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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 long time fitness professional and 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. Hi everyone! Welcome to another episode of the fit for Hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady. And today we're going to be talking about how to know if you have a thriving metabolism. What does that look like? Or on the contrary, how do you know if things might be a little bit off or less than optimal when it comes to your metabolic health? The term metabolism is just thrown around rampantly in social media and health and fitness circles, and unfortunately, there's a lot of misconceptions about it. So I want to kind of set the record straight on what does a healthy metabolism actually look like. And, um, you know, what are some of the things that are also going to indicate if we need to take a closer look? What are some lifestyle and nutrition habits that are going to potentially cause a little bit of adaptation or harm to your metabolism over time. So a lot to cover today. Let's dive into it. So first of all, I just kind of want to share a little bit of my own side of the story, um, regarding my metabolic health. So when I was in my mid 20s, I was really struggling with my metabolism. I was one of those women who was working out six days a week, sometimes twice a day, always doing like a hit style class or a run or hit style sprints. I mean, I was doing like the most intense workouts that you could possibly think of all the time, like every single day. So, um, you know, from that standpoint, you would think that I would have been the epitome of health and fitness and like the best possible body composition. However, the opposite was true. The more that I got into this, the harder I went, the more I started to see the scale going up. I wasn't happy with my body composition. I constantly felt like fluffy and like I had this layer of fat over my muscles that I really couldn't figure out what was going on. In addition to this, I was constantly doing these like restrictive diet cycles, doing things like juice cleanses or Whole30, or cutting out sugar, cutting out all carbs. I went gluten free just because I thought it would help me lose weight. Like I literally was just doing everything and. All of that, plus all the exercise still wasn't getting the results I want. I stopped having a cycle altogether for years. I was getting all this testing done. It was just crazy. Like my health was not in a good place. And eventually I got my metabolism to a much better spot. Um, through many, many lifestyle changes addressing the root causes that were leading to some of these stress responses in my body. Um, but I know what it feels like to be in a place where you have a suboptimal metabolic function and all of the ramifications that can have all of the symptoms that you start to see in your day to day life, not only how you look, but how you feel and your, um, menstruation, your cycles, all of that. So, um, it really does matter that we advocate and protect our own metabolic health. And we're going to get into kind of what that looks like today. All right. So let's talk about key signs that you should be looking for for a thriving metabolism as a woman. What are some things that are going to tell you okay, I'm actually probably doing alright in this department. So first one would be energy and vitality. You want to have consistent daily energy for the most part, right? If you're constantly getting crappy sleep, you know, only sleeping like six hours a night, scrolling your phone Own until midnight or something like that, then you can't be like, well, it's my metabolism, right? A lot of these things, it's like you got to have your lifestyle components in check before you just blame your metabolism or your hormones, and this is one of them. But if you are consistently getting into bed at a decent time, trying to get at least eight hours of good sleep, setting the stage for good quality sleep in your room, um, but you're still waking up, dragging your crashing midday, things like that, then your energy really isn't where it should be. So you really want to notice that you have the most energy in the morning to mid day. You're not experiencing those crashes. You're not having to rely so heavily on caffeine all throughout the day. Um, also with workout recovery, you can do strength training, hiking or cardio and feel tired but not totally wrecked. If you're just like, I can't even move the next day or later in the day, um, then your energy is not where it needs to be. Sleep quality falling asleep within about 20 minutes of laying down. Sleeping through the night. At least from things that you can control. Right? Right now I have a five month old and she's into sleep regression. Can't really control that. But if you aren't being interrupted, you don't want to have all of these wake ups throughout the night and then waking up feeling rested, that's going to be a sign that your cortisol and melatonin are balanced. Next one is hormonal balance. So here are some of the the key things to look for regarding