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Let's break down what your metabolism is, and ways YOU can support your metabolism no matter what stage of life you are in. In this episode I debunk a few metabolic myths and empower you with simplified education and tools so you can keep your metabolism healthy.
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.
For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE.
What is Fit for Hiking?
Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional in Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness trail talk and adventure, hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active. Looking to level up your health, unlock your potential and become inspired to live your most vibrant life. You're in the right place. You're listening to the Fit for Hiking podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast. I'm so happy to have you here today for the fun topic of the metabolism. So we are going to be kind of diving into metabolic Health 101. What are some of the habits that you can adopt that really support a thriving metabolism? And I feel like this word gets thrown around so much that there is a lot of confusion. More than likely, you've said or heard someone say like, Oh, I just have a sluggish metabolism. I've always had a slow metabolism, or once I turned 30 or insert the age, my metabolism slowed down drastically. And yes, there are some things that can cause the slowing of the metabolism, but I kind of want to just shed some light on what does that really mean and what can we control? Because I think it feels very helpless if we're just like, well, my metabolism slowed down and that's it. And now I can't stay lean or I can't lose weight. And that just simply is not the case. We are in control of so much more than we think if we have the knowledge and then we implement. So I want to share some tips with you guys on what that can actually look like as far as practical application today. So just to start things off, what is the metabolism? It's kind of a confusing topic because it is the culmination of a lot of processes in our body. So the the dictionary definition of metabolism is chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life or the process by which the body changes food and drink into energy. So even when we're doing literally nothing, our metabolism is at work to supply energy to our bodies, processes our organs, just to keep us alive, even if we are sleeping, even if we're laying in bed all day. Okay, so that's kind of what the metabolism metabolism looks like. Just from a definition standpoint. So we are going to be talking about what are the types of things that affect the metabolism and how can we translate these to our everyday life. So here are some of the things that affect just your basal metabolic rate. It's going to be different for everyone based off of a lot of these factors. So things like your gender, your size, your height, larger individuals will naturally have higher metabolisms because they have bigger bodies that require more energy. Okay. 1s Your current amount of calories that you've consumed regularly in recent months or years. So if your body has adjusted to eating a lower amount of calories, then your basal metabolic rate will follow suit. Okay. So that's something that we'll kind of talk about a little bit is the concept of metabolic adaptation. 1s The muscle mass that you have on your frame muscle is metabolic tissue. So the more muscle mass that you carry on your frame, the more energy your body needs simply to maintain that muscle mass, which is why lifting weights is such an effective form of naturally boosting the metabolism as well as so many other benefits. Stress management absolutely can affect the metabolism cortisol levels, adrenals. So stress affects the body in so many ways. When our work to rest ratio is off, your body is going to really try to conserve energy by lowering your output, okay. And your gut health and hormones. So all of these different processes play a role. The gut microbiome regulates glucose metabolism, appetite and fat storage, and our hormones create a cascade of responses and chemical reactions in the body that can affect the metabolism as well. So if there's any sort of hormonal components going on, such as Hashimoto's hypothyroid, these things are going to affect the rate of our metabolism and and how efficient it is. Okay. So as far as actual habits that can affect our metabolism, first we're going to talk about fitness habits. So one thing that is really important when we're looking at building a healthy metabolism is using your workouts to focus on building muscle rather than simply to burn calories. So if we want to look at it like from an example standpoint, if we're trying to constantly just burn, burn, burn, but we're not doing anything that actually saves up or creates a lasting effect, then that's just not going to be effective, right? So we want to think about building muscle versus just simply trying to constantly manually burn calories through cardio because, yes, in the moment that's going to burn more calories, say in that 40 minute workout versus if you're doing a weightlifting workout. But the expenditure is momentary versus actually creating a longer lasting calorie burn through more muscle mass like we just talked about. More muscle mass