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Are you tired of ineffective approaches to fitness and longing for a healthier, stronger you?

In today’s Episode of the Fitness Simplified Podcast, Fitness & Nutrition Specialist, Coach Brooke Davis, delves into the essential strategies to supercharge your metabolism and embark on a journey to lasting health. Brooke debunks common myths surrounding food intake and exercise, emphasizing the importance of whole foods, adequate protein consumption, prioritizing recovery, strength training, and proper diet cycling. Through insightful explanations and practical advice, Brooke reveals how these strategies can reverse metabolic downregulation caused by restrictive diets and help you achieve sustainable results. 

Tune in now and kickstart your journey to vibrant well-being!

Transcript:

Welcome to the Fitness Simplified podcast! I’m Brooke Davis, Women’s Functional Nutritionist and Fitness Specialist with Elysian Women’s Wellness, and I’m here to simplify your fitness. Today we’re diving deep into the essential strategies to supercharge your metabolism and kickstart your journey to a healthier, stronger you for good.

I assume most of you are here because you’re tired of restrictive diets and hours spent on the treadmill only to leave you right back where you are, completely unhappy with your body and your health. Well, you’re in the right place. In this episode, we are unveiling five game-changing principles to ignite your metabolism and achieve lasting results.

So, what is metabolism? We’ve all heard this, but what does it actually entail? This actually involves the production and regulation of hormones, your immune system function, digestion, detoxification, energy production, and nervous system management. This is also the system through which your body takes food and turns it into energy, allowing you to breathe, move, and your heart to beat. How much energy it takes, calories, is a measurement of energy, is called your basal metabolic rate or your BMR, which I talk more about in some upcoming episodes.

This is your metabolic rate, and this rate is different for everyone, but there are averages based on age and sex, essentially. That being said, metabolic rate isn’t a set thing, okay? It’s affected by many different factors, including hormones, caloric intake, exercise, muscle mass, weight, and then overall stress on the body. So just like our muscles, our body will adapt to the demands placed on it, even down to a cellular level.

It’s so fascinating. And what most women experience is a metabolic downregulation and disruption of those six metabolic systems due to lack of nutrients and calories from dieting, which in turn makes it difficult to keep the weight off, and it makes it harder and harder to get it off again and again when the weight comes back. I want to stop this vicious cycle for you.

I want to reverse the degradation of your health due to these attempts at fat loss and help you regain your vibrant, energetic, and confident self so that you can show up as your best in all areas of life. So, let’s get to it. First up, we are going to debunk the myth that less is more when it comes to food.

It is time to embrace the power of whole foods and fuel your body with nutrient-rich goodness! So, number one, when it comes to kickstarting your metabolism is to eat more whole foods. I know, I know.

Oh, really odd. Oh, you’ve heard it before, but eating a healthy and balanced diet is essential for maintaining good health and whole foods are a huge part of this.

Whole foods, natural, unprocessed foods, minimally refined. These are fruits, vegetables, whole grains like quinoa, oats, beans, legumes. These foods are essential for metabolic function.

They not only provide a ton of benefits, including, but not limited to, improved digestion, energy levels, and a stronger immune system. Processed foods, on the other hand, are foods that have been changed from their natural state, usually to make them more convenient to eat or to extend their shelf life.

Most foods you find in the store are processed in some way. Comes in a box, a bag, or has an ingredient list longer than five things. It’s processed.

These foods are often high in calories, sugar, unhealthy fats, and additives, and low in essential nutrients. Processed foods are detrimental to metabolic function and can ultimately lead to a range of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

I’m not saying that you can’t ever eat these things. In fact, I encourage our clients to incorporate foods that they love in their diet, even if they’re processed, because from the mental aspect of things, being able to have these, food is fuel, but it’s also comfort. It’s also connection.

We have to recognize this. Studies have shown that people who take a flexible dieting approach and allow foods that they enjoy, foods with their families, food with their date nights, things like that, versus completely restricting and cutting out carbs completely or cutting out sugar or cutting out certain food groups completely, are going to have more success long term. Also, more whole foods equal more fiber.

The more fiber you have, the more satiated you are, the less likely you’re going to go for things, be out of boredom or hunger, that they’re not serving you in any way ultimately. So mindless snacking, things like that. Number two, and one that I see missed most often is getting adequate protein.

