Metabolism: Is Yours Broken?

Is your metabolism broken? If you have felt the desire to throw the scale against the wall, shake your fists at the diet “gods, and scream, “Why are you punishing me, diet gods? I followed all your rules” and then quit, but DON’T! I promise you will regret it, but you may have some work to do to optimize your metabolism. 

Things can definitely move slower as we age, especially after menopause. This is due to a few things: the first is hormonal shifts, especially after menopause, and the second is age-related muscle loss. 

Hormonal Shifts:

When discussing hormonal changes, one of the biggest contributors for women is the decline in estrogen and progesterone hormones. This can contribute to less lean body mass as the body becomes less efficient at retaining muscle. As the ratio of lean body mass shifts to less lean muscle and higher body fat, it affects the body’s metabolism. Women tend to notice this shift when they start to develop the dreaded menopause belly or increased weight in the abdomen area. The reduction in progesterone can impact sleep, which further compounds metabolic issues. 

Age-Related Muscle Loss:

Age-related muscle loss is also a concern since we lose 3-8% of muscle mass per decade after age 30, and this rate accelerates after age 60. This is important since muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat tissue, meaning muscle burns more calories at rest than fat. In fact, it is thought that you increase your caloric burn by 100 calories for every kg of muscle you add to your body. 

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, a famous board-certified family physician trained in geriatric nutritional sciences, focuses on skeletal muscle to support longevity. In her most recent book, Forever Strong, she says, “We aren’t overfat; we are under-muscled.”

In a stage of life when things seem to be slowing down, we want to work with our bodies to retain as much lean body mass as possible. Why is muscle so important? As we age, we want to ensure longevity, and the only way to ensure longevity is to fight the age-related muscle loss that begins in our thirties. We do this by feeding and moving our bodies to ensure we have a strong foundation of physical stability and strength to ensure independence and health for as long as possible. 

Other Metabolic Factors to Consider:

While it’s true that slowing the metabolism can result from some shifts in hormones and age-related muscle loss. Still, the bigger explanation is that the average woman’s metabolism just tends to slow down due to:

• Diet history: How long, how often, and how low in calories her diet history entails 
• Activity level: How active or sedentary she is
• Overall energy or calorie intake in relation to daily movement
• If she eats enough protein to retain muscle
• If she strength trains or stimulates muscle tissue to retain muscle

Science Has Proven that the Reason Most Diets Work is Twofold: 

1. All diets essentially reduce your overall calorie intake. This means you take in less energy than you burn. 

2. The diet you selected fits seamlessly into your overall lifestyle.

People who have been successful on any diet have been successful because they can insert the diet with minimal interruption to their lives. Now, this can look different for different people. Here’s what the studies have proven: when testing all diets (low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb, carnivore, Keto, etc.), and you equate for calories (meaning they match calorie counts for each diet and then run them side-by-side to test for weight loss), neither diet shows a greater weight loss. They show that diets that cut out whole foods groups run a greater risk of nutrient deficiencies. I’m saying you don’t HAVE to eat drastically to lose weight. In fact, there really isn’t a benefit. You just need a little awareness and knowledge to be successful. Here’s what you need to know:

Your body’s basal metabolic rate is the number of calories or energy your body utilizes just to run basic processes like pumping your heart, breathing, and normal brain function. It accounts for about 60-75% of the calories or energy your body needs. In comparison, exercise activity (workouts and movement) accounts for approximately 5-10%, depending on the individual’s activity level. This is why health experts challenge people to get 10,000 steps a day. It’s not that something magical happens when you hit 10,000 steps (like you hit a new level in the game, although imagining this does help. Just sayin’), but that you need that level of movement to maintain health and fitness. Steps are just a motivator to keep people moving, so they fight against being sedentary, which leads to diseases like obesity, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and osteoporosis. 

It also doesn’t have to be steps. It can be swimming, kickboxing, skipping, or chasing your grandkids around all day, but the point is to not fall into the trap of most Americans and come home and fall onto the couch and start mindlessly scrolling on your phone or watching TV for the rest of the evening. 

The average American only takes 3,000 to 4,000 steps daily, eats 3600 calories (the general calorie range for women just to retain health is 1600-2400), and is physically active 17 mins a day or 119 mins a week. The CDC recommends that adults aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity daily exercise (210 minutes minimum).

