How many of you live off coffee and energy drinks? Feel exausted all the time and have to rely on sleep medications to fall asleep at night? Feel sick to the stomach with excessive bloating, gas and digestive problems? Have done every fad diet in the book only to end up heavier, unhappy and feeling lost?
STOP THE MADNESS! All of these things disrupt the 'homeostasis' in the body! Living in a constant state of up and downs from dieting to binging to over-cardioing all in the name of weight loss will NEVER work long term and will damage your metabolic system and your ability to lose weight!
Signs of metabolic Damage
· Weak nails
· Hair falling out
· Feeling lost
· Gaining weight while on dieting calories
· Fatigue
· Irritability
· General Malaise – you feel terrible
· Gas
· Nausea
· Bloating, cramps
· Digestive problems, digestive
stress, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome,
· Menses abnormalities, colitis,
and Crohn’s disease
· Living on caffeine or stimulants throughout
the day
· Anti anxiety medication
· Anti depression medication
· Interrrupting sleep patterns
· Gaining weight, especially cellulite even
while doing consistent training & diet
· Require sleep medications
The good news? You CAN reverse Metabolic Damage!! As discussed on the show, here are 10 strategies to reverse metabolic damage - and not to mention, ALL of these strategies are things we encourage EVERY day to move toward a healthy, lean lifestyle!
1.) Eat more! You need a caloric deficit for weight loss, but there are
different ways to achieve a deficit. You can eat less. You can exercise
more. You can do a little bit of both. In addition, how specifically
you eat less and exercise more makes all the difference. The smart way is
to avoid crash diets and pursue slower but steady fat loss with an eye on
body composition. Start with a conservative deficit of only 20% below your
maintenance level. Use a larger deficit only if you’re seriously
overweight. Increase the deficit incrementally when you need to, ideally
not going above 30% under maintenance. When you add in resistance
training, cardio training and an active lifestyle, your calorie
expenditure (metabolism) goes way up, and that’s how you can legitimately
eat more and keep getting leaner.
2.) Eat
clean & natural. The long term daily consumption of refined,
artificial foods in large amounts will eventually take its toll on your
health. When hormonal health declines, body composition outcomes are worse
during weight loss and risk of metabolic damage may increase. Furthermore,
most natural, unprocessed foods, especially vegetables and lean proteins,
are lower in caloric density and can lead to spontaneous decreases in
caloric intake compared to the standard American diet (S.A.D.) For
optimal body composition results and metabolic and hormonal health,
it’s not just about calorie quantity, but also calorie quality. Don’t
focus on one to the neglect of the other. Eat CLEAN foods in their whole form (lean proteins like chicken, fish, turkey, steak - eat fruits, vegetables and healthy fats like olive oils, salmon, nuts and avocados - eat complex carbohydrates like whole grains, sweet potatoes and whole wheat products). Does eating clean mean you have to eat 'boring'? NO! Check out our recipes and look at great 'clean eating' resources like 'Clean Eating Magazine'
3.) Eat
regularly: Eat like an athlete! Spread your
total daily calories into 4-6 small meals per day and be
sure to include a source of lean protein with every major meal. But
whatever meal schedule you choose, consistency is of great importance:
studies have shown that haphazard eating patterns are at least partially
responsible for metabolic disarray including decreased thermic effect of
feeding and dis-regulation of blood sugar and insulin.
4.) Eat
carbs. Instead of the carb-phobic diets that millions of people still
follow (which can actually suppress hormones like thyroid and leptin), EAT carbs. Complex Carbohydrates like those found in whole grains like oats, brown and wild rice, qunioa and other complex carbs like potatoes, whole grain products, legumes, etc. are our body's energy source and seek to not only keep you FULL with the fibrous components in the food, but also help to break down proteins and fats in the body. Carbohydrates, proteins and healthy fats work TOGETHER to break one another down and a healthy diet includes all of them.
