Ep. 94 When to Cut, Maintain or Reboot Your Metabolism

Let's dive into the different phases and strategies used to manage your metabolism. This episode is full of relatable insights that will help you navigate your metabolic health with more clarity and direction. 

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. 

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When to Cut, Maintain or Reboot your Metabolism: Understanding the right phase for you
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And 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 everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the fit for Hiking podcast. Today is kind of a quick and dirty look at when you should choose a certain fitness goal or phase. Um, so specifically we're going to be talking about pertaining to body recomposition. When is it a good idea to cut? When is it a good idea to focus more on just maintenance? And when should we focus on rebooting our metabolism? Um, so like I said, this is going to be kind of a quick one, but I feel like it's a really important thing to talk about because not only is it a is it very crucial to kind of know what your goals are and really clearly define those, but you also need to be realistic with yourself about whether or not it's actually a good time for you to pursue said goal. And if your body is ready, if your mentality is ready, if your environment is ready, all of that will really affect your ability to succeed. And nobody wants to just be trapped in this like constant stage of like, I'm low key, trying to, like, lose weight all the time. Um, we really want to avoid that because that just leads to this general, like mental fatigue where we feel like we're constantly dieting, we feel like we're always trying to lose weight and we're not really seeing progress, but we always are in that mindset, which is exhausting. It's draining, and it's not the best way to really go about this to achieve a result. So we really want to be focused and understand when is it the right time to focus on each of these particular goals or phases? Okay. So let's talk about when to cut, when to maintain, when to reboot your metabolism and understanding which phase is really right for you at any given time. So. Jumping right into when you should focus on cutting. So a cut is just another word for a fat loss phase. You're looking to lean out. You're looking to lose weight. You want to cut some body fat okay, so if your goal is losing weight or getting leaner then listen up here. So when you should cut, first of all you need to have the mental capacity. Because weight loss is not necessarily mentally easy. You have to be committed to it. You have to be able to kind of push through those times of low motivation, or when you're in social settings and you don't really feel like following your plan, right? If we're not mentally prepared for what we have to take on and the sacrifices that are going to be necessary, then we're not really going to be able to succeed. So if you're just kind of following whims and you're not having a plan and you don't have a whole lot of discipline when it comes to things getting hard, then it's going to make it very difficult for you to have a successful fat loss phase. Yes, you might like be on for a week and then off for two weeks and then on for a week. But again, that's just kind of this like constant state of somewhat quasi dieting, which is really draining and not very effective with a cut. We really want to get in and get out, um, a little bit faster. Okay. So we don't want to just always be perpetually dieting. It's not great physiologically. It's not great mentally. It's not great metabolically. So it's better if we can just be in a place where we're ready to take that on from a mental standpoint. When else should you cut if your maintenance calories are in a good place? So it's really important metabolically to be ready for a cut. So meaning if you are going into a cut and you've already kind of downregulated your metabolic health and your basal metabolic rate due to constantly being in that diet phase, like I was just talking about, then you're not going to be as primed or as sensitive to a calorie deficit, and likely you're going to have to eat a very, very low amount, which makes it hard to adhere, makes it hard to really follow through or stick with a calorie deficit. If you have to be eating a thousand calories in order to lose weight because your maintenance calories are just down the toilet from metabolic adaptation, that's happened over time because you have been dieting constantly for the past decade. Um, so it's important to understand where your maintenance calories are, and you can do that simply by really keeping track for at least a week and not skimping on anything. So you track it all. You don't cut corners. You don't forget on weekends or social settings. You do it every single day for a full week, and you write down every little thing that goes into your mouth, and then you kind of have an idea at the end of the week, if you've maintained your weight, you know, okay, these are probably roughly my maintenance calories. And I would say if your maintenance calories are any lower than about 1500, you don't want to be doing a fat loss phase, because if that's the case, then you're going to be needing to eat 1200 or less calories per day in order to lose weight. And that is really low. Unless you're just a very, very small person. The smaller you are, you know, if you're like a five foot female who weighs £100, then your basal metabolic rate is just going to be lower than if you are a 510 female who weighs £180. So it's important to take that into consideration. But most of the time when fat loss is a goal, you're probably not starting out that low in weight. So if your maintenance calories are that low, it typically is an indicator that