How to Reset a Slow Metabolism
/See if this sounds familiar to you. You’ve been working out hard for a while, dieting and running. At first, you were seeing really good results from your effort (assuming your goal was losing body fat). But then as you keep going, progress seems to slow to a crawl or stops altogether.
What do you usually do at that point? You start pushing your foot harder on the gas pedal, so to speak, demanding more from your body and eating even less. For a time that might work but then the same thing happens. Your progress stalls or stops AGAIN and now you are even more drained and hungry than you were before. Maybe this cycle has occurred again and again. Super frustrating!
Perhaps this is happening to you or you know someone that this is the case for. They complain that no matter what they do they can’t seem to lose any fat or they keep regaining the same body fat back over and over. Right about now we start blaming age or our genetics for the problem. Now those things will play SOME role of course but what if I were to tell you that how you treat your metabolism can tell it either to slow down OR to speed up.
Your metabolism and specifically your metabolic rate is quite frankly the most important piece of equipment you have in your proverbial tool bag. The current state of your metabolism is your KEY to getting where you want to go.
So what exactly is metabolism
If your metabolism were a Facebook relationship status it would say “It’s complicated”. The metabolism is a complex piece of machinery and a full discussion of every aspect of it is beyond the scope of this post.
It IS however important to understand the basic purpose of the metabolism, which is to convert food into energy in order to run cellular functions. It is literally ALL the chemical reactions that occur in your body to sustain and maintain your life. It’s kind of a big deal.
Knowing this is important because your fuel/food intake, specifically how much you consume relative to what your body's needs are is intimately related to how well your body functions and is able to sustain itself.
There is no fooling your metabolism. It knows EXACTLY what it needs based on what your body is being asked to do. Those jobs include important things such as keeping your brain and organs running on top of any other tasks you ask of your body. IE running that ½ marathon or trying to lose those 10lbs of extra body fat through diet and exercise. It knows what it wants or at least what it thinks it needs based on its current expectations.
Thermostat vs. calculator model
When discussing fitness or fat loss all too often we are led to believe that our metabolism is a simple calculator. Take in less energy than you put out = fat loss at a steady consistent rate. This model, however, is not a very accurate representation of how the metabolism works.
Your metabolism is an adaptive animal. Your metabolic rate adjusts to better keep you alive. It cares more about your organ function first and foremost, not your athletic endeavors or desire to lose fat. If it’s under stress and being asked to do a lot with very little it’s going to start fighting back by slowing down and wanting to hold on to the “rainy day fund” around your midsection or decrease the energy you have for that athletic endeavor and your performance will suffer.
The metabolism is better represented as a furnace and how hot or cold that furnace burns can change! The heat of your furnace will determine if you are making continued progress in your goals or are stalling out. The good news is that if it’s currently low it can be told to turn up!
What causes your metabolism to slow down?
The act of the metabolic rate adjusting is known as adaptive thermogenesis. This slowdown of your RMR (resting metabolic rate) or a general reduction in calorie burn can occur usually for 4 primary reasons:
Not eating enough. Eating much less than your body needs over an extended period of time.
Your body getting more efficient at the exercises you perform. This overtime means you are actually burning fewer calories to perform the same amount of work than you did when you first started out. Your body becomes more efficient and requires less energy to repeat the same activity.
Chronic stress causing hormonal dysfunction. That goes for all stress on our bodies. Emotional stress, work stress, diet stress, exercise stress, lack of sleep, etc. Stress is stress and your hypothalamus which helps regulate your metabolism via hormones is intricately linked to your nervous system. Also, as stress levels increase so does the hormone Cortisol which can inhibit thyroid stimulating hormones, the messengers between the hypothalamus and the thyroid gland. This is why high levels of stress (good or bad) over time can have a negative impact on the function of your metabolism.
Losing muscle (or just not having very much to begin with).
Fat Loss and metabolic slowdown
Everyone’s goal should be to try and maintain their metabolic capacity as much as possible.
