BayouHealth: HOW TO RAMP UP YOUR METABOLISM THIS SUMMER

Part Two: Adding Fuel To The Fire

article by SHANNON DAHLUM | photos by JAMIE DAHLUM

Last month we talked about the first step to getting your metabolism moving more efficiently; optimizing your sleep routine. I hope you’ve been focusing on that throughout the month of June and are ready to dive in to the next step! This month we’re talking about how to stoke your metabolic fire with food.

You’ve probably always understood that in order to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. That’s true, and it sounds simple enough, but it can actually be very complicated to accomplish. This is because your body doesn’t work like a bank account. At the bank, you simply need to put more money in than you spend in order to build wealth, while spending more than you save will lead to debt. But your body is a living organism, and it’s designed to adapt for survival. When you initially deprive your body of calories, you’ll see your fat stores diminish, but over time, it becomes more and more difficult to keep losing weight.

Your bank account doesn’t adapt to your spending habits, but let’s imagine what would happen if it did, and it’s number one priority was to prevent you from going into debt. If you had $1,000 in your account and you withdrew $200 from the ATM machine, you’d be left with $800 in your account. If you did the same thing the next day, you’d be down to $600. So far, so good! Your bank account is dwindling as expected. But after your third day in a row of withdrawing $200, your account would start to figure out that at the rate you’re spending cash, you’ll be in debt in only three more days. Since your account’s top priority is to not allow you to go into debt, it’s going to control your spending for you; obviously, you can’t be trusted.

When you visit the ATM machine on day four and request to withdraw $200 again, it will only spit out $100. You’ll probably get mad and kick the machine, but it’s really just protecting you from your poor choices! If you keep going back to the ATM machine day after day, it will continue to give you less and less, until eventually, it won’t give you anything. Of course this leads to more kicking and cussing, but at least your account is protecting you from going into debt!

Your body works just like this imaginary adaptable bank account. Sure, it’s frustrating to continue dieting and depriving yourself without seeing the weight loss you expect. This is happening, though, because your body is saving you from yourself! You obviously can’t be trusted to provide your body with what it needs, so it takes over and holds on to everything it can. It knows that at the rate you’re expending energy without replenishing it, there soon won’t be enough energy left to carry out vital functions. Since it can’t force you to eat more, it will instead prevent you from burning it by slowing your metabolism. Your calorie depleting diets have led to a slower metabolism instead of a leaner body.

Let’s go back to the imaginary adaptable bank account. Imagine you’ve withdrawn money consistently until you’re down to $50. Every time you request to withdraw $200, it shoots a few pennies out, but that’s it. If you want that ATM to allow you to take more more out, you’re going to have to put more in. Instead of focusing on how much you can withdraw every day, start putting money in consistently. Start by adding in only $10 every day for a week. Now your account will feel safe enough to allow you to withdraw $5 each day. As you continue to increase your deposits on a regular basis, the bank account will see that you’re no longer in danger of going broke and it will allow you to continue withdrawing more and more.

In order to get your body to continue burning energy so you can lose excess fat, you have to give it energy consistently so it doesn’t fear you’re going to run out. Your metabolism works more like a campfire than your bank account; in order to keep it burning, you have to continuously feed it; without enough fuel, the fire will go out. So what do you need to eat in order to get that fire burning again? In a nutshell, you need three to four meals daily, each containing protein and veggies, with healthy fats at most meals, and complex carbs at some meals.

If you have a long history of deprivation diets and now struggle to lose weight at all, it’s a good indiction that your metabolism has slowed down. Your body is holding onto energy rather than burning it, because it’s been given the signal that it’s in “starvation mode”. Decreasing calories even further or incorporating intermittent fasting will only exacerbate the problem! What your body needs is something called a “reverse diet”. This is where you slowly increase your calorie intake to get your body out of “starvation mode” and get your metabolism moving again. You need to add fuel to that fire to get it to burn hotter!

MEASURING PORTION SIZES OF PROTEIN, FAT, CARBS & VEGGIES

PROTEIN: 1-2 PALM SIZED PORTIONS AT EACH MEAL
How do you increase your calorie intake without gaining a lot of excess weight? By very slowly increasing your intake and starting with protein. Protein is less likely to be stored in your body as fat than carbohydrates or fat, and more likely to go toward regenerating new cells. It’s important to begin your day with a serving of protein, so no more skipping breakfast! Add in another serving at lunch and one more at dinner. If needed, have a fourth serving between meals, too. If you’ve been eating a good deal less than this for a long period of time, then increase your amounts slowly. Start by adding in protein at breakfast and just stick with that for a week or two. When it feels comfortable, begin adding it to your lunchtime meal until that’s comfortable, etc. Continue increasing your servings until you’re consistently eating three to four meals daily, including a serving of protein at each one.

Good sources of protein include all varieties of animal products, like poultry, beef, pork, fish, shellfish, dairy, and eggs. Always choose organic, pasture raised or wild animal products when possible. Powdered protein supplements are a great option for increasing your protein intake when you don’t have an appetite for including more food. A good trick is to add a serving of Vital Proteins collagen peptides to your morning cup of coffee for a simple protein boost to start off your day. If you prefer eating only plant based sources of protein, you’ll need to consume almost twice the amount of protein to give your cells what they need. While plant foods are undoubtedly a very healthy choice, the protein in them isn’t as easily assimilated and used by the body as animal sources are.