you have, um, potentially experienced some metabolic adaptation due to lifestyle components that have happened over the past few years or even few months. And it's not necessarily a good idea for you to enter a cut, because it's not going to be realistic, and you're going to have to then maintain those calories that are crazy low in order to maintain the weight loss that you wanted to see. Right? So just kind of puts you from a bad spot into a worse spot, and your body's not going to be that receptive to the deficit unless you're eating like a thousand calories a day, which just is not sustainable and not healthy. Next is do you have a healthy relationship with food and your mindset around dieting? So if you are someone who has been jumping from diet to diet to diet, I wouldn't really recommend doing a fat loss phase because you probably are just going to have that same like all or nothing diet mindset. This is short term. I'm just trying to do the extreme thing to get the result. That's not going to give you a new result, though. That's just going to give you probably the same result that you've gotten where maybe you see some weight loss, but then you have no clue how to maintain it. And then it's just you're right back in this vicious cycle. So if you're wanting something different out of this and wanting to actually have an exit strategy be able to maintain this long term, you have to do something that you haven't done before. You can't just fall back into these same familiar patterns. Um, also with our relationship with food, if you have a super negative relationship with food and keeping track of things, it's going to be very triggering for you. Um, I would definitely recommend working on that first. That's a foundational thing that needs to be addressed through therapy or working with someone who specializes in relationship with food. Um, before going into a fat loss phase, that could potentially just trigger some negative thoughts and actions. Okay, so you got to be honest with yourself with some of these because, um, if you're working with a coach and you aren't expressing, hey, I have some history of disordered eating or I still have like a really all or nothing terrible relationship with food, then they're not going to know how to work around these things and that maybe you shouldn't be doing a fat loss phase. Okay, so you got to make sure that you're honest with yourself. And if you're working with a coach, be honest with them too, about what you have the capacity to take on. Um, the next part is not having a ton of external stressors. Obviously in life there's always going to be stress, but if you have a ton going on, like I'm talking like some big stuff like big life transitions, maybe you just got a huge promotion at work, maybe you just got fired, maybe you are going through a divorce or a really messy breakup. Maybe you have like some heavy, heavy family stuff going on or whatever in your life that is creating extra stress. Probably not the best time to focus on fat loss, because that is also going to be a stressor. Okay, so you really want to make sure that you're not throwing fuel on the fire to your nervous system in a sense, by taking an already very stressful situation and then putting your body under more stress by being in a calorie deficit. Um, also making sure that you're not coming into this with an all or nothing mindset. I literally just got off of a client call all about this topic, because I really believe that this is the number one thing that holds people back in successful habit change, weight loss, whatever your fitness goal is, if you have an all or nothing mindset, you're going to stay seriously stuck. Um, because you really are kind of your own worst enemy here, and you're self-sabotaging before you even have the chance to experience success. So here's what I mean. If you are someone who maybe starts the week strong, you're feeling motivated because you had a really crappy weekend. You're like, oh my gosh, I drank and ate way too much. This is my week. I'm going to be healthy. Then halfway through the week, things come up. Life gets stressful. Maybe some unforeseen circumstances happen and it kind of throws you off just enough where you revert back to old coping mechanisms, patterns, ways of thinking, ways of eating. And then because of that, you decide that you can completely ruin the week. It's a total wash. You might as well just give up. And then one bad day or one bad meal, one bad hour turns into five days of just a free for all because you've decided to say, screw it and you'll start again on Monday. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. That is such a common, vicious cycle that we can get caught up in when we subscribe to the all or nothing mindset. So if you are coming into this and you are struggling with all or nothing mindset, why do you think that this will be different? You'll probably just still struggle with those tendencies while trying to do a cut, and then you'll be in this never ending, like I'm cutting for two days a week, and then I screw it up, and then I start again the next Monday. That's going to a completely drag out this process for months, potentially years. And then you are in that quasi dieting mode long term, which is not fun. Okay. So it's really important to address some of these foundational things, these mindsets before going into a successful fat loss phase so that you can not expect perfection from yourself because it's no one's going to have a perfect cut, whether it's one week or a month or three months. There's going to be things that happen that make you say, oh, why did I do that? Or like, totally fell back into old pattern there. That wasn't the healthiest thing I could have done or well, I didn't expect to be sick for the past two weeks. But here we are, things that are going to have the ability to throw you off if