That said, for fat loss to occur there are two universal truths to keep in mind:
You must be in a calorie/energy deficit
You must work to balance your hormones
For better or worse with a reduced calorie intake and exercise you are going to experience a slow down or metabolic compensation.
The rate at which one's metabolic rate slows down is an individual thing. Everyone’s system is unique. On average when someone is in an energy deficit the slowdown of metabolic rate can range between 200-800kcal/day or on average about 300kcal/day.
With any fat loss program at times, it usually becomes necessary to drop calories lower and/or increase exercise in order to continue to see progress. Such is the nature of the beast. Again you should only adjust this when progress completely stalls as you want to be able to eat as much as you can get away with for as long as you can and still net results. Jumping to a very low-calorie diet right away is a common mistake as this leaves you less room to drop down as your metabolism compensates (If you are already at a low-calorie point and not seeing results the next section is for you).
For example, two people start a fat loss diet and person A starts at 2,500 calories (based on their TDEE or total daily energy expenditure) and person B starts at 1,500 calories.
Person A has a LOT more dieting capacity and wiggle room. They can eat more food and still create an energy deficit. They also have more room for error. That 250 calorie cookie they eat at lunch isn’t going to take quite as big a bite out of their daily calorie allowance as person B who is more calorie poor.
Metabolic damage symptoms
When your metabolism gets increasingly stressed you will experience:
Increased hunger
A drop in energy levels
Increased cravings
ALL this is done to try and force you to take in the energy (aka food) that your body wants.
When this happens, your hormones start getting out of balance and typically after a while we cave on our low-calorie diet. Now, since you have a slower resting metabolic rate 2 things can happen:
You regain the fat you worked hard to lose.
Your body overcompensates and you end up gaining even more weight than what you started with. Not ideal.
Depending on one’s diet history, the hard facts of life are your metabolism may no longer be set up to let you continue to lose body fat. If you have been in a chronic low energy state through a combination of low-calorie intake and exercise AND not seeing the results you are after your metabolism and hormones are probably hitting the brakes pretty hard and won’t play the fat loss game any further. Your metabolism has probably compensated pretty hard to make up for the imbalance it has been dealing with in its energy budget and dialed that furnace way down.
The trick is not JUST to work harder but work SMARTER and understand that at times increasing your metabolic capacity and INCREASING calories is the way forward.
Increase your metabolic or dieting capacity with reverse dieting.
Let me give you a hint. Eating smaller frequent meals has nothing to do with ramping up your metabolism. Meal frequency or meal timing can have different effects on your body but has nothing to do with increasing your RMR.
The first thing to do is to stop what you are doing, which is probably just more of the same and think differently. It might be time to start reversing metabolic damage by SLOWLY start adding calories back into your diet, releasing the hormonal brakes on your metabolism and focusing on anabolic (aka. muscle building) activities.
6 Steps to Resetting Your Metabolism When it’s No Longer Working for You:
Start a food log. If you haven’t ever kept a food log now is the time. It’s not hard. It just takes some discipline and practice to get a feel for it. I really like using MyFitnessPal for this task. You might find that on your average week or day you are actually taking in FAR MORE calories than you previously thought. This might be the reason for you stalling out on your fat loss. If you are hungry, have low energy and your cravings are high, however, I guarantee you that eating too much isn’t your problem. Keeping a food log is going to be the tool you will use to help you understand where you are now and how to SLOWLY increase your calories.
Have an intelligent macro (carbs, fats, proteins) approach. Arguing for or against a certain macro percentage or eating style is not the focus of this post and could be a much larger discussion but I would just say make an informed decision about what your plan will entail and follow that in relation to your calorie budget. Balance is key. If you haven’t had a macro plan previously I would suggest starting with either:
50% carb / 30% protein / 20% fat
40% carb / 30% protein / 30% fat.