equals a higher resting metabolic rate. So it's kind of like investing, right? You're investing in a longer term higher basal metabolic rate when we're lifting weights and we're not focused on that momentary, just like burning as fast as we can. Okay. 1s The more muscle that we can build, the more calories that we're going to burn simply by existing. So while cardio does burn more calories in the moment, it's proven to be less effective for long term fat loss because it doesn't actually do anything to improve our basal metabolic rate. And sometimes when we're doing it too frequently, if we're just a chronic cardio bunny, then we're going to actually lower our basal metabolic rate as a as a compensation effect because the output is so high. So our body adapts to that body's are super adaptive, and that's something that is constantly at play with the metabolism. So we're a little bit less about burning calories in your workouts and focus on progressing the load on your muscles week after week. Let nutrition play its part in achieving a leaner physique. So I think that that's a big common misconception is that exercise is the key to fat loss, right? Really, exercise is helpful when it comes to weight maintenance more than it is fat loss, because if we're trying to manually burn calories through cardio, like I just said, it's not going to be the best long term effect because of the body's compensation and it's not doing anything for long term the way that lifting weights does. So we want to think about our workouts as shaping the body, raising the basal metabolic rate through building muscle and not so much just trying to use workouts to burn fat. There's really no such thing as a fat burning workout, which is a phrase that unfortunately gets thrown around a lot in the fitness world. 1s Strategic amounts of cardio can be helpful. It's great for heart health, improving aerobic endurance for events like marathons or big hikes, but it can be a bit stressful on the female body when done in excess, increasing your cortisol, metabolic adaptation and increasing hunger as well. I did a whole episode all about how running is not the most effective means of weight loss because of those things, and it often is like kind of thought of to be the holy grail of fat burn or weight loss, and that's just simply not the case. So we want to, you know, use cardio to boost your mood, to enhance your aerobic capacity, all these things, but don't necessarily feel like you have to do it five times a week for 30 to 60 minutes at a time. If your goal is fat loss. Okay, focusing on non stressful daily movement such as walking, playing outdoors, hiking and gentle biking, things that allow you to get in the zone and really focus on that current moment. This has been proven to really help lower cortisol and support the metabolism in a way that is not stressful to the body. We're still moving, we're still increasing our total daily energy expenditure in a very non stressful manner, which is crucial. Okay. Stress is like the enemy of our metabolic health. So that's just something to keep in mind as we go through these. Okay. Let's talk about nutrition habits. Now, when it comes to supporting the metabolism, one is to focus on gut health. So the gut has been called the second brain because our gut microbiome is constantly communicating with our brain, which is then going to affect our hormones, our mood, our appetites, all of these different things. So healthy gut is really essential for a healthy mind, a healthy metabolism, a healthy body. So here are a few ways that you can focus on supporting your gut health, minimizing processed foods. This is not always going to be possible. We can't just like eat clean 100% of the time. But the more processed foods are part of your diet, the more likely your gut will suffer. So especially processed oils, we want to try to minimize polyunsaturated fats. These are typically found in things like seed oils and so checking labels of things because many packaged up foods, not all of them, but many of them are going to be laden with corn, oil, seed oil, things like that. So just kind of keeping that in mind that we don't want that to make up the majority of what we're consuming on a regular basis. So swapping seed oils for cooking fats such as butter, ghee and coconut oil is going to be a really good way to minimize those polyunsaturated fats that I was just talking about and go for healthy saturated fats that are going to be a lot less destructive on the on the gut. 1s The next tip is that if a food product has more than four ingredients, most of which you can't understand or pronounce, probably best to reconsider. You know, this isn't always the case. Sometimes you can see like those prepackaged, like frozen mixes of quinoa, veggies and things like that. And they're going to put some stuff in there just to make it last. And it's not the worst thing in the world in general. We just want things with less ingredient complexity, minimizing antibiotic usage when possible. So antibiotics are made to kill bacteria and the gut. The issue is that they don't only kill the bad bacteria, but they're also killing the good bacteria, which is really important for a healthy gut. So when we're constantly just throwing medications at our issues, this is going to create a cascade of issues within the gut. So really, only getting on antibiotics when absolutely necessary, trying to avoid just like popping Advil and Tylenol and these things all the time just because you have a small headache. And that next one is choosing quality antibiotic free meat sources when possible. And I know that this is a tough one because eating organic and eating antibiotic free meats, it does tend to be a little bit more expensive. Unfortunately, it's really frustrating. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt If you're able to make this happen financially awesome or if you have like a local farm that you can purchase from where you have friends that work for a farm or have their own meat sources, those are awesome options. And then adding in a probiotic or fermented food regularly such as sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir or a supplement form of a probiotic. These are all really great ways to support your gut health. The next, as far as nutrition habits is to aim for balanced meals and snacks. So every meal should be a blend of a protein source, a carb source and a fat source and veggies. Ideally balanced plate in this way is one of the best things to support the liver, which definitely has a lot to do with detox pathways, which we'll talk about in a little bit, which affects metabolism and just how your body's functioning as a whole. And it's the best way to make sure that you are keeping blood sugar balanced, hormones in check and hunger in check. If we're really just only eating like, you know, carb sources or carbon fat sources and we're not getting healthy fiber healthy proteins, then we're going to notice dips and energy spikes and energy. And it's just going to be like a roller coaster. 1s So snacks will be more of like a carb and protein combination usually, or a fat and protein combination. But in general we want to try to avoid is lonely carbs, which are going to spike insulin and leave the blood sugar unbalanced, which can really lead to some metabolic diseases over time. Diabetes is a prime example of this. 1s Um. Okay. Continuing on the next one is to start your day with food before coffee or with coffee. Ideally, you're grabbing something to eat within about an hour of waking. Especially as females, you know, a lot of the the test or, you know, trials done on intermittent fasting were done on men. And I'm not saying intermittent fasting is terrible, but if you are a menstruating age female and you know you're of reproductive age, then fasting might not be the best thing for you, especially if you are a higher stress individual. If you're in a higher stress season, if you're wanting to get pregnant, some of these things really make a difference as far as how you want to approach your eating. So I'm not by any means demonizing fasting, but in general, if you're a female and you're of reproductive age, I would definitely recommend having food earlier in the day for hormone health. So much information is coming out about how when we restrict calories for long periods of time really can affect our hormones as ladies. So I say that with love not to cause controversy. So eating about within an hour of waking and then having your coffee afterward. Ideally, this is going to help not spike cortisol first thing in the morning and create a bit of a imbalance with your cortisol. And it's also a really good thing to have an appetite first thing in the morning because it's a sign of a healthy metabolism. If we're never hungry, that's a sign that our metabolism is down, regulated as a response to not getting fed frequently enough. So never being hungry is not a good thing. Um, so practice eating close to the time of waking to help improve this. Sometimes it takes a bit of practice. You might not be hungry right away, but just starting with something small that's protein based as you have your coffee. And this is going to really help avoid blood sugar imbalance and avoid increased cortisol. The next one is to consume regular amounts of protein throughout the day. So not only does this aid in muscle protein synthesis, if you're doing some weightlifting, um, but protein has also been shown to have a higher thermic effect of food, meaning that your body's naturally going to burn more calories, simply digesting protein, which is pretty cool. So aiming for 20 to 30g spaced out evenly 4 to 5 times a day. Um, protein is also going to be the most satiating macronutrient of all. So compared to fats and carbs, it's going to allow you to stay fuller for longer, especially if you're pairing it with your fats, carbs and fiber micronutrient sources of veggies. On the next is to mind your macro micronutrients. So you've probably heard of the macronutrients, right? But we're just talking about protein, carbs and fats. Micronutrients are all the little tiny nutrients that are really in high demand. We need them in order to thrive. These are usually what our multivitamin pills are made up of, and they're usually found in things like vegetables, fruits, even like, you know, good red meats and starchy carbs and things that grow out of the earth. So here are a few vitamins and minerals to pay attention to. If you're taking notes, you can jot these down. These are going to support your hormonal and metabolic health at ladies Magnesium, Vitamin D, Selenium, Omega three fatty acids, zinc A, vitamin B complex, calcium choline, iron, copper and chromium. And in