you give them too much power and just go all or nothing. Oh, I'm either on the bandwagon or off the bandwagon. If you are still struggling with that mindset, you really got to work on that first. Before, I would recommend trying to enter any sort of hardcore fat loss phase, because otherwise you're just going to spin your wheels. Also, the final thing to kind of indicate whether or not you should cut is if you are not experiencing hormone imbalance symptoms. It's really important to understand what your body's trying to communicate with you. And if you're experiencing some of these symptoms, then it's probably not the best idea to focus on a deficit at the moment. So things like feeling cold all the time, having thinning hair or brittle nails, your regular periods like if you're getting your cycle super irregularly. Um, digestive issues like bloating after meals when it doesn't really make sense for you to be bloating, um, or just having digestive issues in general, skin issues or a lack of appetite in general, or especially in the morning. Some of those can be just indicators that somebody might be off hormonally for you, and sometimes those specific ones are linked to already being underfed or overstressed. So that's why it's important in correlation to a cut to understand what your body's trying to tell you. And again, not just add fuel to the fire, because if your body's already kind of compensating for some of the stressors or under eating that's happening, then going into a deficit is only going to exacerbate some of these symptoms and potentially cause even more hormonal imbalances or just worsen what's already happening. Okay, So listening to your body there, instead of just trying to push through for the sake of fat loss, um, it's important to do something different if you want a new result, right? So it's it's not going to be helpful to just jump into another fat loss situation when you haven't addressed some of these root things that are getting in the way. Okay. So those are some of the qualifications of when you should cut when you should not cut. Now let's talk about when to maintain. So maintaining maintenance mode, whatever you want to call it just really refers to homeostasis. Kind of just staying the same not pushing towards a big goal. And your your main goal is just truly to maintain where you're at in this moment. So when is it a good idea to focus on maintenance? One is during busy times of life, so if you know that you just have a ton on your plate right now, probably a good time to just focus on maintenance. You don't need to be saying, oh, I'm gonna start training for a half marathon, or I'm gonna start focusing on fat loss right now when you have the world on your back. Okay? So being honest with yourself about whether or not you have the capacity to take on a big goal or whether or not maintenance might be a good idea for you during holidays or vacations. So if you are entering the holiday season, I have most of the time with my clients. I'm saying let's just maintain if we can keep your weight where it's at. For the next month, then that's a success because a lot of people gain weight throughout the holidays or vacation, right? If you end a vacation kind of maintaining where you're at once, you flush out maybe some excess water weight at the end of the trip, that's a win. Instead of gaining weight and just being a free for all, you focused on maintenance instead. So those are some really good times to focus on maintenance. And that is the goal is just to purely maintain where you're at so you don't feel like you're taking backward steps. The next is if you're content with your weight currently, if you're feeling like pretty good with where you're at, then there's really no point in continuing into a fat loss phase or a bulk or whatever it is that you've been doing. Just focus on some maintenance for a while. Let your body adapt to that new normal, and then you can always refine later. We don't need to just constantly be in refinement mode. Always be in a cut, always be in a bulk, always be in this or that specific phase. It's actually really healthy for our body to just enjoy some maintenance phases so that it can adapt to the new normal, the new homeostasis. Okay. Also, when you have a lot on your plate and you really feel like you can only do the bare minimum for your health, we are all going to have seasons like this every single year. There's going to be weeks or months potentially, where you just don't have the capacity to show up in a huge way for your health, and you're literally just doing the bare minimum. That's when I really recommend having some non-negotiables in your back pocket where you're like, okay, these are the few things that during these times of maintenance or overwhelm, I can still do these few things for my health, just to maintain and just to feel good and still feel like I'm prioritizing my health in these small ways when I don't have control over a whole lot else. So here are some non-negotiable examples, and I really recommend writing out a few of these for yourself, because we're all going to have these times when you can't have five health things on your to do list every day. Maybe you can only have 1 or 2 because you are a new mom, or you are caretaking for people, or your whole house is sick and you're you're also sick and trying to take care of everybody else. Um, maybe you just have like, a crazy work season where you're traveling constantly, whatever that looks like for you have some non-negotiables in your back pocket. And here are a few examples. Having protein at every single meal. That's something that's pretty easy to do once you get in the habit of it. Prioritizing protein, uh, a veggie, a day, a workout, or a walk. So you just decide, okay, I'm going to dedicate 30 minutes of movement every single day. It's really not that much of my time. And