With dietary advice like “Eat 5-6 small meals a day”, and “Get lots of whole grains to get enough fibre” , being a sugar burner has become the new normal. Unfortunately this so-called “sound dietary advice” is not working for many people. We are walking around with plenty of available stored energy as fat but we are unable to access it. The result: we can’t lose weight even though we are “eating healthy”.

So what’s going on here? The best description I have some across so far is the wood fire analogy. This can be found in the book Primal Body, Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas. Imagine heating your home with only a wood stove. Natural sugars and carbohydrates are like the kindling and paper for the fire. Refined sugar, candy and alcohol are like gasoline. If we relied on this kindling as the primary source of fuel for our fire, the only way we could keep it going would be to stand by the stove with a mountain of fuel. Translation: when you eat carbohydrates in the form of sugars or grains you can easily be hungry every couple of hours and not be able to lose weight.

Now imagine putting a nice, big log on that fire. It burns at a steady rate and keeps going for hours -- freeing us up to leave the stove and live our lives. That is what it's like when we eat more healthy fat and protein. Changing the composition of our fuel allows us to access our fat stores for energy. We no longer have to be preoccupied with where our next meal or snack is coming from. We can start burning fat and then start losing fat to sustain our blood sugar.

Losing weight doesn’t need more discipline and willpower. You just need the right information and actionable steps to put it into practice.