general, too, as far as electrolytes, these are your minerals. So I already mentioned magnesium, but sodium and potassium or the other really important electrolytes. If you are doing a lot of sweating, if you participate in a lot of like hot, sweaty workouts or long duration cardio especially, you got to make sure that you're replenishing your. Electrolytes, your minerals. So magnesium, sodium, potassium are going to be big ones that you want to focus on. Honestly, I like to take those every day, even if I'm not doing a lot of sweaty exercise, because especially if you're under a lot of stress, your minerals are going to be depleted more readily. So just something to keep in mind in stressful seasons. All right. Lifestyle habits is our next category for a thriving metabolism. So the first tip here is to try to remove synthetic chemicals or hormones from your environment. This I know can feel super overwhelming, at least to me. It's like, oh gosh, just another thing to worry about, right? But the more that I've learned about our toxic load, our toxic burden that we accumulate over time, you know, I heard it described from a professional in this field. She said, if you breathe air, drink water and eat food, you have a toxic load. We all do. It's inevitable. It's hard to avoid. And so these are just some things to think about and start to kind of moving your mind towards. If you want to create less of environmental toxins in your environment and support your metabolism in this way. 1s So going a more natural route with with your products like birth control, birth control is very loaded with synthetic hormones, most fragrance products. So really veering away from like lotions and shampoos and body soaps and candles that are loaded with fragrances, deodorants, even air sprays, cleaning products, makeup, candles, face wash, body wash, shampoo, all of these things. If you can start to just like, you know, next time, one of those things runs out looking for a more organic natural version of it instead of the stuff that's just loaded with chemicals. Um, like I said, I know it can be daunting. I still am in the process of like, when I run out of one thing, I'm trying to swap it out with a more organic, healthy version that you can find at like natural grocers or sprouts or even looking it up on Amazon if you want to try to search it there. The next is to get seven hours nightly of quality sleep. Studies have shown that decreased sleep affects hormones that affect the metabolism. Specifically your hunger hormone. Ghrelin is actually upregulated and your satiety hormone leptin is down regulated when your sleep deprived. So no, getting less sleep doesn't automatically make you gain weight. But it's because of these hormonal processes that get thrown off that affect your satiety and your hunger. The next is stress management. Oh, this is a biggie. So when we're stressed, whether it's from traffic, emotional stress, work, stress, a workout or a body's, our body's response is to increase the hormone cortisol. This puts us naturally in a sympathetic state or a fight or flight heightened state reacting to that stress. Right. So during this time, our metabolic functions and digestion are slowed down. This is why staying in a constantly stressed out state is less than optimal for your health, metabolism, your gut, everything. It's also why, when we try to eat on the run or during a stressful moment, it's not ideal for digestion because we're our body is not ready for that. It's not in a place of being able to digest It thinks that we're dealing with a big situation of stress and needing to fight something off. Similarly, stress also slows down your reproductive system because think about it, if you're in a state of stress, why would the body focus on making sure that you can create a baby or eat food properly? It's worried about other things. Okay. That's just a simplified way to break it down. This is why when you're chronically high stress, your sex hormones get thrown off. You can lose your period, you can start to lose your hair, some of these things. Or if you're under eating, your body senses that as a form of stress, that your environment is in a not a safe place or under stress or under attack. And that's why we start to lose our period and reproductive function. So practicing recovery activities that actively take us out of that fight or flight state. Otherwise, without realizing it, we can often walk around with chronically high cortisol. Another really helpful tip here to just reregulate the nervous system and get you out of that fight or flight state is cold water exposure. So either taking a cold plunge, taking a cold shower or dunking your face in a bucket of ice water. It sounds crazy, but this is one of the best things for naturally reducing cortisol. 