Episode 321
Metabolic Adaptation and Restoration
Have you ever been told to “eat less and move more” to lose weight, but always seem to gain the weight back? That’s because, fundamentally, prolonged calorie restriction leads to metabolic adaptation, which actually prioritizes the loss of muscle mass, not body fat. It’s not in your head! And you’re not doomed!
Today on Salad With a Side of Fries, Jenn Trepeck explores how metabolic adaptation can affect energy expenditure and muscle mass, leading to hormonal imbalances and other unwanted symptoms. Learn why "eat less, move more" is not a long-term weight loss solution and why, instead, we want to be focusing on building muscle. Jenn shares how prioritizing protein intake and fiber consumption, stress management, and getting quality sleep can help to prevent metabolic adaptation and support metabolic restoration. Discover how reverse dieting can help to restore your basal metabolic rate and other strategies to support sustainable health through gradual fat removal.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
✅ Learn why "eat less, move more" leads to muscle loss and fat regain
✅ Explore nutrition strategies to prevent the effects of metabolic adaptation
✅ Understand the roles stress management and sleep quality have in restoring basal metabolic rate
✅ Get practical tips for restoring metabolic health, like reverse dieting, and sustaining hormonal balance for long-term health
The Salad With a Side of Fries podcast, hosted by Jenn Trepeck, explores real-life wellness and weight loss, debunking myths, misinformation, and flawed science surrounding our understanding of nutrition and the food industry. Let’s dive into wellness and weight loss for real life, including drinking, eating out, and skipping the grocery store.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Metabolic Adaptation Explained: How Calorie Restriction Slows Basal Metabolic Rate to Survive
03:40 Our bodies adapt to weight loss by reducing energy expenditure, negatively impacting our muscle mass
06:41 Metabolic adaptation conserves energy, lowering basal metabolic rate during calorie restriction
09:57 Increased efficiency in metabolic adaptation sheds muscle mass, harming sustainable health
13:29 Metabolic adaptation can cause weight loss plateaus, drawing nutrients from the bones
15:04 Hormonal imbalances from metabolic adaptation affect thyroid function
19:55 Prevent metabolic adaptation with quality nutrition: protein and fiber in every meal makes removing fat no big deal
28:00 How reverse dieting can help restore our body’s basal metabolic rate and counter the effects of metabolic adaptation
34:41 Build muscle mass with resistance training to boost metabolism and avoid metabolic adaptation
38:39 Thyroid function is key to restoring basal metabolic rate
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
💎 Prevent metabolic adaptation by prioritizing quality nutrition and protein intake to maintain basal metabolic rate.
💎 Build muscle mass through resistance training to boost energy expenditure and avoid calorie restriction pitfalls.
💎 Focus on stress management and sleep quality for hormonal balance and sustainable health.
💎 Use reverse dieting to counter the effects of metabolic adaptation, aiding in restoring your basal metabolic rate.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Become a Happy Healthy Hub Member
A Salad With A Side Of Fries Merch
A Salad With a Side of Fries Instagram
Personalizing Fitness by ADAPTing (feat. Philip Pape)
Nutrition Nugget: Minnesota Starvation Experiment
Celebrating Three Years with The Five Fat Factors
QUOTES:
00:00 "In prolonged periods of calorie restriction, which is the old adage of ‘eat less, move more’, the body adapts in order to survive." Jenn Trepeck
03:40 "Metabolic adaptation is essentially when the body adapts to prolonged calorie restriction or weight loss efforts by changing its physiology." Jenn Trepeck
17:17 "We want to focus on nutrition that supports every piece of our body's function and maintaining and building muscle." Jenn Trepeck
28:13 "Metabolic restoration is reversing the metabolic adaptation... improving energy levels, improving our metabolism." Jenn Trepeck
SEO KEYWORDS:
Jenn Trepeck, Salad With a Side of Fries, Nutrition Nugget, Health Coach, Weight Loss for Real Life, Metabolic adaptation, Metabolic restoration, Muscle mass, Hormonal balance, Nutrition quality, Stress management, Sleep quality, Protein intake, Fiber consumption, Reverse dieting, Sustainable health, Metabolic adaptation effects, Restoring basal metabolic rate, GLP, GLP-1, fat loss, body composition
Transcript
Metabolic Adaptation and Restoration-Transcript
[:[00:00:28] I'm your host Jen Tpic, talking wellness and weight loss for real life. We're here to clear up the myths, misinformation, bad science and marketing to teach you how to eat and how to cheat. Are you ready? I'm having salad with a side of fries. Hey friend. Welcome back to Salad with a side of fries. I'm Jen Cheick, your host and health coach here with you every week for wellness without the weirdness.