So inadequate protein intake can lead to a variety of health problems such as muscle wasting, weakness, and fatigue, but it can also impair your immune system and increase your risk of infections. Fortunately, like I said, this is all too common. And the older you get, the more protein you need, which is what I see people doing the opposite of.

Usually the older the people are, the less food in general they’re eating, but the less protein they’re getting. So, proteins can be found in a variety of foods, which is meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products, and beans. And I dive into this a little bit more in one of my upcoming podcasts or the next one, I think.

But the general recommendation is one gram per pound of desired or healthy body weight. There are other specific calculations, but for most people, this equates to one to two palm-sized servings of protein per meal, across three to four meals per day. So, five to even eight servings per day of protein.

Super important. This protein helps build and repair the tissues in the body, like muscle, skin, and hair. It also helps build and maintain muscle mass, which in turn helps maintain your metabolic health.

So, another secret, protein helps with weight management by keeping you full and satiated similar to fiber. So, these first two are not only about the nutrient they’re providing, but it’s about keeping you full and satiating some of those cravings. So, if you get enough fiber and you get enough protein, more often than not, you’re going to reduce the cravings that you have for foods that are not serving you.

So that was my first challenge to you in terms of nutrition, is to make sure that you are getting enough of those two things, and then come back to me about your cravings. Number three is something that I think women more specifically struggle with, and especially moms, but this is prioritizing recovery. If you are a team no days off, #nodaysoff, with four to five days of HIIT a week, you’re doing too much.

Combine that with your low carb diet, you were told is going to be the answer to losing fat, over caffeination, because you’re not sleeping and you have kids, and it’s a recipe for disaster. It’s a hormonal recipe for disaster, and your body’s not going to respond the way that you want. Sleep and recovery from training are a crucial part of maintaining a healthy metabolism.

Adequate sleep is absolutely essential for metabolic function. It allows the regulation of your hormones, such as cortisol and insulin, which play a key role in fat loss and maintenance of a healthy weight. Cortisol and insulin both regulate blood sugar, and they affect other hormones in the body that help you manage weight and maintain homeostasis or balance in the body.

I will dive into hormones a little bit more in some future podcasts as well, which I’m excited about. So additionally, sleep plays a crucial role in muscle recovery and repair. During sleep is when the body produces growth hormone, which is what stimulates that growth and repair.

Sleep also helps reduce inflammation and oxidative stress in the body, which can contribute to improved metabolic function. So that’s part of that overall stress on the body. If you are experiencing increased inflammation, excessive oxidative stress, that is going to play a role in the body’s essentially attempt to prioritize fat loss.

It can only prioritize so many things. We only have the energy to prioritize so many things, especially if you are dieting, which is only being in a caloric deficit is only added stress on the body. So, recovering from training is absolutely crucial for maintaining that healthy metabolism.

Exercise as well as that caloric deficit, right, places stress on the body, and you need that recovery time to repair and adapt to the stress. If you are not recovering, if you are not giving your body time to recover, the workouts are pointless. The changes are not seen during the workouts; they are seen afterwards when your body can recover from it.

Okay, this allows the body to replenish your energy stores, repair damaged tissue, and reduce that inflammation. So not allowing adequate recovery time over exercising under eating your body is going to be overwhelmed by that stress, that overall stress leading to decreased metabolic function in all six of those areas, hormone, immune system, detoxification, digestion, energy systems and nervous system, as well as increasing your risk of injury. So ideally sleeping six to eight hours a night.

I know that’s not always possible. Mom’s 300 ish milligrams of caffeine max for most people. Some people say 400, but I think even 400 is too much for most people who are operating at these high levels or have to operate at these high levels for so long, like moms on so little sleep, but everyone’s different on that.

So that might even be too much for you. And then you should be taking at the very least one day off per week, but I think two is best. And then limiting your HIIT or even cardio in general, even moderate cardio to two to three days, absolute max.

Moving on to the next one, prioritizing your strength training. And number four, my personal favorite and one that I have a lot of podcasts coming up on and I’m so excited is building muscle. So I know that so many women are focused on losing fat, but you hear the word toning up.

They want to tone up. And what that means is that you’ve built muscle in order to be toned. You have to build muscle.