hormonal balance and the reason why we're going to talk so much about hormones intertwined with metabolism is because your metabolism is just kind of the sum of all these processes. It's your ability to burn energy. It's your ability to have your hormones all functioning in harmony. Um, and kind of the sum of all these processes. It's not just like this one little key thing that you switch on or off or ramp it up or ramp it down. It's kind of how all of your body systems are functioning together your hormones, your gut, your muscle mass, your digestion, all of these different sex hormones, all of them are going to affect your metabolic health as well as your liver. That's the really big one. Makes up like 15% of your metabolic function. Um, is just how your liver is functioning and filtering things out on a high level on a daily basis. So there's so many different processes within our body that make up the sum total of what we call our metabolism, or how efficiently we are using our energy throughout the day. So hormone balance is the big factor in this. So key signs with hormone balance would be menstrual cycle regularity every 26 to 35 days. If you are of reproductive age, if you haven't gone through menopause yet, you should be having a regular cycle. That was a big key indicator for me in my 20s. I was like, I am 23 years old. I should be having a period. This is abnormal, right? Don't just be like woohoo! No, period. Yay! Like that's your body giving you a sign that it doesn't feel safe enough to reproduce. So you want to be having a cycle? Um, not skipping a ton of months except if you are obviously pregnant, newly postpartum, or going through menopause. Healthy flow. So 3 to 7 days of bleeding that isn't too heavy. Changing products every 2 to 4 hours. Um, manageable PMS, slight moodiness, breast tenderness, some cramping. But it shouldn't be overwhelming where you are literally debilitated for days. Okay, this is actually not a super healthy sign of hormone balance. If you are just having crazy bad symptoms every single month. Mood stability. Um, hormones like estrogen and progesterone, thyroid and cortisol are going to be balanced enough that you're not experiencing like these wild swings with anxiety or irritability or depression spikes. This is why postpartum it's so rough mentally because your hormones that I just mentioned, um, particularly the estrogen and progesterone, are going crazy. Like they're spiking. They're dropping. Um, things are just completely all over the place from what they normally are. You experience, like, the biggest hormone drop after giving birth that you will in your whole life. And that's why so many women struggle Mentally, so your hormones are really linked to your mood and how you're feeling mentally. So this should be a stable as possible. Most of the time, unless you are going through postpartum or something like that. Fertility signals cervical mucus mid-cycle. Um, having ovulation signs like mild ovulation cramping a temperature rise showing your body is producing estrogen and progesterone properly. If you're not ovulating, then you're not having a full proper cycle. So that is important. And you can actually track your cycle through keeping track of your basal body temperature first thing in the morning, which is really cool. So, um, that's definitely something that you can look into if you're like, how the heck do I know when I'm ovulating or if I'm ovulating and all that libido. You should have a somewhat consistent and not chronically low libido that can signal thyroid cortisol or estrogen progesterone levels being off if you just never have a sex drive. Okay. Let's talk about body function and regulation. So stable weight. Your weight should not fluctuate drastically with every small diet change. If your metabolism is adapting well, then you're able to kind of be flexible. Or yeah, maybe you have like a crazy weekend because you go on a girls trip or you have a vacation or a holiday and you might gain a few, a few pounds in the subsequent days because of water retention. That's normal, but it should flush out and you should kind of go back to your baseline. Um, we shouldn't be experiencing these drastic swings. I will say the exception to this is, um, the week before your period. We can retain up to £10 of water weight, um, just because of what's going on hormonally. So that is a normal kind of bigger fluctuation swing. But in the day to day this should not be happening where you're like, okay, this week I weigh this amount and the next week I gain £8. That is kind of abnormal. So we want to be able to maintain a stable weight. Um, even with just with those daily fluctuations of life. Good digestion, regular easy bowel movements 1 to 2 per day, ideally minimal bloating and gas. After you're eating, you feel like you can digest most of your food without issues. If you're chronically bloated and everything you eat makes your stomach painfully distended or you're just never having bowel movements, those are definitely not normal, um, digestion symptoms. So we want to make sure that we kind of address those, because that can be a sign that