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Let's jump into what the metabolism is and how it functions! We'll go over different signs of a sluggish metabolism, signs of a thriving metabolism, ways to support it, and how to work WITH your metabolism to reach your health and fitness goals.
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.
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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 long time 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. 1s Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the fit for hiking podcast. Today we are digging into a topic that is probably one of the most misconstrued, misunderstood concepts in the fitness and health and weight loss industry, and that is understanding the metabolism and what exactly it does. How does it function? How do we interact and affect our metabolism? Um, and really this question of is my metabolism sluggish? And this is something that we hear thrown around a lot. You know, people will say things like, my metabolism is just so much slower than it was when I was in high school or so, and so as a pastor metabolism than me. If I even look at a cookie, I gain weight. So first of all, I just want to start by defining the metabolism. And then today we're going to get into signs of a healthy metabolism. And some ways that we might be, um, not supporting our metabolism the best way and what what we can really focus on instead. So let's get into it. The metabolism defined really is a set of life sustaining reactions in organisms. The main purpose of the metabolism is to convert water and food into energy, and run our cellular processes within the body, to convert food into our building blocks of energy and and eliminate metabolic wastes. So all of that to say, it's a lot of different systems and processes working together. It's not one static thing working in your body that has like an on or off switch or a dial where you can, like turn up your metabolism or turn down your metabolism. So it's a lot more complex than I think these oversimplified versions of it that float around in articles or on social media, um, can really speak to. So even while we're resting, the body needs energy in order to be sustained. So this is why we each have what's called a resting or basal metabolic rate, which dictates how much food we need just to simply exist. So even people who are laying in a hospital bed in a coma for weeks on end still have certain nutritional needs. They still need a certain amount of energy just to sustain their organs, their processes and and create that energy. So. This doesn't take into account our individual activity level. Our basal metabolic rate is really just what we need to exist and and rest if we're not including all of our added movements throughout the day. So all of that to say, a thriving metabolism is abundant energy, feeling better and maintaining a lean body composition more easily. This is what we want, right? We don't want to have to constantly strive and work so hard just to maintain, let alone trying to lose weight. So we want to feel energetic, we want to feel good, and we want to maintain with ease. Having a thriving metabolism allows us to do that. Okay, so let's get into signs of a healthy metabolism. What does that even look like in the day to day. So number one would be you find it fairly easy to maintain your weight. So while there's some nuance to this, typically people with a healthy metabolism find it fairly easy to stay lean. And some people are just naturally eating less and are more active, and they feel like that's pretty normal for them. So while it might feel like it's easy for them to stay lean, it has a lot to do with their lifestyles. And on the the other end of things, um, you know, some people aren't as active and they do eat more and they're able to maintain their weight regardless. Okay. So these people would be would have what you might call a high resting metabolic rate. Um. And have avoided some of the biggest pitfalls that lead to a less than healthy metabolism. Obviously, if you're eating in a surplus and not moving consistently, you're going to gradually gain weight and it can happen super easily. I mean, if you think about like, like for instance, I'm in Guatemala right now and normally I make coffee at home. I just have like a basic coffee with a little bit of milk or cream, nothing crazy. Well, while we're here, I love to get like the bougie fun coffee drinks because the coffee here is awesome. There's so many fun coffee shops, but they make their coffee almost like ice cream sometimes. Like if you get an iced coffee, it's really fancy, really full of sugar, and that can really add up if I'm having one of those a day and then maybe throwing another cocktail in there or an extra snack, because we go out to eat because we're in a new city. Um, you know, it's really easy to add like an extra 500 calories per day. Well, if I do that over time, I'm gaining on average, a pound a week. Okay. So you really have to look at what you're doing on a regular basis. And it might not be that your basal metabolic rate is low. It might just be that you are eating extra calories right now and not really paying attention to that. Okay, so that doesn't really have to do with your metabolism being off. This is just how the law of thermodynamics works. As far as, um, you know, eating in a calorie surplus is going to lead to weight gain over time, and eating in a calorie deficit will lead to weight loss over time. So you really have to be honest with yourself. Are you inconsistent on a week to week, month to month basis and still struggling to maintain a lean physique or loose fat? If you find that you are, then there might be