[:[00:01:07] RJ: Howdy. Thanks for having me, Jen.
[:[00:01:18] RJ: It's awesome.
[:[00:01:43] So this is another great way for us to stay in touch Between episodes. I send tons of great stuff and I promise you, I don't spam you. I send like two emails a month. So anyway, what I'm saying is I wanna connect with you, social media, [00:02:00] emails, all the places. So anyway, RJ, back to you. The message you sent me recently, do you remember what it said?
[:[00:02:13] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. So you just asked if we had any episodes on metabolic restoration and metabolic adaptation, and I replied, you know, kind of referencing a few where we, you know, talked about pieces of it and then it got me thinking, you know, and so I was like, alright.
[:[00:02:50] RJ: right?
[:[00:02:57] RJ: Metabolic adaptation. I've [00:03:00] heard those words.
[:[00:03:20] And metabolic restoration is, I guess it has a lot to do with your BMR, your basal metabolic rate, right.
[:[00:03:40] So metabolic adaptation is essentially when the body adapts to prolonged calorie restriction or weight loss efforts by changing its physiology. So it adapts to the decreased fuel. [00:04:00] So we'll talk about how it does that and why it does that and all of that stuff.
[:[00:04:09] That's why I asked you, I texted you that.
[:[00:04:41] So we'll dig into these. You know, both sides, the adaptation and the restoration today. So really quick before we get too far into it, one more piece of housekeeping. We gotta tell our members what they're getting this week. So members of the Happy Healthy Hub, your recipe this [00:05:00] week is for cauliflower rice with pistachio chicken.
[:[00:05:31] For just $12 a month, or by the way, you can prepay the whole year and get the whole year for just $120. But so for $12 a month or $120 a year, you get a weekly recipe, curated articles or discounts from me and our partners expert interview episodes in full video, including behind the scenes content, a community with the ability to post and comment on other people's posts.
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[:[00:07:15] It will always do whatever it needs to do to survive. And in prolonged periods of calorie restriction, which is the old adage of eat less, move more, the body adapts in order to survive. So part of how that adapts is reducing that basal metabolic rate. It reduces the amount of fuel or calories. It burns the energy burn for all of our bodily functions.
[:[00:08:11] Non-exercise activity thermogenesis or neat. We talked about this a little bit with Philip Pape. So this is our normal movement throughout the day. That's not exercise, so maybe you're fidgeting, right? Those kinds of things. So our active energy expenditure is usually about 25%. Your basal metabolic rate is usually about 60%, give or take.
[:[00:09:03] Your body will also start to use its own muscle for fuel. Your body will pull nutrients from the bone in order to do what it needs to do. So what happens? Our body overall, it's burning fewer calories from every single piece of this, right? Our energy expenditure, the basal metabolic rate, everything slows down.
[:[00:09:57] Normally we would think of [00:10:00] efficiency as a really powerful, positive thing. In this case, increased efficiency means that we're actually not building muscle. It means that our body is actually trying to get rid of muscle because muscle requires a lot of energy, muscles, metabolically active tissue. If we have less fuel, we want to eliminate the things that need fuel.
[:[00:10:29] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah.
[:[00:10:48] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, and the tricky piece is that as we talk about all the time, calories aren't the be all end all. Yet, that's how all of the literature and [00:11:00] anything that talks about this describes it, right? The implication of the way these things are discussed is that as long as it's a calorie, it doesn't matter. And we know that a calorie is not a calorie, that it makes a difference, and it's the quality of the calories that we're looking for.
[:[00:11:18] Jenn Trepeck: Awesome. There's also psychological factors, so people will talk about. Sometimes it's decreased hunger. Sometimes it's increased hunger, depending on those cravings or feelings of needing to be satisfied in some way. You know? And a lot of this, if you're a long time listener, we've talked about this with the five fat factors.
