What is metabolic flexibility?

Metabolic flexibility is your metabolism’s ability to effectively switch between using carbs or fats as a source of energy. Most of us solely rely on sugar as fuel - too much of it, in fact. Burning sugar as your primary energy source is like using dirty fuel. It puts you on a blood sugar rollercoaster having to refuel often, otherwise you will get “hangry”. This consistent fuel burning also leaves behind pollution in the form of inflammation and eventually additional metabolic health problems like weight loss resistance, fatigue, diabetes, and more.

On the other hand, fat-burning is a more efficient fuel source for your metabolism. A byproduct of fat-burning metabolism is ketones, which your body and brain can use as an alternate slow-burning, efficient source of fuel. This allows you to consume less carbohydrates while also increasing your energy.

Metabolic flexibility gives you the opportunity to intuitively trust your body to function at optimal capacity. Whether you’ve eaten six minutes or six hours ago, eaten a higher carb meal or a higher fat meal, you can be confident in the fact that your body is taking care of itself and is able to respond in a healthy way from either fuel source.

So does metabolic flexibility help you lose weight? Perhaps the most important factor in weight loss is healthy metabolic function. Metabolic flexibility is important for overall health no matter what, but for those who are interested in weight loss goals, achieving metabolic flexibility is an important beginning step for successful and healthy weight loss.

How to achieve metabolic flexibility

Thankfully, many of the factors that impact your metabolism are within your control and can be changed to improve your body’s metabolic flexibility. As I talk about in detail in my book Intuitive Fasting, the food you eat and how often you eat, holds a lot of power over your metabolism. 

While everyone is different and your exact diet is going to look different than someone else's, in general practicing intermittent fasting and focusing on clean, whole food sources, eating fewer sugar and carbs, and eating more healthy fats, are going to do wonders for achieving metabolic flexibility.

How do you know if you have metabolic flexibility?

As you start on your journey to metabolic flexibility, you’ll start to experience some amazing health benefits of an optimized metabolism including:

• You no longer get “hangry”
• You have more energy
• You don’t get tired immediately after a meal
• You no longer experience “brain fog”

While these are some great benefits that you might experience, they don’t definitively tell you whether or not you’ve truly achieved metabolic flexibility or not.

That’s why I always recommend Lumen to my patients, and anyone else looking to understand their metabolism or achieve metabolic flexibility. Lumen is the world’s first hand-held, portable device to accurately measure metabolism. By using a special CO2 sensor and flow meter, Lumen is able to determine exactly what fuel your body is using to produce energy by measuring the CO2 concentration in your breath - the higher your CO2, the more carbs you are burning and the lower your CO2 the more fat you are burning. Founded by Ironman competitors and PHD’s in nutrition Michal and Merav Mor, it’s the first metabolism measurement device of its kind.

“A beautiful body is a well-functioning body. If you’re able to use the right fuel at the right time, you’ve achieved what’s called metabolic flexibility. Things you had a harder time processing before like a piece of pie, now become easier to metabolize. It’s a funny example but basically, it’s training your body to process carbs and fats more efficiently,” says the founder of Lumen, PHD in physiology and nutrition Michal Mor.

Since it is so easy to measure your progress at home or on the go, you are able to optimize every aspect of your metabolism. Here are some of my favorite ways that Lumen makes optimizing your metabolism easier than ever.

• Nutrition

Between counting macros, intermittent fasting, and the various diets and different ways of eating, there’s no doubt that nutrition can become a very confusing and overwhelming part of your life. Lumen aims to streamline that aspect of your life by providing daily, personalized meal plans based on your body’s real-time needs. Depending on your results, Lumen will be able to tell you exactly what to eat and when, so that you can continue on your way to metabolic flexibility.

• Sleep

Adequate sleep is essential for optimal health, including a thriving metabolism. Lumen is able to see your sleep patterns and its effect on your metabolism and provide insight on how to optimize your sleep for enhanced metabolic flexibility.

• Exercise

Lumen helps you optimize your workouts by showing you where you stand before and after a workout. By using Lumen, you’ll be able to see if you have enough energy or need to fuel up before exercising and how each workout affects your body and if you need to make any adjustments to future workouts.

Before Lumen, the only true way to measure metabolism and metabolic flexibility was in a clinical setting through an expensive breath test known as RER. But now, Lumen has put the power in the consumers hands with their scientifically-backed device that is proven to be as accurate as these gold-standard RER tests.

Lumen makes achieving metabolic flexibility as easy as one simple breath every morning. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s one of the easiest ways anyone can start reclaiming their health!

So if you’d like to learn more about metabolic flexibility, check out my book Intuitive Fasting and for a limited time, take advantage of this life-changing technology by getting $50 off your Lumen product today using code DRCOLE50.

As one of the first functional medicine telehealth clinics in the world, we provide webcam health consultations for people around the globe. 

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