Is my metabolism damaged?
"It's getting harder and harder to lose this weight. It's like my body resists losing any weight at all, and if I do happen to lose a few pounds, I put it back on faster than ever, and usually a few extra. This is so frustrating! Is my metabolism damaged?"
Julie is a 40-year-old mom of two children, ages 8 and 12. She is about 30 pounds overweight and has contacted me in the hopes of losing it. During our initial consultation she tells me that she's been battling her weight since college and she just can't seem to keep it off any more. She is constantly hungry and can't understand why she struggles to stop eating.
Julie isn't a slouch either. She has tried all the diets: Paleo, keto, intermittent fasting, South Beach, Weight Watchers, Whole 30, grapefruit...you name it, she's suffered through it. She has also punished herself with hour-long kickboxing classes, running, Crossfit, and yoga in an effort to lose the weight. She says:
"It's getting harder and harder to lose this weight. It's like my body resists losing any weight at all, and if I do happen to lose a few pounds, I put it back on faster than ever, and usually a few extra. This is so frustrating! Is my metabolism damaged?"
Here's the good news, Julie: Your metabolism is NOT damaged. In fact it's working exactly the way Mother Nature intended (I will explain below).
Here's the bad news, Julie: Years of yo-yo dieting and weight fluctuation has flipped an ancient biological switch. You have essentially trained your body to be a fat-gaining and fat-storing machine.
Crap.
Is my metabolism damaged?
With a basic understanding of human evolutionary biology, you will see that your metabolism is NOT damaged, and in fact, your body is acting exactly as it should. Here is a very simplified version of the most important points:
Nature's design is perfect...if the biggest threat to your survival is starvation.
- Human evolution took place over a time frame of about 6 million years.
- Nature equipped our species (and all others) to do two main things: survive and reproduce.
- Over the past 6 million years the biggest threat to the survival of the human species, and thus the biggest threat to our individual bodies, was starvation.
- Common sense would lead you to the conclusion that a person who lost weight easily during a famine, and didn't regain it quickly when food became available, would likely die of starvation.
- A dead person cannot propagate the species, so nature selected for those humans that could easily gain and store fat.
- The result: the human body is beautifully designed to gain fat quickly, to store it efficiently, and to release it slowly.
- The human body never had to learn how to lose fat...only gain and store.
For nearly 99.9% of our 6 million year history the primary concern has been famine, which made weight loss a poor survival strategy for our species. We are hard-wired to gain and hold onto body fat! Without nature's beautiful design, none of us would be here today.
Willpower never trumps biology. If you are going against your biology, you are fighting a losing - or should I say GAINING - battle.
Unfortunately, the modern human environment has changed dramatically in just the last 100 years and our biology hasn't had time to catch up. We now have access to calorie-dense foods 24/7. When food is available, especially highly tasty food like donuts and pizza, our biology tells us to eat and store. After all, there may be none tomorrow, right?
Our body has no idea that famine is a thing of the past and that food is constantly available. And then we go and do the one thing that proves to our body that there is indeed a famine: we go on a diet. We restrict calories, carbs, fats, etc., in an effort to lose weight. Your body knows no difference between a diet and a famine, so the cascade of biochemical and hormonal changes that are triggered, are the same...and your brain immediately starts sending out the biochemical signals to eat, eat, eat, and store, store, store!
Next week in part two of "Is my metabolism damaged?", I will discuss what happens in the body when you go on a diet, and how diets essentially train your body to store and hold onto fat even more efficiently, which can make you fatter over the long term! In part three, I'll talk about the good news...there is a solution, so stay tuned!
PART TWO IS UP!!!! Read it here.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
Fed up with dieting? Sick losing weight only to gain it all back? Do you feel like you have everything else in your life under control...except your eating and your weight?
IN FALL OF 2018 I WILL BE OFFERING AN "INTUITIVE EATING” ONLINE COURSE! STAY TUNED FOR MORE INFO OR CONTACT ME IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN JOINING!