some metabolic considerations that you want to look at. I just want to steer you away from like automatically jumping to that conclusion, because I do think that it's easy to blame things like our hormones and metabolism without really like putting in that foundational work of committing to the basics for months before. Um, just throwing out like, oh, my metabolism is broken. Um, so just a little disclaimer there. Okay, so number two is your body temperature runs warm. Body temperature is a really easy way to gauge your metabolic health. If you are consistently cold. There's an underlying reason. Um, your body produces signals like this when something is off. And so when we're not getting enough energy or we are chronically stressed or the metabolism isn't functioning where it should, body temperature is one of the things that we can look at. So one way that you can gauge this is taking your, uh, body temperature first thing in the morning before you even hop out of bed. And, and what you want to see is a good average temperature. You know, 98.3 is pretty standard. If it's much lower than that, then that might be something you want to look at. Or if you're just one of those people that's like always cold, even when it's warm outside, that's definitely a bit of a cause for concern. 1s Number three is. 1s You sleep well and you have sufficient energy. Again, these are just kind of some ways that you can gauge how your overall health is. How are you sleeping? How's your energy if you're dragging, have inconsistent sleep or rely on coffee slash energy drinks just 24 over seven to get through the day? That could be a sign that something's off. If you're sleeping seven plus hours a night of, like, good quality sleep where you really feel like you're getting good REM sleep. It's not super like you're not tossing and turning. It's not super anxious sleep. Then your energy should not be dragging all day. You shouldn't rely on constant stream of caffeine to make it through the day. Number four is you have a healthy appetite. Um, I used to think it was a good thing to never be hungry, you know, like. Oh, great. Perfect. Like, I just don't have an appetite. How lovely. When really, it's actually a sign that the metabolism has adapted to fewer calories, and therefore is not in an advantageous place to be efficient. And and actually stay lean with ease. Because if you're adding calories to that, then then what is your body going to do? It's going to, you know, easily gain weight because your new set point is lower and adapted, which we're going to get into a bit later. So if you aren't waking up hungry, if you never feel the need to eat, um, if you just have no appetite on a consistent basis, this could be a big indicator of metabolic dysregulation. This is why fasting is not necessarily ideal for everyone, especially women. Um, in certain seasons of life, especially if you're of reproductive age or if you already kind of struggle with, like not really feeling hungry or you have some disordered eating patterns, then sometimes fasting is not the not the way to go. All right. Number five experiencing experiencing regular periods. So a sign of health is having regular periods every single month. Your hormones and metabolism are so closely linked. This is why if you are being diagnosed with a thyroid disorder, irregular periods is often a symptom. Women will report um, so if you're of reproductive age, you should be experiencing monthly periods. If not, it's really, really recommended to seek medical advice as this is a sign that something is off. Um, there's something called hypothalamic hypothalamic amenorrhea, which is a loss of a cycle. And it was something that I experienced in my early 20s. And it was very confusing to me because, you know, I'm in my. Early to mid 20s. Why am I not getting my period? I didn't get it for years, and I had to go through a lot of testing and a lot of doctors appointments, and ultimately what it came down to was stress. There was too much going on with my nervous system, that it was signaling to my body that it wasn't safe. And this can also happen when an eating disorder is present, if you're over exercising, if you're not getting enough nourishment, if you're in a very traumatic situation, if you're in a toxic relationship, a lot of these things can trigger, um, the loss of period is your body's way of protecting you from getting pregnant and it not being a safe environment. That's literally what your body is sensing. So that's a really big one if you're not having regular periods. Um, definitely, definitely something to look at. Okay, so now that we've discussed those five things, let's get into main tips for improving metabolic health. Because sometimes I feel like it can be overwhelming just to look at the, you know, okay, if I'm having these symptoms, then I might be having an issue. Let's talk about what we can actually do about this in the day to day. And, um, I also want to note that I think a lot of times we want something super simplified, like, oh, you just take this one supplement, or you eat strawberries, or you have this one type of bone broth the week of your period, and that will magically boost your metabolism. It's not going to be like one thing or one food or any one little small tweak like that. It's really these bigger lifestyle components that all add up and work together. Okay, so number one is to quit the chronic dieting. Unfortunately, dieting can become such a vicious cycle. When someone starts dieting, they rarely just do it once. It can become an on or off mentality. Um, and diets have been proven to rarely work in the long term due to their unsustainability. So as a result, many people live several years or more of their lives in restriction. I