something is going on with your gut, which also affects your metabolism. Again, this is all very much intertwined. Body temperature, normal thyroid driven metabolism keeps your hands and feet warm. You're not always freezing. You should have a basal temperature of about 98.3. If you have a chronically low body temperature, that could be a sign that your metabolism is not functioning the way that it needs to be. And stress resilience. You can handle normal stressors without constant burnout, um, or showing like massive spikes in cortisol. So we really want to make sure our adrenal health is in balance and that we can handle the day to day stressors that are going to be thrown our way, because that's just life. Um, next is skin, hair and nail. So this actually is an area where you can see if your metabolism is doing well. So again, this is kind of, um, exempt from postpartum because things are crazy. I'm experiencing a ton of hair loss right now because I'm in that like postpartum hair loss window. So if you are also in the same boat, just know that doesn't mean that your metabolism is broken. It means that you're experiencing crazy hormone shifts right now and things will regulate. Um, so as far as skin, clear, hydrated, glowy skin, um, acne along the jawline or chin can be hormonally driven around your cycle, which is somewhat normal, but you want it to be minimal if you're experiencing acne all the time, that's definitely a sign that something is off. Um, your hair should be growing normally without excess shedding, especially around the temples or part line, and then nails growing steadily, not brittle or peeling. Next area is hunger and satiety, so healthy hunger signals is important. A lot of women I talk to on discovery calls for mountain Metabolic are like, yeah, I'm just not hungry until like 2 p.m. that is not a good sign. That's not the flex that we sometimes think it is. If we're just never hungry, then our body has adapted to very little food, which means our, our, um, basal metabolic rate is going to be lower. That's not a good thing. We want to be able to handle with resiliency, flexible eating where there are days where we're eating higher amounts, days we're eating slightly lower. But if your body adapts to just like hardly eating calories, that's not going to vote so well for the days when you do eat a normal amount of calories, it's going to make it very hard to ever lose weight or maintain, um, a healthy weight. So you should be getting hungry about every 4 to 5 hours. Not ravenous right after eating or never hungry at all. You should be hungry first thing in the morning as well. Um, as far as satiety, you want to feel generally satisfied after your meals, especially when you're balancing proteins, carbs, and fats with each meal, which is the goal. Um, and if you're doing that, you shouldn't feel immediately hungry afterwards. Stable blood sugar, not feeling shaky, or these hangry crashes, headaches, or urgent cravings shortly after meals. So big picture of thriving metabolism is going to mean that your body has enough fuel and resources to keep non-essential, but important systems working well. So think like fertility, mood, hair, skin, digestion. These are the first thing that things that your body is going to be like, okay, don't need that. If it doesn't feel like you have enough fuel, because why would your body want to reproduce a human if you can't even feed yourself, right? Why would hair be a priority? Why would skin be a priority? It's going to your major functions when your body feels depleted. Okay, so if your metabolism is sluggish, your body is going to shut those down first to conserve energy. So now let's talk about top habits that do tend to hinder metabolic health in women, especially when it comes to hormone balance, energy regulation, and body composition. The first one is chronically under eating or over dieting, and this can be done knowingly or sometimes unknowingly. Sometimes I talk to women who just honestly don't have any clue how little they're actually eating on a regular basis, or that they do these big spikes where it's like they will hardly eat anything all week, and then the weekends. It's like total opposite, which just puts their body in such a weird state. So chronic under eating is one of the worst things that we can do for our metabolism. Because again, signals to your body that you are starving, that you don't have enough resources or food. So it's not like your body goes into this thing called starvation mode. That's a myth. But what does happen physiologically is your body will start to try to preserve energy. And what happens is called metabolic adaptation. So it's adapting to less energy. Therefore you're going to burn less energy doing the things that used to actually burn quite a bit of energy for you. So skipping meals, eating far below your energy needs for long periods of time will signal your body to slow down. This leads to fatigue, stalled fat loss, and hormone disruption. Like irregular cycles. You don't have to be super underweight to experience this if you're still not feeling your body properly. That was exactly what