Is It Possible to Boost Your Metabolism? The Truth About Metabolic Flexibility

Is It Possible to Boost Your Metabolism? The Truth About Metabolic Flexibility

https://inbodyusa.com/blogs/inbodyblog/the-health-benefits-of-fruits-and-vegetables/

Eat carbs before you work out. It will improve your performance. No, don’t – eat fats like peanut butter or avocados. No, actually, don’t eat at all and your body will burn more calories. Refuel with carbs. No, recover with protein to build muscle.

Is your head spinning yet?

You’re not alone if you ever feel like every health article you see contradicts the one you saw the day before.

If you stay up-to-date on health news and research, the very word “metabolism” may seem antiquated and overused. But it’s everywhere because it really IS that important. Your metabolism is the process (or series of processes, rather) that dictate how your body functions.

Even though the word appears ubiquitously, most of us misunderstand what metabolism really is and what it does. Yes, your metabolism determines how much and how often you need to eat, but most people overlook the fact that metabolic reactions take place in every single cell in your body.

“Metabolism” refers to the series of chemical processes in each cell that turn your food into energy to keep you alive. And because your metabolism is so complex, it’s able to use different sorts of fuel to your body’s advantage.

This is where the perpetual carbs-versus-fats debate comes into play. Everyone’s quick to tell you about their success with the Keto diet or how more balanced macros improved their performance in the gym.

In reality, there’s no perfect diet. Everyone’s preferred macronutrient ratio and calorie intake depend on their unique resting metabolic rate, activity level, food sensitivities, and more. But there is one thing everyone can count on: Your body will – or should – use what you give it.

What Is Metabolic Flexibility?

If you eat a lot of fats, fat will be your body’s primary source of fuel. If you eat a lot of carbohydrates, glucose will be your body’s primary source of fuel. If you eat more protein than anything else – you guessed it – your body will burn more protein for energy.

Metabolic flexibility is your body’s ability to adapt to metabolic demands. When things change – such as changing what time you eat breakfast or what you eat for breakfast – your body is forced to change the way it metabolizes your food.

When you eat, your food is either burned for energy or stored if what you ate was in excess of your energy needs. Any excess carbohydrates are stored as glycogen(which serves as quick energy reserves) or fat tissue if glycogen stores are full. Any extra fat is also put away for later use, as fat tissue.

How flexible your metabolism refers to how efficiently your body can switch between using carbs or fats for fuel – or, more importantly – how efficiently it can use what is already available.

Someone with great metabolic flexibility can burn carbs when they eat them. They can also burn fat when they eat it, or when they don’t eat at all. People with flexible metabolisms can “flex” between carbohydrate metabolism and fat oxidation relatively easily.

For example, a person with great metabolic flexibility does cardio in the morning on an empty stomach. Because their metabolism is highly flexible, their body powers through the workout on fat tissue that already exists. The same person, however, could eat oatmeal and a banana an hour or two before their workout and instead use those carbs as fuel (instead of storing them for later use).

Flexibility?

A flexible metabolism gives your body more leeway when determining what fuel source to use. Take the example of the person doing fasted cardio in the previous section. If that person was metabolically inflexible and exercised on an empty stomach, he or she would first burn through the glycogen (stored carbohydrates) in their body – leaving the fat untouched.

This is why it’s so hard for many people to burn fat: They are metabolically inflexible.

If you’re very metabolically flexible, eating calorie-dense, sugar-laden, or very fatty foods from time to time won’t always be an issue for your body. Your body can convert those calories into energy without much negative aftermath.  

Those who are metabolically flexible carry more mitochondria in their muscles, which allows them to produce energy more efficiently. Having too few mitochondria, or having dysfunctional mitochondria, limits the amount of energy a person can produce. It makes switching between fuels difficult, which makes utilizing any stored body fat between meals almost impossible. This is why metabolically inflexible people tend to snack often.

So we know now that the benefits of metabolic flexibility are vast. But what’s the big deal if we aren’t so good at flexing our metabolism muscle?

