If you experience fatigue, light headedness, depression, insomnia, endocrine issues, weight gain, trouble losing weight, craving for sweets, memory issues, blurred vision, joint issues, premature aging, and slow healing then you could be suffering from a blood sugar imbalance.
The current standard American diet is filled with refined carbohydrates, especially sugar. Our bodies were not designed to source such a significant amount of its energy needs from those refined carbohydrates. Our bodies need high quality unrefined fats, carbohydrates, and proteins.
Fat Burner vs Sugar Burner
Our bodies were designed to allow us to primarily burn fat for energy and secondarily burn glucose (sugar) for energy. Unfortunately, with our current standard American diet, we have altered our body’s preferred metabolic state to becoming primarily sugar burning metabolizers. Ultimately, we want to get back to being fat burners. A major factor of being a sugar burning metabolizer is that it turns off our fat burning metabolizing abilities.
Traits of a Sugar Burning Metabolizer:
- Difficulty burning stored fat or dietary fat for energy
- Insatiable hunger throughout the day and cravings for carbohydrates
- Require a diet heavy in refined carbohydrates (kindling) for quick energy
- Will burn through their glycogen stores quickly when exercising
- Burn stored fat and dietary fat for consistent energy throughout the day
- Feel satiated after meals due to sufficient dietary fat
- Can rely more on fat for energy during exercise and not exhaust glycogen stores
Think of carbohydrates as being short-burning kindling on a fire.
Traits of a Fat Burning Metabolizer:
Think of fats as being a long-burning log on a fire.
Glycation
Too much sugar in the blood will end up reacting with the proteins of cell walls creating a sugar-protein cross-linked hardening of the walls called Advanced Glycation End Products (AGE’s). This causes the cell membranes to become unable to interact with insulin which then prevents the cells from taking in the glucose which is needed for energy production. This is the cause of Insulin Resistance, Type 2 Diabetes, Dementia, and Premature Aging.
Fructose Metabolism
Fructose (found mainly in fruit and in the industrial ingredient high fructose corn syrup) is solely broken down by the liver and is turned into free fatty acids and triglycerides which then get stored as fat. With food manufacturers using high fructose corn syrup as a major ingredient in processed foods (sodas, sports drinks, nutrition bars, snack foods, candy, soups, dressings, etc.), people are unknowingly consuming high amounts of a sugar that is causing their bodies to create and store fat more readily than other sugars. High fructose corn syrup has been linked to Americans becoming more overweight than previous generations. This ingredient was created by the food industry to be less expensive than table sugar (sucrose), and therefore more desirable for higher profits.
Bottom Line
If your blood sugar gets re-balanced and you become a fat burning metabolizer, you will be on your way to feeling better and improving your overall health. That’s just for starters, and I can help you do that. Please let me know if I can be of assistance.