This YouTube video (Dr. Tabatha Barber) explains how many people are "sugar burners"—relying on carbohydrates (glucose) for fuel—which creates hunger cycles, jitteriness, and frequent snacking. The speaker contrasts carbohydrate (glucose) fuel with fat-derived fuels (fatty acids/ketones) and protein (amino acids), and advocates becoming a "fat burner" so the body can tap stored fat for energy and support weight loss.
A lot of us are stuck on the sugar roller coaster. We are used to burning carbohydrates for fuel. We're used to getting our fuel from whatever we're taking in to our mouths because the snack industry has really trained us to kind of eat every couple hours, all day long, the entire time we're, you know, awake. And when you intake food, you know, if it's primarily carbohydrates, those get broken down into glucose. Glucose is sugar. And that isn't a fuel that you can immediately use as energy if you want to go do a workout or you have a really big test to study for or something that you're going to require a lot of energy production. But unfortunately, in this day and age, a lot of us don't have those kind of lives. We're just doing things that don't require a lot of energy production yet we're taking in a lot of fuel all day long. And if you eat fats, fats can get broken down into fatty acids and burned as ketones and proteins get broken down into amino acids and hopefully get used to make new proteins in your body for like enzyme production and other processes in your body and to create new DNA and all of those important things. So our primary sources of fuel are glucose from carbohydrates or fats. And the majority of us eat way too many carbohydrates and not enough healthy fats and protein. And so our bodies get stuck in this sugar burning mode. And if you're in sugar burning mode, that feels like hangry, like you can't go more than a couple hours without eating, or you're jittery, irritable, anxious, like you're so hungry you just have to eat something. Or it feels like addictions like, oh, I just need to snack, I just need to grab some M&M's. I just need some peanuts. I just need something every couple hours. I need to drink a pop all day long and just sip on that or a smoothie. Those are all sugar burning behaviors. And I want you to be a fat burner. Why is that? Because then you can tap into your own fat cells and burn your own fat for fuel and actually lose weight.