In simple terms, metabolically inflexible people generally feel pretty poor.

Side effects of metabolic inflexibility include fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, poor sleep, low mood or depression, poor cognitive function (poor ability to focus), and shortness of breath. If you find it hard to finish tasks at hand, taking frequent coffee breaks for caffeine-induced energy, getting frustrated easily, or having trouble sleeping, you may have an inflexible metabolism.

Additionally, metabolically inflexible people tend to be excessively hungry or have an unusually strong appetite. This is because their bodies aren’t good at burning what’s already there.

How to Train Your Metabolism to Be More Flexible

The key to understanding metabolic flexibility is understanding how insulin regulates our energy. A healthy person with normal insulin action can effectively switch between fats and carbs as fuel. An insulin-resistant person cannot do this as effectively.

Insulin is the hormone that regulates your blood sugar by taking glucose into your bloodstream. There are two primary states of being as it relates to a person’s metabolism: fed and fasting.

During fed conditions (e.g., having just eaten), your insulin levels will be high due to incoming food. During fasting conditions, someone who is very metabolically flexible will easily be able to tap into stored body fat. The workings of insulin are vast, and you can learn more here, but these points are essential to understanding metabolic flexibility:

All food you eat, regardless of macronutrient composition, sparks the release of insulin.Insulin is a factor in deciding which fuel source your body uses.When insulin levels are low, your body primarily burns fat.When insulin levels are high, your body primarily burns carbs and stores fat.

One of the best – and easiest – ways to improve your metabolic flexibility is to exercise. If you’re generally sedentary, adding exercise to your days is a surefire way to kick your body into a fat-burning mode it’s never experienced before. If you already exercise regularly, add more variety to your workouts.

Varying the type of training you do (strength training, intervals, and some sort of aerobic or endurance activity) might just give your body the nudge it needs to tap into your fat reserves. Different types of exercise use different mixes of fuel and eventually may train your body to use different fuel sources during day-to-day activities.

Fasted cardio is one type of exercise intended to tap heavily into your body’s fat reserves. Doing high-intensity cardiovascular exercise with little to no glycogen stored can train your metabolism to be more flexible.

Another way to improve your metabolic flexibility is intermittent fasting (IF). Remember the person who used body fat as fuel during their morning fasted cardio? That worked because his or her body was trained to use the available energy in the absence of food.

Metabolically inflexible people would just feel atrocious in the same scenario because their bodies don’t know how to function without incoming energy (food). If you can’t make it more than two-to-three hours without food, you’re impairing your body’s ability to utilize your body fat. Work slowly to increase your spacing between meals.

Timing your nutrient intake can help your body use fat more efficiently, and the longer the fasting period, the more your body has to tap into its fat reserves, which may be one way to combat obesity.

You should also test out different macronutrient ratios. The fewer carbohydrates you consume, the more your body will have to rely on fat sources for fuel. This is the premise behind the ketogenic diet. Try cutting out added sugars and overly processed grains first. Then you can try reducing your carb intake even further by cutting out starches like potatoes. If keto’s not for you, try out the paleo diet, which is also low in carbs and higher in fat and protein.

While it’s encouraged to consume fats, avoid trans fats and too many saturated fats. Try to get your fats from nutrient-dense sources like olive and coconut oils, avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish.

Also, consume more antioxidant-rich foods: Antioxidant consumption has been linked to a reduced risk of metabolic syndrome, as well as an increase in insulin sensitivity.

A Flexible Metabolism Means More Energy, a Better Body Composition, and Improved Health

To sum up, metabolic flexibility is the ability to switch from one fuel source to the next: from fats to carbs and vice versa. Metabolic inflexibility is the opposite: the inability (or limited ability) to switch from one fuel source to the other. For those concerned with body composition, inflexibility can be a real downer because it’s impossible to lose body fat if your body can’t burn it.

A flexible metabolism is efficient at using excess adipose tissue (fat) for energy, which over time decreases the ratio of fat mass to lean mass, resulting in a better body composition and decreased heatlh risk.

