Is Metabolic Damage Real? How Long Metabolism Repair Takes

Nikkiey: Trust me now and believe me later. Metabolism damage is real, but it's adaptation, not destruction. Your body just got efficient to survive what you were putting it through. And things that adapted can be readapted. So your body is adapted to where you're at right now, and it can be readapted to taking on more food, building muscle, and getting into the body composition you want to have.

What's going on, you guys? Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show with your host, Nikkiey Stott. On these episodes, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

On today's episode, we're going to get into a topic that I get asked constantly. I feel like in the fitness space, on social media and marketing, all of the jazz, it has so much noise and confusion around it that today I just want to cut straight through all of that and give you a real, honest answer.

The question that I consistently get daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, is this metabolism repair thing. Is it actually real? And if it is, how long does it actually take to repair a metabolism? Because I know a lot of you have been in a diet cycle for a really long time. You've restricted, you've eaten less, you've pushed through plateaus, you've done all the things.

And at some point, something stopped working. Either your results slowed down or they stopped entirely, your energy tanked, your hunger felt unmanageable, and someone told you, hey, your metabolism is damaged, or your metabolism is broken, or your metabolism has stopped working. And maybe now you're here wondering, is that actually what happened? Is my metabolism broken? Is my metabolism damaged? Can it be fixed? And what does fixing it even look like?

So today, I'm going to answer all of that. I'm going to get into it with you guys and, hopefully, cut through all the noise in social media and marketing and dive straight into the answers, so that you walk away with some type of clarity leaving this episode. Okay, so let's get into it.

Before we even talk about repairing something, we need to understand what it actually is. So let's talk about metabolism. Metabolism gets thrown around constantly in the space, and I think people have a pretty fuzzy idea of what it actually means.

Your metabolism is essentially the sum total of all the chemical processes your body runs on a daily basis to keep you alive and keep it functioning, from breathing to circulating blood to regulating your body temperature to repairing your cells to producing hormones. All of the things. All of it requires energy. The rate at which your body burns energy to do all of those things is what we call your metabolic rate. Okay? So I just want you to keep these terms in mind.

Your metabolism requires energy to do all this, and the rate it uses that energy is what we call your metabolic rate. When people talk about having a fast or a slow metabolism, what they're actually talking about is their TDEE, their total daily energy expenditure, which is the total number of calories their body burns in a day across four different components.

One is your basal metabolic rate, your BMR, which is the calories you burn just existing: keeping your organs running, your heart beating, your brain functioning, all the things. This accounts for roughly 60 to 70% of your total calorie burn on a daily basis and is largely driven by your body composition, specifically how much muscle mass you have.

So, your BMR is maybe anywhere from 1,000 to 1,200 calories a day just to keep you alive, you guys. And that's what the majority of you are eating on a daily basis. I just want to make a side note right here. You're already burning that many calories just to keep your body alive, 1,000 to 1,200 calories. And most of you are only eating that much. You're not eating enough food. And I'm going to get to that in a second.

Another way your body makes up this TDEE, your total daily energy expenditure, again, the number of calories your body burns on a daily basis, is the thermic effect of food: the calories you burn just digesting what you're eating. Protein has one of the highest thermic effects of any macronutrient, which is one of the many reasons why it's so important.

So you burn calories through BMR. You burn calories through the thermic effect of food. You burn calories through NEAT, which is non-exercise activity thermogenesis. That's all of the movement you do that isn't formal exercise, like me sitting here moving my arms up and down and my fingers out. If you talk with your hands, you're burning calories doing that. You burn calories by walking, by standing, by taking the stairs.

This one is more variable than people realize, and it plays a huge role in your total calorie burn. People don't realize that, just like me, you are burning calories by doing this. I'm burning calories by walking. I'm burning calories by going up and down the stairs. I'm burning calories by crossing one leg over the other. It's small, but you're still doing something. And then the other one is exercise activity.

So: BMR, the thermic effect of food, your NEAT, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and your exercise activity, the calories you burn during intentional training. Why does this matter? Because when we talk about metabolism being broken or damaged or slowed down, we're talking about changes to one or more of these components. Understanding which ones are affected is key to understanding what repair actually looks like and what to actually pay attention to.