5.) Take
a break: Avoid prolonged periods in aggressive caloric deficits. If
you have a lot of fat to lose and it’s going to take more than 3 months to
hit your long term fat loss goal, don’t do it all in one stretch. Take a
week at maintenance calories after 12 weeks of restricted dieting. This –
raising your calories - is the most counter-intuitive of all the
metabolism-rebuilding strategies but it’s one of the most important. This is the same concept we use with your 'cheat meal' - eating clean all week and giving your body the break it deserves with your cheat meal helps your metabolism to fire up rapid speed because of the change in its normal plan. The same is true with your calorie intake and ratios throughout the day. After a few weeks, change up your caloric intake, ratios, nutrients in meals, etc.
6.) Get
serious about weight training: In the physique world, weight training
is a foregone conclusion. But in the everyday world of non-athletes,
weight loss = “diet,” not weight loss = “lift weights.” For
Suzy soccer mom, or average Joe beer belly "lift weights to lose
weight” probably doesn't even compute. But weight training is so important
for metabolic health and better body composition, that if you were forced
to choose one or the other – cardio or weights – the weightlifting would
be a NO BRAINER decision. If you have a concern about metabolic damage and
you’re not weight training yet, there’s nothing else to discuss. Start
pumping iron and building muscle first, then get back to me
7.) Do
Cardio. Don’t Over-Do It. If you’re overweight, you can sometimes get
away with very low calorie diets without adverse effects if you’re not
doing tons of cardio on top of it. Endurance athletes get away with
high volume training because they provide ample amounts of food to fuel it
(man, those guys can EAT!) Dieters and physique competitors on the other
hand, often semi-starve themselves while doing huge amounts of cardio at
the same time. Exercise research says that extreme
amounts of cardio during a diet can actually cause the same type of
adaptive metabolic downshift as eating too little food. For example: Fitness competitors have been known to do 2 or even 3 hours of cardio a day before
competitions. This kind of overtraining can be counter-productive when you
look at the metabolic damage and “cardio dependency” potential. And
remember, if you’re not diligent, you can out-eat almost any amount of
exercise. If you’re doing upwards of an hour of cardio a day and not
seeing significant fat loss, you’d better take a close look at your diet
first before you rush to add more cardio.
8.) Balance
stress with recovery: It's ok to have stress in your life - the only
people who don't have stress are dead people. Training is a form of
physical stress and it's a good type of stress if you recover from it.
That's the key point: If you don't balance each period of stress with a
period of recovery, you will be in dire straits. If you add stress on top
of a metabolic damage situation, it's like an amplifier, multiplying the
usual symptoms, the most well known of which is increased cortisol, the
catabolic stress hormone (that causes hunger and cravings). Stress without adequate recovery has been linked
to insulin resistance (diabetes), increased fat storage and decrease in energy.
9.) Get
adequate sleep: In the past several years, the amount of new
information coming out of research centers about the association between
sleep and fat loss is staggering. Short sleep and sleep deprivation affects you 'hunger' hormones (cortisol) and may affect hormones regulating metabolism.
The study that really got my attention was when scientists at the
University of Chicago compared 5.5 hours per night to 8 hours per night
and the short sleepers lost more of their weight as lean body mass at the
same caloric deficit. Do NOT overlook the importance of 7-8 hours of
quality sleep per night for better body composition and metabolic health.
(NOTE: These last 3 points - overtraining + continuous stress without
recovery + sleep deprivation - all at the same time, while on a calorie
restricted diet, are what I call the metabolic "trifecta of
doom")
10.) Gradually add healthy lifestyle changes: Don't go 'cold turkey' or the likeliness you will fail is high. Incorporating healthy changes like clean eating, consistent frequent meals, strength training and a healthy cardio plan WILL make a life changing difference for you, your body and your overall feeling of wellness. But you are more likely to be successful if you take things slowly, one step at a time instead of trying to do them all at once, feeling overwhelmed and going right back to damage mode.
Metabolic damage and metabolic burn out are extremely prevalent in todays crash diet society. What is right and what is wrong by way of health and nutrition is confusing and information is skewed in every different media outlet. Bottom line - its proven. Its science. Eating 'clean' is the way our bodies were meant to eat - before there were Hostess processed desserts and Red Bull chemical sugar drinks - our bodies were created to eat REAL food. The over chemical, over processed, over sugared foods are making us unhealthy, overweight and damaging our bodies. But there is a way OUT and it starts right here!
In Health,
Nutritionistas
