor is often some pretty great stuff (essential oils from lemon rind, for example, gently extracted) as long as there’s no MSG in it, which there is probably not in sweet dominant beverages.

  21. Will be doing a FB live with Michael Yo later today on this. Athletes need to be able to burn body fat and the modern diet blocks that. It’s not about the macros as much as the types of fatty acids. Much related info in the book, of course.

  22. Possibly a uninformed question… what would the macros look like on this way of eating for performance/aesthetics? Would it be somewhat traditional to the sports nutrition norms or vastly different? I’m actually certified in sports nutrition but I have pcos and have been struggling greatly producing the results I want for my own body composition. Kelly Starrett turned me on to your stuff and I really want to dig in and apply it.

  23. Hi Dr Cate, we have been reading your books and following your eating guidelines since we discovered you on the Bill Maher episode. My husband Roy is a fellow Cornellion.
    Quick question if we may; we notice on our flavored sparkling water beverages the addition of “natural flavor”. Is this something to avoid?

    Thanks for your guidance!

    Michelle & Roy Grimm

    Sedona

  24. My husband and I eat only two meals a day. How would you recommend we divide the calories, grams of fats, carbs and proteins? We don’t snack.

  25. In the FATBURN fix I recommend watching the triglyceride to HDL ratio and 2 or better is a good goal. It can take months to years to improve depending on age/metabolic health. But it will imrpove.