Okay. So just keep those in mind. Now, the big question: is this actually a real thing, or is it just an excuse? Is metabolic damage real? The honest answer is yes. It is real, but it's probably not what you think it is. The terms damaged or broken are doing a lot of misleading work in this space. Your metabolism isn't broken.

It hasn't stopped functioning. If it stopped functioning, you'd be dead. What chronic dieting, especially chronic under-eating, actually does is make your body adapt to survive on less. From the outside, that adaptation looks a lot like a damaged metabolism. But what's actually happening biologically is that when you eat in a significant calorie deficit for an extended period of time, your body perceives that as a threat.

It doesn't know that you're trying to lose fat. It knows that energy is scarce. So it does what it's been evolutionarily programmed to do: it downregulates. When I say it downregulates, I mean it lowers your BMR. Your body becomes more efficient, burning fewer calories at rest.

It reduces your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. You unconsciously move less. You fidget less. You take fewer steps. Oh, I'm going to park closer at Target. Your body is burning fewer calories. It's conserving energy in ways that you don't even notice. It reduces the thermic effect of food. It increases hunger hormones to drive you towards eating more.

And it's preferentially going to burn muscle tissue, because muscle tissue is metabolically expensive and your body is trying to cut costs. This is called metabolic adaptation, and it is very, very real. This is what a lot of human beings experience. It's very measurable. And it's the reason the same calorie intake that produced fat loss in month one produces nothing in month four.

The key distinction I want you to hear is that your metabolism hasn't been destroyed. It has adapted. That is why people who go into calorie restriction lose weight. They'll see results in month one, but it'll stop by month four. Why? Because the body has adapted. And things that adapt can be readapted. That's the entire premise of a metabolism repair, and it's why the process works.

Before we dive into how to fix it, I want to talk about what makes metabolic adaptation worse. A lot of women, a lot of men, a lot of people are unknowingly doing these things and wondering why they feel so stuck.

The first is chronic, severe restriction. The deeper and the longer the deficit somebody is in... and let me not even just say deficit. It's the way people eat on a regular basis. They don't eat enough food to cover all of those ways I already described that the body burns calories.

Your body alone is burning 1,200 calories every single day to keep you alive, and you're only eating that. What about all of the other ways your body is burning calories that I just went through? People aren't eating enough to keep up with that. And it's not your fault. People think, I'm going to eat less because I'm going to lose fat. They don't realize all the other ways your body is already working. It is a machine. So people eat less and less and less. And the longer they do this, the more aggressively the body is going to adapt.

Women who have been eating very low calories, think under 1,200 calories, sometimes under 1,000 calories, for months or years, are dealing with a level of adaptation that takes real time and real intention to reverse. The body has been in survival mode for so long that rebuilding it takes trust. Rebuilding that trust, for your body to trust you, is a process. So that's one reason you may be feeling so stuck.

That's one way you're making metabolic adaptation worse: severe restriction. Then there's yo-yo dieting: repeated cycles of restriction, followed by overeating, followed by restriction again. That teaches your body to become increasingly efficient at storing fat and increasingly aggressive at defending against the deficit. Every cycle can deepen the adaptation. This is one of the reasons women who have been dieting for 20 years often find it significantly harder to lose fat than someone who's never dieted before in their life, even at the same calorie intake.

Over time, if you've been dieting for 20 years, in cycles of restricting, then overeating, then restricting again, then overeating, then restricting again, every cycle deepens the body's metabolic adaptation. It learns that it needs to store and survive, and then gain it all back after the restriction.

That's why it's hard for people to lose the fat if they've been doing this for 20 years. Think about the unwiring the body needs to go through, again, to rebuild the trust. And rebuilding the trust is a process. That's why, and I'm going to talk about this in a minute, this is what we preach inside of WarriorBabe. This is why WarriorBabe has so many success stories, because our women go through a retraining phase. Some people are in it for three months. Some people are in it for nine months. Some people are in it for a year after joining WarriorBabe.