Reverse diet. Yes. You still get to diet! Just in reverse! This is not a free for all. This is still eating with goals and guidelines in mind. This is the part however where you get to start adding more calories back in on a weekly basis. Again the keyword when adding calories is....SLOWLY.
If you have been eating 1,200 calories for quite some time and you just start adding in tons of extra calories you are just going to put on a lot of extra weight which isn’t the goal. Your goal is to increase as much as possible but have your body still maintain homeostasis. I.E. Your weight and/or your body shape should remain fairly close to where you started. That said if you are very underweight or have been treating carbs like they are the spawn of Satan you most likely will see an initial WEIGHT fluctuation. That’s ok though! Remember not to let your emotions run away with you and start associating WEIGHT with FAT. It’s not the same thing.
On a weekly basis, you are going to add in 50-100 calories or 2-3% of your body weight. Follow the plan for a week, check in at the end of your weekly cycle and EITHER increase again if your body is relatively close to your starting point OR hold steady for another week and check back in after your body has reached more of a point of homeostasis. Remember your metabolism slowed down over time it’s going to take a bit of time to build it back up. Enjoy eating more and having more energy!
Start focusing on muscle-building anabolic workouts. Building up muscle requires energy both to build and more importantly to maintain when at rest. IE. You get to eat more and still look awesome.
Muscle building activities stokes the anabolic hormones of the body and revs your metabolism up. This is not sex-dependent! This goes for both men AND women. You don’t need to train like a pro bodybuilder but you should be incorporating some heavy, challenging weights (for you) into your week and continuing to add challenge week to week. If you are lifting the same weight over and over you aren’t stimulating the muscles or the anabolic (building) process the same way after a certain point. Again if your metabolism is your focus, some strength training should be as well.
Get adequate sleep. Remember how we talked about chronic stress having a detrimental effect on your hormones and your nervous system? Well getting enough sleep is part of how your body recovers and recoups itself. Your general aim should be to get about 7-9hrs a night. Getting enough sleep in our busy world is seemingly harder and harder to do but just make it your aim to improve it if you are currently getting way less than you should.
Reduce stress. Suffering from low motivation? Low energy during the day? Low sex drive? Feeling depressed? Have no energy to do your workouts? Feeling run down often? Unreasonably anxious? Surprise! You’re probably dealing with chronic stress at some level. Stress is fine. Chronic stress is not. It wreaks havoc on your nervous system, and your hormonal balance let alone your quality of life. Remember balancing hormones is also a part of healing your metabolism or at least getting your hormones more willing to play the fat loss game or improve sports performance. A constant state of stress is not going to let your body recover the way it should. The first step is to identify what is causing your stress and then work on it as if your health depends on it…because it does. What you need to do to improve stress will be different for everyone. For some, it actually might mean exercising less. For others, it could mean incorporating yoga and a hot bath into their week. Or maybe just more time with friends and loved ones. Work to find strategies to improve your current stress status and not just hoping it will go away.
How long does it take to reset your metabolism? There is no real answer to that because every BODY is unique. In the end, remember ber progress, not perfection is the goal. If you are moving in the right direction and taking steps forward you will feel like a success. Focus on the journey and the big picture. Don’t get caught up in the craze of quick fixes or just repeating the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Sometimes the way forward is for you to stop, breathe and refuel your body so that you can continue making progress on your big long-term goals.
Is your metabolism slow? If you have been struggling with a slow metabolism and haven’t been getting the results you want from your training program, then contact us! We offer nutrition and workout plans that are custom-tailored for our clients both in-person in Denver and virtually all over the globe.
I’m a personal trainer in Denver and an online training coach and have been training clients for over 11 years. I’m passionate about teaching my clients how to get their dream body and helping them reach their health and fitness goals. In an industry driven by fads and hype, I strive to be a sound voice helping to filter the noise out for my clients so they can focus on just the things that matter. I believe looking your best and feeling great isn’t just a destination but a lifetime of good habits put into practice. Get my Top 5 Ab Moves HERE.
