Your body is so brilliantly designed that it will repair itself when given the opportunity.
Unfortunately, a lot of people in our society do not give their body this opportunity.
Why?
It’s because of the way people eat.
Nevertheless, your body is designed to repair and heal by alternating through two different modes of operation, two systems.
These two different systems are the ones your body uses to produce energy.
What are those systems?
The systems your body uses to produce energy are the sugar-burner system and the fat-burner system.
When your body is using one system it cannot use the other – it is like a light switch. When one is on, the other is off.
Put simply, the sugar-burner system kicks in when you eat, and your body switches to the fat-burner when that sugar is used up, after about 12 hours since eating.
Your body still needs fuel to make energy, so it dips into fat stores to make ketones for energy when the sugar from food is gone.
Do you now see why lots of people don’t access this innate power of the body to repair and heal?
It is because when people eat all the time, never going even as long as 12 hours without food, they never give themselves the chance to dip into the alternate energy system of repair.
The sugar-burner system
Most food we eat gets burned as sugar, easily producing energy.
We get proteins, carbs and fats that build our bodies, specifically muscles, hormones, and the immune system while supplying all that runs our bodies.
We get vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and so on that are necessary for cellular function.
The sugar burner system is what makes you hungry for food so you can rebuild your body.
But when you keep eating and eating, you stay in the sugar-burner system and excess sugar gets stored as fat. Most diets try to reduce the amount of fuel for the sugar-burner system. If weight is dropped, it often comes back.
One reason is that cells lose their sensitivity to the incoming sugar because they need a break.
The Fat-Burning System
That break is the fat-burning system that kicks in when you stop eating for long enough.
Your body is able to switch fuel source when the sugar is gone – it turns to burning stored fat.
In the fat-burning system, hunger disappears while your body repairs itself.
Depending on how long you are in the fat-burning system, you reap benefits such as the cells becoming more sensitive to sugar when that system comes back online.
You body can go into a process of cellular repair called autophagy at about 17 hours since eating.
Longer extended times in this system can repair your gut, improve your mood, and balance your hormones because stem cells are mobilized to do that repair. During those extended times fat-burning, you can undo just about anything that you have done to yourself by staying in the sugar-burning system too much.
But you can have too much of this good thing. One example is eating so little fuel that gets burned as sugar that you stay in this fat-burning system. That is the goal of a ketogenic diet. While it can have its benefits short-term, as anyone who has tried to stick to a ketogenic diet knows, it is not sustainable.
We are not meant to be in the fat-burning system forever. The carbs and sugar-burner system provide building blocks for our feel-good hormones and more.
A healthy body easily naturally switches between these two systems because they each fulfill different functions.
Hunger, Fatigue, Brain Fog
But, wait, you say, I’m hungry! I get shaky if I go without food for too long.
On top of that, I have brain fog and fatigue, I need to eat now!
This scenario is simply a rusty metabolic switch. The body is having a hard time switching into the fat-burning system and is stuck sugar-burning without any sugar to burn.
Getting the body to more easily switch from sugar-burning to fat-burning solves this problem. It takes practice, going easy, yet steadily stretching a window of time when you are not eating to turn this around.
Metabolic Switching
Being able to switch from sugar-burning to fat-burning and back again is the key for weight loss.
Part of the success of this strategy is that food cravings go away as hunger goes away in the fat-burning system. This is part of the secret of the success of weight loss drugs – that hunger goes away.
When in the fat burning system, mental clarity skyrockets along with energy, so you want to be in that state at certain times.
Being able to metabolically switch easily becomes more important as we age. It can prevent chronic disease like diabetes and hormonal imbalances because their root is in insulin insensitivity, which happens when you do not metabolically switch.
By staying insulin sensitive through metabolic switching, it gives you energy and mental clarity and the conditions necessary to make certain hormones like estrogen
When To Eat & When Not To Eat
That is the question.
Metabolic switching is the key to weight loss, reversing chronic disease and healthy aging because it is the innate system our bodies have to repair and heal.
We’re designed that way.
When we follow our innate design, we get healthier.
Even though the concept is simple, how we carry it out needs to be individualized as we respond to what our body is telling us through our symptoms.
We can’t do it the same way every day because we do not show up as the same person every day. Each day has its unique environmental conditions that we respond to. Each day our bodies tell us something different.
If you would like guidance in getting your health back through this innate process, reach out to me for a complimentary chat to find out how we might be able to work together. Call Dr. Cheryl at 928-649-9234.