I will tell you out of the gate, it's not sexy to say, oh yeah, it's probably going to take a year to see some type of results. But this is why. This is the deeper understanding of it. This is why it takes time. For those of you who want results in four weeks, or two weeks, or three months, I'll tell you right now, it's probably not feasible because of the amount of damage your body has gone through. Let me not say damage. The amount of metabolic adaptation your body has gone through.

Another way metabolic adaptation gets worse is chronic cardio without adequate fuel. Long periods of high cardio volume combined with not eating enough, being on a low calorie intake, is one of the fastest ways to drive metabolic adaptation and muscle loss simultaneously. You're burning a lot of calories doing the cardio, eating very little, and your body responds by becoming more efficient and eating its own muscle to meet energy demands.

The result of that, and this is why people end up skinny fat, is a smaller body with a slower metabolism, which is the opposite of what most women are going for. That is why, if you've seen our ads and our marketing, you'll hear me and WarriorBabe say we don't want you doing tons and tons of cardio without eating enough food. It's going to get you the opposite result of what you're going for. You're putting in all of this work.

You think you're doing all of this work, only to end up where you don't want to be with your body.

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Another one is not eating enough protein. You guys have heard me say this over and over and over again. Protein is the macro most protective against muscle loss during a restrictive deficit. Women who restrict calories without prioritizing protein lose significantly more muscle than those who eat adequate protein while in a deficit. Those women are doing it the right way. And since muscle is the primary driver of your BMR, losing it directly lowers your metabolic rate.

So every pound of muscle you lose on a poorly constructed diet is your metabolism getting a little slower. Just a little slower. It makes you think: why aren't a lot of women walking around with muscle? Why aren't women walking around toned? Why don't more people look like that? Because this is what the majority of the world is doing.

And one more is ignoring your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This one is subtle, but it's significant. As your body adapts to a deficit, it unconsciously reduces your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. You move less without realizing it. If you're also consciously avoiding movement outside of your structured workouts, you're compounding that adaptation. NEAT can account for hundreds of calories of difference in daily expenditure between two people with the same workout routine.

Just think about that. When you are eating significantly less... I remember this from my bodybuilding days. I got more and more tired toward the end. I didn't want to go do my cardio. I didn't want to go exercise. I'd park closer and minimize my steps unconsciously. This is what happens when you're restricting and your body is adapting to less and less intake. This is why people feel tired. This is why people have low energy.

Okay. So let's define what we're actually talking about when we say metabolism repair. There's a version of this concept floating around the internet that sets women up for a really frustrating experience, because people want results yesterday. And they can't get them, because their metabolism needs this focus.

A metabolism repair, done correctly, is the process of gradually increasing your calorie intake back towards your true maintenance level while minimizing fat gain, focusing on rebuilding muscle, and allowing your metabolic rate to upregulate toward where it should be for your body size and your body composition. This is essentially what we do for at least 90% of our babes in the first nine-month period, as a rough, broad estimate. This is essentially what a reverse diet is.

The goal is to get you eating as much food as possible while maintaining your body composition, so that when you go back into a fat loss phase, you have a much higher calorie ceiling to work from. You also have a way more responsive metabolism, better energy, better hormone function, and significantly more room to create a deficit without bottoming out. That is why you see in the success stories on our website how women have worked their way up to 2,500 calories.

And when they go into a deficit to lose the fat and show more of the tone, they're doing it the right way. Now their metabolism has repaired. It's responsive at this point. You may hear some women say, oh yeah, we tried to go into a cut, but my body just wasn't having it. That's a telltale sign that your body isn't ready to create a deficit yet. It hasn't healed.

Going back to what I was just saying, when you go from 2,500 and you're doing it right, your metabolism is responding, you have better energy, better hormone function. Someone might get down to 1,900 calories and lose all the weight, and they're still eating 1,900 calories. Not 1,000, not 1,200, not 1,400, depending on your body size, right? Because they're doing it the right way, they're not bottoming out. They created a deficit with significantly more room, without being at 1,500 or 1,400 or 1,300 calories and being fatigued and tired. So that's what a metabolism repair is when it's done correctly. And this could take months, you guys.

