When you are not metabolically flexible and can’t easily burn body fat for fuel, your body will be dependent for energy from the carbohydrates you eat.

Think about carbohydrates like kindling in a fire. Carbs burn hot and fast. If there are no logs in the fire (dietary & body fat) you will be out of fuel very quickly.

Your brain which is very energy hungry, will be the first to indicate to you that there is an energy crisis.

All of the symptoms above and more can be signs that your body is unable to burn body fat for fuel and this is often accompanied by cravings and urgent hunger for foods high in carbohydrates and sugar.

Becoming metabolically flexible is one of the keys to health! You can start by lowering carbs AND INCREASING FAT!

Remember, the fat is like the log in the fire. It will burn low and slow and give you energy for hours! If you can’t make it more than a few hours between meals, up the fat and see if that helps!

Do you experience any of these symptoms??

If...

This is a concept from Dr. Cate Shanahan’s book The Fatburn Fix.

“Whenever you snack, you are teaching your metabolism unhealthy habits. Whether we’re talking about snacking on candy or soda, fruit or nuts, protein bars or protein shakes, if you want to lose weight, you need to break the snacking habit.

When you snack frequently, the circadian clock in your stomach is set to alarm at whatever time you normally snack, and when that clock goes off, you get hungry.

In other words, snacking trains your metabolism to make you want more snacks. The more times you eat on any given day, the more time you’ll spend building fat instead of burning it.

Just like anything else you practice, by snacking, you’ll get better and better at building fat; meanwhile your metabolism almost never gets to practice burning it.

“We can be tricked into thinking snacking is healthy if snacking makes us feel temporarily better.

If we’re tired and snacks give us more...

This outdated nutrition advice might be keeping you stuck with an inefficient metabolism & be blocking fat burning! (Literally the opposite of what they tell you it would do).

When you eat (especially snacks), your blood sugar rises and so does your insulin. Insulin’s job is to put the sugar in the cells of the body for use or storage.

When insulin is in the blood, the message the body gets is “store fat.”

If we are eating all day, we are constantly raising our insulin levels and keeping our body in a fat STORAGE mode.

You can’t burn fat and store it at the same time so this is how snacking actually blocks your fat burning.

Hot tip: Stop snacking!

Tip for getting started with this: Have your snacks right at the end of your meal instead of a few hours later.

Note: If you can’t make it to the next meal, try adding more fat and protein to your meals. If you’re getting shaky, hangry, anxious, fatigued, dizzy, or having any other sign of a blood sugar...

If your huger is accompanied by the symptoms on the left, your hunger is really signaling an ENERGY crisis!!

If you have metabolic flexibility, or a metabolism that can easily and efficiently burn fat for fuel, you will have access to energy all the time (stored body fat).

But, if you have insulin resistance and a damaged (sugar burning) metabolism, you will be subject to those energy crashes when the fuel from your last meal runs out.

This keeps you tethered to your purse granola bars. In other words, you’ll need to eat very often and your hunger will feel urgent and accompanied by signs of blood sugar drops/hypoglycemia.