maybe for several weeks straight, that's only a walk. That's still so much better than just deciding that you're going to be sedentary because you can't follow your workout program perfectly. Deep breaths before meals. It being in bed by 10 p.m. or drinking a certain amount of water every single day. Those are just some examples of some really helpful, but realistic non-negotiables that you can set for yourself for those extra busy times. So instead of just reverting to the nothing out of the all or nothing mode, you say no, I can still do some stuff. It might not be perfect, it might not be as much as I was doing a month ago, but I just got to get through this season. And here's what I'm going to do during this time to still prioritize my health. Okay, so those are really the best times of life to focus on maintenance mode. And the next is when to do a metabolic reboot. Okay. So metabolic reboot kind of refers to a time when you are really focusing on improving your metabolic health and your metabolic potential. So when are sometimes when this might be a good idea. One is when your maintenance calories are really low. Okay. So kind of like what we talked about pertaining to a cut. Um, if our maintenance calories are crazy low. After you've done your tracking, you've done your due diligence to kind of figure out where you're at with some of that. If you notice that your maintenance calories are really low, and in order to do a cut, you would have to go crazy low in your calories. Then, you know, all right, might want to focus on getting that number up, um, improving my metabolic potential and sensitivity so that if I ever do want to lean out, I can do that without it feeling so difficult and sacrificial. Okay, so if your maintenance colors are low, probably a good idea to do, uh, a metabolic reboot phase. Um, if your body has adapted to tons of hit and cardio. So if that's kind of your go to modality of exercise, if you just always gravitate towards cardio, always trying to do the next like sweaty class or something where you're just constantly moving, burning calories, um, but your body's not really like changing. You're not seeing the results that you want, and you're like, what the heck? I work out more than anybody. Probably a good indicator that your body has adapted, and it might be a good idea to do metabolic reboot. If you are in a very high stress season or you're just low key, always stressed as a person. Maybe a good idea to look into doing a metabolic reboot, especially if you have that. Plus pairing with maintenance, calories being low, or your body adapting to tons of cardio. Um, the next one is not seen. Fat loss despite eating local calories and working out a ton. So if you are kind of that stereotypical, like I'm doing all the things I really know that I am, like, I'm not just saying that I'm doing the thing because I am doing all the things and I'm not losing weight at all. My body composition isn't changing. It's not even just about the scale. Like my clothes are actually fitting. Worse, I'm gaining inches. I feel like inflamed and puffy. Um, all of these things, then probably a good indicator that you shouldn't just go into another fat loss phase, but you really should focus on a metabolic reboot phase first to set yourself up for success. And the next one is if you are experiencing those hormone imbalance symptoms that I mentioned before. So being cold all the time, thinning hair, brittle nails, irregular periods, digestive issues, skin issues, lack of appetite in general, or especially in the mornings. Maybe you're just like running on caffeine all day, barely eating and calling it a day and you're still not losing weight. Those are all some pretty serious signs that something's going on metabolically. Okay. And ultimately, if just the foundational things aren't working for you, despite being very consistent for a long time. This is exactly where I found myself several years ago, and I was just at a complete loss because I was working out sometimes twice a day, definitely at least once a day, 6 to 7 days a week. Um, doing tons of cardio, tons of classes, tons of hits. Um, I was always dieting and I felt like, okay, I'm doing more than anyone I know. And I was slowly gaining weight and I was so puffy and inflamed, you could see it in my face. And it was really baffling to me, because I knew that I was doing all of the foundational things that should create change in my body. Um, so something was going on that was a little bit more deeply rooted than, oh, I just need to be more consistent. I would say, like 95% of the time, we as humans do just need to be more consistent and actually keep track of intake and actually do the foundational things. So I would say most of the time that's the case, but probably about 5% of the time there are women that we talk to in Mountain Metabolic who are doing all of the right things, and they are showing up consistently for years, and yet they're seeing kind of like negative steps and not seeing the progress that they want to see. Okay, so if that is you, then the goal of a metabolic reboot phase would be to improve metabolic flexibility or sensitivity to fat loss measures. We want your metabolism to be more sensitive to those things so that it actually responds in a favorable way. Um, so our goal is to take time to bring inflammation down, improve body systems such as your gut liver health, hormone health, increased muscle mass, lower stress, get yourself in a parasympathetic nervous system state as often as possible. Um, and bring calories up in general to improve thyroid function. So those are kind of the goals of a metabolic reboot phase. Uh, so there's a couple of things that we can do here. And it's different for everyone. So this is where working for a coach, especially within a program like Mountain Metabolic Coaching, is so beneficial because