If you’re like me you don’t have time to be sick.
You have goals, dreams and aspirations for your life that require a high level of good and consistent energy. You want to feel amazing as much as possible and you want to look as good as possible while doing it. You want to be highly functional, strong, lean and toned and be able to burn any excess body fat if necessary without being completely miserable, cranky and uncomfortable. You’re also smart enough to know that getting your diet right is a big part of making sure this can happen.
I’m here to tell you that to be lean and have the consistent, good (i.e. “happy”) energy you want, you need to turn your body from a Sugar-Burner to a Fat-Burner.
How to Know If You’re a Sugar-Burner and NOT a Fat-Burner
- You have energy highs and lows or no energy or motivation at all. You feel like your often “dragging”.
- You think about food all day
- You have a big appetite and are often “starving”
- You’re still hungry or unsatisfied after meals
- You’re have hair loss or have noticed a lack of luster, volume and texture of your hair
- You have poor skin: it’s less “plump”, more wrinkled, dry and “stressed/aged-looking”
- You need to eat every 2-3 hours
- You have problems with bloating, gas, upset stomach, constipation, IBS
- You require coffee/energy drinks etc. to get thru the day
- You have joint pain, fibromyalga or “arthritis”
- You are on medications
- You don’t sleep soundly every night and rarely wake up refreshed
- You have excess body fat and/or you have a muffin top (yup, no matter what your age!)
How’d you do? Don’t worry, most people in this day and age are Sugar Burners and don’t do too well on the list either but I’m here to share with you the good news:
If you’re willing to reconsider what you’ve learned as “healthy” eating and change the way you think about food, you can reverse most, if not all of the above “symptoms” and feel and look AH-MAZING by becoming a Fat-Burner!
Top Fat Burning Myths You Need to Ditch Pronto
Let’s start with clearing up some of the top, misconceptions of a healthy diet:
- All calories are created equal Weight loss and health is NOT all about calories in and calories out or “exercising more and eating less”! Science, biochemistry and empirical evidence shows this is just not accurate. 100 calories from a plate of broccoli will have different physiological and hormonal effect on our body than 100 calories of gummy bears. Rather than a calories in/out equation, we now know weight loss and health is about understanding how different food, hormones and meal timing work in our bodies and then using that knowledge to make them work for us rather than against us.
- Losing weight is about eating less and exercising more Just look at any health club or gym: if this myth was true, everyone there would be fit and trim and we wouldn’t have a multi-billion dollar diet/fitness/book industry
- To prevent metabolic slow-down, you have to eat every 2-3 hours This is only true if you are a Sugar-Burner! When you become a Fat-Burner you don’t get “hangry” (hungry + angry) or suffer from low blood sugar and hypoglycemia and mood and energy dips when without food for a while
- Eating fat will make you fat Only when eating the wrong types of fat can you get fat because they are toxic to the body. Otherwise we absolutely need plenty of the right fats to run our hormones, neurotransmitters and stabilize our moods and blood sugar
- Saturated fat is bad/unhealthy/evil/increases cholesterol We now have mountains of scientific research that has since debunked this faulty hypothesis.
Basic Principles of a Healthy Diet and Being a Fat-Burner
So let’s turn this ship around and get you burning stored body fat for fuel instead of relying on the sugar from the food you are eating for energy.
- Eat a diet high in good fat (SOURCES: coconut oil/butter, Ghee, olive oil, grass-fed butter, lard, avocado, grass-fed meats), adequate (not excess) protein, like .5-1.0 grams/pound of lean body weight/day (SOURCES: whole, free-range eggs, wild fish, sardines, poultry, free-range meats) low in carbohydrates (SOURCES: vegetables) and REMOVE/AVOID: Starchy carbs: grains, rice, pasta, flours, fake foods, sugar, fake sugars, soy and vegetable oils (canola, soy, corn, safflower, sunflower, etc)
- Eat nutrient dense foods. You want bang for your buck. Don’t waste calories with low quality, low nutrition food. When you eat better you can eat less because you are satisfied and meet your body’s nutritional requirements. In general, the darker the food, the more nutrients it contains. For example dark green spinach has more nutrition than iceberg and fresh herbs like Cilantro and Parsley have more phyto-nutrients than any other food source!
- Determine your ideal food mix and you Personal Carb Quotient: Find out by trial and error the right amount carbs your body does best at. This will be different with everyone and will depend on how much metabolic damage has been done, your insulin-sensitivity, activity and stress level, current level of body fat, etc
- Eat real food (Don’t rely on shakes, boxed, packaged products, brand “meals”, meal replacements, etc. These are energetically dead “non-foods” that have no life-force.
- Identify any food intolerances or allergies and avoid. Soy, eggs, gluten, wheat, nuts are common ones but any food that causes inflammation is an irritant and is technically something your body is not tolerant of. A common sign of an intolerance is swollen, tight or achy joints like fingers, hands, knees, backs and necks.
- Read all food labels. You have to know WHAT you’re actually putting in your body!
- Do a Kitchen Makeover: Go thru your whole pantry, refrigerator, drawers, etc and get rid of the junk!
- Keep a Food Journal for 3 days to 1 week – Most people are horrified to know how much they are actually eating. Research has shown that almost all of us underestimate the amount of food we eat. Keeping a notebook or an APP on your phone is an incredibly simple, yet effective way to track your intake and give you an accurate indication of why you’re getting what you’re getting!
There you have it!
Follow these tips and switch from being a Sugar-Burner to a fat-Burner and enjoy more stable energy, a leaner body and best of all a liberated mind free to think of other things rather than food, eating and calorie-counting!