[:[00:11:45] RJ: I think I just listened to that.
[:[00:11:48] RJ: ago.
[:[00:12:13] Doesn't necessarily translate into long term health, but in the short term, we can think it's doing exactly what we want it to do. And so that's why I often say it really comes down to when somebody says it works or whatever they're doing works or is working or will work. My question is always for how long and how healthful is it?
[:[00:12:53] RJ: Yeah. Right. It's not sustainable
[:[00:13:02] It's decreasing our basal metabolic rate. Right. So it's interesting as we think about what's happening in the zeitgeist. These days all about the GLP medications. I think we've done about three episodes now on them, and I think it's very relevant to this conversation because metabolic adaptation is our body fighting to survive that self preservation and protection.
[:[00:14:00] We get frustrated. We go back to old eating habits. Then we're gaining the weight back. But now as we're gaining the weight back, we have less muscle on our body to be burning that extra fuel and we gain it back as fat. So each time we do this, so if you've listened to the episode about the five fat factors, this is what we're talking about, where we lose it as what water, muscle and bone.
[:[00:14:55] That is what often leads to blood sugar [00:15:00] dysregulation, cardiovascular disease.
[:[00:15:06] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly. Without proper nutrients, you know, and by the way, there are hormones like we were talking about before, that are connected to hunger and satiety, and then there are hormones that we think about like estrogen and testosterone and all of these things.
[:[00:15:29] RJ: A lot of it's from food is that we get a lot of people tend to stay away from like egg yolks and stuff like that too.
[:[00:15:55] Or eating foods that have cholesterol. If our body is [00:16:00] functioning, then our body would then produce less of its own cholesterol because it's maintaining. I think if memory serves, I think it's about 50 grams of cholesterol. So the amount of cholesterol in an egg is a few milligrams relative to 50 grams.
[:[00:16:49] So. When it comes to metabolic adaptation, the ideal scenario is to prevent some of this or [00:17:00] prevent living in this place for extended periods of time, right? So how do we do that? Frankly, you do everything that we talk about at salad with a side of fries all the time. We wanna focus on nutrition that supports.
[:[00:17:40] RJ: Yeah. 'cause weight loss is not that loss.
[:[00:18:07] It was Your Fat cells have memory, a new study finds. So essentially what the study found. Do you remember this?
[:[00:18:24] Jenn Trepeck: I love it. Yeah. So essentially what they found is that our fat cells, like the DNA, or maybe it was the RNA in the cells, adapted to what's called the obesogenic environment.
[:[00:19:08] So then people quickly regained weight. Their fat cells had a memory essentially for this other environment and sends signals throughout the body to create that environment. I see. So it turns out how we go about removing fat is critically important. Giving our body time to adapt is critical. And in this case, I'm using the word adapt to.
[:[00:19:51] RJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the gist of it.
[:[00:20:10] Eating quality, nutrition, protein, fiber, quality, fat, sustained efforts over the long haul versus trying to do it quickly. Movement and exercise and activity that build muscle. Increase our energy expenditure, right? And we wanna monitor hormones. Work with your healthcare provider. Look at what's happening.
[:[00:21:00] RJ: Right. I wanted to ask you, do you have, have you ever done any episodes on. On hormones and like their influences on, um, behavior.
[:[00:21:20] So the more that we try to dissect and unpack any one specific thing, I believe we're actually doing a disservice because for the average person. That's not how we think about it. That's not how we live our lives and it's all connected.
[:[00:21:44] 'cause a lot of people would just starve themselves and start running on a treadmill here. We know what's gonna happen after that.
[:[00:22:09] So if we need to train our body to need less, it's going to remove muscle and store fat. Okay? So odds are if you have ever done a diet or followed a plan of some kind, whether the objective was the number on the scale. Or something else, it's likely that you've experienced this. And what it means is that we also must focus on metabolic restoration.
[:[00:22:47] RJ: Yes. Also, I wanted to ask, um, yeah, so metabolic adapt tissue would probably be like the cutting face of someone's goal. Restoration would be like the bulking phase of someone's goal.
[:[00:23:01] Right? Right. I guess, but you're going to have a more difficult time maintaining muscle. If you are in a place of metabolic adaptation, your body is going to want to get rid of muscle because muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain.
