How to Fix Your Metabolism After Years of Dieting

Nikkiey: For those of you that yo-yo diet or keep your body in a restrictive state for long periods of time, and you're under-eating and then you're overworking with your workouts, this podcast is for you.

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe, where we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome, you guys, to episode number 39, where today I'm going to talk all things about retraining your metabolism.

I'm really excited to bring this podcast and information to you guys, because I get questions a lot about how do I reset my metabolism, how do I eat more food to bring my metabolism back up to a healthy state, or even if you don't know that you need to do that. For those of you that yo-yo diet or keep your body in a restrictive state for long periods of time, and you're under-eating and then you're overworking with your workouts, and you're not getting the results you want, this podcast is for you.

If you're that person and you're not getting the results that you want, dude, make sure you listen to everything here. There's going to be a lot of methodologies here. There's going to be a lot of tactics to give you, but I've got to preface something with the tactics. This type of thing, retraining someone's metabolism, is so uniquely individualized. So when I get down to talking about what I like to call the ART, awareness, retraining and transformation, of what encompasses a retrain process, when it gets down to those tactics, I'm not going to be able to speak 100% directly to them, because I don't want to be dishing out some numbers and all of these things and you guys go and apply it, and it's actually not the right thing for your own personal, individualized body, lifestyle, all of these things. Okay.

But mainly, if you yo-yo diet, if you're a restrictive person, you've been in a restrictive state, you're under-eating, even if you don't know how much you're eating, and I'm going to talk about that when I get to the A of the retraining process, if you're overworking and you're not getting the results that you want, listen up. Okay. I'm going to explain the process of a retrain. I'm going to say why we do this, what you can expect, and all the normal things that you could see and or experience during a retraining of your metabolism.

Because if you're somebody that is in that state that I just talked about and you want results of building muscle and decreasing body fat, this is something that you need to go into first and get your metabolism back up to speed, because your metabolism is probably stopped. If your hunger cues are not there, and I'm going to talk about all that stuff, because if you're not hungry, then that's a sign of an unhealthy metabolism. And so if you want to cut weight or if you want to build muscle, you have to fix this process first before you go into any type of cut, any type of putting your workouts where they need to be, all that stuff. So this is what you need to do first.

And to make it a little bit more individualized, you guys, I want to say that we do this inside of our WarriorBabe programs. We coach women through this entire process. So if you guys are interested in having that, and this is you and you need that, the links to our programs are beneath this podcast in the description.

But anyway, let's get to it. So as I said, a lot of times, if you are a yo-yo dieter, or you keep your body in a restrictive state for long periods of time, or you're under-eating and then you're overworking, right? You're under-eating, but then you're going and crushing it in the gym five, six, seven days a week. You're doing a shit ton of cardio. Your hormones can have a huge impact. And those are the hormones that keep your body performing and giving you the results that you want.

This is the thing, you guys. So many just follow a diet and they do this workout program. But it's like, dude, if your hormones are not right, you need to get them right, so they work with you instead of against you. There are so many things. It's not just the outside appearance, you guys. There are so many things going on on the inside. In order to achieve the ultimate goal of having more muscle and seeing a lean, aesthetically pleasing body that you love and that you feel confident in, you have to work on getting the inside right. The inside of your body, okay? It's not just, I'm going to follow this diet and I'm going to do this workout program.

If you've been in this restrictive state and you've been doing it for so long and you're not getting the results that you want, this is what's happening. Your hormones are likely off track. And it's not that you have to go do some... maybe if you're older and you need some hormone replacement therapy. But it's like, dude, if you just fix this one thing of getting your nutrition right and retraining your metabolism and putting in the time and the work, because this is a process. Some of you guys have been in this restrictive state for too long. I'll tell you right now, it could take nine weeks to do this. It could take less than that. But you can do this so naturally, rather than having to go and take medicine to fix your hormones.

Okay, so let's continue to get to it. I'm very passionate about this topic, you guys, because I want everyone to know that there's a natural way to do all of this stuff. And also, you have to fix and get your inside cellular processes, hormonal processes in alignment with what you want to go do and achieve. All right.

So I just want to touch on some of the major hormones that do have a major impact if you are in that state of restrictive yo-yo dieting, under-eating, overworking, all this stuff. The main two hormones, and they're hunger hormones, are leptin and ghrelin.

