Are you a Sugar-Burner or a Fat-Burner?

with metabolic flexibility, it's basically your body's ability to use the primary fuel sources efficiently and effectively. So when we're talking about primary fuel sources, we're talking about carbohydrates in the form of glucose, right? And, and fat in the form of fatty acids and ketones. Those are kind of our two primary fuel sources, and we're talking about calories and fuel. Protein is there, but protein is not, we don't really want to use protein as a fuel source, we want to use it as a recovery resource. All the processes in our bodies, there's a lot of processes in our bodies that require protein. So it's more of I like to look at it as kind of the the building blocks that the recovery side of things building muscle, right muscle protein synthesis, all that jazz, but in terms of energy, like using energy, we want to use carbs and fats. And so in terms of metabolic flexibility, I kind of look at it on a spectrum.

There's people who are, you know, very high carb, we call them, you know, sugar burners, or you use that term where you're a sugar burner, which, basically, you're kind of running off sugar, glucose all the time, your body is not very efficient at tapping into its body fat to be used for, for fuel. So, you know, sometimes I like to reframe the way I say that though, because it can get a little bit like, people can take it literally, in the sense of like, oh, I, you know, if I'm a sugar burner, I'm never gonna burn body fat. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that it's harder for you to tap in to using fat as fuel, if you're so accustomed to burning sugar burning carbohydrates as fuel, versus someone who may be fat, maybe have gone into a state of ketosis before, which is, you know, not your average american rate. They their body is more primed to to use fat as fuel because their body can recognize that source, they can recognize the ketones, right? Most people, most people in kind of the general, like, if we're talking in general American diet, standard American diet, they have never, they haven't used ketones for fuel since they were a baby, right? Big. Y

eah, so. So we've kind of gotten away from that kind of primal side of things, right, just living in our modern world. And so going through a period of ketosis, really just kind of maybe going through some not, maybe you don't even have to follow a ketogenic diet, maybe you just implement some fasting here and there, or maybe you go into a little bit of a lower carb diet, and you just kind of try those things out that can basically prime your body to recognize fat and ketones as a fuel source, so that you can efficiently kind of go back and forth and use those things when it's warranted. So you know, if you're sitting at your desk all day, and you're just doing low, low activity, literally sitting at your desk, doing nothing working on your computer, you should be using fat and ketones as your primary fuel source, right?

If you are out, you know, Springsteen or you're in the gym, lifting weights, like carbohydrates, and glucose, that's going to be that's probably going to be the primary fuel source that you want to use, right. But if your body's not efficient at going back and forth between those are tapping into those right from both sides of the spectrum, then it's just harder to be efficient at that, it's, it's gonna cause issues down the line, whether that's, there's so many different things that I can cause, right. So that's where the metabolic flexibility side comes into it. Because we have people who are sugar burners, like on way on that side of the spectrum. And then we have people who are actually way on this side of the spectrum of fat burners, where they've gone keto, but they've stayed there for like a long time. And so their body has basically downregulated the machinery to process carbohydrates efficiently, whether that's from just digestive enzymes, or just not being used to them and things like that.

So that's where the metabolic flexibility side of things comes in, because that's where you can kind of be in the middle and still kind of train your body to use these different fuel sources, but do in a way that it recognizes them at different times and when it's warranted. So that's kind of the gist of metabolic flexibility, just being able to efficiently switch back and forth between them at the specific times that they should be used.