happened with me. Two is over exercising without recovery, just doing long cardio sessions daily, burning crazy amounts of calories on a daily basis to the point where your body now adapts and it doesn't burn as many calories. But your body now almost needs that in order to maintain your current body weight. This is also going to elevate cortisol suppress thyroid function. It's just not ideal for metabolic health. Low protein intake protein is going to be the number one thing that supports your lean muscle. Other than obviously strength training. Um, so that's going to be your metabolic engine, your muscle. So it's not only going to help with that, but also overall satiety. Consistently eating too little protein can reduce your muscle mass, which can then lead to a lower metabolic rate. Two little resistance training. Unfortunately, this is still like such a thing for women. A lot of women just are not doing proper strength training and relying only on cardio or group classes and hit and things like that, just skipping strength training. And that's really going to limit your muscle growth and bone health, which are two key drivers of metabolic resilience. Poor sleep quality or quantity. Sometimes both. So less than seven hours of sleep can raise cortisol. It disrupts your blood sugar balance. It reduces your, um, leptin and ghrelin regulation. So that's your hunger and fullness hormones. So it kind of like just throws everything off because you're like, wait, maybe I am still hungry when in reality you normally wouldn't be. It's just the fact that you are exhausted and your hunger and satiety hormones are off. Chronic stress slash just not having strength management coping skills. So if you're constantly high cortisol this is going to suppress your thyroid hormones. It disrupts ovulation. It can promote fat storage around the midsection. Um it can just really do a whole lot of damage when we're constantly in this fight or flight state, ignoring blood sugar balance. So relying on refined carbs or like, really easily digestible sugars and carbs, sugary snacks, caffeine spikes without having the proper balance of protein and fiber with the carb intake. This can lead to blood sugar, roller coasters, cravings, and energy crashes, especially if you are pre-diabetic or PCOS. This is going to be crucial to manage, um, dehydration. Even mild dehydration can actually slow your metabolism and reduce your energy, and it impacts your overall digestion, so hydration matters. Low micronutrient intake, so deficiencies in key nutrients like magnesium, zinc, iron, iron, iodine and vitamin D can stall thyroid and hormone function. So when people are like all about just if it fits your macros or just all about hitting calorie targets, but you're not at all focusing on getting micronutrients in through your veggies and fruits and good quality protein sources, then you are going to find yourself likely deficient in really key nutrients that are going to help you thrive hormonally. How you feel. Health metrics your energy, right? It's not all about just the scale. There's so many other things that will affect your vitality, which will then affect your energy and your ability to keep going if you are trying to lose weight. So it really does matter to look at your micronutrient intake and your food quality. And finally, a sedentary lifestyle outside of the gym. jam. So if you're just sitting all day, even if you do work out a few times a week, you're still going to have a lower daily energy expenditure, which is a big key piece of your metabolism, right? If you're just not burning calories, then your metabolic rate is going to be lower. Same if like someone was in a someone who's in a coma, for instance, in the hospital, they're not going to need a ton of calories on a daily basis. They'll still need some to keep their organs functioning for just kind of basic bodily necessities. But it's not going to be nearly as much as someone who is working a job where they're on their feet all day, has a ton of muscle mass they're trying to maintain because they are strength training. They're eating a ton of protein. Um, you know, they have all of these things in place that we've talked about today, right? So that's going to be someone who has a much higher energy need, because they're focusing on the things that will keep their basal metabolic rate high. That's what we want. All right. So let's talk about hormone specific red flags of a slow or strained metabolism. And these are often signs that will show up gradually. And many women just kind of normalize them as oh, it's just stress or I'm getting older. My metabolism is just not what it used to be. But they're actually early signs and signals of metabolic and hormone imbalance. So cycle and reproductive health wise irregular missing or light periods, kind of low energy availability or thyroid issues, typically worsening PMS, mood swings, bloating, cramps is usually due to estrogen or progesterone imbalance. Trouble conceiving or long cycles is often linked to thyroid or cortisol dysregulation and low libido. Energy and mood needing caffeine just to function. Energy crashing