mean, even decades. Um, how many women do you know that are just like, always low key on a diet of some sort? Um, maybe they take a break for, like, a vacation, and then they're like, oh, now I'm doing this diet. Um, or just kind of always in that restrictive mindset, never spending time in an abundance of food or just not worrying about restricting. So the reason that this can be so destructive is that the metabolism is very adaptive. And and what can happen here is called metabolic adaptation. This takes place as a result of limited energy over a sustained amount of time. Okay. So this isn't going to happen after like a week or two of dieting. But for someone who is living in a constant state of of dieting or restriction, metabolic adaptation is a very real thing. So when less calories are taken in over time, the metabolism is going to slow down, to down, regulate and adapt, to conserve energy. So meaning you're literally slowing your metabolism down over time. This is why so many people accidentally dig themselves into a hole with dieting, and it makes fat loss so much harder. So this is why fat loss efforts must be done strategically and ideally with an experienced coach who understands how to cycle, how to do re feeds, how to do d loads, and is not just unnecessarily slashing calories way too low for way too long. Okay, so this is something that we take very seriously in our mountain metabolic coaching because I've seen fat loss done so poorly after working in the fitness industry for a decade now. Um, and ultimately it just leads to kind of that yoyo effect of like losing weight and then, oh, gain it right back after a few weeks because nothing is done properly or sustainably. So when my clients do have fat loss goals, we never just pick a like haphazard number of severely low calories for their deficit. We gather data on their current maintenance calories and create a modest deficit from there, with scheduled times to do Re feeds so that we're avoiding metabolic adaptation along the way. And a little caveat there is that if if consistency isn't really, really on point, then re feeds are going to be less necessary. But if if you know, if I have a client who's like freaking on top of it and really, really strict and diligent with their calorie deficit, then we are wanting to do appropriate cycling and re feeds to make sure that we are, um, approaching the metabolic component. Well, um, and so making sustainable nutrition changes is going to benefit you in so many ways that dieting cannot. And this is not just me saying this. This is really what all of the research shows based on, like the psychology of dieting and what dieting actually looks like as it plays out. Um, definitely go back and listen to episode 35 on how dieting can affect hormones mindset. That was such a great episode. Um, and if you are a female listening to this and you've struggled with dieting over the years, man, please go back and listen to that one. So so good. Okay, so number one is to quit chronic dieting. Number two is to understand and manage stress. And before you kind of like, you know, roll your eyes or just glaze over and and hit the fast forward button because this seems like so generic. Trust me when I say stress can seriously throw your metabolism off. And it has so many ramifications when we have chronically high cortisol. Um, stress management should be at the top of your to do list. If you are a high strung, high stress person, you have a lot on your plate all the time. You constantly feel like you are on overload with a million tasks, a million tabs open in your brain, and on top of it, maybe you're doing like a lot of high intensity exercise or running or hit classes. Um, maybe you have some stressful relationships going on a toxic work environment. Things like this are all going to affect your nervous system, which then affects your gut, your hormones, and your metabolism and metabolic function. So stress is not just mental or emotional, but everything bleeds into the other facets, right? So your body isn't just interpreting like this one area of stress. It takes the physical stress, the emotional stress, the mental stress, it's all together. So we really have to look at our cumulative stress load in our lives. So like I was kind of listing off before a couple of different factors to consider for your stress load. Are you generally a high strung individual or are you someone that's like kind of low key, always anxious or worried or stressed? Do you have a stressful job? Are your relationships in turmoil or are they life giving? Is your home environment calming or is it stress inducing? Do you take days to slow down and prioritize rest, or are you constantly on the go? How much sleep are you typically getting and is it good quality sleep? Are you a no days off type of exerciser? Do you typically gravitate towards high intensity or cardio exercise? How do you start your day with caffeine or more of a nourishing meal first? Do you take time to do restorative activities such as stress stretching, yoga, meditating, journaling, prayer time in nature, or unplugging? 