If you feel like your metabolism is stuck, you are not crazy!
If you feel like no matter how much you diet, the scale won’t budge, or your inches won't go down then the truth is, your metabolism isn’t broken, but it might be working against you.
It is common for midlife women to feel like they are doing everything right and nothing is budging with their weight.
Also, it is common for midlife women to feel like weight loss is slower and takes longer than it did in the past. The same diets, the same calorie deficits, the same dieting tricks seem to no longer work.
The good news is you are not broken, you are not crazy!
While your body does not defy the laws of thermodynamics, meaning a calorie deficit still is necessary to lose body, your metabolism may not respond as well to a caloric deficit in midlife.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode, I explain five reasons why your metabolism is stuck.
Now I will say that many women will automatically assume their metabolism is the problem, but here's the tough love...
If you are not regularly strength training, getting your daily steps, eating balanced meals with adequate protein and fiber within your calorie needs, then those foundational habits must be worked on first.
Throughout my eleven years of helping midlife women lose weight sustainably, I have consistently seen women not have these foundational habits in place, yet they are expecting fat loss.
They also have a poor relationship with food causing them to overeat foods that trigger them and they have an all or nothing mindset about food and their health habits.
If those are issues you deal with, then you do not have an issue with your metabolism and these are the things you need to fix first to be successful with taking care of your health and to lose body fat.
Is it easy? Absolutely not. Especially when you are dealing with real life, crazy hormones, lack of sleep, a job and a family.
None of it is easy and sometimes this is the tough love women need to hear!
Listen to the podcast for more details on why your metabolism is stuck and what to do about it!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- Why Women In Midlife Feel Like Their Weight Won't Budge
- 5 Reasons Why Your Metabolism Is Stuck
- How To Fix These Issues To Make Your Metabolism Work For You
- The Components Of Total Daily Energy Expenditure
- Why Chronically Dieting & Under Eating Is Sabotaging You
- The Importance Of Learning Maintenance
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify or Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Fix Your Relationship With Food
- 10 Mindset Shifts To Escape Dieting
- All Or Nothing Mindset
- Why You Self Sabotage
- Women Are Mentally Dieting
- Why Your Metabolism Is Slow In Perimenopause
- Do You Have A Broken Metabolism
- Why Your Group Fitness Classes Are Not Helping You Lose Weight
Why Your Metabolism Is Stuck (and what to do about it) Podcast Transcript
Hello friends! Today we’re discussing 5 reasons why your metabolism is stuck and what to do about it.
If you have ever felt like no matter how much you diet, the scale won’t budge, or your inches won't go down? You are not crazy. The truth is, your metabolism isn’t broken, but it might be working against you.
Most women think fat loss is about eating less and moving more so they get stuck in a perpetual cycle of chronically eating less. But if your metabolism isn’t optimized, your body will hold onto fat instead of burning fat.
So, let’s talk about how to get your metabolism working for you, not against you! I’m going to give you four reasons why this could be going on and how to fix it.
Number one is chronically under eating. This is truly the biggest mistake women make. Chronically under eating for your activity level all the time is going to make fat loss harder because when you keep calories too low for too long, your body doesn’t think, “Oh great, let’s burn fat.”
It thinks, “We’re in a famine—better slow everything down to survive.”
Your metabolism adapts by burning fewer calories at rest, making fat loss harder over time. This is called adaptive thermogenesis. Everyone has a baseline number of calories called your BMR that you need just to survive and then on top of your BMR is your activity.
If you are very active, if you have had a bunch of pregnancies all right in a row which I have had some clients like that, your body has significant energy demands on it.
And if you are not properly fueling your body, your body will adapt to whatever food you are giving it, and your subconscious movement will downregulate. Blinking, fidgeting, moving around your body will downregulate those things to conserve energy.
Now I will say a lot of women are going to immediately think they’re in this camp and this is why they’re not losing weight, but for most women this is not their issue. Most women don’t have the basics down.
They have an unhealthy relationship with food, they have an all or nothing mindset, they have self-sabotaging behavior patterns and aren’t doing the basics of health consistently.
So, if you are sitting on your butt all day barely getting any steps, if you are not strength training regularly or exercising, if you are not getting adequate protein and fiber – you don’t know how much you should be getting, if you do not know where your maintenance calories are and are not tracking your food then what I’m talking about right here is not the problem.
