012: Dr Peter Brukner – Sugar By Half

Dr Peter Brukner OAM

 is a specialist sports and exercise physician whose most recent position has been Australian cricket team doctor from 2012-17. Peter is the founding partner of Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre in Melbourne and Professor of Sports Medicine at LaTrobe University. A founding Executive Member of the Australasian College of Sports Physicians, he served two terms as President and played a key role in establishing sports medicine as a medical specialty in Australia. Peter is the co-author of the widely used text book Clinical Sports Medicine and has been team physician for professional football clubs as well as national athletics, swimming, soccer and men’s hockey teams including Olympic and Commonwealth Games. Peter was the Socceroos Team Doctor at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and subsequently became Head of Sports Medicine and Sports Science at Liverpool Football Club. He is the co-founder of the public health campaign SugarByHalf and is committed to the challenge of improving the nation’s health with improved diet and increased physical activity. His most recent book A Fat Lot of Good was published in May 2018.

Living and working in Liverpool, UK in 2012, Dr Peter says that he has a strong family history of Type 2 diabetes.  Despite being borderline obese with a BMI of 30, blood tests showing he had a fatty liver, he still considered himself to be in good health, doing the right thing with eating low fat foods and exercising.

It was through his long standing academic friendship with Prof Tim Noakes, that he read Gary Taube’s ‘Good Calories Bad Calories’ that challenged the idea of the low fat diet.  

Embarking on his own journey, reading and self experimentation, Dr Brukner was able to see first hand the impact of eating real food. He lost weight, more energy, mentally sharper as went from eating three meals and three snacks to two meals and a small snack of a handful of nuts.  Blood tests showed that his fatty liver had resolved and was completely normal. 

Frustrated by the mixed messages in the public space, he wanted a platform to campaign for dietary change.   He founded the not-for-profit organisation ‘Sugar By Half’ as a public health campaign to promote and advocate for healthier eating by reducing sugar consumption.  

He authored ‘A Fat Lot of Good’, a best seller book which provides an engaging and easily accessible approach to eating real food.  

Dr Peter's Top Tips

1. J.E.R.F. - Just eat real food

2. Avoid vegetable / seed oils - go back to cooking with butter, lard, beef tallow, coconut oil, olive oil

3. If you do have Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease or metabolic syndrome - there is a real chance that you will be able to reverse your condition.

Quotes

“I shrugged my shoulders and say I thought I was doing everything right, I was on a low fat diet, I exercise regularly, but I was certainly overweight”  

Peter Brukner

“How could we have got this so wrong? That the whole of Western society was on a low fat diet.   I always assumed that there was good science behind the low fat diet but there was absolutely no science behind it.  It was because of politics, money and US agriculture.”

Peter Brukner

“After reading ‘Good Calories Bad Calories’ I was hooked, I read everything I could after that..”

Peter Brukner

“As a scientist, I knew that N=1 experiment is a waste of time, except when that N=1 is you, then it becomes very important.”

Peter Brukner

“In three months, I lost 13kg without even trying. Without being hungry, eating as much as I wanted to and the more fat I ate the more fat I lost.”

Peter Brukner

“The hardest thing to understand to get your head around which had been drummed into us all these years was that low fat was good and then all of sudden I am eating fat.”

Peter Brukner

“One negative of the weight loss: I had to get a new wardrobe because none of my clothes fitted me as I dropped two pant sizes. It is a small price to pay!”

Peter Brukner

“There is no one diet for everyone and no one diet for athletes”

Peter Brukner

“I don’t think anyone needs the amount of carbs that athletes were consuming a few years ago.”

Peter Brukner

“It is amazing how many regular exercisers are overweight”

Peter Brukner

“Lots of good reasons to exercise, huge benefits to exercise but weight loss is primarily diet.”

Peter Brukner

“There’s a very good reason why we are getting fatter and sicker, it is partly our fault as a medical profession, as dieticians. We have been giving the wrong advice for a long time. That advice that we thought was based on science turns out to be quite fraudulent.”

Peter Brukner

“If I were a Type 2 Diabetic I would be really angry at the medical profession and the diet profession for giving me the wrong advice for the last 40 years.”

Peter Brukner

“You have just got to look at the figures to show that whatever we have been doing is not working. If you had a business and your bottom line was getting worse every year for 40 years, wouldn’t you somestage of those 40 years say to yourself “hang on a minute maybe we are doing something wrong, maybe we need to do something differently.”

Peter Brukner

“The food industry has done a fantastic job at making profits.”

Peter Brukner

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Music by Bob Collum

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