Here's what a metabolism repair is not. It is not eating everything in sight and hoping your metabolism magically resets. That's uncontrolled eating after a period of restriction. Sometimes people call this eating healthier or intuitive eating, but really it's reactive overeating. If you're just eating whatever and you're not being conscious about having the right intake of protein, fats and carbs, it's going to result in significant fat gain without the metabolic benefits of a structured reverse protocol.

That's because the calorie surplus is too large and too fast for the body to use efficiently, the way it's supposed to be used. If it's taking on too much, the excess is going to get stored. It's not a quick fix. And the internet sells metabolism boosting: oh, this two-week protocol will boost your metabolism in two weeks.

That is not how it works. That is not how it physically or physiologically works. And it's not a guarantee that you'll return to exactly where you were before years of dieting. Metabolic adaptation can be largely reversed, yes. But the degree of reversal depends on how long the adaptation has been going on in the first place, how severe it was, your age or hormone health, and how well you're actually able to execute the repair process.

Because I'll tell you, you need to be consistent. And this is why a lot of people are where they are these days, you guys. This is why a lot of people are overweight. Understanding these things and executing on them is hard to do. That's why you need to get a coach who's able to help you through it. This is our bread and butter at WarriorBabe. This is why women are so successful.

So, how long does it actually take? Because I know this is the question everyone wants an answer to. Even WarriorBabes three weeks in ask it. It's just the way people have been psychologically ingrained to expect results when it comes to fat loss, because people think it happens fast. It's how it's been for decades on decades. But I'm going to give you the most honest answer I can, which means I'm going to be straight with you. It depends. But I'm also going to give you real ranges so you have something useful to work with.

For someone with mild metabolic adaptation, maybe you've been in a moderate deficit for a few months. You haven't lost significant muscle. Your energy is somewhat suppressed, but it's not completely crashed. Repair can happen relatively quickly. We're talking maybe six to 12 weeks of a structured reverse diet before your metabolism is operating closer to its full capacity, like it once was.

Then there's the middle. Maybe you've been restricting for a year or more. Maybe you lost some muscle. Your energy and your hunger hormones are noticeably off, right? These first two are few and far between. Most people are in the next category that I'm going to get into. But if you've hit multiple plateaus and you've been restricting for a year or more, a realistic timeline is probably closer to three months.

Now, for the ones who have been in it for a long time, severe, long-term, chronic restriction for many years, significant muscle loss, severely suppressed appetite followed by uncontrollable hunger and being hungry all the time, hormones that are off, an extremely low calorie intake that's become normal. I just don't eat enough. I don't eat on a daily basis.

This is a longer process. Guys, we're talking six months to a year. That's why I rounded up to nine months earlier, depending on what phase you're in and where you're at. That's why it's so individualized for each person going through this. For those of you who have been in it that long and are more in this bracket, it takes that long to genuinely rebuild metabolic function. Not because it can't be done. It totally can be.

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Yeah, it can be reversed, but the body needs time and consistency to reestablish that trust and to upregulate again gradually. When you're doing it the right way, you don't just jump the calories up to where you should be at maintenance. It takes time to gradually get up to maintenance, while in the interim your body learns to trust you with this food and heals internally. That's why I say it takes time. I'm going to get into some practical stuff you can do. But each time you increase your calorie intake, it takes time for your body to adjust to that intake safely without you gaining weight.

The one thing I really want you to hear about that timeline: the women who try to rush the process almost always end up either gaining a ton of fat, because they increase calories way too fast or too aggressively, or they bail on the process before it's complete, because they're uncomfortable eating more and not seeing the scale move.

The scale going up or staying the same during a reverse diet is not a failure. It is physics. You are eating more food, and the food weighs something. You are also rebuilding glycogen stores, which hold on to water. What you are building underneath all of that is a body that will actually respond when you go into a deficit, instead of a body that is so adapted it has nowhere to go.