And in order to do that, you have to do one, do steps one through three, and then welcome to number four. So this is a phase building muscle that most women don’t ever get to experience because you’re so focused on losing fat. But hear me out.

The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even at rest. Toning again equals more muscle.

The more muscle you have, the more energy you have, the more muscle you have, the more strength you have. And the more strength you have, the more things you’re capable of. You can keep up with your kids.

You can go do fun things. And you just feel like a badass. Feel good to have some biceps.

Feels good to have some abs and know that you have the capability to do things in life and protect yourself and take care of yourself. I saw this reel that I just loved. And it was like, hopefully you don’t ever have to pick up your kids and carry them for long distances.

But wouldn’t it be nice to know that you could? What if you did have to do something? I mean, it’s really crazy right now. There’s so much going on. And so wouldn’t it be nice to know that you could just grab up your kiddo and take off and be okay and have that capability? Okay.

But in all seriousness, right, this phase, this muscle building phase is going to be what fires up your metabolism and allows you to just live around that average intake of 2000 plus calories per day with great energy and less stress around food. The average intake for a 145 pound woman, not including exercise is 2000 calories. If you weigh 145 pounds or more, you are exercising or doing cardio of any kind, or you’re hitting your 10,000 steps, you need more than 2000 calories to survive.

If you are 145 pounds or more, if you are exercising, if you’re hitting your 10,000 steps, you need more than 2000 calories just to survive, or you should need 2000 calories. Your metabolism may have down-regulated and you may need to help support it to get back up there, which is what we focus on here. So muscle building three to four days per week for strength training and prioritizing true strength is plenty for most people.

If you’re pushing your sessions hard, this leaves room for cardio and plenty of recovery, right? Tip number three, but that toned look you’re wanting comes from going through a true building or bulking phase. Quote, unquote, I hate to even use that word because I know there is a real fear of building quote, unquote, too much muscle for women, but I can promise you it is insanely difficult. And if you are implementing a true reverse diet and increasing your calories and prioritizing your strength training, you are going to come out of this phase feeling so dang good, okay? This is what allows you to stop stressing about food and stops you from gaining weight by just looking at the cake.

You can literally have your cake and eat it too. And last, but certainly not least, one of the next biggest mistakes that I see women making when it comes to reaching their goals is proper diet cycling. So you can’t just be in a caloric deficit or on a diet forever.

And most people, we see that they’re either on a diet or they’re going crazy and gaining all the weight back, okay? This method of dieting and continuously decreasing calories or this yo-yo dieting, right? With the binge cycles falling off in between completely restricting calories causes what we talked about is that metabolic adaptation and can slow your metabolism. So I have created this graph, so to speak, it’s a circle basically. And I call it the vicious diet cycle, okay? So you diet, which is you decrease your calories.

There is what’s called a famine response or your body ultimately adapting to the fact that you don’t have access quote, unquote, right? To this many calories. And so it reduces your metabolic rate and it gets ready to store fat when it has more calories. And this is what causes most people to gain the weight back after they’ve lost it because they don’t reprep their bodies to maintain the weight loss and increase their calories the right way.

So they lose weight. They also lose muscle because they’re going into an extreme deficit and they’re not prioritizing their recovery or strength training. And then they completely fall off.

They go crazy. Maybe they eat a ton and they go into what is called the feast response. And this is the body now storing fat because it’s like, well, we just went through this famine.

We are preparing to possibly do it again. And along with that, you’ve lost muscle, which has decreased your metabolic rate. And so you are not burning as many calories when you increase those calories.

Yes. Your metabolism will get back up there. It doesn’t happen instantaneously, but the longer you keep your calories high, the more it will adjust to it.

The other component of losing muscle is that your body goes into what is called hyperphagia. And that is an extreme desire to eat. And it does that until you have regained your base amount of muscle, not weight, but muscle.

Your body is so smart that it wants you to have your muscle. It knows how metabolically important muscle is. And so it makes you hungrier and hungrier until you have regained your muscle, which also includes excessive fat.

And then you’ve gained the weight back, likely plus some. And so you try it again. Diet, you go into that response, you fall off.

This is what I call the vicious diet cycle. Like I said, essentially, we are extremely efficient beings. So your body adapts to those things in order to mitigate the effects of metabolic adaptation.

