Hi, I’m Kris Stokes from Custom Fitness personal training studio where your health comes first. Today, I wanted to talk to you about the number one factor that influences your metabolism. Metabolism comes up quite often in conversation, when I sit down with people from day-to-day, they’ll tell me that they have low metabolism, or their metabolism used to be great and now it just doesn’t seem existent. Then they’ve got other people in their lives that they’re like, “Man, I just don’t know how they rev their metabolism up the way that they do.” Well, I need to tell you what actually influences that.
What is the point of talking about a word if you don’t really understand what it is that causes that to be such an issue? The thing is that your metabolism does really great whenever you’re younger, right? Or, at least it seems to. That’s typically because when we’re younger we are balanced in hormones. We have more energy. Our bodies haven’t been as torn up and taken advantage of as they are, say when you hit 30, 40, 50. By that point, your body’s just kind of trying to survive, and if you’re still eating like a college student, it’s not doing a very good job of it. We’re just not fueling it well.
What is the number one factor that influences your metabolism? Well, it’s not cardio, it’s not strength training and it’s not your genetics. Okay? It’s not any of those three, but I will tell you that people struggle their whole lives working on cardio and strength training, thinking that they can raise their metabolism just through that. And, it’s not that those areas don’t play a factor in your metabolic health because they absolutely do, but they’re just a part of the process, and some of the key ingredients to really your fat burning metabolism success.
The number one factor that influences your metabolism is nutrition… not something that we all want to hear. Right? Nutrition is like 70 to 80% of the battle whenever you’re looking at health, weight loss, muscle gain, any of the physique type things that we’re looking at, as well as, that number one that I said, health. Nutrition comes in huge as a big piece of the puzzle. But, specifically when we’re talking about metabolic reboot or lifting your metabolism is your nutrient timing. Making sure that you’re getting the right macro and micronutrients at the right times. I know that sounds really complicated and people have a way of making nutrition sound way more complicated than what it needs to be, but the thing is that it’s not that complicated. What exactly is nutrient timing? Well that’s a good question…
Nutrient timing simply refers to the type of nutrients that you consume, combined with the specific times that you consume them at. So, people come into me and they say, “Well, what does your nutrition plan look like? I’ve tried this and that and the other and they didn’t work. What does yours look like? How complicated is this going to be?” And I tell them simply that most often people’s issues do not lie necessarily in what they’re eating, as much as when they are eating and the balance of what they are eating. If we can get those things timed out and figured out, then the body starts to be able to use what it has, it’s being given more fuel instead of just filler, and the body can respond better. It can lose weight. It can have more energy. It can sleep better. You just live life fuller whenever you eat well and perform well.
Right now, the average person only eats about two to three meals a day. I’ve met people who eat one meal a day and I’ve met people who eat less than that. I’ve also met people on the other end of the scale that eat a ton more. We’re talking about the average person. Average is about two to three meals a day. When it comes to your metabolic health, this is a huge problem, because your body really only remembers the last time that you ate. So, if you eat two meals a day, hypothetically speaking at lunch and dinner, then there’s a huge gap between the time you ate dinner and the next time that you eat lunch, sometimes like 12 to 15 hours or more. When this happens, your body goes into what we call starvation mode, which causes you to store extra calories as body fat.
Whenever you go into starvation mode, what happens is the next time that you eat, you don’t just store random calories, your body holds onto extra calories. It grabs as much as it can and holds on to all of that and stores it as fat, so it can use it as energy later, because it thinks that you’re starving, that there is no food available, and that you’re going to have to wait longer periods of time fasting before you’re going to be able to eat again. How do we fix this? Another great question. So glad you asked! The way that we fix this is to really make your metabolism work for you by eating more frequently. Simple enough, right? No, you don’t have to eat six meals a day..
If we take the same amount of calories that you would normally eat and space them out between say four to five meals a day, that are about every say three-ish hours apart, then you’re going to start to give your body a signal that you’re not starving, there is no fast, and it’s going to get what it needs. Which means your body is going to turn on its metabolism, burning fat away. Okay?
In doing this, you’re getting the right amount of energy that you need in order to be healthy. What we think healthy is and what healthy actually is, a lot of times are two completely different things. We want to fuel our metabolism in a way that it allows us to use the excess fat that we’ve been storing as fuel, so that we can lose weight and be healthy, just like we want to do anyways.
Right? All right, so here’s the catch, though. You really can’t eat five meals of just anything that you want. I know that sounds great. That’s that magic cure, right? That we can eat whatever we want to and still lose weight and do all these things, and that’s great. To a point, there needs to be some enjoyment in life, but we’ve also got to learn that some of these things that we just want all the time, really are more treat-like. We should not be eating cakes and muffins and cupcakes every day. We should space them out, make them into treats. Same thing with cokes. They should be a treat, instead of a habit that we consume every single day. We do have to consume the right amount of macro nutrients, which are your carbs, your proteins, and your fats, over the course of those five meals, so that your metabolism can start to work for you.
The best part though, is when you begin to eat to fuel your metabolism this way, then you don’t have to completely deprive yourself of those favorite foods. That’s where that enjoyment comes in, that you’re able to eat a little bit more of those things as treats here and there, than what you would otherwise, because you are feeding your body so consistently well. If you can stay on track with that and really know that you’re giving your body everything that it needs, then you will be able to see the effects, the success, going forward from it on a pretty regular basis. I mean, this doesn’t turn into a once and done deal. This becomes a habit that you can follow over and over again to create better things for you. I would love to invite you to build some new habits today, to start working on making your metabolism work for you, making sure that your body is doing its absolute best, rather than just surviving.
If you would like some help with that, feel free to give us a call, (806) 322-3188, that’s what we help our clients with. We help them with nutrition, lifestyle factors, and exercise. It’s not just a workout here. You get so much more. That’s kind of the our non-gym experience, and so we want to provide you with everything that you need to be healthy, to be well, to be whole, and to be fit. Feel free to give us a call. The other thing I want to tell you about is, if you are in need of learning some habits and maybe you’re not quite ready to commit long-term, but you think “I just want to try it out, just want to put my toe in the water”, we have got our Clean and Lean Challenge coming up on June 3rd.
Clean and Lean is all about eating clean and getting lean. Through that process we build a ton of great habits in the six week program. It’s absolutely wonderful and if you tell us that you heard about it on this post, I’ll be happy to give you an extra bonus discount! Hope you have a great day.