It’s hypothesized that metabolic inflexibility also plays a role in various diseases processes such as metabolic syndrome; so along with better body composition, being metabolically flexible can improve overall health and wellness by boosting insulin sensitivity, reducing the risk of disease, and training your body to adapt to metabolic demands.

Though this may all seem too complex to try, it’s not really that complicated: Think about your ancestors, what they ate, how much, and how often. It’s no secret that whole-food nutrition (fruits, vegetables, lean protein, nuts, and seeds) and exercise are the keys to a lean, healthy body.

Training your body to endure longer periods of time without food is also key to mastering fat-burning mode. Our hunter-gatherer predecessors didn’t have access to the abundance of food we do. They were forced to go long periods of time without eating, and thus their metabolisms kept them alive by burning what fat they had stored on their bodies.

If you’re interested in improving your body composition or general wellness, it’s worth experimenting with exercise, fasting, and macronutrients to train your metabolism to be flexible.

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Amanda Capritto is a certified personal trainer and health coach who writes about nutrition, fitness and healthcare. A journalism alumna of Louisiana State University, Amanda spends her free time adventuring outdoors, hitting the gym, and encouraging people to live balanced, healthy lifestyles.

What’s Better for Dehydration: Water vs Sport Drinks

What's Better for Dehydration: Water vs Sport Drinks

Water makes up about 60% of your bodyweight and is the most important chemical in your body. It’s involved in everything, from regulating your internal temperature to protecting sensitive tissues and cushioning joints. Every single cell, tissue, and organ depends on proper hydration to function optimally.

When your body lacks enough water to function properly, it’s known as dehydration, which can lead to fatigue, confusion, and irritability. Hydration depends not only on your water intake, but on the amount of water exiting your body through: • Sweat • Urination • Breathing When you exercise, you sweat. And when you sweat, you deplete your body of water. In fact, during challenging athletic events, you can lose 6% to 10% of your body weight from sweating. Which means prioritizing hydration before, during, and after exercise is extremely important. Not only does hydration improve performance, it helps you achieve body composition goals and maintain a healthy weight. All the more reason to bring your water bottle to work and keep sipping!

But what should you be drinking? Is water enough to hydrate your body or are sports drinks like Gatorade more beneficial? Let’s dive into how hydration works and see for yourself when you should be drinking water and when you should drink sports drinks.

Hydration and fitness: What’s the link?

To get the most out of your workouts, you’ll need to put hydration at the top of your priority list.

Not only do your muscle cells depend on water to function properly, research shows that without proper hydration, endurance, strength, and power are all limited. Meaning when you exercise without enough water, you’re not getting the best results.

Staying hydrated and drinking water also assists in weight loss. Research shows this could be due to a natural decrease in eating (a natural compensation from drinking more water) and an increase in lipolysis (the breakdown of fat).

We know you need water to perform your best, but how do you know how much you need? 

How to assess hydration levels

Like previously mentioned, you lose water through sweat and urine, which make them the perfect measurement tools for assessing your hydration levels.

The color of your urine tells you a lot about your health, including how hydrated you are. The lighter-yellow it is, the more hydrated you are. If your urine begins to turn dark yellow or honey colored, it’s time to drink some water!

If you’re heading out for a run or about to take on a cycling class, you can hit the bathroom first to make sure you’ve got enough water in you! If not—bring water with you and drink plenty through your workout to get hydrated.

You can also assess the amount of water lost via sweating through a simple formula provided by the CDC:

pre-exercise bodyweight – post-exercise body weight + fluid intake – urine volume/exercise time in hours
 

Or to make it even easier, weigh yourself before exercise and after. Make sure that you take the post-workout measurement after you remove those heavy, sweaty clothes. If you’ve lost weight, you need to hydrate more next time.

Signs of dehydration

There are lots of theories on how much water you should drink each day, but it boils down to your individual needs and activity levels. However, there are a few signs you should grab a glass (or 2!) of water:

Thirst Early-onset fatigue Increased perception of effort Decreased exercise capacity Increased body temperature Faster breathing and heart rate Dizziness

Hydrating: water vs. sports drinks

Many people prefer drinking sports drinks during and after exercise as opposed to water because of the taste and added electrolytes. However, many sports drinks have additional ingredients and added sugars—making them a less appealing choice for those trying sweat off the calories. But is that enough reason to forget about them altogether?

