Is Your Metabolism Damaged?

This is a very common concern amongst a lot of people. And understanding the answer to this question can be quite confusing because there is so much misinformation out there in the fitness industry.

Before we can answer this question, let’s go over what metabolic damage typically looks like.

Do any of the following scenarios sound familiar?

Despite working out constantly and doing lots of cardio, for whatever reason you can’t lose weight?

Or maybe you eat healthy and pride yourself on eating like a bird and yet the weight just won’t come off?

As well too, perhaps you were seeing progress and then suddenly it just stopped, and you’ve felt stuck ever since?

Do any of these scenarios mean that your metabolism is damaged?

Not exactly.

But a lot of people believe that it does, causing them to say screw it, giving up and eventually repeating the same cycle over and over again.

Just because your metabolism isn’t technically damaged from any of these scenarios doesn’t mean your body isn’t going through changes, where if you are gaining and losing fat constantly, it can change the way your brain regulates your body weight, making it very difficult (not impossible) to see the results you are looking for.

But no, your metabolism is not damaged.

To understand why this is, I think it’s important to understand what the word damaged truly means. Damage is where physical harm is inflicted on something, and that harm impairs its value, usefulness, or normal function. Most people hear the word damage and instantly think unrepairable. So, they give up.

Because of that, I really don’t think it’s wise nor do I like when others in the industry use this word when trying to explain what is happening with your metabolism.

I prefer to think of it as a metabolic setback. I like this wording better because it implies that things are repairable. There’s an opportunity for a comeback. And we all know that the comeback is always greater than the setback. 

Before we investigate how to structure our metabolic comeback, let’s first look into what got us into this mess in the first place.

To stay alive, you need a specific number of calories to do so. Now when we want to change our body composition, these calories need to be manipulated to accomplish that. Where, if you eat less calories than you expend, you should lose weight. However, if you eat more calories than you expend, you should gain weight.

Seems easy enough, right? I just need to eat less and/or move more and I should lose weight. The problem that arises from this is how often you are doing it. The more and more you go to diet, the increased risk you are putting your body at to develop metabolic setback.

Let’s look at this a little bit more in depth.

To initiate a fat loss phase, you must drive a calorie deficit. Typically, if this is your first-time dieting, the quicker you drop your calories, the quicker fat loss will occur.

However, driving an aggressive calorie deficit creates what is known as an energy gap. This is the difference in your bodyweight and calorie intake. This gap increases and increases as you continue to diet, which eventually activates your body’s self defence system. Not a good thing when we are dieting. However, most people don’t really notice the negative implications of this issue when it’s their first-time dieting. It’s typically the second go around where this becomes a problem, which we will elaborate on shortly. 

Something else that is occurring when you are dieting is that your metabolic rate is going down as well, as an attempt to reduce this energy gap. This is your body trying to maintain homeostasis, meaning your body is trying to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that are best for survival.

Again, the issues of our metabolic rate slowing down doesn’t seem to impact first time dieters. It’s when we go to diet again, where this can cause a problem.

Clearly this works where you can achieve a lower body weight. If you starve yourself long enough, you can achieve your weight loss goals. Then the diet ends, and the hard work is over.

Now what?

After the diet, most people go back to their old habits of eating what they want and however much they want. The problem with this approach is our hunger signals aren't stable due to dieting, so it's very easy to eat even more than what you were prior to the start of the diet. This can cause body fat overshooting, where you weigh more than you did prior to the start of the diet.

We have talked about this before. But let’s elaborate again how your hunger signals are effected and why they aren’t considered stable or reliable to listen to after a dieting phase.

Some of the hormones that are impacted during dieting are:

1.    Ghrelin

2.    Leptin

3.    Thyroid

That’s just to name a few

Ghrelin is known as the hunger hormone, and it goes up during the fat loss stage. So, as we are dieting and eating less food over time, it makes sense that we are going to start to feel hungrier. This is ghrelin going up. This is primarily why it is so damn hard to sustain a dieting phase over an extended period – the hunger you experience can be mitigated but never completely eliminated. It is normal and can only be ignored for so long. 

Leptin is produced in fat cells and is the opposite of ghrelin. This hormone regulates hunger, meaning it makes you feel less hungry. So, as you diet down, you start to lose fat, which causes this hormone to go down. And when leptin goes down, you start to feel less satiated.

