Metabolic Health
3 Tips to Boost Metabolism for Preventing Fat Gain and Muscle Loss
No matter what you do, unless you optimize your metabolism, fat gain, and muscle loss will be an issue as you age.
Excessive visceral fat (leading to obesity) and muscle loss (leading to sarcopenia) are two severe health concerns for the aging population. These two conditions are related to metabolic functioning as it tends to slow as we age. Therefore, improving metabolism can lower these risks.
Based on years of reviews and experience, I noticed three key factors significantly impact metabolism. They are stress, diet, and movement.
I gained visceral fat and lost muscles in my younger years due to typical weight loss mistakes but not in my older years. Instead, as I got older, I gained a defined body with a well-functioning metabolism thanks to healthy lifestyle choices and mindful living that I introduce in this article.
As metabolism is a broad and complex topic, I articulate the critical points under three headings to give you a perspective with practical tips. First, I’d like to provide a brief overview of metabolism so that the issues I discuss and the helpful information I introduce make sense to you.
An Overview of Human Metabolism
Metabolism is a complex process of chemical reactions within the human body to generate energy for cells. Metabolic activities are catalyzed by hormones and enzymes, involving a series of convoluted pathways.
To illustrate human metabolism, during my presentations, I use the metaphors of a car engine and a waste management machine from energy utilization and recycling perspectives.
Like a car engine, the body converts fuel into energy, and like the waste machine, it breakdowns materials to convert them into reusable items.
The two critical concepts for metabolism are anabolism and catabolism. Anabolic activities refer to cell growth, and catabolic activities refer to cell breakdown or shrinkage. The lifestyle factors I mention in this article can be anabolic or catabolic based on their effects.
Lifestyle factors (food, movement, sleep, and rest) can have a significant impact on metabolic activities, either positively or negatively. Our metabolic rate determines our waistline, muscle mass, fitness, and overall well-being.
When metabolism slows down excessively due to caloric and hormonal issues, it can lead to metabolic and other disorders, such as type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and some cancers.
It is essential to make healthy lifestyle changes or work with healthcare professionals to treat underlying conditions to address these risks.
To understand metabolic rate, you may first understand the basic metabolic rate (BMR). It refers to the energy the body expends while at rest, performing bodily activities such as digestion, breathing, blood circulation, heart rate, and cellular processes.
The higher the BMR, the more calories the body burns in a rested state. However, BMR tends to slow down as we get older due to sedentary lifestyles and losing muscle mass, mainly caused by preventable hormonal imbalances and inevitable aging.
Many factors affect BMR, including diet, activity, stress, medical history, weight, height, sex, ethnicity, and genetics. Active metabolic health is crucial for physical and mental well-being, as the two are closely intertwined.
The key to optimizing metabolism lies in achieving hormonal balance. Multiple hormones or neurotransmitters, such as insulin, leptin, CCK, adiponectin, glucagon, growth hormone, thyroid hormones, and stress hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline, affect metabolism.
1 — Holistic Stress Management
I start with stress as it affects us at a genetic and cellular level. Biological and psychological factors can cause stress and anxiety, adversely affecting metabolism. Therefore, a holistic health approach to stress management is vital.
Without addressing stress, the other two steps will not be as practical as psychological and emotional issues can stress the genes and mitochondria, causing an imbalance in hormones and neurotransmitters.
Stressful situations can adversely impact our metabolic and mental health, leading to fat gain, muscle loss, and other metabolic concerns. Negative emotions such as guilt, anger, anxiety, grief, boredom, envy, and feeling worthless can disturb the body’s balance (homeostasis).
For example, unresolved emotional traumas and accumulated stress can lead to addictions, such as binge eating, resulting in fat accumulation and sedentary lifestyles.
Emotions, feelings, and sensations inform us of important messages from the cells caused by biochemical and electrical signals. Therefore, we need to understand, accept, and find solutions to express them to lower emotional stress. This process is called emotional regulation.
Dysregulated emotions can cause chronic stress manifesting as physical and mental health conditions putting us in a vulnerable position by adversely affecting our metabolism.