midday. You just feel like you cannot stay awake if you don't have another energy drink or another coffee at 2:03 p.m. feeling wired but tired at bedtime. So it's like you've been tired all day. But now you lay down and you're suddenly wired. You can't wind down or have trouble falling asleep. Brain fog, poor focus or forgetfulness increase anxiety or irritability. High cortisol or low progesterone pattern. Typically, feeling depressed or flat could be a sign of low thyroid, low estrogen, or nutrient depletion. And then body composition and physical signs would be unexplained weight gain, especially around the midsection, despite dieting or exercising. Again, this isn't something where we can just blame everything on our metabolism or hormones. If you have not been following any sort of fitness program for at least six months, if you have not been moderating your food intake and keeping track and getting out for walks and things like that, if you're not doing those basic things for your health, try that first, right? And then you can always see, am I still struggling with this? Or did I just not really have my ducks in a row with the big things that mattered, and that was what was leading to the weight gain. But if you're having unexplained weight gain, despite being one of those people that really is doing all the right things, that could be a sign, um, inability to build muscle even when strength training, eating ample protein, hair thinning or loss. This is often thyroid related brittle nails, dry skin, or feeling cold all the time. Low thyroid function, puffy face swelling or water retention. Um, this could be a hormone imbalance or just inflammation. And then the next part is appetite and digestion. So irregular hunger cues. Never hungry or always hungry. Strong cravings for sugars and carbs, especially at night. Or bloating. Constipation or sluggish digestion. So those are just little red flags for things that might mean that you need to have something addressed. I know that this can feel a bit overwhelming, but the reality is a lot of this is within our ability to alter or improve. That's what's so cool about our health. Is that a lot of it? We can take it into our own hands. And by making simple lifestyle adjustments, whether it's nutrition, movement, exercise, um, how we're balancing our circadian rhythm supplementation, um, really just looking at these symptoms and knowing what to do with that information to improve our results and to get our hormones into a better spot. You have that within your hands. Um, and what's really awesome is this is something that we help our clients with in Mountain Metabolic coaching. We start with the basics and then we build on that. If it's necessary, we can take deeper dives into hormone testing, looking at underlying causes for continued symptoms. If when we're really in the thick of the program, we're still experiencing some of these red flags that we talked about today. Um, so if that is something that you're interested in learning more about, if you're listening to this and you're like. Yeah, I kind of have some of those red flags, or I definitely don't check the boxes for having a thriving metabolism. And you know that you need some guidance on just the basics and kind of where to go from there. Then we would love to help you out. So what you can do is you can send us a DM at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page, and that's going to be linked in the show notes. Check us out there. You can send us a DM and just say metabolism. If you send us a message. With that, I will reach out. We'll get a discovery call booked, and we can kind of talk about what's going on with you, what symptoms you're experiencing, and then coming up with a plan to move forward and get you to a better place, where you can see results and feel your best. Because not only will all all of these symptoms really start to weigh you down as far as how you're feeling on a day to day basis. But if you are trying to lose fat, having a less than thriving metabolism won't make it impossible. But it will make it slower and harder and more frustrating. And I've been there. I know how how terrible that is. When you feel like you're doing the right things, you're putting in so much energy and work and the progress is minimal to nonexistent. Existent. So this will allow you to push through plateaus and get where you want to be with your results much, much faster and feel so much better overall. All right, I hope that this has been helpful for diving into metabolic health, what it looks like, what it means. And again, send us a message at the fit underscore for hiking Instagram page. Message us metabolism and we will reach out to learn more about what's going on with you. If you enjoyed this episode, if you enjoy the show in general, sharing that on your social media, sharing with loved ones, passing it along is so, so helpful. Um, just getting that word of mouth out there. We really appreciate the support and I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning into 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 Etrailer.com. Happy and healthy trails.