Let’s take a look at some of those additional ingredients:

Electrolytes: Minerals, like potassium, sodium, and magnesium, have an electric charge and help maintain your body’s ionic balance. You lose electrolytes when you sweat and sports drinks claim to help replace what’s lost during exercise.

Carbohydrates: Most of the carbohydrates in sports drinks come from sugars. Carbs are one of your body’s energy sources and sports drinks are designed to re-fuel you after a hard workout.    

Amino acids: These are the building blocks of protein, and it’s believed that when we drink them after a tough workout, we help our bodies recover faster and better.

As you can see, some of the additional ingredients in sports drinks offer hydration benefits that water on its own cannot.

When to reach for a sports drink: what the science says

Though water should always be your first drink of choice, there may be certain scenarios where a sports drink is exactly what your body needs.

If you’re participating in high-intensity workouts lasting more than 45 minutes to an hour, sports drinks may help replenish your body’s electrolyte stores better than water. Recommendations also show that people whose sweat contains high levels of sodium (you may notice sweat stains or rings on your skin or clothing) may also benefit from re-hydrating with sports drinks.

Endurance athletes, like marathon runners or long-distance cyclers, may also benefit from drinking sports drinks because of the increased fluid loss from such intense exercise.

In both of these scenarios, athletes should make sure their sports drinks contain both carbohydrates and electrolytes.

Most of the time, good ole’ water will do the trick.

If your main goal is body composition related, you’re better off sticking with water and avoiding added sugars and calories.

You should also stick with water when:

You’re looking to hydrate before exercising    During a lower intensity workout or with workouts that don’t last 45 minutes or longer    You’re thirsty throughout the day

Other hydration methods

Water and sports drinks aren’t the only ways you can hydrate. Fluids like tea, juice, coconut water, and milk also provide plenty of water, as do many fruits and vegetables.

In fact, research shows coconut water hydrates just as well as a carbohydrate sports drinks or plain water, and may be easier to drink in large quantities than sweeter sports drinks.

Milk is also a great hydrator, earning a slightly higher rehydration score than plain water. Just another reason to enjoy an ice-cold glass of chocolate milk after a tough workout.

If you’d rather up your daily hydration through food, you’re in luck! Fruits and vegetables are great sources of water and also contain vital vitamins, minerals, and carbs—making them an ideal snack anytime.

Conclusion

Staying hydrated is important to all aspects of health and fitness. Without enough water, you simply can’t perform your best or maintain a healthy body composition.

Though there are many ways to stay hydrated, drinking plain water is the best choice for most people—unless you’re an endurance athlete or participating in high-intensity workouts.

However, if you’re tired of plain H20, coconut water, milk, fruits, and vegetables are all delicious choices.

Happy hydrating!

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Kaili Meyer is a health and travel writer based in the Midwest. If she’s not writing, you can find her cuddled up with a good book, in the gym, or on a plane headed somewhere warm. Visit her site: SideOfKail.com for all things health, fitness, and food.

How to Stick to a Meal Plan that Works

How to Stick to a Meal Plan that Works

Editor’s Note: This post was updated on November 23, 2018, for accuracy and comprehensiveness. It was originally published on May 3, 2017.

Eat less, move more.

Anyone who has been successful in achieving their body composition goals will have followed a general formula. However, they would also be quick to point out that it’s not that simple.

If you’re serious about changing your body composition, it’s important to realize that you have to go beyond making unhealthy nutrition decisions like severely restricting food intake or entire food groups and exercising frequently. While both are helpful for transforming body composition, making a plan that is way too broad and lacking in actionable elements will make it more difficult to achieve sustainable outcomes. Sure, you might get the results you’re after, but you might be making it much more difficult to reach. If you do reach your goals, be mindful that it may be unsustainable to maintain that level.