It is so important to make gradual changes to your diet and lifestyle and less extreme calorie deficits when you are trying to lose weight rather than making those sudden drastic changes and going for the quick fix. Yes. With reduced calories, with Optivia, with semaglutide, HCG, intermittent fasting, the reason they all work is because they put you in a caloric deficit.

The problem is that they put you in a huge caloric deficit. You lose weight quickly. You can’t keep it off.

You can’t maintain those habits. You don’t have enough energy to survive with those habits. And so when you go back to normal eating, you end up in that vicious cycle.

So what we want you to do is, one, not have so drastic of a caloric deficit. We want you in a proper diet cycle, which comes from a conservative, which is 15 to 25 percent, usually max, of a caloric deficit with periods of maintenance or diet breaks, as well as muscle building focus and a potential caloric surplus, or at least a reverse diet or a strategic surplus, taking you up to or slightly above your current maintenance in order to build muscle and increase your metabolic rate. So again, it would be diet, caloric deficit, a diet break, maintenance.

We break up those diet periods between 8 to 16 weeks, usually, with a week or two of your maintenance, which increase in calories and a stopping of weight loss. So yes, it’s going to take a little more time, but you’re going to be able to keep it off. And then we go back into your deficit if needed.

Then we go into, again, that maintenance, possibly forever, if you want to maintain that, if you’re good, if you feel good. If you want to tone up a little bit more, you want to change some of your body shape, build some glutes, whatever it is, then we can go into a strategic surplus, which is where we’re going to increase carbs and fats slowly, incrementally. And we are using this to prioritize our strength training, follow a solid program, and make sure that we’re using it, again, to increase your metabolism, nourish the body, and up-regulate all of those processes, your hormones, your immune system, your digestion, your detoxification, energy system, and your nervous system.

We are optimizing all of those functions through those processes. So that is the proper diet cycle. I know that all of this can seem kind of overwhelming.

I know it can be slightly confusing to try and put into a plan for yourself, and maybe you’ve tried some of this, but really haven’t been able to complete the picture to reach the goals that you have. So we have this free guide. It is the Metabolic Kickstart Guide, where I outline all of this.

I’m going to drop the link in the comments, but this is essentially the first phase in our three-phase metabolic optimization method. And this phase makes it to where when you get to your diet and your fat loss phase, once you have earned the right to diet, you are in a good place, it makes it so easy. It makes it the easiest, most simple fat process you’ve ever been through.

Not the fastest. I will promise you that it is not the fastest, but it is the most sustainable and you will be able to maintain it. We also teach you phase three.

Phase one is our metabolic optimization, our rebuild phase, making sure that your metabolism is up-regulated, it’s optimized. Phase two is our fat loss phase. This is the recreate phase.

And then phase three is our relive phase. And this is where we reintegrate you and your diet and everything else back into just regular life. And we ensure that you are able to maintain the results that you have gotten in the first two, which at that point is honestly the easiest part.

So I am going to drop the link to our metabolic kickstart in the show notes here, and you can go snag it. There’s also some videos that go with it. I hope that this has been insanely, at least eye-opening for you, if not super helpful to understanding not just why your past attempts haven’t worked, but how you can change what you’re doing in the future, whether it’s with us or on your own.

Happy to provide these resources, these guides, everything else. If there’s something that you can’t find that you need, please reach out. Happy to answer questions and we will see you next Monday.

If you have any questions, suggestions for future topics, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram @Brooke_Elysian and Facebook linked in the show notes or via our website, Elysianwomenswellness.com. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, we’d be thrilled if you could take a half second to leave us a five-star review. Not only will you be helping others find our show, but you’ll also be entered into our monthly $100 giveaway for new reviews. New episodes drop every Monday, so make sure to hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more.

Thanks for listening. See you soon.

Coach Brooke Davis Links:

Website: elysianwomenswellness.com

LinkedIn: Brooke Davis

Facebook: Brooke Davis, CPT 

Instagram: Brooke Davis  (@brooke_elysian)

Free Community: Women’s Fitness Simplified: Lean down, tone up, build confidence!

METABOLIC KICKSTART GUIDE: https://bdavistraining.com/metabolickickstart/