Latest / Health Unscripted / Why You Should Care About Your Metabolism

Transcript

Why You Should Care About Your Metabolism · Health Unscripted

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: What's up guys?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Health Unscripted with Dr.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Dwyer.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I am Dr.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ashley Dwyer here for another week of awesomeness.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This week we're going to be talking about all things metabolism.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that sounds super sexy, so hold on to your pants.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a fun episode.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to talk about metabolism because it is the one thing that is not talked about enough when we're growing up, when we're learning about nutrition and science, and it really needs to be, you know, uncovered and let out so that we all know why, you know, I freak out so much when we hear diets and crash diets and all of that.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, what is metabolism?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like our metabolism is obviously the energy source to our body.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It controls our BMR, it controls how much we're burning at rest, it controls our hormones.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things are super important when it comes to our health and our body.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is, you know, not static.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the metabolism is always changing, it is always like perceiving our distresses, what we're putting into our body.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is our energy regulator and it does an awesome job at doing that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So when we screw with the amount of energy that we put our body through or put into our body, it is very sensitive to adapting to that.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that look like when we come to diets, right?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is why I'm actually talking about this is because calorie restriction is so, so, so popular forever.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's been a popular fad forever.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But why is it so bad then that we restrict calories or that we're not eating enough?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And why, you know, most of my clients have to go on reverse diets as soon as they start working with me, which means more food, because they've been in such a calorie deficit for so long.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does your body like go through when you're in deficits for so long?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, what happens to your body and the term for it for metabolic adaptation is really adaptive thermogen.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can't speak, adaptive thermogenesis.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's, you know, not the same for everyone.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is different depending on health conditions or you know how long you've been in a diet phase, things like that.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then the degree to which you experience these adaptations, um, like I just said, will be consistent with how long you've been in a diet, how long, you know, you've been overstressing your body, what your environment looks like now, etc.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens during metabolic adaptation?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say, for example, we're gonna use myself.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my total daily energy expenditure, so what I burn throughout the day while, you know, doing my thing with exercise, with eating, whatever, is around 2,000 to 2,200 calories per day.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is a range, it's not a static figure either.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So these parts of, you know, TDEEE are comprised of basal metabolic rate, which is your BMR, your resting metabolism, how much you burn at rest, your exercise activity thermogenesis, so how much you're burning while exercising, the thermic effect of food, which is how much your body is burning based on the amount of food that you're eating.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we do burn calories while digesting food, and then non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is um also called NEAT.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: You'll hear me refer to it as neat, which is how many steps you're doing, fidgeting, how much you move around throughout the day, basically activity outside of exercise.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So these numbers are super important because these are what are affected when we decrease and we're when we're in calorie uh deficits.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you take that TDEEE, which I just said, you know, 2000 to 2200 is mine per se.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then let's say that I was in a deficit and I didn't know any better, and my fitness pal told me to eat 1200 calories a day.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So here I am eating generally a thousand calories less than my deficit.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not like feeling like I want to be a math whiz right now.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm literally taking out my calendar to tell myself that this is a like 55% calorie deficit that I'm in.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to go over 20% when you're in a deficit because it's just a massive crash diet.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what happens when I start eating 1200 calories for you know a couple weeks, couple months, maybe it's a year, I'm able to like get away with this.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what ends up happening is our body then is very adaptable.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like we said, our metabolism will, you know, respond to these changes.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's like, oh, hold on.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we're not getting this much food in.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So now we need to decrease our BMR because you know, our metabolic resting rate downregulates when we're trying to save as many calories for fuel as we can.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So our body is not concerned with aesthetic.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our body is concerned with functioning at its highest power if it can.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when we are not feeding it as efficiently or feeding it as much, it downregulates the amount of calories that it expends every single day.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then you're also gonna get a decrease in that EAT, that exercise activity thermogenesis, because you're also going to be losing weight on this crash diet for a time.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It does plateau, and this is where we'll talk about the plateau of the metabolism, and that's usually when you start, you know, having this metabolic adaptation.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna decrease the thermic effect of food because you're gonna be eating less, obviously.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's gonna go down.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna decrease your meat.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you notice it or not, if you are not eating enough calories for energy, you will not fidget as much.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: You will probably not go on as many walks as you were before because you'll be tired.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So your body will want to reserve as much energy as it can.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of these are downregulated.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is bad because after a while, your BMR will essentially like bottom out and become super, super low, which means if you eat above that 1200 calories or you know, even go above eating a little more in the future, you will then gain weight.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: So um it needs to be said that your metabolism is super powerful, and this is why we need to incorporate diet breaks.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, what else happens during um metabolic adaptation?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: You also go through hormonal adaptations, and this is where you know we come out and we talk about thyroid issues, sex hormone issues, things like that.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because what happens is um your T3 and T4 are downregulated because that regulates your metabolism, our thyroid regulates our metabolism, so your thyroid hormones go down, your testosterone goes down, your sex hormones go down, insulin sensitivity goes down, so that's where you may notice you are, you know, uh having more sensitive, sensitive.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't speak.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your insulin sensitivity goes down, so this is where you may notice that you are having a hard time with carbs.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Your leptin hormone goes down, which is the satiety hormone, it tells you that you're full.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Your gorelin hormone, which tells you that you're hungry, actually shoots up, and your cortisol also shoots up, which is the stress hormone that can kick that can cause water retention, it can cause uh weight gain around the midsection, um, a lot of not good things.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, we don't want any of that to happen.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you stop your body from going through these these changes?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what we call like diet breaks or or reverse dieting or refeed days, things like that.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't want our metabolism to adapt, we don't want to under-eat.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So instead, I would then come up to a healthy calorie deficit within 20% of my TDEEE, which would be around like 1700 calories, maybe a little more.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'd still only eat that for like 12 weeks to do a cut.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would go back up to maintenance so that my body could essentially heal, recover.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: I would, you know, get my BMR back up to that high state so that we can go ahead and do it again in the future.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're not supposed to diet forever.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can stay at maintenance for as long as you want.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: If done correctly, reverse dieting actually won't like have you gain weight.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: You should only really gain two to four pounds.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk on another episode about what is reverse dieting and how to do it correctly.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it's essential to go in and out of these build phases, these diet phases, and to take a break so that we can normalize our hormones and then you know, jump back into a cut in another three months if we want to, three to six months, depending on your body.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So back in the day when I was constantly training for my shows, I was in a diet for probably four years before my hormones were just like, nope, we're done.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: We've done this for four years.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're exercising too much, your stress is too much.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it is time to, you know, my my metabolism was shot.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think I went in and did one of those breathing tests that determines your BMR.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And my BMR was like 1300.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, this is awful.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: So after healing for a little while, I went back for a year and it was, you know, 14 something.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, we're getting better.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So now I have no idea what it is because I haven't done the test in two years.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be very interested to see what it is, but you want to take these breaks, and that is what this episode is about is about how smart our metabolism is, what happens when we diet for too long and when we restrict calories for too long, and then how to get out of that by taking these breaks.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you guys found this episode helpful.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm always interested in looking for other topics to discuss with you guys.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So please leave comments, share, shoot me a DM on Instagram at drdwyre.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I am loving doing these episodes every single week, and thank you for joining me for another one.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you guys next Thursday.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Happy weekend.