One of the most important principles to stay healthy is to become a good fat burner
What kind of fuel do you think your body is burning?
When we talk about “burning fat,” what we are actually referring to is the process of using fat as our fuel, our source of energy. It’s a chemical process, not just a metaphor for losing weight. But fat is only one kind of fuel that can be utilized by our bodies, and carbohydrates—or sugars—are another. When your body has both available, it will burn the sugars first and the fat second.
As it turns out, burning fat has many benefits beyond weight management. Fat is the most precious source of fuel for the body. It is the body’s calm, non-emergency fuel. It burns slowly and steadily, providing energy for many hours straight.
By contrast, sugar burns quickly. Sugar and carbohydrate provide quick bursts of energy that often crash. Fat provides us with long sustained energy.
There are a number of reasons you want to become a good fat burner.
- The first one that’s important to many of us, is it helps us maintain our natural weight.
- Next, it is a calm fuel – when it burns you feel relaxed. It is the non-emergency, stress-reducing fuel that tells your body there’s a steady supply of energy, the war is over.
- Burning fat also neutralizes disease-producing acids that are created from stress.
- Burning fat detoxifies damaging fat-soluble chemicals that get stored in our fat cells. The way it works is toxins become surrounded by the fat to protect us from them. Burning the fat releases toxins. It is only by burning the fat that we are able to rid the body of these chemicals. If you wonder why you may have trouble losing weight it could be because of the toxins stored in your fat cells that your body is unable to burn off.
- In addition, burning fat is important for our mental state. It detoxifies fat-soluble molecules of emotion that lock us into repetitive patterns of emotional behavior causing stress and disease.
The problem is many of us have lost the ability to burn fat effectively and are chronically storing fat, often gaining weight.
Our ancestors, the hunter-gathers did not snack. For them, it was feast or famine.
Our very presence as a species is due to the fact that humans were able to endure long periods of time without food.
In the past ten years, we have been told that eating many small meals throughout the day is better than three. Let me explain why this advice is flawed. When you eat 6 meals a day, the body takes all of its energy from each meal with no need to draw energy from your reserves, which is your fat. Why would the body burn fat when it is fed every 2-3 hours with a snack – even if it’s a healthy snack?
If you want to burn fat – and you do for all the reasons I just mentioned, you have to give the body a reason to burn the fat.
If you eat breakfast and nothing else until lunch, you will burn fat in between those meals. If, however, you have a carrot as a snack in between those meals, you will burn the carrot. It is not bad, you just didn’t burn any fat that day.
So how do you restore your body’s natural fat burning ability and keep your blood sugar balanced? How do you restore fat as the active fuel supplier so you are burning fat all day long and not need to have snacks?
You can’t go cold turkey. The more you strain and starve yourself, the more your body feels there is a fat storing emergency.
To get the body to burn fat naturally you have to convince it the war is over. You do that by eating in a way that nourishes your body and encourages the body to burn fat naturally and effortlessly.
Eating To Burn Fat Naturally and Effortlessly
1. Eat a relaxing breakfast that is substantial enough get you to lunch without the need of a snack.
Here I want to mention early morning carbohydrate consumption offsets your natural cortisol rhythm which is supposed to be high in the morning. Bagels, pastries, and sweet breakfast bars slow you down and don’t give you the energy you need for the day ahead. In turn, this slowly offsets your circadian rhythm and therefore your sleep cycle which then upsets your hormones. This is why it is important to have breakfast with good protein, fats, and fiber.
2. Then make lunch another highly nutritious meal with plenty of vegetables, some good fat, and protein.
If you want to lose weight make lunch the largest meal of the day. For example, chicken, or fish, quinoa or sweet potatoes, vegetables and/or salad. Eat enough at lunch to get you through to dinner without needing an afternoon snack or another cup of caffeine.
During this meal, you should relax and not watch TV, read emails or texts, work, drive your car or talk on the phone. For the body to digest a large meal and provide energy, you must relax during the meal and take 5-10 minutes of rest after the meal before going back into your day. If you tend to work while you eat your lunch, start taking 15-20 minutes away from your workspace to enjoy your meal. Your productivity and efficiency will increase, and you will actually get more done in the afternoon (without snacking!).
Notice and work on how much food you need to get to supper without a snack. If you get hungry, have a snack and eat a bigger lunch the next day.
3. Finally eat enough at dinner to comfortably get you through to breakfast the next morning, without needing a bedtime snack or waking up hungry in the middle of the night.
Make supper count and see if you can eat nothing after supper. Overnight from supper to breakfast is a critical time to burn fat, lose weight, detox and reboot so you can handle the stress of the next day.
Then, wake up and break the fast with breakfast.
Eating breakfast, lunch and supper with no snacks in between will provide a natural fast in between meals that will encourage fat metabolism.
For most Americans who have become accustomed to snacking, having three meals a day will be a transition. Be gentle and give yourself some time to make this transition. Your 3 pm blood sugar crash can be balanced with a shift in how you eat but it does take time.
If you know you start crashing at around 3:30 back it up a little bit and plan for a healthy snack at around 3:00 so you don’t crash. You can even start with four meals to make it easier.
The goal is to become a good fat burner once again.
Benefits of being a good fat burner
- Better Energy
- More Stable Moods
- Greater Mental Clarity
- Better Sleep
- Fewer Cravings
- Easy To Maintain Natural Body Weight