Thyroid hormones are responsible for your metabolic rate. This one we all know that when you diet, your metabolic rate goes down and the only way to speed up your metabolism is by eating more food over time. 

Clearly there are some significant negative adaptations that dieting has on your body. Your hormones clearly take a beating when you diet and are eating very few calories over a significant period. And because of this, going back to your old habits (especially if it involves significant calorie consumption) is a recipe for disaster when it comes to maintaining your fat loss results.

But most people don’t understand these negative adaptations that have been developed from dieting. And instead of giving your body time to recover, what do most people do after a diet?

Calories go up, often too quickly and often higher than what they were consuming prior to the diet, which causes body weight to go up as well. When our body weight goes up right after a diet, do you think it’s a good idea to enter back into a dieting phase again to get rid of that fat that came back too quickly?

Hopefully you said no.

Most people will though.

So, why is it not a good idea?

Remember, we have three variables that are being impacted. Our calorie intake, our body weight, and our metabolic rate. Just because our calorie intake and body weight both moved up in the same direction at approximately the same rate after the diet doesn’t mean your metabolic rate did.

What do you think happened to your metabolic rate?

It definitely didn’t go up as quickly as your calorie intake and body weight did. Why is this not a good thing? Remember your metabolic rate is trying to close that energy gap so you can successfully diet and minimize metabolic setbacks.

Your metabolic rate doesn't speed up as quickly and it takes longer to recover, where it's nowhere near your calorie intake or body weight and our energy gap still exists and is even larger than what it was at the end of the dieting phase. This is not something we want if we are considering dieting again because we gained too much weight back too quickly. 

What happens if we go and diet again with a lower metabolic rate like this?

When we enter back into a dieting phase before our metabolic rate has recovered, our fat loss results are going to be nowhere near what they were compared to the first time around.

Fat loss may even eventually stop because the metabolic rate slows down even further.

This is because our metabolic rate continues to slow down from the calorie deficit and wasn’t given enough time to fully recovery after the initial diet. And the energy gap has again increased even further from the initiation of yet another dieting phase.

This is why yoyo dieting is such a problem when it comes to trying to maintain your results. It actually gets harder and harder to diet the more you do. This is completely normal and yet it creates this insecurity in a lot of people that there is something wrong with them. When there actually isn’t. 

This clearly is a viscous cycle if you are constantly gaining weight and losing weight and can maintain your weight on super lower calories.

Does this mean your body is broken? Of course not!

So, what should you do?

Firstly, you want to diet as little as possible. Dieting every single year for a wedding, vacation, post new year’s or even every year for a bodybuilding competition is just not sustainable or healthy. Remember that each time you go to diet, it’s impacting your metabolic rate, making it harder and harder each time you go to do it.

This is why I actually haven’t dieted in 5 years. I put my body through hell dieting for 6 months 2 years in a row, as I got lean for my bodybuilding competitions. Even for me, the second time I went to diet for that second show, it was WAY harder than the first time around. That is completely normal for everyone. 

So, I decided that I would take some time off and focus on building muscle, eating more food and giving my body a much needed break that it clearly needed. I am now dieting again for the first time in 5 years and it’s actually going quite well. I haven’t had to be as aggressive as last time and it feels a little bit easier than my previous diet. Why? Because I gave my body a much needed break.

But what if I gain weight too quickly after my diet? A common concern I’m sure.

Well, try to be proactive and implement a reverse diet after your diet. If you are strategic with the diet after the diet, this shouldn’t be an issue. Be sure to listen to episode 60 to learn more about reverse dieting.

But if you don’t implement a reverse diet, go a bit overboard and too much weight regain occurs, I recommend riding it out! You just can’t enter back into a diet. It’s not worth it.

The weight regain won’t last forever if you track your food, are consuming your maintenance calories and ensure you are being consistent with your daily intake. Your metabolic rate will eventually catch up, where that energy gap will close and be almost non-existent, and your body weight will stabilize.

But you must just embrace the weight gain if it happens. It’s not worth putting your body through hell by dieting again before it’s ready. It needs a break from dieting after dieting. Trying to diet before your body is ready is like trying to run another marathon the next day. It’s just not happening.

Your body needs time to recover so your metabolic rate has an opportunity to truly recover. You need to be ok with letting dieting go for a while.

Hope this was helpful! 

Coach Krysten