Your metabolism is stuck because you’re not doing the basics consistently. You need to work on the basics, your relationship with food, your all or nothing thinking and behavioral patterns of doing the basics.
In my nutrition practice, only about 25% of the clients I see are in this camp. They are chronically undereating for their activity level, and it is why they are stuck.
Now to fix this problem of being stuck you have to work in reverse and remove the stress from undereating so that later down the road your metabolism is in a good position to release body fat.
You do this by fueling your body with enough protein, fiber, and whole foods at your maintenance calories and you stay at maintenance for a LONG time before attempting a deficit.
When I say a long time, I’m talking about a year. Six months is the minimum, but a full year at maintenance calories is truly better.
I’ve seen this play out with my clients and those who take a full year to bring calories up to maintenance and just hang out there, their fat loss phase always goes easier. On the other hand, I’ve seen some client’s kind of sort of get their calories up.
But they didn’t get them up as high as I wanted them to in maintenance, mostly because of their fear of gaining fat kept getting in the way, and they refused to stay in maintenance very long because they want fat loss results and weren’t willing to ride out maintenance longer.
Those clients I have observed in practice they struggle with fat loss. It still really slow or not a lot is happening. You must take maintenance seriously when you are in this type of situation.
You also can’t be in a rush to get fat loss when you are in this situation. Your metabolism is in charge and working with your metabolism will remove your frustration and will make results easier.
Unfortunately, this goes against what so many women have learned about weight loss throughout their lives dieting and that it is a difficult thing to navigate situations like this with these clients.
There is usually a lot of resistance to doing this, a lot of freaking out about the scale and feeling fluffier, but I always remind them that their way hasn’t worked so we have to do things differently to get the result that they want.
Chronically under fueling your body will not do you any favors when it comes to losing body fat. The same is true of people who eat 1200 calories during the week because they’re trying to be good then eating 2500 calories on the weekend.
On average, you are eating 1571 calories and that is what your metabolism cares about. It doesn’t care that you eat good during the week.
The same is true with women who are chronically eating below their activity level needs. Your metabolism keeps score and if you are placing activity or pregnancy demands on the body and eating below what you need then fat loss will be tough and frustrating.
The only way around this is bringing calories up to maintenance and staying there for a long time. At least one year and during that year the focus should be on strength training and building some muscle which leads me to number two reason why your metabolism is stuck, and this applies to all women.
More strength training, less cardio and I didn’t say no cardio. I simply said, less cardio. The common issue women have is they are doing a ton of cardio and barely any strength training.
Here's the deal - cardio burns calories while you’re doing it. Muscle burns calories 24/7 and more muscle equals a higher resting metabolic rate, meaning your body burns more fat at rest.
Muscle tissue at rest burns 6 calories per pound daily, whereas fat tissue burns only 2 calories per pound daily. That means muscle burns almost 3 times the amount of fat! This is because muscle is more metabolically active than fat.
That should wake you up to the importance of strength training being a huge benefit to your goal of fat loss because it is! Not to mention just the importance for strong bones and not developing osteoporosis and aging healthy.
The fix here is to swap some of your cardio for strength training. Ideally, you want to get to two to four times a week and more is not better.
You can do two strength training sessions per week and if you are using properly intensity that can be sufficient. It really depends how you are training, but the bottom line is if you want your metabolism to get unstuck, strength training is key.
Number three is balance your blood sugar by balancing your meals. I’ve shared this many times that balanced meals are key to keeping hunger hormones in control. Spikes and crashes in blood sugar leads to cravings and cravings lead to overeating.
Overeating leads to eating more calories and more calories messes with your metabolism and causes you to store fat and well, just not feel your best.
When you have balanced meals, your energy and mood will also be better, and you won’t be dealing with pesky hunger and wanting to snack all the time.
Build balanced meals with enough calories and balanced with protein, fiber, fruits & vegetables and healthy fats to keep blood sugar stable.
Most of your nutrition should be balanced and you can and should still work in the fun foods. As long as you are hitting your nutrient needs within your calories, you can work in the fun stuff.
Number four is stop dieting all the time and learn maintenance. If you’ve been stuck for a while and not seeing results in a deficit and you truly have been consistent, it’s time to shift the focus.
Your metabolism isn’t broken, it needs the right environment to respond better.
When you fuel your body, lift weights, get steps, balance blood sugar, stop dieting and eat enough calories at maintenance for a long time, fat loss stops being a battle.