So leptin, think of it as the master control switch. I'm always going to go back to the state until I can get it super clear as to why that state needs to be fixed. So leptin is a master control switch. When you're in that state, this declines. And when this declines, fat cells shrink, your hypothalamus freaks out, and it demands more food. And so at this point, the body is signaled to lower, aka slow down, your metabolism.

You guys have probably heard that before in the fitness space or from other people that you follow. This is what's happening scientifically with your body. Your body is signaled to lower your metabolic rate, meaning that you're burning fewer calories throughout the day just doing your normal sitting, your normal breathing, your normal laying, your heart beating. Your BMR gets lowered.

And then the opposite is ghrelin. Ghrelin wants you to eat. Ghrelin wants you to just keep going, and you never feel full, and it increases your hunger. So these two things are just completely out of whack. And if you think about it a little bit more, as I just explained, leptin turns things down, ghrelin turns things up. Aka, when you're burning fewer calories yet eating more food, what do you think is going to get packed on that you don't want to get packed on? Unwanted body fat and weight, right? Okay.

So now you're in this state that I talked about. It is so important, you guys. I already talked about how if you're in this state, you most likely have an unhealthy metabolism. Okay. And why you have an unhealthy metabolism is because you're no longer getting hunger cues. It is so important for your body to still get hunger cues. That is a sign of a healthy metabolism.

And this is also where I want to bash people over the head with a book who say, I don't want to feel hungry when I'm going into a cut or when I'm decreasing my calories. Dude, feeling hungry is a sign of a healthy, strong metabolism. And so when you don't get those hunger cues, it means something is off. So you're in this state, you're experiencing all of this under-eating, overworking, you're not getting these hunger cues. Something is off.

So for example, if you're somebody who's eating 1,200 calories, you're 5'7", you're 150 pounds, and you're not hungry, something is off. 1,200 calories is way too freaking low.

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And so let me also just plug this in here. In order to achieve all of the things that you want with a cut and cutting your calories down, if you don't have this fixed, you're not going to get the results. I'll use examples. Some people come into WarriorBabe and they want to go right into losing fat. But their metabolism is wonked. Their metabolism is whacked out because of all the things they've done and tried before. So we're like, you have to go through a retrain. You have to get your metabolism to work with you, not against you, so you can do a cut properly.

And a lot of people don't like to hear that. A lot of people hate that, because we're in this instant-gratification world of putting our body into a microwave and 30 seconds later, out pop the results that you want. But listen, I just want to really drill this one home: if you can fix this, and you can, all of your future cuts, reverses, maintenance, builds, building muscle, dude, that's going to be such an easy trajectory, such an easy result to get once this is fixed.

This is also another example. I just used the 1,200-calorie one, but let's say you go through this process and you get back up to your maintenance level, which is something that I'll talk about when I talk about the ART of retraining your metabolism. You get up to maintenance calories, and then you want to go into a cut and you bring it down to 1,500 calories. Let's say you were at 2,000 calories, which is maintenance, you sat there for a little bit, and then you bring it back down. We should expect at this point to see your hunger cues ramp up.

But sometimes you didn't allow the process of healing your metabolism to go long enough. Like I mentioned, possibly nine weeks or even longer, depending on how damaged your metabolism is. If you don't allow that time to be done right, then you'll cut the calories down and you won't experience hunger cues. And if this is the case, you need to bring that food back up. This is something people don't like or want to hear too. But you need to have those hunger cues happening and experience them before you can go and slash your calories down to do a cut. Okay.

So those are some of the things that happen here. You've got leptin and ghrelin all whacked out. Also, other areas of your body get affected with this process: your thyroid, your testosterone, your progesterone, your estrogen, your cortisol. All of those things get impacted when you're under-eating for an extended period of time.

So your thyroid, which is something that stimulates your BMR, is slowed down. The output is slowed down in order to save energy. We don't want thyroid levels to drop to an unhealthy amount. And this is where people experience thyroid problems, because they under-ate for way too long. So these are some things that are just so important that you get fixed. And you can naturally fix it by eating the right amount of food. Usually it's a little bit more food than what you've been eating to date as an under-eater, or being in a yo-yo restrictive diet state for too long.

Your testosterone decreases. This is crucial for the hormones in us women in terms of building muscle and going through a maintenance. Progesterone levels fluctuate. Increase in hunger. Decrease in strength. Muscle maintenance. All of these things get impacted. Your estrogen levels drop. Cortisol increases. So these things, on top of your ghrelin and leptin being impacted, are the reasons why you're not getting the results you want even though you're eating 1,200 calories a day. Okay?