Some practical ways to regulate emotions and lower oxidative stress are breathing exercises, stretching, taking short breaks, working in a flow state, listening to music, expressive writing, self-talk, digital therapeutics, and laughter yoga, which can activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
In addition, practicing cognitive behavioral therapy to manage thoughts and feelings and seeking help from qualified psychotherapists who can effectively and sustainably help us resolve our psychological problems and emotional issues.
Rewiring the brain for healthy habits is necessary to lower oxidative stress leading to chronic inflammation. Keeping the brain in growth mode by initiating BDNF-boosting activities can reduce oxidative stress and stimulate the brain for neurogenesis.
From a daily stress management perspective, sleep and recovery are critical for metabolic health. The main contribution of sleep is to lower stress, balance hormones, and support metabolic activities.
Sleep deprivation adversely affects fat burning by increasing insulin and cortisol hormones. Although the metabolic rate slightly lowers during sleep, after restorative sleep, the rate can significantly increase, having favorable effects on the metabolic pathways.
Mindfulness practices like meditation can improve sleep quality, lower stress, and balance hormones. Meditation after exercise can expedite recovery. As it lowers stress hormones, the body can tap into fat stores after meditation sessions and prolonged fasting.
2 — Personalized Dietary Modifications
The body creates energy from what we eat. As part of our evolution, it saves excessive energy for future use, as energy is the most critical survival mechanism.
The body produces energy from three macronutrients, carbs, fats, and proteins. Therefore our food intake and ratios of these macronutrients affect the metabolism directly or indirectly.
Protein-containing food can increase metabolic rate through digestive energy expenditure and muscle-building activities like activating mTOR.
Some diets restrict essential macronutrients like proteins and healthy fats. However, the nine essential amino acids we get from bioavailable protein sources are necessary for muscles and many other metabolic activities.
Some fats are also essential for the body. For example, the satiety signaling hormone (leptin) comprises fats and functions based on sensing fat intake and stores in the body.
When we don’t consume enough fat, the body can experience leptin resistance, causing us to eat more than necessary with more calories and accumulate visceral fat.
Macronutrient requirements might differ from person to person based on numerous factors. Therefore, support from qualified dieticians or nutritionists can help create a personalized dietary plan.
The key point is creating energy from healthy fats and complex carbs instead of unhealthy fats and refined carbs. Please keep in mind that even though proteins can create energy, their primary purpose is serving the body as building blocks.
Cutting protein and healthy fats and increasing carbohydrates for energy might slow down metabolism indirectly. For example, too many carbohydrates can spike insulin and prevent fat burning.
Micronutrients such as minerals and vitamins are also necessary for metabolic activities as co-factors for creating various enzymes, hormones, and neurotransmitters. Therefore, consuming nutrient-dense foods is vital for a healthy metabolism.
Our eating and fasting windows can also affect metabolism directly or indirectly. Some diets require people to eat less but frequently. Although digestion of food might slightly increase metabolism, frequent eating can cause insulin spikes and prevent fat loss.
Frequent meals might work for some people but might not for others. They did not work for me; therefore, I had to cut snacks and even skip meals to improve my metabolism. For many years, one meal a day has been my sweet spot to keep my body fat-adapted and insulin sensitive.
Time-restricted eating for healthy people can be more effective than frequent eating due to hormonal effects. During the fasted window, insulin stops, but glucagon and growth hormones increase. Glucagon helps with fat burning, and growth hormone protects muscles.
Unlike misperceptions, time-restricted eating, and ketogenic diets do not slow the metabolism of healthy people. On the contrary, they do just the opposite. Besides lowering calories and optimizing hormones, they can also initiate autophagy and mitophagy to clear the garbage in the cells.
For example, like many healthy people, my metabolism significantly improved after I adopted one nutritious meal a day. As a result, I don’t gain weight but keep my lean muscles. However, these diets and eating regimens might not suit everyone.
The vital point to remember is that when frequent insulin spikes happen for a prolonged time, the body might get insulin resistance, causing the metabolism to slow down, accumulating visceral fat, and leading to metabolic disorders and obesity.
Hydration is also critical for metabolism. Dehydration can slow down metabolism. Drinking adequate clean water with electrolytes is crucial to keep the metabolism active.
3 — Muscle-Building and Fat-Burning Workoutout Regimens
One of the biggest mistakes some people make is lowering calorie intake with excessive cardio and fad diets that can slow metabolism and lead to starvation, muscle loss, and metabolic disorders.
