It’s very simple in theory.  At any given moment, you can either be burning fuel from the last meal you ate, or you can be burning stored fat from your body.  When you reach a point of balance—where the amount of food you eat in a day perfectly matches the amount of fuel your body needs to burn in a day —you have weight maintenance.  If you are eating more than your body can burn, you have fat gain.  If you burn more than you store, you have fat loss.  Clearly, that is the goal for anyone who is attempting to lose weight.  You want to burn more fat than your body can store. HOW to actually do that is the big question that haunted me for years.  You can probably relate.  If it was easy to figure out, we would all be slim.  (Looks around.  Nope, we are not all slim yet.)  In fact, data shows that Americans are getting bigger and bigger over time. WHY can’t we figure this out, if it is as simple as just eating less food? There are many answers to this question, depending upon who you ask.  If you ask almost anyone you meet, the answer would be that we eat too much and don’t move enough.  That’s the conventional “eat less, move more” strategy.  It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?  All we have to do is eat less, and move more, and we will be thin and healthy.  We have all heard this advice and tried to follow it, and it is not quite so simple in practice.  Why is that? Well then, it must be because we lack self-control.  We all WANT to eat less and move more, which we have heard is the only way to lose weight.  So—if we are unsuccessful, it must be because we are spineless and gluttons and weak human beings.  Good news!  You are not a spineless glutton. I don’t even know you, and I know that to be true.  There is a lot going on in your body that is out of your control.  If you try to eat less over a long period of time, then certain hunger hormones are activated that make you want to eat and eat and eat.  It’s because your body LOVES you, and doesn’t want you to starve to death!  Your body doesn’t know that you are purposefully restricting your food intake, and it thinks you must be in some sort of terrible famine.  The hunger hormones cause you to seek out whatever food you can find, and that’s when you end up standing at the refrigerator door eating anything you can shove into your mouth.  Been there, done that.  That’s the moment when you feel like a weak failure with no self-control.  When you realize WHY you feel that way—because it is your body trying to keep you alive—you can cut yourself some slack. Others would say that we are fat because portions are bigger.  Well, I’m pretty sure that we do expect bigger portions these days, whether we are eating at home or at a restaurant.  All I have to do is think about my grandmother’s generation and how they ate.  When she died, I inherited her fine china.  You should see how small the serving bowls and serving platters are! The serving bowls are not much bigger than the cereal bowls you can buy now at most stores.  And the set has tiny little coffee cups and saucers!  There were no giant coffee mugs or huge travel tumblers back then for us to fill with creamy coffee goodness and drink on the go.  No, they would sit and drink their tiny little cups of coffee and then be done with it.  The set also comes with a cream and sugar service, and the cream pitcher holds less cream than I would use for one cup of coffee.  So, there is an element of truth in the idea of bigger portions.  Maybe if we had never started eating huge meals, we wouldn’t see such an obesity epidemic.  I have a feeling, though, that big portions are here to stay. I have also heard people blame the fact that we eat out more.  Just look at the number of restaurants all around us, particularly fast food restaurants. Not only are there more and more restaurant options to choose from, but we are busy.  Many families have either one single working parent or two parents who are both working. When you are working all day long, it can be hard to find the energy to come home and put a balanced meal on the table.  It is SO much easier to pick up something on the way home, or rely on packaged foods from the supermarket.  Unfortunately, many things we can pick up or prepare in a hurry are devoid of nutrients and not the highest quality. One other thought is that our food supply is different now.  In some areas, the soil has been depleted of nutrients due to years of farming, and we are genetically modifying many of our crops. We add corn syrup to almost everything, and there are artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners and preservatives in many store-bought foods.  Grocery store food is certainly different than what our great grandparents ate.  One popular diet book tells us that even wheat available today is different than it used to be.  So why does all of this matter?  I’ve read the theory that our bodies don’t recognize these artificially grown and developed items as “food.”  (Doritos, though delicious, are not picked from a Dorito bush.)  Because of that, our bodies are always in search of nutrients, which makes us hungrier.  We eat and eat, yet never feel satisfied. So:  our portions are bigger, we eat out more, we reach for convenience foods, and our food supply has changed.  Our hunger hormones are on overdrive because we have tried (unsuccessfully) to restrict what we are eating and we are eating processed junk.  I do think that all of these factors work together to make it harder for us to lose weight; however, I think there is an even bigger culprit, and this is the piece of the puzzle I was always missing when I tried to change WHAT I was eating. The problem is meal frequency:  we are constantly in a fed state, and never get a chance to access our stored fat.  By changing WHEN I was eating, I was able to lose weight while worrying less about WHAT I was eating. Why are we constantly in a fed state?  Think about it for a minute.  What is the latest dietary advice?  If you said, “eat frequent and small meals throughout the day to fuel your metabolism,” then you are right on target.  This very advice is why we are having so much trouble losing weight.  Are there people who can eat frequent small meals during the day and lose weight?  Of course there are!  I am not one of them, however, and if you have struggled with your weight, you probably aren’t one of them, either. In this book, you will learn how to FINALLY enter a fat burning state every day of your life, so that you can access the fat you have stored on your body.  The best news of all?  You can do it eating the foods you love.  Again, remember the name of the book:  Delay, Don’t Deny!