I just want that to be like, holy shit, a light bulb. I'm eating 1,200 calories a day. Or if you don't know what you're eating, you're going to know in a couple minutes, because I'm going to share tactics with you if you don't know how to find that. But if you're eating 1,200 calories and you're overworking, all of this shit inside is off kilter. And so you have to get it working with you. And how you do that is by eating the right amount of food to support all of these hormonal things going on inside of you. Okay?

So we have to reestablish all of these things to a healthy level. And you do that by increasing the amount of food that you're eating on a daily basis. If you expect everything to function properly, if you want to build muscle and decrease body fat efficiently, you have to reestablish these things to a healthy level.

And when you do start eating the right amount, I'm going to show you how we do it inside of WarriorBabe. We do ART. It's an art to retraining your metabolism. And by the sounds of all of this I'm sharing with you guys, it truly is an art. It's an individual art for everybody.

But just so you guys know, if you try to do this, the signs that you're progressing aren't just measured via the scale. You could gain a little bit of body fat or weight while you're doing this, or you may even drop more. It doesn't fucking matter. And I say that, I curse, because I have so much passion behind what I'm sharing with you guys. All that matters is that everything internally is right. Okay, so some of the things outside of the scale that will tell you positive things are happening are things like this.

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Spending more time in sleep throughout the night. If you're somebody who tosses and turns, something is off internally, and step one of figuring that out could be doing all the things I'm talking about today. So you'd be spending more time in sleep throughout the night. Your mood improves. Your strength increases. Your food thoughts decrease. Your daily activity increases. Your hunger cues come back. And all of these other things are restored. Your estrogen levels are restored. Inflammation is reduced.

So many things that you will experience outside of just the scale. And these positive things that are happening are so much more important to pay attention to, because everything inside is starting to work with you and not against you anymore. And so you're going to see it in your mood, in your strength, in your sleep, in your thought processes. So far removed from just a number on the scale, you guys.

Okay. So those are some of the reasons why retraining your metabolism is really important, some of the things that you may be experiencing right now, and what you can expect if you do this retraining process the right way.

Now, I want to get into more tactical things for you to be able to apply for yourself, if you're in this state and you need it to be fixed. The first step in ART that we use inside of our WarriorBabe programs is awareness. A for awareness. Some of you guys may have no idea how much food you're eating, or whether you really are in this restrictive state, right? Or the diet plans that you've been doing, yo-yoing back and forth. I'm bringing conscious awareness to you that this is probably where you're at. And especially if you're experiencing all of these things and you're not getting the results that you want, then you need to do this first step: becoming aware of how much you are actually eating.

So what we recommend our babes do is download MyFitnessPal, and for one whole week, track the foods that you are eating. It can even be roughly, but just so that you are bringing awareness to how much you are truly consuming on a daily basis. And by the end of the week, you guys, after seven days, it will be so eye-opening for you, especially if you don't know exactly how much you're eating. By the end of the week, you can look at your numbers, your total average calories consumed. And it could be anywhere from 1,100 calories, maybe 2,200 calories, maybe 1,300 calories.

That's the first step. So do this for seven days, you guys. Do it. Hold yourself accountable to track your foods for seven days, because this is the first step that you need to take: becoming aware of how much you're eating, so that you know how to transition to retraining your metabolism.

Okay. So the next step of this is retraining. And as I mentioned earlier, guys, it's really hard to get down into individual tactics here, because I'm speaking one to many right now, and all of you guys are so different. So if you need help with this, the links to our programs are below this podcast. I would highly recommend it. This could be something that sets you up for future success in so many ways. And why not get it down right? Fix everything internally so that you can get the results you want. So our links to the programs are below.

The second step is retraining. After you've completed seven days of tracking inside of MyFitnessPal, this will allow you to start this next step of the retraining plan. So wherever you're at at the end of those seven days, let's say you're at 1,200 calories, we're going to slowly bring you up in calories and macros to your maintenance level. And there's step by step by step of things that we do with our WarriorBabes inside the program. There's literally step one, step two, calculator, calculator, calculator.

