Fat loss and metabolism

Your metabolism is important.

Wiki definition, it is: the set of life-sustaining chemical transformations within the cells of living organisms. The three main purposes of metabolism are the conversion of food/fuel to energy to run cellular processes, the conversion of food/fuel to building blocks for proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and some carbohydrates, and the elimination of nitrogenous wastes.

Simplified, this is the maintenance of all living cells in the body that give life. Your body gets the energy it needs from the food that you eat by the process of metabolism and it is influenced by age, gender, the food you eat, muscle to fat ratio, physical activity level and your hormones.

A lot of people that have crash dieted, or chronically under eaten/eaten the wrong things are subjected to a slower metabolism, which in effect, slows down the body and makes it less effective at burning food to provide the energy needed to live.

For people who have never had an issue with nutrition and eating, metabolism is not usually an issue, unless they are subject to chronic periods of stress - more on this later, so fat loss and improvements are seen a lot faster.

For people with a damaged metabolism and a fat loss goal, this can be an issue. The body is essentially on economy mode, storing calories for energy, instead of thinking it has enough fuel to burn freely to do what it needs to do, and this can cause slower than expected, or no results despite best efforts.

What tends to happen at this point, is that the person with the fat loss goal, cuts calories even more and increases exercise in the hopes to kick start results - but this then fails and only lasts maybe a few weeks before progress and or energy levels stall again.

This can be a really difficult phenomenon to get your head around as the way to reverse this, is to reverse diet... and the idea of eating more calories at first seems counter intuitive to your goals

Any self-respecting nutrition coach / trainer will first look at the nutrition history of the individual to understand what’s going on and help to work out resting calories (the amount your body needs at rest just to survive in bed all day) and this figure alone, can prove to be alarming for someone that has a chronic history of undereating.

On top of this, add an activity multiplier to the equation and it can become even scarier, but the reason this is necessary, is to teach the body that it is ok, and it has enough fuel in the tank to burn to kick start all of the cellular processes back into action and restore harmony in the body.

Obviously it is a lot more complex than this, but without baffling you with science, the idea is simple.....

Eat more to exercise more, or eat less and exercise less (in other words rest)

Now, for the person on a mission to lose weight, resting is not an option, therefore fuel must be increased to get to the end result, but, metabolism needs to fix itself first, before seeing any miraculous numbers on the scales. - Conclusion, metabolism wasn’t damaged overnight, it won’t fix overnight either.

As a Personal Trainer with a vested interest in nutrition, there is always a reason why we tell you the things we tell you to do and it's always in line with your best interests and goals, otherwise before you know it, you will end up on 500cals a day exercising 6days a week to try and outsmart a damaged metabolism.... big fail.

The truth is as I said above, when you have a sluggish/damaged metabolism, it's not an overnight fix to that miraculous beach body, you have to teach your body that it's ok to eat, that there is enough fuel to feed the fire that you want to create with your training... without "overeating" which is where we coach you on the calculations and multipliers for your calories - these figures are tailored to the individual, and ensure that enough fuel is being eaten, but not over-eaten.

Sure you can lose weight with diets like weight watchers or Cambridge, hell even we could tell you to live off 1200 cals a day, but we would be selling you the idea of scale weight and eventually, it slows down your metabolism and so you revert back to your old weight once you stop "dieting" and start eating again... it's unfortunately an all too common vicious cycle.

But if you follow these protocols and see no improvements whatsoever in measurements and composition (not scale weight) after around 6 weeks at least, then ideally you need to start looking beyond training and dieting into the following:

Stress

No matter how perfect your nutrition and training, if you are stressed/miserable/moody/unhappy in your job/home/relationships etc.... this will win hands down anyway and kill your results.

The reason for this is because chronic stress elevates cortisol and adrenaline - stress hormones. Exercise releases these stress hormones too, because exercise is a stress to the body, however, we need cortisol, it’s not our enemy. These hormones are the fight or flight hormones that kept our ancestors safe from the sabre tooth tiger, and also keep you alert in times of danger and get us out of bed in the morning.

Too much of the hormone cortisol puts stress on the adrenal glands, which then depletes the body of vitamin C, impacts the immune system, affects our ability to utilise the food we eat and how we store fat, impacts blood sugar levels, cardio vascular and gastro intestinal functions as well as the protective, anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant hormones, not to mention a whole host of other nasty stuff which if left untreated, can cause long some serious term health implications - this is a must to be addressed for any sort of fat loss goal.

Carbohydrate consumption and timing

Are your meals too carbohydrate rich when you aren't training? Carbs can help you train, but they also retain water and glycogen stores (the energy in your cells that you need to train and move) which can add water weight when over consumed. A mars bar or a piece of bread / oats / too much fruit etc... once it has gone through your digestive system, is identical to how it is used by the body.... as glucose (I.e. Sugar,) this then can cause issues with your insulin hormone, which is a growth hormone that is useful before and after training, not so useful for fat loss anywhere else.

Fixing your leptin/ghrelin hormones (hunger hormones)

Historically, crash dieting and metabolic damage can massively affect these hormones and as such can mess with your brain to signal when you are hungry and full.... fixing your metabolism helps to repair these hormones to put you more in tune with your body.

Fixing your resting calorie multiplier

Those 1.375 lightly active / 1.55 moderately active multipliers may need adjusting and looking at whether you really are as active as you say

Revisiting the calories you are counting

Most people forget to add the sauces, the milk in their coffee, the sugar in their tea, the side of broccoli, the soft drinks and condiments etc.... these can all add up and pull you over those goals without realising. Also guessing the weight of your food can cause issues with calorie tracking...

Completely stopping the calorie counting and going back to basics.

I.e. eating whole foods, no processed junk, laying off alcohol and take outs etc... Being honest about what you are eating and when and facing any demons head on that you have with food.

So you see, metabolism plays a huge role in not just fat loss, but wellness too. Fat loss isn't easy, there are SO many factors to consider, but the main one starts with your stress level and correct nutrition. Get these right, and miracles will start to happen.

Love, light and Burpees

Ascension PT