2s Um, so another one here kind of goes along with the environmental toxins is to support your detox pathways. So these are things like supporting the liver, which is big for detoxification, making sure we're drinking enough water and sweating properly. So if we're not drinking enough water, then we're going to have a hard time flushing out toxins as well as excess hormones that have been processed through our body. So we want to make sure we're drinking plenty of water so that your pain frequently eating enough fiber that we are going number two at least once a day. That's a really good way to get rid of some of that junk sweating, whether that's through exercise or through the sauna. And like I said, supporting the liver. So minimizing alcohol intake and lemon is a really great way to support the liver as well. So the final topic I want to talk about as far as metabolic health kind of circles, back to the beginning, when I was talking about metabolic adaptation, I just barely mentioned it. And this is something that we work around a lot in our mountain metabolic coaching because unfortunately as women, a lot of us grew up in hardcore diet culture and it was all about the low carb, low calorie fad diets, detoxes, cleanses, juice whatevers that basically have you on no calories as a means to speed up weight loss. Um usually paired with doing some like crazy cardio activities really intense classes things like that. So the issue with these types of approaches is that, one, they're just truly not sustainable at all in the long run. But as far as how it affects your metabolism, your body senses these things and adapts to them. So if we are chronically under eating, our body is going to adapt and take that number and think, okay, this just must be my new norm. Like if you're only giving me 1200 calories on a regular basis, then I got to slow things down because I'm not getting enough food. So it's like I mentioned earlier, a compensatory mechanism in the body to keep you alive, which is awesome, but not so awesome. If you've been chronically dieting and now you're finding yourself in a place where you can't even maintain your weight unless you're eating 1200 calories. So this is called metabolic adaptation, and it happens slowly. You know, it's not going to happen from you eating low calorie for a few weeks or something like that. So you don't need to freak out. But this is why fat loss needs to be done strategically and with a plan and not just slashing calories and having no idea how many you're eating because we can really create some crappy side effects that will make things harder in the long run. So this is something that we do with our clients. A lot of our clients in mountain metabolic coaching are coming to us because they are in this place where they've. Either knowingly or unknowingly been under eating for quite a while. Maybe they've had a bad relationship with food, some history of disordered eating, or they just didn't even realize that they have been under eating for a long time or they've been doing these super intense workouts every day. In general, it's just too much stress on the body, especially as females. Like I said before, we're so much more susceptible to stress because we have to produce humans. So we are of reproductive age and that changes everything. We're not just small men, so we have different things that we have to factor in, and stress is a really big one. So in that case, the only way to really get out of that place is to do a bit of metabolic restore, meaning that we are actively increasing calories and reducing stimuli from stress. This can be really hard because some people will gain weight during this phase. Some people will maintain or maybe even lose, but it's really impossible to say for sure what's going to happen and it requires a lot of patience. It requires compliance and sticking with it, even though it's hard mentally to start eating more if that's been something that you've struggled with. So metabolic adaptation is a very real thing, and that's why it's not just so cut and dry of like eat less calories and move more. Yes, For a lot of people, this might be a solution for fat loss, but for some people, especially for females who have been struggling with disordered eating or exercise habits, this is really unhelpful advice and it's a lot more nuanced than that. And that's why we take these things in consideration. We take metabolic health and hormonal health into consideration in our mountain metabolic coaching. So if that's something that you're interested in, as always, the link is in the bio. If you want to chat, if you feel like, Oh wow, that sounds like my situation, maybe it would be helpful to have an expert to talk to you about this. That's what we're here for. So I hope that this episode has been helpful and kind of understanding the complexities of the metabolism, all the different arenas that can affect it and what you can do from a nutrition standpoint and exercise standpoint and a lifestyle standpoint to further support your metabolism. You know, a lot of these things are just going to be small tweaks that you can make to your lifestyle that add up over time. It's not going to be something where overnight you're like, Wow, my metabolism is so much faster. But all of these things really do make a difference when implemented consistently over time. So as always, thank you so much for being here. I hope that you found this episode enlightening. If you have any questions on this, you can always shoot us a DM at the fit underscore for hiking Instagram page. I would love to chat with you there and I will see you guys in the next episode. 1s Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands for more content like this. Be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail underscore on a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking and find more free resources at ponytail on a trail happy and healthy trails.