Burn It To Earn It: Metabolism Myths
Ah, metabolism. The wildly misunderstood and most marketed topic for bogus weight loss wellness products.
Let’s start with the basics - what is metabolism?
Metabolism the is the rate in which you use energy, or Calories. Everyone has a “basal metabolic rate” or baseline rate in which they use this energy to stay alive. Everything in your body takes up energy: maintaining your body temperature, organ function, breathing, digesting, fighting off sickness, using your complicated brain, etc. Everyone is going to have a unique basal rate because every body is unique. That is why the calculators that you see online about how many Calories you should eat in a day are not really helping you out - it is an over simplification of a complicated thing. Even me - a professional Calorie estimator - use these calculations with a grain of salt and have a range with multiple factors that I take into account. Even then, I look to each person’s body to tell me how much energy it truly needs, because really only your unique body can tell you.
Let’s dive into some common metabolism myths.
Myth #1: If you eat less Calories, you lose weight because your metabolism stays the same. To boost you metabolism even higher, you add exercise into the mix.
First major thing that I must stress. YOUR BODY NEEDS ENERGY. Your body is still in the “caveman” era where we lived out in the wild. Food was not guaranteed and the winter months were hard. Therefore your body follows this logic: you’re under-eating (dieting) -> you are hungry and losing weight -> your body panics as this is not good (it thinks it is going into a famine) -> your metabolism slows so it can hold onto any energy it can -> your weight loss plateaus -> you get frustrated and stop under-eating so you gain back weight (usually more than when you started because your body is trying to save up incase it goes into famine mode again) -> you get even more frustrated and again try to under-eat (go on another diet) -> and the cycle starts over and over. You add exercise into this and your body goes into even more panic, not only are you not getting enough energy to maintain, now you’re exercising and using more energy than you usually would. It breaks it down anyway that is can which includes going for muscle. Yes, that is correct, muscle is easier than fat to break down through certain catabolic mechanisms, therefore when you have weight loss, it is not all going to be fat cells - it will be fluid fluctuations and muscle as well. Muscles are right there at the ready, fat cells are like long term storage - you’re not going to go for the emergency funds when your savings account is right there.
On this tangent - “fat burning foods, teas, pills, etc” = marketing BS. Which leads to my next point.
Myth #2: Metabolism “boosters” like teas, weight loss pills, etc really speed up your metabolism.
So incredibly false and harmful. Without looking deep into the ingredients I am going to say the metabolism booster teas probably just have caffeine (along with other things I’m sure), yes, it will give you a burst of energy, maybe make your heart work a little hard but in the long run will NOT “boost” your metabolism. Your body is an expert at adapting, if you suddenly lost all your valuable weight just from drinking a cup of tea everyday then that would not be a very useful evolutionary trait. Remember - to your body weight loss potentially means death. If you are unable to catch enough food on the day-to-day, unable to fluff yourself up for the winter - YOU DIE. Yes, it is that dramatic. But look at it from the stand point of your body - it is an amazing, complicated, intricate, beautiful system that is constantly keeping everything in line so that you can keep on living.
Weight loss pills - basically legal speed. Yes, you will have bursts of energy that cause you to do more but at what cost? So many studies and recalls of diet pills because of the harm that they do to your body. I don’t care if they are marketed as “all natural ingredients” with some berry that is found deep in the rainforest that is the “magical secret” to weight loss. I know weight loss can be a very emotionally charged and desperate search for the Holy Grain (which was a typo but I’m keeping it because it fits) - but just think for a second - do you really think this “magical secret” would be sold in the energy bar aisle of Target? If this was such a gold mine ingredient from the remote jungle, why can you get it for $49.99/bottle next to the cans of Slim Fast? It’s all marketing, marketing banking on your desperation to try ANYTHING. That you’ll be of the 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% that the product “works” on, that this will be the secret key to you making the pounds melt off in 30 days and then stay off forever when you stop taking the pills. Please, please, please stop for just a second the next time you think about giving one of these companies your money. I know the marketing is getting pretty convincing these days because they know consumers have caught on to their usual or cliche terms - so just know - your metabolism is much more complicated than to be “boosted” by a G00p flower petal suppository or whatever else that nonsense has come up with lately.
Myth #3: Your metabolism stays the same. Ie. “I have a fast/slow metabolism.”
Tying into myth #2, your metabolism does not stay the same. It can fluctuate throughout the day, weeks, months, etc. Again, it includes a lot of different factors but like the example I used above, your metabolism might slow if you’re not getting enough energy and it might increase again once you do. Yes, the part about everyone having a different metabolism and basal metabolic rate is true, this is largely due to genetic makeup but it might also be the social environment you’re living in, your history of weight cycling, if you have thyroid abnormalities or other such disease factors, how your body reacts to starvation/famine (under-eating), etc.
So what is the takeaway here?
Your body needs energy to survive. In this modern world with food everywhere and a bombardment of nutrition messages and marketing how do you sort through it all? In my opinion, that is where intuitive eating comes in. When you get back to your roots of listening to your body and trusting your hunger/fullness cues and giving yourself permission to eat any food so that there is not feeling of desperation or deprivation, your metabolism and weight will find their balance. Your body is peaceful and chillin’ when it knows there will be energy when it needs it and therefore you can maintain your weight homeostasis or “set point weight”. This is the weight your body feels best at, so if you are at this weight range and you eat more, metabolism will go up, you eat too little, metabolism will go down. Your body will keep it all in balance. And that is the true “lifestyle change” that you can actually maintain for life.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!