Catherine Shanahan - The Fatburn Fix: Boost Energy, End Hunger, and Lose Weight by Using Body Fat for Fuel

Fix Your Fatburn, Fix Your Health

Claudia was a twenty-seven-year-old bookkeeper and mother of two with a weight problem. In college, shed gain a few pounds after holiday parties and trips, but shed quickly get back to normal weight by cutting down her portion sizes and going to the gym. After her second baby, however, that strategy wasnt working. In spite of cutting soda and working with a trainer, it was all she could do to keep the weight gain trajectory from climbing higher and higher.

Carl was a thirty-two-year-old software engineer, high school basketball coach, and first-time dad who thought he was in perfect healthuntil a workplace wellness screening uncovered high blood pressure and low HDL cholesterol levels. His doctor told him he needed to lose weight and buy a prescription that Carl was hesitant to take, so he wanted my opinion on the best way forward.

Cathy was a forty-six-year-old music teacher whose doctor told her losing 10 pounds would help to control her blood pressure. She came to me deeply depressed. After exercising regularly for six months, following a program of protein shakes, salads, and lean meat, she had managed to lose weight. Nevertheless her last round of blood work showed she was now prediabetic. I worked so hard to do everything right. Whats wrong with me? she asked, near tears in a broken voice.

Cindy was sixteen and had been overweight since she was eight. Shed just found out her irregular, painful periods were due to polycystic ovarian disease, and her mother brought her to me hoping there was something Cindy could do besides take birth control pills to fix her hormone problems.

Charlie was sixty-four and planning to retire next year. He came to me after the shock of his life. What seemed like a bout of his usual heartburn landed him in the hospital with a diagnosis of a minor heart attack. Now he had a stent and four new prescriptions. Hed never been particularly concerned about his weight or his diet, although he knew both were unhealthy, but now he was worried he wouldnt be around to enjoy his grandchildren.

These are just a few examples of the kinds of folks I see all day, every day in my medical practice. And while it may seem as if they each have different problems, the reality is their stories are all rooted in the same common soil: theyve lost their ability to burn body fat for fuel. Our ability to burn body fat is an underappreciated gift of nature and an unrecognized requirement for metabolic health that we almost never think aboutuntil it starts to slip away.

Losing the ability to burn body fat traps you in a downward spiral of reduced energy, increased hungerwhich drives overeatingand slowly worsening health.

You might assume you can burn body fat just fine, or at least you could if you got into a good diet and exercise routine. But what most people dont know is that exercising rarely restores your ability to burn body fat to its full capacity. Whats more, most diets out there will make blocked fatburn even worse.

Let me repeat that. Most diets actually damage your metabolism further. Not only does this set you up for weight regain once you complete the diet, it can also cause entirely new health problems you never had before.

Ive seen it time and again. People follow any number of diets that have worked for them in the past, diets that successfully enabled them to lose 10, 20, even 30 pounds or more. At some point, having regained that weight again, theyll try the same routine, still thinking theyre doing all the right things. But this time, their body wont respond the same way. The pudge refuses to budge.

And thats often when people notice other new health problems developing. Patients often repeat the very same phrase to me: Its like my body is starting to fall apart. You may be diagnosed with prediabetes, like Cathy the music teacher was, or thyroid disease or another hormone problemor even an autoimmune disease. Alternative practitioners often discuss adrenal fatigue or candida. When treatments for these conditions fail to provide the hoped-for results, many people get an inkling that theres still something else going on that nobody has yet discovered. Thats what this book is about.

The reality is that todays gold-standard dietary advice has caused your metabolic problems. As youve followed the advice, your metabolism has become increasingly dysfunctional, and less able to do its number one job: supply your cells with energy.

Energy is the basis of health. When your energy declines, you change how you think and behaveever so gradually that you may not be able to pinpoint when it began. Your energy-deprived brain becomes relatively less capable of dealing with emotional stress, problem solving, and planning. You may grow hungrier and prone to overeating. You may be less interested in activity and exercise. You can even experience difficulty with basic body functions like digestion, blood flow regulation, sleep, and hormone balanceall of which require energy. The list of over-the-counter or prescription medications starts to grow.

Experience has taught me that blocked fatburn is more than just an inconvenience that makes you feel bad and gain weight. It puts you on course to develop type 2 diabetesa disease thats now taking over the country. Type 2 diabetes is not just a problem of high blood sugar, as we commonly believe. Its a disease that develops as your body loses its ability to use fat for fuel. Its also a disease that multiplies your risk of hospitalization, causing dangerously high blood pressure, nerve damage, learning and memory problems, joint degeneration, failure to eliminate toxins, skin diseases, heart attacks, heart failure, kidney failure, liver disease, strokes, and even cancer. Theres no part of your bodyno tissue, organ, or metabolic functionthat is immune from complications of type 2 diabetes, which is to say theres no part of you that blocked fatburn leaves untouched.

Fortunately, just as our metabolism crumbles under the influence of a terrible diet, it begins to heal the moment we set our diets right. Just as we can lose this metabolic ability to convert body fat into cellular energy, we can also gain it back. Doing so will not only enable you to lose weight and keep it off for good; it will greatly improve and extend your life.

When I first trained in clinical medicine nearly thirty years ago, weight was thought to be mainly a cosmetic problem, not something that shortened your life. The only accepted complications of being overweight were excessive wear and tear on the joints and skin conditions as a result of moisture retention in body creases. Obesity was something doctors like me would see just a few times a month, and it was mostly a concern for womenmany men seemed to enjoy being larger.

Decades later, its widely accepted that most chronic disease is associated with obesity, and that losing weight can help alleviate suffering and sickness of all kinds. Still, even though its clear how important it is for many people to lose weight, were not very good at helping to get the job done.