The formula to accomplishing long-term success is to take steps that are specific and actionable. If you want to eat less and change the way you eat, change up your approach. Meal prepping is a healthy habit that many individuals have had success with because it helps you achieve sustainable outcomes in your weight loss or body re-composition efforts.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how meal prepping can play a crucial role in achieving your body composition goals. Plus, you’ll learn how to stick to a healthy meal plan for the long haul. After all, it all boils down to consistency.

Why Meal Planning Can Be Beneficial In Changing Your Body Composition

When people think about fat loss or leaning out, diet and exercise are both important parts of the formula. Yet if you have to choose one weight loss method over the other, study after study has shown that being mindful of your diet— both in quality and quantity— outweighs exercise when it comes to achieving or even maintaining body composition changes.

For instance, a meta-analysis evaluating the effects of diet, exercise, or a combination of both revealed that although long-term success was greatest in the combined programs, diet-only interventions, as opposed to exercise-only interventions, achieved similar results in the short-term.  Another systematic review showed that diet is moderately superior to exercise for creating changes in body composition.

In a nutshell, you can exercise like crazy, but if you have unhealthy eating habits or you have trouble sticking to a diet, you are only setting up yourself for failure.

Coming up with a workable meal planning system deserves the same (or even more) amount of time and attention that you devote to planning your exercise routine. The problem is many underestimate the effects of their eating habits on their overall results. Having the mindset of  “I’ll burn these three slices of pizza at the gym tomorrow” is way too common. What if you can be more mindful? Instead of eating pizza, what if you plan your meals ahead so you aren’t tempted by unhealthy choices?

The point is not to disregard exercise altogether (as it has other body composition and health benefits), but to take meal planning seriously, too.

Finally, it’s also worth noting that meal preppers tend to be healthier. When you plan for your meals and go buy groceries, you are more likely to prep and cook them yourself. In a 2014 study on home cooking frequency and diet quality,  the researchers concluded that people who frequently bought groceries and cooked their meals at home eat healthier and consume fewer calories than those who cook less, regardless of whether they are trying to lose weight.

Now that we’ve talked about some of the benefits of meal planning, let’s take a look at creating a meal plan that’s right for you.

How to Stick to Your Meal Plan For the Long Haul

Of course, meal plans will vary from one individual to another. First, people have different health goals. Second, some folks will have a different approach in their diet choices.  For instance, you might want to go low-carb and choose the ketogenic route, but not everyone can do this diet. Some folks are comfortable planning a week in advance and freezing neatly-labeled plastic containers every Sunday night. 

Others wing it every two or three days by grocery shopping for produce in the middle of the week beside their weekend market trips.

Regardless of goals and dietary or fitness preferences in improving body composition, a workable meal plan system is a must. The ultimate goal is to avoid feeling frazzled the next time you have to think about your next meal and having to resort to a goal-busting junk meal (here’s looking at you, freezer pizza).

To help you steer clear from unhealthy food choices and achieve healthy body composition goals, let’s get the ball rolling with these actionable, real-world tips in creating and sticking to a meal plan for the long haul.

1. Identify what drives you to stick to a meal plan besides improving your body composition.

Sticking to your meal plan if you’re not seeing any progress. Cutting a few pounds of fat doesn’t happen overnight and progress may not be noticeable early on.

In order to keep motivation high, you need to identify other tangible reasons behind your goal, other than positive changes to your body composition. How about saving extra dollars from your weekly food budget? Maybe you enjoy the time you spend together with your loved ones preparing a recipe? These are just examples of reasons that can motivate you in an instant to stick to your healthy choices, even when signs of progress are not yet evident.

2. Have a well-stocked pantry.

Sticking to a meal plan for the long haul can be made easier with a well-stocked pantry.

Run out of lemon to whip up a quick dressing? Don’t have any herbs on hand to boost flavors? All of these will likely lead to frustration, and likely cause you to give up planning for your meals. Make sure you keep a list of essential groceries whenever you go to the supermarket, to make sure you never run out.