What Got You Here:

Let’s talk about specific behaviors most women fall into that haven’t supported their desired healthy bodies. Then we talk about how to combat these behaviors to make real progress toward goals:

Here are three major reasons for why your metabolism has slowed down:

1. Lifestyle behaviors
2. Mental behaviors
3. Hormonal Issues

Lifestyle Behaviors:

This is first because it’s the largest bucket and impacts overall metabolism the most. Three main categories of lifestyle behaviors contribute to a slowing metabolism: Nutrition, Movement, and Recovery.

Nutrition Behaviors

• Always being on a “diet,” or yo-yo dieting off and on for years
• Cutting calories too deep and/or too fast (this results in greater total body weight, a.k.a scale weight, but not necessarily body fat. In fact, it can actually increase the fat-to-muscle ratio and severely impact your metabolism in the long term. Lower scale weight doesn’t necessarily make you healthier). 
• Not fueling properly for the workouts you are doing. 
• They are not getting enough protein, period. Americans are severely undereating protein, and women are especially bad at it. Protein is essential for being lean and fit. 
• Focusing primarily on carbs or fat vs. getting enough protein. 
• Not focusing on eating Whole Foods, or most of your diet is processed foods. Even “healthy” processed foods are still processed. You want to minimize foods from a box or bag when possible. That doesn’t mean processed foods are inherently bad, but at this stage of life, your body isn’t optimized like it was when you were younger. You want to support, not work against, systems that are less effective than they once were. 
• Fiber is low. The recommendation for fiber for women is 25g per day. Most women are not getting anywhere close to that amount.
• Fasting to lose weight works like any diet by lowering your overall calorie intake. The issue is that limiting your eating window makes it increasingly difficult to consume the protein you need to retain your muscle tissue and lean body mass as you age. 

Movement Behaviors

• Trying to “out-train” your calorie input by constantly “burning” calories can be counterproductive. Constantly going harder or “punishing” yourself for a perceived slip can also be counterproductive. 
• However, you must still move your body and stay active to see results. Move it or lose it—It’s a real problem. 
• Focusing more on your one-hour workout than on moving the other 23 hours of the day. In fact, NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis will burn more calories throughout your day and improve your overall health than that one hour of exercise.  Don’t think you can work out for an hour a day and then sit the rest of the day. Our bodies were made to move. 
• If your body hurts, being sedentary will NOT help. You might need to get uncomfortable before you can move comfortably again. This doesn’t mean ignoring pain or hurting yourself; it just means being sore or having subtle aches and pains is a normal part of exercise.
• You can be severely under-muscled, which will impact how you age. The best thing you can do for yourself is retain or improve your physical strength as you age. Women always underestimate how strong they are. Stop settling and start becoming. You are way stronger than you think.  
• Aging doesn’t mean you can’t handle challenging workouts. Not all types of stress are bad for you. Please stop using those ridiculous pink dumbbells that don’t challenge you in the slightest bit. 

Recovery Behaviors

• You need to know how and when to actively rest and recuperate. This is not the same as “self-care,” getting mani-pedis, and taking bubble baths. Those things are nice, but not what we’re discussing for improving health. For example, don’t do back-to-back training, especially if it’s something of higher intensity (cardiovascular or strength-wise). Ideally, at this stage of life, you should give yourself at least 24 hours before training the same muscles or systems again. 
• Sleep. You need at least 7 hours of quality sleep per night to burn fat efficiently.

Mental Behaviors:

Where is your head? These behaviors involve perspective and resilience. They are about learning to stop your inner bully and see yourself in a true light. Behaviors that fall into the mental bucket include stress management and resiliency. 

Mental

• How do you handle and manage stress? What are the healthy ways you cope with stress? 
• How do you view failure? Do you allow yourself to learn, or do you expect that you will intuitively be perfect at something new? Are you a perfectionist? Do you spend your mental energy bulling yourself when you feel you didn’t check ALL the boxes? Can you improve by being a little better than you were yesterday instead of being perfect today? 
• How do you view yourself? What is your level of self-efficacy? What do you really think of yourself? Do you think you deserve to be happy and healthy? 
• Can you dust yourself off when something doesn’t go quite right, or do you stay where you landed and give up?
• Are you the reason you haven’t been successful up to this point? Can you get out of your own way long enough to see those opportunities, make a plan, and commit to the plan for you? 