It becomes a byproduct of a well-functioning metabolism.
It is important to eat at maintenance calories and track your food to ensure you are eating enough to fuel your metabolism. Now does this mean you have to put off your desire to get fat loss results immediately. Yes.
The truth is you will continue banging your head against the wall if you don't spend a significant time at maintenance and at the appropriate maintenance level before attempting a deficit.
I have seen this with my clients over the years. They don't take maintenance that seriously, so they don't get their calories up as high as I want them to (typically because they fear weight gain) and then they attempt a deficit, and their body doesn't give them great results, or it doesn't budge at all.
If you want results, you must understand that dieting all the time is literally making it harder. There must be a shift in mindset to fuel your metabolism properly and to stop chronically under eating.
If you are coming out of a fat loss phase, it is just as important to track calories and ensure you are bringing calories up as it was to track your calories in your fat loss phase.
You cannot do a program, let’s say you do Noom, and you lose a bunch of weight and never bring calories up. Calories need to come up after you exit a diet phase.
Eating too little is going to result in adaptation over time leading to very easily regaining weight. I spoke about this in the Optavia podcast I did awhile back.
Number five reason why your metabolism is stuck is you are sitting on your butt all day. We now live in a society where we sit all the time.
Our life is all about convenience. We shop online and things are delivered to our homes. We order grocery delivery. Some of us work from home.
These are all opportunities for us to move and we are no longer doing it, and it is a big problem for our metabolisms because we are not burning energy like we used to and now we are eating the same way or even more.
That is a recipe for weight gain and a poor functioning metabolism.
In the world we live in today, you need to purposefully go out of your way to inconvenience yourself and move. You have to find ways to move and moving is not exercise.
If you exercise for one hour and sit the rest of the day, that is a huge problem. Steps and movement are part of the fat loss equation, they actually attribute way more to total daily energy expenditure than exercise.
So, you need to find ways to inconvenience yourself and move more throughout the day.
I see this all the time with clients. They have the exercise dialed in and even their nutrition, but their steps are super low and a large part of why they are stuck.
There are four components to daily energy expenditure – BMR, movement, the thermic effect of food and exercise. BMR is the largest percentage of daily energy expenditure, movement is number two, the thermic effect of food which means the energy your body utilizes to break down food is number three and exercise is number four. Exercise is like 5% of your daily energy expenditure whereas, movement is 15-20%.
That’s a big difference so moving more throughout the day.
So, those are five reasons why your metabolism could be stuck and what to do about it. Again, this is if you have been physically in a calorie deficit. I say this because some women are in mental diets, not physical diets.
Podcast episode 92 is one of my most popular episodes where I talk about how a lot of women are mentally dieting, but not physically dieting and often these women have a poor relationship with food too.
Episode 117 I discuss the steps you can take to fix your relationship with food so that’s another one to listen to and oh yes, episode 33 I did a long time ago on why your metabolism may be slow as a midlife woman so that is a great one to listen to.
My client Robin was on the podcast last year in episode 118 and when Robin came to me, she like many other women, thought her metabolism was broken and it really was not that her metabolism was broken. She had a poor relationship with food and was mentally dieting, not physically dieting.
That is why I said at the beginning of this episode that most women don’t have this issue with an adaptive metabolism.
Now that said, I cannot stress enough to stop chronically dieting and undereating. If you are constantly trying to eat very little and it is backfiring on you into overeating or just not seeing results and I’m talking, you have been dialed in and consistent for 12 weeks and nothing is happening or very little is happening then it is time to hang out in maintenance.
Frankly, I wish every woman would take the time to learn how to fuel properly before going into a caloric deficit. I’ve really in the past year cracked down on this with my clients because I just know from having done this so much that trying to go into a deficit if you are not already fueling properly is going to create more frustration and limited results.
If you are in fact in this camp, chasing a calorie deficit is not doing you any favors. Don’t be scared of eating ladies and fueling your body properly.
When you do not stoke a fire, it does not burn. It’s sort of the same concept with your metabolism.
Well, I hope this was helpful for you and if you have been stuck for a while or you don’t know how to do these things or where to start, then make sure you schedule a consultation with me so we can review what’s been going on for you and how I can help.
The link to schedule a consultation with me is in the show notes as well as the detailed of my 6-month program. Have a great day and I’ll talk to you soon!
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