1s Are you always being stimulated by some device or something? Again, back to the mental tabs. Like are you always, always thinking and calculating, working on self-improvement? Or do you ever just take time to truly rest and turn off? Stress really does add up, so if you're experiencing a high volume of stress in a certain area or a certain season of life, it may benefit you to cut out stressful exercise such as hit or chronic cardio and switch things up to something slower. Lower impact. This worked wonders for me when I was constantly inflamed due to a really high stress lifestyle. Some different things going on relationally. I was working out a ton, sometimes doing two days, doing a lot of hit. Um, and that was the time when I had also lost my cycle. And, and even though I wasn't in an active eating disorder or anything like that, my body was processing too much stress. Um, and the loss of cycle was just a symptom of that. Um, so go back and listen to episode 15 for more on stress. If this is a topic that you're kind of like, oh, maybe I need to look into this a little bit for myself, then check out episode 15. Okay. Number three increase muscle mass. So the more muscle you carry, the higher your metabolic rate is at rest, just to keep said muscle active and alive. So while working out with the goal of increasing muscle mass may feel counterintuitive, if your goal is fat loss, it's really kind of like the equivalent of creating a passive income stream. Instead of constantly trading your time for money, you really are investing in something long term that's going to require you less effort over time just to keep your metabolic rate at a good place. This is why people with more muscle mass can eat a lot more and stay relatively lean. Um, it's really like just constantly making that deposit every time you're doing a weightlifting type of workout with the goal of adding muscle to your frame. So this means less random hit classes, hit style workouts, YouTube workouts, or the type of like low weight circuits that are done as fast as humanly possible with no rest. Um, if your workouts really don't have any progression built in as far as like increasing weights over time or increasing like the difficulty with how much tension you're putting on your muscles, then that's something that you're really going to want to look at implementing even just a few days a week. And I'm not saying that you can never do any of like, the hit or cardio or classes or things like that. Again, if you enjoy that, that's awesome. But as far as what's going to be effective for increasing muscle mass, that's not going to give you the most bang for your buck. So I would recommend maybe just doing some cycling of cycling in some strength, um, periods into your programming on an annual basis. So maybe you take like three months at the beginning of the year and you're really focusing pretty heavily on strength. And then maybe in the spring you move more towards like some of that more conditioning based things, if that's what you really enjoy. And you take a break from the strength and then you hit the strength hard again the last three months of the year, you can cycle like that. So you're still getting in the activities you like. Or maybe you like to just, uh, mix it all together and do like 2 to 3 really good strength workouts a week year round. And then you're also mixing in some cycling classes or some hit classes or things like that. If that's something that is important to you, you can also do it that way. And I like to do that too, because it keeps things less mundane and it mixes it up even just within the week. 1s Um, and if you are curious about what proper progressive overload actually looks like and you're like, what the heck does that actually mean? I've heard it, but I don't really know how to implement it or what that would look like. Then go back and listen to episode 20. It's with our coach Kristen from Mountain Metabolic Coaching, and she is a whiz at this stuff. And it is such a helpful and practical episode for any females out there who want to get into lifting and just aren't really sure where to start. Okay, number four is just avoiding extremes. So one example here, um, most people have probably heard of the show Biggest Loser. So there was a study done, um, with a group of participants, and I think there was like 16 of them all but one in the study regained up to 70% of their weight lost over the six years post-show until they did the study. But the truly shocking part was that their leptin levels. So that's their satiety hormone and metabolism, never rebounded to what they had been before the show, so they were eating way less than they were before the show. I think it was up to like 700 calories a day less. And yet they still were gaining that weight back steadily over time, up to 70% of the weight that they had lost. 1s Um, so that is crazy. And I think a lot of that boils down to the extreme levels that they went to on the show. I mean, the show is actually so horrible. If you look back at it, the the methods that the coaches used of like shaming them, they were working out for hours a day doing these crazy intense workouts that are not in any way sustainable, especially for someone with that much weight to lose. They were put on extremely strict diets, um, eating almost no calories. Definitely not enough to account for all the energy that they are expending during their several hour long training sessions every single day. So it's no wonder that they experience a massive amount of metabolic adaptation, which really just makes it so difficult in the long run to maintain the loss that occurred during the time on the show, which is super, super frustrating. And yet, I feel like shows like this really just perpetuate the extreme approach so many people would rather jump to. Like the most extreme diets like Ozempic and, you know, whatever's trendy, um, to be miserable for a short period of time. And then they just want to be able to go back to how things were. And the reality is. It's going to be inevitable that you're going to regain the weight if you're not adopting some of the habits along the way that allowed you to reach that point. You can't just expect to stop everything altogether and then maintain the weight loss. You're going to gain it back and then some, because these extremes are going to lead to higher levels of metabolic adaptation when it's not done strategically. So a few tidbits to help you understand your metabolism a little bit better. 