it's not one size fits all. There's different circumstances, there's different biofeedback that your body's providing you. This is something that we've really worked to refine within the program in the last few months is, um, keeping track of these symptoms so that we know what part of our body needs to be addressed. Because if we aren't getting labs and we're not looking at the symptoms really closely, how do we know what to really refine and what to work on? So there's a couple of different things that we can do based on what your symptoms are showing and what your lab work is potentially showing, if that's something you've gotten done. So one would be following an anti-inflammatory diet, which we have a protocol for that within our program. That is amazing. Um, also working on lifestyle adjustments to remove toxins from your lifestyle and things that are going to be more inflammatory in nature as far as just how you're spending your time, stimuli in your life, toxin load, food intake, all of that. Um, next is lowering workout intensity and really focusing on minimal effective dose workouts. So really just doing the bare minimum enough to elicit a change to maintain muscle or build muscle while not driving up stress in the process. Um, so that's going to look like doing a lot more weightlifting and walking and low intensity type of stuff versus the cardio and the hit, um, bringing calories up slowly. Having a strategic reverse diet sometimes is really all it takes for certain people. Um, so getting your body out of that constant deficits and bringing calories up, but we want to make sure we're doing it slowly and carefully so we don't, um, just have a ton of excess weight gain. Um, focusing on nervous system regulation and your day to day life. Potential supplementation. Again, this needs to be strategic based on what your symptoms are showing and then a potential liver flush or gut protocol depending on the severity. And again what your body is telling us. Um, and this is where again, having labs done can definitely go a long way. This is something that we can provide within mountain metabolic coaching when necessary. Um, we are able to order labs to anywhere in the country, which is really great because sometimes we're just guessing if we don't have the information to tell us, okay, is what's going on related to your liver health, your thyroid health, your adrenal health, your estrogen, your progesterone, your testosterone? There's so many different things that can cause many different things that can cause cascading symptoms in the body, um, or make fat loss really difficult, kind of create some metabolic syndromes. Metabolic resistance is sometimes what it's called. So it's important to have the facts. So whether we're just looking at biofeedback or lab results and then going from there as far as lifestyle adjustments, workout adjustments, nutrition adjustments, um, if we need to add in certain supplements for nutritional deficiencies or doing a potential liver flush or gut protocol. If things are really severe. So I know that's kind of a lot of information, but hopefully that helps provide some clarity on where you fall into all of this. If body recomposition is your goal, is right now a good time to focus on boosting your metabolism? Is it a good time to focus on going into a cut as your body primed and ready for that already? Um, or is maintenance more where you need to be right now? Depending on a couple of factors that we talked about with maintenance. Um, so I hope that this has been helpful. If you're listening to this and you're like, I know that I need a little bit more support to either take on a cut or take on a metabolic reboot phase, then now is a great time to connect with us. Regarding mountain metabolic coaching. Um, we can get working with you heading into spring and summer so that you're feeling good heading into the summer months. Um, oftentimes we think, oh, I'll just figure it out on my own this year. I'm going to really do it, and then we don't really do it. And then we get to the fall. And then we get to the fall or winter and realize that we're right where we started the year, and that's a super discouraging place to be. So if you want to elicit a new result, let's do something different together. You can reach out to us on our Instagram fit underscore for hiking and just DMs. Apply if you're interested in applying. You can also check the show notes and there's a link to our application there. It's just a few quick questions, and then we will reach out to schedule a call with you. Um, and remember, as a listener of the show, you get half off of your first month of coaching, which is awesome. So, um, all you have to do is let us know on your call that you are a listener, and we will take it from there. Um, but don't procrastinate this if you are feeling that motivation, feeling that fire of like, okay, now's the right time, then capitalize on that. Use that momentum and turn it into some action and see where you're at in six months. Like, that's what's so exciting is that we have the power to completely change where we're at six months from now. Um, and all we have to do is lean into that and take some new serious action to get a new results. So I hope that you have enjoyed this episode today. Love to connect with you guys on Instagram. Like I said, you can always send us a message of the fit underscore for hiking Instagram page. Um, whether you want to apply or just connect and chat about your goals or how you're feeling, questions that you have, things that you like about the show, what you would like to hear more of on the show, whatever that is. We'd love to connect with you. Um, thank you so much for tuning in, and I will chat with you in the next episode. 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 Pony Tail on a trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.