But broadly speaking, say someone's at 1,200 calories, we bring them up 150, 200 calories more than that. So 1,350, 1,400 calories. And they stay there for a week or two weeks. We allow the body to adjust. They have to be consistent with it, because it's really important that we're assessing all the things that are going on here. Are you experiencing hunger cues yet? Are you feeling hungry? How are your measurements? Are we doing it too fast? Do we need to slow down? So there are so many individual things that we really hone in on in this part.

And as I said earlier, this could be nine weeks that you're doing this. But it's so important to put that time forth in retraining your metabolism and doing it the right way. The ultimate goal is to get your metabolism up to maintenance calories and macros. And then what we recommend our babes do is at least maintain that, because we want to be like, okay, you're here eating at a higher caloric intake and macros. We want to maintain that for four weeks and assess how your body is feeling. Are we getting those hunger cues back? How are you sleeping? How are all the other things being impacted? And you're free from the signals and the things that you may have experienced being at a low, restrictive caloric intake for that long period of time.

So as you can see, this time frame can take one or two months of doing this the right way, but it will repair the years of damage that you've done to your metabolism. And it is time so well spent, and time saved, as you aim for your goals. Like I said, if you get this down right, you can do future fat loss, future maintenance, future muscle building. You can do all of this right and get the results that you want without having to bash your head against the wall, like, I'm doing all the work, so why am I not seeing the results? It's probably because some things are just internally off. They need to be realigned, and this is the way you realign them.

So I talked about that process very broadly. Again, you guys, it's just so individualized. But then the third step is transformation, right? So you've worked your way up to maintenance calories. You've worked your way up to the macro intake of your maintenance calories, and you're consistently retraining your metabolism on a daily, weekly basis here. You're experiencing those hunger cues. All of the things are working in alignment. Your mood is up. Your strength is there. Your thoughts of food are decreasing.

And so this process is where you maintain those numbers. This is the third step, which is transformation. You maintain those maintenance numbers for at least four weeks. And everyone's different. You don't have to be there for four weeks. It could be three weeks. It could be two weeks. But as long as we're getting some signals back, that's the most important thing.

And so the goal of the transformation time is that once you reach this step and you've successfully retrained your metabolism, then it's time to determine next steps, like going into a cut. And like I mentioned earlier, that means trying to reduce your calories back down while maintaining those hunger cues and keeping your metabolism healthy, revving, and on fire, so that you're burning body fat at the same time, right?

So that's a very broad explanation of ART: awareness, retraining, and transformation. These are the things that we do inside of WarriorBabe, like I said. But if you're somebody that understood that, and you know you're in that state of restrictiveness and you've been yo-yo dieting and you've been under-eating and overworking, you can totally apply it and try to do it yourself. But I would highly encourage that you have a professional or coach helping you through this process, so you're not getting in your own way. You're not getting stuck. You're not wondering what if.

Because I'll tell you the things that I've seen women experience. What we recommend in step two, retraining, is that you sit at these numbers for a week and then you increase again. And then you sit there for a week and then you increase again. You sit there for a week and you increase again. You have to do it consistently. So having a coach hold you accountable to this is so freaking important, because women will go a week and they'll hit three out of seven days, and then they want to increase their macros. And we're like, what? Hold up. No. Because then all the things may happen too fast. Weight gain may happen, and some other things may start occurring. So you want to pump the brakes, and you just want to do this right.

Or some people are like, I'm gaining two pounds, three pounds. Those are some things that you can expect. But it's not all necessarily body fat. It's not all pounds being packed onto your body. It's other things that are just getting right internally. The scale isn't just body fat or just weight being packed on. People can get in their heads. They see the scale going the opposite direction of what they wanted.

So I just highly recommend that you have somebody who is a professional walk you through this process, someone who understands this process, has done it with tons of their clients, and knows what to expect. They know how to coach you through it, let you know what you can expect, and be there to be like, dude, it's okay. These are the things that you're going to experience going through this process.

But overall, man, I loved sharing this information with you guys. I love talking about this because it's so important to fix. Again, like I said, it's not just the diet and the workouts that people want to do. The majority of women are in a restrictive state for a long period of time, and they're wondering why they're not getting the results that they want. It's because internally all of these things are off, and internally they need to be turned back on and worked with, instead of you just slamming your body into these overworked, stressful states. Instead of doing that, you need to do this.

So I hope you guys found this super valuable, super helpful. This encompasses everything about retraining your metabolism. I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.

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