Your individual metabolic rate (or identity) at any given time is an accumulation of everything you’ve done or are doing up till now.

How many diets you’ve been on, the nutritional quality of your food, how active you are day to day (not just ‘exercise’ time) , kids, age, general health issues, stress levels etc

Your body is constantly surveying and making adjustments to your metabolic rate based on 2 main areas:

External and Internal Stress

It doesn’t matter if this is stress from work, lack of sleep, money problems, relationship issues, not enough nutrients, too much or too little exercise, a schedule that is too hectic, no downtime, not enough sun, illness, injuries, allergies, any inflammation from any reason or whatever.

If stress is an issue in any way, THIS IS GOING TO AFFECT YOUR RESULTS BIG TIME

Energy Intake, Storage and Usage

Your metabolic rate is ever changing based on so may things.
Metabolic Adaptation is normal and you need to work with that to keep getting results. The rate doesn’t just change from week to week, it changes from day to day and from minute to minute.

Any kind of table or formula you’re using to calculate your calorie requirement is at best an inaccurate guess or estimation

Adaptations include:
– less/more calories (energy) used/stored/ released, not just what you consumed or ‘exercised’ away
– hunger increasing or decreasing
– cravings and other food habits up or down – other changes to hormonal activity not related to hunger/fullness (such as reproductive etc)
– energy increase or decrease
– and of course rate of fat loss or storage

Your metabolism is like a thermostat. It is constantly adjusting up and down on a minute by minute basis. Maths and chemistry formulas that estimate it are missing the point.

So what can you do about it?

If you’re like many of my clients, you suspect you have a broken or reduced metabolism. But your thermostat may just need correcting.

I like to think of this in terms of a series of toggles you can adjust to get it working more in your favour.

Remember that it’s not broken and doesn’t’ need fixing. It is adapting to what YOU are throwing at it and that is perfectly normal to do so. Even if that is so frustrating when you’re overweight.

You can’t measure metabolism without a lab and lots of testing, but you can do many things to help ensure that your metabolism isn’t the factor holding you back

Luckily (and not surprisingly) the very things you do to keep your metabolism firing as fast as possible are the very same things that get you fast AND sustainable fatloss. Let’s get to adjusting those toggles.

Here are some of them:

• Enough sleep and recovery. I put this first because it is so so important. Everyone wants to know what to eat and start an exercise program. While those are important too, getting enough sleep is number one vital. If you’re not getting enough sleep, NOTHING else will work
• Stress Reduction . This goes hand in hand with sleep and recovery. You probably think this doesn’t effect you. But you most likely have either high cortisol levels or they are out of rhythm. More sleep will help, as will saying no more often, spending time doing relaxing things, meditation, yoga, pilates and walking (without worrying about time or distance) More nutrients will also help
• Daily Movement. More daily movement is one of the top three things you can do to improve your metabolism. This means moving more in your every day – not doing an exercise routine. Walking to work, walking at lunchtime, taking the stairs, standing instead of sitting, walking to delver messages rather than emailing or calling, carting groceries and so on. More and more and more every day movement. Aim for 10000 steps per day minimum. If you’re doing that easy, aim for 15000.
• Nutritional Status and Gut Health. You need to think about your food in terms of nutritional value. If you’re living on primary white, cream and yellow coloured foods (think about it) you are so low in many nutrients its not funny. Add more veggies and salads and fruits. And then add some more. This will not just increase the vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients you consume, but also increase fibre – super important too. There are of course other foods you need to add as well. But if you loaded up on more vegetables/salads and fruits every day, you’d be well on your way.
• Calorie Level, Macro Nutrient adjustment and Nutrient Timing Making sure you’re eating enough calories (even if keeping them lower to lose body fat) is vital as well as making sure that within those calories you are getting enough protein, carbs and fats. (I’ll go into this more in future articles)
• Hydration. The easiest way to make sure you are well hydrated is to drink more water. Coffee and tea count too as long as you don’t have too much. Herbal teas are great too. Limit drinks that contain calories or artificial sweeteners. Again, I’ll go into this more in another article soon
• Exercise and Training. A properly planned exercise program can boost your metabolism both in the short term in the time during and straight after the training session, but also over time. Fit people generally ahve faster metabolisms, and a larger muscle mass ( you don’t need to have huge muscles) also increases your metabolic rate.

You can see that the steps to improve your metabolism are the same as I’d recommend to lose weight. They work hand in hand.

Depending on how much weight you have to lose, if any, more calories (food) less food, more training or less training could be in order.

As a coach, I can look at what you’re doing, where you are now and where you want to go to help balance out all of the above.

While you may think you just need to exercise more and eat less, this is NOT always the case. In fact, you may need to do some metabolism maintenance first and then begin your transformation program which will lead to faster results.

In fact, the challenge we’ve just started now – many are staring by eating MORE than they were before and some have been instructed to TRAIN LESS.

Who knew??? Need help with this. Please message me today or any time. [email protected]

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