The key mechanism for this issue is that the body cannot access fat stores when cortisol levels are continuously elevated. Excessive and prolonged cortisol levels can lead to muscle loss instead of fat loss. Reducing muscle mass leads to lower metabolism, ultimately hindering weight loss efforts.
Based on my reviews, experience, and observations, resistance training, such as weightlifting and calisthenics, can significantly impact improving metabolism. This is due to the stimulating and anabolic effects this type of training has on our muscles. It can address anabolic resistance.
Muscle cells require significant energy from glucose and fat molecules. Therefore, even when not consuming food, the body needs to provide energy to muscle cells by burning fat molecules and converting them into glucose through gluconeogenesis and lipolysis.
Therefore, the more muscle we have, the more energy the body can burn. As a result, people with more muscle mass can lose fat faster than those without muscle mass, particularly when they combine resistance training with a reduced-calorie diet.
After resistance training, the next anabolic workout is high-intensity interval training (HIIT). However, as it puts the body under excessive stress, it might not be suitable for everyone, especially for those with underlying health issues caused by oxidative stress and chronic inflammation.
Athletes who perform high-intensity training, such as sprinting, generally have better body composition than long-distance runners.
Cardio also plays a role in fat mobilization and burning. It also benefits cardiovascular health, blood flow, and toxin removal. However, excessive and prolonged cardio can cause metabolic problems.
For example, excessive cardio may lead to muscle catabolism, as prolonged cardio sessions increase cortisol levels, which causes the body to burn the glucose from muscle cells. This can lead to muscle loss and decreased metabolism, making it harder to lose visceral fat.
Replacing excessive cardio, like long-distance running with calisthenics, high-intensity interval training, and more resistance workout, significantly boosted my metabolism.
Summary and Conclusions
Metabolism is a complex process of chemical reactions within the body to generate energy for cells. It is catalyzed by hormones and enzymes involving complex metabolic pathways.
These three factors contribute to caloric and hormonal balance directly or indirectly. Both calories and hormones play critical roles in metabolism. So metabolic activities revolve around calories and hormones.
Too many or too few calories can cause imbalances in hormones. Hormonal fluctuations can be both triggering and aggravating factors for numerous metabolic processes.
For example, ghrelin triggers hunger and leptin signals for satiety. Growth hormone triggers muscle cells to grow and insulin fat cells to expand. I introduced the intricacies of six hormones affecting our metabolism.
Acquiring hormonal intelligence to optimize and balance them is essential. We can balance and optimize our hormones with lifestyle factors like restorative sleep, quality nutrition, regular exercise, rest, fun, and timely recovery.
However, underlying hormonal disorders require support from medical specialists such as endocrinologists. For example, if we have slow metabolism symptoms, getting our hormones checked and treated by a specialist can be helpful.
Takeaways
Fat loss and muscle gain for healthy people are not too complicated, but we overcomplicate and make them mysterious due to myths, misinformation, ignorance, and negligence.
Most of the time, the culprit is slowing metabolism due to various lifestyle factors, aging, and underlying health conditions. More importantly, starvation caused by excessive calorie cutting is a critical factor we must keep in mind.
Here are the takeaway points of this story.
1 — Reduce stress by having a nightly restorative sleep, taking regular breaks at work, acting mindfully, meditating daily, and having fun with friends and loved ones.
3 — Customize your diet, ensuring sufficient bioavailable proteins and healthy fats, essential minerals, and vitamins from whole foods, refraining from refined carbs and processed foods.
3 — Move the body regularly and joyfully with personalized training using body weight and weightlifting tools.
4 — Instead of weight loss, focus on healthy weight management by lowering visceral fat and increasing lean muscles. Measuring your waistline can be a better indicator than the scale.
5 — Improve your relationships and social connections to boost your mood, increase energy, optimize your hormones, and enjoy healthy lifestyle habits.
6 — Address underlying health issues such as hormonal imbalance and slow metabolism timely by seeking support from qualified healthcare professionals and others.
Understanding the rules of metabolism and taking corrective actions as lifestyle choices is the secret sauce people look for in the wrong places, like expensive supplements and weight loss programs in magazines.
10 Lifehacks Schools Couldn’t Teach Me.
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