2s The biggest reason are metabolism slows as we age is due to a loss of muscle mass. In general, most people are losing a couple bodies or a couple percentages of muscle every single year as they get older. Um, this really, really adds up and slows the basal metabolic rate, as we talked about earlier. Earlier. Having muscle on your frame is going to allow you to burn more calories at rest. So when we're constantly just losing that muscle, it's going to make it a lot harder as we age. So it's not just like, oh, I'm older. So now my metabolism slow. You actually are an active participant in this and you can really counteract that. Um, next is that our basal metabolic rate will go down as we lose weight. I feel like this is something that we're so afraid of. Oh, like, if that happens, then I've definitely damaged my metabolism, and that's not the case. It's going to happen because your new maintenance calories are just naturally going to be less as you have a smaller body. Now, the larger the body, the more energy it's going to need to sustain itself. So it's natural that when you lose some weight, your maintenance colors are going to be lower. It's to be expected. This just means that the efforts that you put in to lose the weight will have to be maintained to a certain extent if you do not wish to regain that weight quickly. So you'll just kind of have to adjust your maintenance calories down slightly with that knowledge in mind, especially if you have lost a significant amount of weight. 1s And the next one is that what we often feel is the fault of our metabolism can also be attributed to less neat, which is our non exercise activity thermogenesis. Um, or just understanding our daily consumption of food and an inconsistent calorie intake. So those three things just moving less throughout the day like when we're little we are so active. Like we're just always zooming around playing at recess, playing during gym class. Usually in sports when we are out of school, we go outside and we play like we're just so much more active. We're on our feet all the time. As we age, we're always trying to look for ways to conserve energy. We're sitting most of the time we're not playing as much, we're not getting outside as much. So it might not be the fault of your metabolism so much as it is, just that you're not moving throughout the day. So really being honest with yourself about your non exercise activity, how are you walking around? What does your daily step count look like? Are you pretty sedentary apart from your workout? And how can you infuse more movement into your days? And then the next is understanding your daily consumption. A lot of people are underestimating up to 50% the amount of calories that they're taking in, especially if we're just kind of like estimating or eyeballing or we're eating quote unquote, healthy. But even if we're eating healthfully, if we're in a calorie surplus, it's still going to make it hard to not gain weight over time. And just an inconsistent calorie intake, too. I think a lot of times, and I definitely fell into this category in my 20s, I would like be super on top of a calorie deficit like Monday through Thursday, and I would track and I would be great and I would be not eating a ton. But then the weekends I would like overcompensate for that, because I was so hungry, because I'd restricted so hard all week, and then I didn't track, and then I was literally just like evening things out to the point where I was never, never losing weight. If anything, I was slowly gaining weight over time because that's how much I was inconsistent with my calorie intake from weekdays to weekends. So that is another consideration. It's not always the fault of our metabolism. We have to really look at all of these different factors as well. 1s Okay, you guys, I hope that this has been helpful as we have taken this deep dive into what the metabolism is, how to support it, what you need to understand if you want some tangible steps on how to achieve a healthier metabolism, then definitely click in the show notes, our our guide to a healthy Metabolism and we will get that sent over to you. Um, also, this is such a big focus of what we do in Mountain Metabolic coaching because I'm so passionate about doing things the right way as women and really setting up our clients for long term, sustained success with the results that they achieve in the program. Um, so if you go and apply today for Mountain Metabolic Coaching, and we'll link the application in the show notes, put the word podcast in all caps in your application, and you're going to receive 30% off your first month of coaching. Okay. So I'm giving you a little special deal, a little incentive if you are feeling prompted to make some changes and to work on this for yourself with our amazing team, um, put the word podcast, like I said in your application, you can put it when you where you input your name, I'll know that you are coming from the show and you'll get 30% off your first month of coaching. Um, so I hope that that helps encourage you to take the leap and invest in yourself if that's the right path for you. And thanks so much for tuning in today, you guys. If you have questions on this topic, if you have different topics you'd like to hear about on our next episode, please don't hesitate to shoot us a DM at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page again, that's fit underscore for hiking. All right, y'all, thanks for tuning in today. I'll see you 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 Pony Tail on a trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.