[:[00:23:19] Jenn Trepeck: To me, it would be counterproductive to put yourself into a place of metabolic adaptation.
[:[00:23:49] Yeah. And so some of those things are much more short term before that moment where it's needed versus living in that place. The [00:24:00] piece that I want everyone to really understand is that you do not need to be a bodybuilder to be healthy. Oh yeah. And the things that someone might do, if that is their goal.
[:[00:24:39] Their objective may be to sell you something. Their objective may be to make you feel like you suck. Their objective may be winning a bodybuilding competition. Right. Interesting. I just had dinner yesterday with a woman who was a female bodybuilder and is now deep in the longevity space, [00:25:00] and we were talking about a few things and it was just very clear that the people I speak to are not the people that she speaks to.
[:[00:25:35] A cutting phase is different than the actions we might wanna take in a different phase, a bulking phase. Okay, let's pause to highlight our partner for this episode and then we'll discuss metabolic restoration. Oh, and all right, we are our own partner for this episode. So, alright friends, you're here, you are listening.
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[:[00:27:43] RJ: Restoration. I'm sitting it sort of like a reefy, right?
[:[00:28:00] Jenn Trepeck: So it depends. I mean, that's one approach to achieve metabolic restoration. But fundamentally metabolic restoration is reversing the metabolic adaptation.
[:[00:28:47] If we're always in restriction, then we're gonna end up in that adaptation. That's counterproductive. Right? Or the body is releasing that muscle. Exactly. So [00:29:00] yes. One of the things that we do is gradually is more, eat, more regularly focus on sleep stress management. Right? All of the things. And so the metabolic restoration is designed to counter.
[:[00:29:38] RJ: Like as the, like the whole body of anything.
[:[00:29:58] Jenn Trepeck: Right. To me. [00:30:00] The time to look at these approaches of metabolic restoration is not just coming out of metabolic adaptation, but think about your phase of life recovery.
[:[00:30:38] RJ: No. Okay. If like from a health aspect, just from a general health aspect, like, oh, you're, you're always feeling fatigued or like, you know, you're, you're always, uh, irritated or you're always craving stuff, but you're only, yeah. Or if you're twice a day.
[:[00:30:56] Or we are in a phase of life where our [00:31:00] body needs more nutrients, there are so much more to health than, you know, number on the scale and stat
[:[00:31:12] Jenn Trepeck: Yep. Yeah. So number one is a focus on nutrition. Protein, fiber, quality, fat, right? Protein supports metabolic processes.
[:[00:31:57] RJ: Right?
[:[00:32:07] RJ: Have you heard that saying fat burns in the carbohydrate flame?
[:[00:32:12] RJ: No. I've heard that.
[:[00:32:15] RJ: Fat burns into carbohydrate flame. So I guess it takes energy to burn energy, essentially.
[:[00:32:28] RJ: correct.
[:[00:32:54] A snack is going to last about one or two depending on how much we have. Eating [00:33:00] consistent meals and snacks, especially not going longer than like four hours without eating helps keep the metabolism burning. It helps keep the metabolism active. It is the counter to. The restriction of metabolic adaptation.
[:[00:33:43] And part of that is also decreasing stress.
[:[00:33:47] Jenn Trepeck: Right. Stress. The more we're trying to push the body to do something, it's added stress and the body typically doesn't respond well to that. Right.
[:[00:33:59] Jenn Trepeck: [00:34:00] Exactly. So number one was nutrition, which includes potentially eating more.
[:[00:34:13] RJ: right? I think I remember asking you this, if you believe that uh, there's a such thing as not eating enough to lose weight.
[:[00:34:22] RJ: Do you? Yeah, that's
[:[00:34:29] What it will release is muscle that's metabolically active tissue that needs fuel to maintain it. That's metabolic adaptation.
[:[00:34:41] Jenn Trepeck: Right? So with our movement building, muscle resistance training, right? Muscle is metabolically active. Muscle dictates metabolism.
[:[00:35:00] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly. I love that you use it. I'm honored. Thank you. So increasing, I tell
[:[00:35:07] Jenn Trepeck: Thank you. Increasing our resistance training to build and maintain muscle mass, improves our metabolism.