VEGGIES AND FRUIT: 2-3 FIST SIZED PORTIONS AT EACH MEAL
Once your protein servings are adequate, shift your focus to fruits and vegetables. Plants contain a wide variety of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals that are necessary to support the health of your mitochondria. Focus mostly on vegetables and limit your fruit intake to two daily servings or less if you suffer from metabolic disfunction.

Produce with especially bright or rich coloring is full of protective antioxidants. Two antioxidants in particular, called alpha lipoic acid (ALA) and coenzyme Q10 (coQ10) support energy production and the ability of your mitochondria to renew and multiply. Some plants that contain ALA include spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, beets and yams. CoQ10 can be found in spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, oranges, and strawberries. It may also be a good idea to explore supplementing with these two antioxidants to give your mitochondria some added support until your metabolism begins to function more efficiently.

FAT: 1-2 THUMB SIZED PORTIONS AT MOST MEALS
Consuming adequate amounts of healthy fats is vital for hormonal balance and metabolic function. The standard American diet is skewed toward fats from vegetable and seed oils, which are high in omega-6 and omega-9 fats, and this leads to inflammation and damage to the mitochondria. To protect the health of your cells, you need to increase your consumption of omega-3 fats while decreasing those omega-6 and 9 fats.

Vegetable and seed oils are so abundant because they’re cheap, have a long shelf life, and can be practically tasteless. They’re ubiquitous in processed foods and most restaurant foods. Although they’re cheap to your wallet, the cost to your health is high. Because of how they’re processed, most of these oils are already damaged before you even consume them and they go on to damage your cells once inside your body. Check the labels of all of your foods, and do your best to avoid them! Oils to look out for: canola, corn, soybean, sunflower, peanut, cottonseed, safflower, grapeseed, or anything simply called “vegetable oil.”

At home, use saturated fats for high heat cooking because they’re more stable and won’t be damaged with heat. Extra virgin coconut oil or butter and lard from organic, pasture raised animals are good choices for use with high heat. Extra virgin olive oil can be used for low heat cooking or drizzling on foods after cooking. Avocado, macadamia and walnut oil can be used for salad dressings or other cold uses. Always look for extra virgin, cold pressed varieties of these oils, and include one to two servings at most meals.

Seek out whole food sources of omega-3 fats, too, from wild caught fatty fish (like wild Alaskan salmon) and avocados. Eggs from pasture raised chickens and meat from pasture raised cows are also good sources of healthy fat. Consider supplementing with a high quality omega-3 fish oil to improve your ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 and 9 fats, and decrease inflammation.

COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES: 1-2 HANDFUL SIZED PORTIONS ON DAYS YOU’RE ACTIVE
When fat loss is the main goal, decreasing or completely avoiding carbs tends to be the most common approach taken. However, when an inability to lose weight is due to a metabolic deficiency or low thyroid function, avoiding carbs isn’t the answer. Low carb dieting has been shown to diminish thyroid function over time and lead to a slower metabolic rate. To increase your body’s ability to burn energy, the key is to consume the right amounts of carbs, from the right sources.

Carbohydrates are a fuel source for your body. To figure out how many carbs you should be eating daily, consider how much activity you’re getting. In general, on days you’re doing some sort of intense exercise (characterized by burning or fatigue in your muscles), you should include a serving of whole grains or starchy veggies at one or two meals. On days you’re fairly inactive or doing only lower intensity movement, like walking, you don’t need the added complex carbohydrates; you’ll be getting all you need from your vegetables and fruit.

Simple carbohydrates, like sugar and white flour, increase inflammation and damage to your mitochondria. These are the carbs that are best avoided altogether! Finding all the names these simple carbs can go by on ingredient labels can be very tricky; the simplest way to avoid them is to choose foods that resemble their natural state as closely as possible. For instance, oatmeal cookies don’t appear anywhere in nature, but whole oats do! Whole food sources of carbohydrates are rich with fiber and other nutrients that help support healthy energy production. Brown rice, oats, quinoa, legumes, bananas, potatoes and sweet potatoes are examples of healthy complex carbohydrate sources.

To sum it all up, for the month of July, you’ll be working on consuming three to four balanced meals each day. Do your best to eat at the same times every day, as well! When your body starts to rely on balanced meals at regular intervals, it will be less stingy with all that energy and much more willing burn it.

Once you’ve regained a healthy metabolism, you can briefly incorporate fat loss tools if needed, like ketogenic diets and/or intermittent fasting. But remember, your body always adapts to the inputs you’re giving it. If you rely on any type of weight loss protocol for an extended period of time, it’s going to stop working eventually. To keep your metabolic fire burning, you have to mix things up! Between low carb, low calorie or intermittent fasting cycles, always go back to the balanced nutritional habits above to “reset” your metabolism.

Be sure to check back next month for the third and final step of revving up your metabolism!