The cells of your body run primarily on two things: oxygen and glucose. If either one of these is deficient in any way, hundreds of trillions of cells in your body will not work correctly. We need to fix this in order to burn fat.

The cells of your body produce something called ATP or, adenosine triphosphate. ATP is the

basic energy source for your body and allows each cell of your body to do what it does. Without ATP, nothing works correctly. In fact reduced ATP production is one of the hallmarks of the aging process.

While there are many nutrients that help with the production of ATP, one of the most fundamental components is oxygen. If your cells are not receiving adequate amounts of oxygen, nothing in your body will work correctly… including weight loss.

In conventional medicine, a decrease in the ability to deliver oxygen to cells is often called anemia, a condition referring to a quantitative and/or qualitative deficiency in red blood cells’ ability to deliver oxygen to the tissues and organs of the body.

While a full discussion on anemia and your body’s inability to deliver oxygen to cells is too extensive to cover here, you can start by getting your doctor to run standard blood work, which should include RBC, hemoglobin, hematocrit, MCV, MCH, MCHC, iron, ferritin and transferrin.

Blood sugar balance is the focus of virtually every diet book from The Pritikin Diet to The Atkins Diet. And with good reason: imbalanced blood sugar levels are at the crux of many health issues, including being overweight.

When talking about blood sugar balance, for simplicity’s sake, there are two possibilities:

Both of these imbalances result in elevated insulin.

When someone is insulin resistant, glucose can no longer effectively enter into the cell. Because blood sugar is not adequately entering the cells, it stays in general circulation rather than being stored. As a result, the body produces higher levels of insulin to remove glucose from the blood stream, which causes even greater metabolic dysfunction.

Individuals with hypoglycemic tendencies will have periods of low blood sugar and therefore surges of insulin, rather than chronically elevated levels. During periods of low blood sugar, adrenaline is often used to elevate blood sugar. This causes a sharp rise in glucose and insulin. The table below highlights some of the symptoms associated with each imbalance.

Hypoglycemic tendencies

Insulin resistant tendencies

Feels better after meals

Feels tired after meals

Sugar cravings before meals

Sugar cravings after meals

May have difficulty staying asleep at night

May have difficulty getting to sleep at night

There are numerous problems with insulin surges. Blood sugar imbalances are typically assessed through routine blood work run by your doctor.