Hormone Issues:

This is the smallest slice. Unfortunately, many women will jump to this when they haven’t fixed the other two first. This is a poor formula for permanent fat loss. It can also be very expensive and less effective unless you work with a professional to troubleshoot bloodwork and hormone level results. Symptoms that fall into this bucket:

Hormone Symptoms

• Slowed metabolism: This can happen, but follow up with your general practitioner first and get bloodwork to validate your concerns. The percentage of ladies that really have hormonal imbalances tends to be much lower once lifestyle behaviors are addressed. 
• Increased fat storage, specifically in the abdominal area
• Loss of strength or muscle
• Fatigue: This can be nutrient deficiencies or interruptions in sleep due to hormonal changes
• Insomnia or poor sleep: This can be from the decline of progesterone or vasomotor symptoms like heat flashes and night sweats keeping you from getting a good quality night’s sleep
• Increased appetite and cravings: This is usually due to poor sleep quality, which has been shown to increase appetite
• Mood swings and depression
• Joint Pain and stiffness
• Hot flashes and night sweats

Hormones are complicated and very individualized. Work with your general practitioner, endocrinologist, or gynecologist to run a full hormone panel to determine if your hormones are at healthy levels. Other suggestions would be to work with a clinic specializing in Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy. If you don’t want to take hormones but are still interested in other options, look at our FREE Menopause Symptom Tracker, which also has suggestions for adaptogens (natural substances usually drive from herbs and roots that are believed to help the body resist and adapt to stressors of all kinds, physical, chemical, or biological) and over-the-counter options to relieve menopausal symptoms.

What Can You Do About a Slower Metabolism?

As it turns out, quite a bit. The good news is that it’s simple—not necessarily easy, but simple. 

First, let’s discuss realistic expectations: Losing weight the right way (permanently and sustainably takes time! Can you lose weight on the scale faster? Yes! Absolutely, but you will regret that decision as your metabolic rate slows to a crawl, and you must eat toddler-size portions to make the scale move again.

Let’s do it right now so you will never have to do it again. 

4 Steps to Increase Your Metabolism:

1. Eat in a slight calorie deficit. Find where your maintenance calories are currently. The best way to do this is to track for a week or two and determine where your calories have been on average. Once you have that number,  then take a slight decrease somewhere between 200-500 calories under the maintenance calories you established when tracking. You can also pull up a calculator online to determine approximate calories. However, remember these are based on averages,  so they are not as accurate as tracking your specific habits for a week or two.
2. Eat enough protein. You may have to work up to this, but it’s important that you aim to eventually reach 1g per pound of your goal body weight. If you weigh 200 lbs, but your goal weight is 150 lbs., aim for 150g of protein daily. If you are eating 30g of protein, 150g will seem like too much. Meet yourself where you are, and just aim to hit 40g. When you have reached that goal, aim for 50g, slowly building up your protein until you have reached 150g. 
3. Move your body! You can use a step tracker or dance in your living room. It really doesn’t matter, but do something and aim to increase your movement by a little bit each week slowly. Don’t worry about where you “should” be. It doesn’t matter! Just aim to move a little more tomorrow than you do today. If you are a numbers person, set a goal of a 10% increase in movement, steps, dancing moves, or whatever works for you, but MOVE your booty! 
4. Resistance Training is your friend. If you don’t know what to do, look up a few free beginner bodyweight workouts online and just start. Focus on doing the exercises properly first, then worry about adding equipment, weights, or joining a gym. 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, while seeing your metabolism slow down may be disheartening, it’s far from a hopeless situation. It’s important to understand that this slowing is a natural part of aging, influenced by hormonal changes and muscle loss. However, with the right strategies and mindset, you can have a powerful influence over your metabolic health.

Begin by focusing on maintaining or increasing muscle mass through resistance training, which is key to a more active metabolism. Prioritize protein in your diet to support muscle health and ensure you’re fueling your body appropriately for your activities. Remember, movement throughout your day is crucial beyond just structured workouts; aim for consistent and varied physical activities.

Additionally, give attention to proper rest and recovery, ensuring you get quality sleep and manage stress effectively. Your mental perspective is also significant – cultivate resilience, manage stress wisely, and maintain a positive self-view to support your health journey.

Lastly, while hormonal changes can impact metabolism, these are often manageable with professional guidance and a comprehensive approach that considers lifestyle modifications first.

Implement these steps with patience and persistence, focusing on sustainable habits rather than quick fixes. Doing so allows you to optimize your metabolism, enhance your health, and enjoy greater vitality at any age. Your metabolism isn’t broken; it’s just waiting for you to give it the care and attention it needs to thrive.