Optimizing our appetite and becoming fat-burning requires reprogramming lifelong eating patterns centered on carbohydrate intake and consuming meals consistently at traditional times. This task will physically challenge you as you strive to get your body to increase fat burning and decrease carb-burning for fuel and energy. Mentally, it will challenge your ingrained norms and habits from addiction due to cultural meal traditions ingrained unconscious habits.

To begin, let’s commit to 21-days to start the process of reprogramming our lifestyle habits and bodies from carb-burning to fat-burning, starting with a gradual, balanced, and deliberate approach to our transition from carb-burner to fat-burner. This process allows us to slow establish a new mindset and self-awareness of our bodies and environment that will endure. Next, we need to focus on identifying and eliminating the most apparent carbs (sugar, starches, fibers) we find in the ingredients of packaged foods, often obscured in dense descriptions. For example, sugar comes in the form of barley malt, lactose malt, rice syrup, maltose, maltodextrin, sorbitol, evaporated cane juice, high fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentrate, demerara, glucose malt syrup, glucose, sucrose, to name a few.

We don’t need to eliminate all carbohydrates. Faulting to a carbohydrate intake of 150 grams per day or less will provide us with a reasonable limit to strive for while our bodies burn fat for fuel and leave us with enough glucose to function without add to our fat stores. At this level, calorie counting, portion sizes, meal timing, food combining, glycemic loads, chronic calorie burning, and other sugar burner craziness and concerns remain irrelevant during this stage of our transformation. 

We may experience substantial weight loss during our initial 21-day transformation unless we have a significant amount of metabolic damage sustained over previous decades of high-carbohydrate eating or familial genetic predispositions that make fat loss more difficult for some. This transformation will come from enhanced fat metabolism, less water retention from the reduction of carbohydrate intake, and the elimination of pro-inflammatory foods such as polyunsaturated oils and insulin-stimulating carbohydrates that promote inflammation (more fluid retention) in cells throughout the body. As we eliminate the too high sugar-containing and high-sodium, processed foods noticing the less water retention in cells throughout the body, we may create an increased need for sodium in our new diet. In this case, adding a pinch of Himalayan salt as we need it will replenish our stores.

It’s important to adopt a self-discipline routine and rules for long term benefits to offset addictive impulses that drive some of our eating and lifestyle choices. Self-discipline puts us consciously in control of our options. At the same time, addictions continuously leave us vulnerable to the changing whims of our emotions and mental state as we often seek reprieve and short-term relief.

These guidelines may feel strict and the transition to eating better may create some feeling of deprivation, frustration, and fatigue, so enjoying the satisfaction of nutritious, satisfying snack alternatives when energy levels flag will help us stay the course. Also, let us remember the big picture of the benefits of eating in a primal balanced way:

• We become less reliant upon regular meals, creating more stability with mood, concentration, hunger, appetite, and energy levels.
• We ease reducing excess body fat without needing extreme measures since fat remains the preferred energy source.
• We enable Intermittent Fasting (more details in a later blog) on demand for accelerated fat loss and enhanced cell repair.
• Delay aging by mitigating oxidative damage from excess glucose and insulin pattern
• We reduce systemic inflammation/protection from heart disease risk.
• We improve stress management/moderate fight-or-flight activity
• We learn to self-regulate our appetite by optimizing our appetite hormones and eliminating severe blood glucose fluctuations.
• We will again see a rapid reduction in total body weight and visible thinning effects in the face and other areas, likely a result of depleted levels of sodium, potassium, and other electrolytes.

Ultimately, ]et us avoid a half-measured attempt to improve ourselves, which will likely result in failure. once we build some momentum with new eating patterns, we can focus on closely aligning eating patterns with hunger, hormone balance, and fuel partitioning to optimize our appetite, reduce fat and attain ideal body composition.