What Is Metabolic Inflexibility and How Does It Affect Your Health?

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What is metabolic inflexibility and how does it affect your health? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Barbara emailed what is metabolic inflexibility and how does it affect your health? Hey, it's JJ and today I have my buddy Dr. Will Cole with me to answer this question. He was named one of the top 50 functional medicine and integrative medicine docs in the nation and he sees patients globally through his virtual clinic. He's also the co host of Goop Fellas podcast and the author of bestselling books Can Keto Terry, the Inflammation Spectrum and the new one Intuitive Fasting. He's also a big peloton enthusiast. And I gotta tell you, Will, once I get my output up a little.

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So stay tuned. We'll be right back with the answer.

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So we have two main modes of fueling our bodies and a way that our metabolisms function. There's sugar burning and fat burning mode. Most people are stuck in various forms of sugar burning mode and that's like kindling on the fire. You get light from that fire, but it's going to be short lived. So you have to keep putting kindling on the fire to maintain that blaze and maintain that energy and light. And that's people's energy throughout the day. If they miss that snack or if they miss that next meal, they're going to get hangry and irritable and fatigued and need a nap or bite someone's head off. And that is this sugar burning mode that's dependent on kindling throughout the day to maintain that light, that energy. There's cleaner kindling of like smoothies and starches and grains and whole grains and all that stuff. There are better kindling options for people if they go for whole food based carbohydrates and sugars. That is cleaner kindling, but it's kindling nonetheless. It's certainly better than the refined carbohydrates, junk food, all the carbage that many people are having in the standard western diet. But just because something's better doesn't necessarily mean it's optimal. So you're still metabolically inflexible. You're burning on cleaner kindling, but you're still metabolically inflexible, meaning you are not burning fat for fuel at all, or it's temporary and it's short lived. So metabolic flexibility, the opposite of metabolic inflexibility or metabolic rigidity is the ability to burn fat and burn sugar for fuel. So that is akin to like a log on the fire. If you're putting a log on the fire, it's more sustainably burning. You're going to get energy longer, more lasting, more resilient, more sustainable. But there's a time and place for clean kindling. So I'm not saying everybody always has to be in fat burning mode. Metabolic flexibility is, as its name implies, the flexibility to burn both clean kindling and burn fat for a fuel both healthy fats from the foods that we eat and or the fats we need to burn from our bodies, if that is a goal or a need for that person's body to be able to burn fat and become a fat burner endogenously as well. So this is really the heart of what I'm talking about in intuitive fasting is that I want people to have that grace, have that lightness, have that flexibility in their life. Because because it's not just a way to sustainably burn fat, which it is. But it's also a way to feel great. It's also a way to, as the title of the book insinuates, Intuitive Fasting. How can fasting be intuitive? How can eating be intuitive? It's nice to say I'm an intuitive eater. I mean, I want that to be beyond just a nice sounding, fluffy, vapid sound bite for Instagram. I want it to be a true thing. Metabolic flexibility is fertile ground for an intuitive eating because when you're metabolically inflex, it's really hard to discern what is your intuition and what's not. Is it hangriness or intuition? Is it hormone balance or intuition? Is it inflammation or intuition? I mean, stress eating is not intuitive eating. Emotional craving eating is not intuitive eating. So I want people to hear that still small voice of their intuition. But they have to have metabolic flexibility to actually do that. So that's what I'm exploring in Intuitive fasting.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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