[:[00:35:41] This plays into detoxification. This plays into appetite into cravings If we do not sleep well. We cannot detoxify well, we cannot repair our systems. We cannot build muscle, we cannot release fat. Sleep is so [00:36:00] incredibly important to this puzzle, and for a lot of us, especially in stress times of life, this goes by the wayside.
[:[00:36:22] RJ: That's what I tell my clients. Tell 'em. I essentially just tell 'em, your body prioritizes stress. And if it's too busy stressing or dealing with the stress, like you said, it won't burn better or grow muscle
[:[00:36:34] Stress is a survival. Now we need some stress. Let's be clear. Not all stress is detrimental to health. Stress, and cortisol gets us outta bed in the morning. We need that stress. So there's eustress quality, stress. Then there's the counterproductive stress, and that is the fight or flight response that is always turned on.
[:[00:37:14] That stress response of fight or flight is designed to be like 20 minutes. So when we're in that fight or flight, because it's about short-term survival, bodily functions that are not critical to survival of the next 20 minutes turn off. So our immune system turns off, our reproductive system turns off, building muscle, turns off growing hair and nails turns off.
[:[00:38:04] Figuring out, and again, we have all these episodes on stress that have tons of options to play with to think about your personal best approach. And the one thing I'll say is that we wanna make sure that we have a whole tool belt full of options because what help today may not help tomorrow, and it doesn't mean you're broken.
[:[00:38:37] RJ: Right. Thank you.
[:[00:38:57] Is our body function and that connects to the [00:39:00] thyroid. So it might make sense for you to work with a healthcare provider, do a thyroid blood panel, take a look at some of these other things, see what's happening. Maybe even check what's called thyroid peroxidase antibodies, the TPO. The idea here is that we're looking to improve our thyroid function and ensure that it is not impaired because of the choices that we have made at other times that our thyroid hasn't slowed down in an effort to survive because it was learning to live in this state of, frankly, malnutrition.
[:[00:39:49] RJ: I have a better understanding of it now. I don't know how to put it in words, but I do have a, I'm still trying to figure out all of this learning is only so I can apply it to my [00:40:00] clients a thousand
[:[00:40:01] RJ: So I like to just go out through all the notes, the show notes and stuff like that and then, um, figure out how I can reiterate it.
[:[00:40:08] RJ: proper word association to my clients
[:[00:40:12] RJ: them, because I'm not gonna, if I say, well now we're, I'm gonna try something called metabolic restoration, blah, blah, blah. I don't know what words to use for them to be like, you know? Right.
[:[00:40:26] I never use these words because it's not what resonates. I've never heard you said, but Right, because it's not what resonates. So the idea is for us to, as you exactly as you said, use the words that make sense to us and talk about these things in ways that register, that click, that enable us to do something about it.
[:[00:41:24] Sleep more and better.
[:[00:41:32] Jenn Trepeck: Yep. Wait,
[:[00:41:39] Jenn Trepeck: thousand percent and heard my student protein and fiber at every meal makes you removing fat. No big deal. I know, I know. But it's always there.
[:[00:42:17] Every piece of health. Is maintained or improved with quality nutrition movement that builds muscle and uses our heart as a muscle managing stress, right. Getting more and better sleep. Awesome. Alright, time to preview our nutrition nugget. You ready?
[:[00:42:40] Jenn Trepeck: All right. On Friday we're talking about stability.
[:[00:43:04] We all need to be talking about it more, and it is, in my humble opinion, way too overlooked. We talk about physical fitness, so we're gonna get into it on Friday and this week's bite-size, bonus episode, nutrition nugget. Be sure wherever you're listening, click the plus sign or the follow button, and your app will alert you on Friday when it goes live.
[:[00:43:46] This is also the easiest way to learn more about working with me as your health coach. And rj, thank you again for joining me.
[:[00:43:57] Jenn Trepeck: Oh, I'm so glad. And of course, everybody, if [00:44:00] you are not already a member, I invite you to the Happy Healthy Hub. You'll go to a salad with the side of fries.com/membership.
[:[00:44:41] Well, friends, that's it for today's episode of Salad with a Side of Fries. Congratulations for making yourself and your health a priority. Thanks so much for joining us. Be sure to click subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast platform. Share us with a friend and we'll be back next week. Always remember you deserve it and you are worth it.
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