So again, it's not sexy to say, but slow, structured and consistent is the only way it works. Period. Okay, so here are some quick practical steps for you to implement. And if you've already tried this on your own, because I've talked about it in episodes before, and you're not where you want to be yet, listen to this episode again, and get a coach. Check out WarriorBabe. Go to warriorbabe.com/start, talk to the team and get in with a coach.

I'm telling you, just think about the time you'll save working with a professional to get this all figured out.

Step one: find your intake. Before you do anything, you need to know where you're actually at. You have to track your food honestly for one to two weeks without changing anything. Get a clear picture of what you're currently eating. That's your starting point.

From there, step two, you're going to increase calories slowly. The standard approach to a reverse diet that I tell people, broadly speaking and depending on where you're at, is increasing weekly by about 100 calories, maybe 150. It sounds painfully slow, yes, but it's intentionally slow, because gradual increases give your body time to upregulate its metabolism at roughly the same pace the calories are coming in, which minimizes fat gain in the process.

Step three is prioritizing your protein intake. Protein targets don't go down during a reverse diet. If anything, they stay the same or go up significantly. Protein is what's going to support your muscle during this phase.

And building muscle is the single most powerful thing you can do to raise your basal metabolic rate long term. So you're going to hit your protein every day. Figure out from step one how much protein you're actually getting. If you're under 100, get it to 100. If you're over 100, get it to your body weight. If you're 250 pounds, go for a goal body weight of 180, and eat that much protein in a day. I've done tons of episodes on protein, because it can sound overwhelming or hard to do.

It may sound hard and overwhelming, but truthfully, it's not that hard once you learn the strategy. There are tons of episodes I have on protein.

Step four: lift. Strength training is non-negotiable during a metabolism repair. This is how you rebuild the muscle you may have lost while in restriction. And muscle is the primary driver of your BMR, as I just said.

Step five: move. Move in general. That's going to help with your non-exercise activity thermogenesis by increasing your daily movement outside of formal workouts. It's one of the most effective ways to raise your total daily energy expenditure without adding more structured training. Walk more. Take the stairs. Stand more throughout your day. If you sit at a desk, get a walking treadmill underneath your desk.

And step six, the last one: know that your goal is to get to your true maintenance calories. That's when you know you've arrived. It's the amount you can eat without gaining or losing weight. For most women, this is significantly higher than where they were when they started.

A woman eating 1,100 calories and maintaining her weight has a metabolic rate that reflects about 1,100 calories of daily output. After going through a successful reverse, that same woman might be maintaining at 1,800 to 2,000 calories. That is the repair working. And that is where you want to be, especially when you want to go into a fat loss phase from there. Done right. Okay? So that's what you need to know about metabolism repair.

It is a real thing, yes. But I hope understanding the why behind it gives you more insight to take the actionable steps of eating more food, strategically. It's not just go eat more food. When it's done right, you could be working with a healed metabolism in anywhere from three to nine to 12 months. And that's going to be so worth it for the results you want to see long term. Trust me. Trust me now and believe me later.

Metabolism damage is real. Yeah. But it's adaptation, not destruction. Your body just got efficient to survive what you were putting it through. And things that adapted can be readapted. Your body is adapted to where you're at right now, and it can be readapted to taking on more food, building muscle, and getting you to the body composition you want to have. Remember that it's structured. It's a gradual process of increasing your calories, building more muscle, and giving your body time and consistency.

It's not fast. It's not comfortable. But it is absolutely worth it. Maybe you don't have the means or the financial resources to work with a coach one-on-one. If you still want to work through what I'm talking about, you can do it inside our community. It's completely free, and we go live weekly. We're actually doing a series in May called Macros Unlocked.

There are going to be four calls. We go live every week, but these specific four will build on each other in the month of May. You can be part of a community of women who are asking the same questions. You're going to learn macros even more, and you're going to learn about what I just went through, for free. Completely free. The link is right beneath this in the description below. Go click it right after this and get yourself inside the community. Okay? I love you guys. I hope this helped and shed more light on what metabolism repair actually means.

And I hope you don't just listen to me until you're blue in the face. Go do something about it. Okay? Love you guys. I'll see you in the next episode. Peace out.

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