This list of staples may include eggs, your favorite protein, whole grains, yogurt, healthy oils, herbs and spices, butter, leafy greens, and a can of black beans. Having these ingredients on hand means you can quickly whip up a simple well-balanced meal when you’re short on time.

3. Pick a day to cook up a batch or prep certain meal components.

For many meal preppers, the weekend is when the action happens. Mornings are for grocery shopping while afternoons are dedicated to prepping and/or batch cooking.

When it comes to batch cooking, you can prep and batch cook some components.  For example, your roasted chicken on Sunday can be cut up and used for sandwiches on Monday and pasta on Tuesday. As you cook up batches (or double batches if you like), the freezer will be your new best friend. There’s no use calling it a meal plan if you have to start a recipe from scratch every night.

4. Be realistic and make room for wildcard days.

There are seven days in a week but you don’t have to come up with a seven-day weekly meal plan. Nor should you shop for ingredients for 21 meals. There might be days or certain meals that you can skip. Perhaps you’re supposed to go out with coworkers for lunch on Wednesdays. How about that Friday date night with your partner? Remember to change up your routine so you don’t get bored.

Before you plan and prep for a week’s worth of meals, double-check your social calendar. If nothing’s set in stone, give yourself some slack (say one or two lunches or dinners in a week) just in case something comes up at the last minute. If you’re into batch cooking, you can even schedule days for leftovers for that little extra bit of flexibility.

5. Embrace meal formulas rather than recipes.

Recipes are undoubtedly rad. However, finding new recipes every time you have to make a meal plan can wear you out and eventually turn you off.

Starch+protein+fat+vegetables is a good example of a meal plan formula (Feel free to cross out a component depending on your dietary needs and preferences, but remember not to cut out those healthy fats). By embracing meal formulas instead of sticking stubbornly to pre-made recipes, you don’t have to scroll through Pinterest for hours if you’re feeling uninspired when creating a meal plan. The key is to be mindful that whatever formula you use, there are different food groups that fit your needs (plenty of protein and healthy fats are essential for workout recovery). It’s important to change up your food choices for both nutritional reasons and to prevent boredom. Just because you are meal prepping, doesn’t mean you need to cut out variety.

Once you’ve figured out the number of meals you’re prepping for, coming up with meals will be an effortless system. It also makes for smooth-sailing ingredient shopping because you’re shopping by food group and not by food items for a specific recipe.

6. Reassess and tweak your meal plan as needed.

It’s common for nutritional needs or dietary preferences to change. Also, your local grocery might run out of your favorite ingredients as some produce are highly seasonal. That said, your meal planning system should be a dynamic process. Stop feeling disappointed if not everything is going as planned. Refocus instead by making changes as needed.

7. Stop obsessing about the perfect meal plan system.

There’s no such thing as the perfect method in creating meal plans. Some prefer the old-fashioned way with their trusty Moleskine journal while others swear by their favorite meal plan app. Meanwhile, there are individuals who enjoy DIY meal plans, but there are also folks who would rather have someone else do it for them.

Spending too much time jumping from one system to another and going back to square one every single week will only stall your body recomposition progress. Before you get burned out with your constant shuffle between meal planning systems, pick one method and stick to it for a least a month or two and tweak as you go.

Wrap Up

If you find yourself stuck in your eat less, move more philosophy but don’t see the results you want, sticking to a sustainable meal plan may be what’s missing. Apart from helping you accomplish your body composition goals more quickly, it can help you tackle other priorities in your life by not having to constantly worry about what to eat.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing worse than coming home late from work and ordering pizza for the fourth time in a week. You know you should be eating something more nutrient-dense, but you console yourself by saying that you didn’t have a choice. The truth is you do have a choice if you intentionally take time to create a meal plan system that truly works for you. Once you make this change – who knows? – you just might be pleasantly surprised the next time you check your body composition progress.

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Kyjean Tomboc is a nurse turned freelance healthcare copywriter and UX researcher.  After experimenting with going paleo and vegetarian, she realized that it all boils down to eating real food. 

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