Is My Metabolism Broken? Why Your Body Holds On to Fat

Nikkiey: The only job your body has, and it's extremely simple yet complex, is to keep you alive. Everything your body does, every craving, every energy crash, every mood swing, that is just a survival response. If you are overtraining, it holds on to fat because you signaled physical stress. Training can create a healthy type of stress on your body, but overtraining and underfueling is signaling to your body physical stress. And especially if you are overtraining, which a lot of people do, they are moving more and they're eating less.

What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, 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 to episode number 311.

Today, my friends, I want to talk with you guys about your body and challenge you in a way that I hope gets you to think about how you know your body. Because I know how it feels to be frustrated. I know what it feels like to try everything that you can, to follow every single diet, to take every kind of supplement, to follow every type of workout program, only to feel like your body is continuing to betray you. And you start to think that you're the problem. You start to feel hopeless. You start to lose trust in yourself that you're able to achieve the result that you want. Or even more so, not even just the trust, but the belief that you can achieve the result that you want to achieve. Whether it's losing weight or building more muscle, or you just think it's long gone.

But the truth is, and this is the different perspective I want to challenge you with, your body isn't fighting you. It's honestly just responding perfectly to the inputs that you have been giving it throughout the years, decades, months, weeks of maybe trying everything under the sun but not being where you want it to be. It's responding to what you are giving it, essentially. Your metabolism, your hormones, your energy, your mood. These are all reflections of how your body has learned to survive.

Let's just be honest. For the majority of women in the fitness space, and even in society, the majority of the inputs are eat less, move more. And then that spider webs into wreaking havoc on your hormones, wreaking havoc on your mood, wreaking havoc on your metabolism. And that's all going to spiral into the way that your body has been trying to survive for you and show up for you.

And the moment that you start understanding that, the moment that you start recognizing and bringing awareness, and you guys know that has been the word over the course of so many episodes, once you start bringing awareness to that thought process, and you start questioning the narrative of how you've been showing up and what you've been doing, and that maybe these programs aren't working specifically for you for a reason, then you start to really unpack the ways you should be going about it the right way.

Then you can start to learn, once you pull yourself out of the years of doing it a certain way and put yourself in the driver's seat of learning how to fuel your body and train your body the right way, which is eating more and training less. And then that spider webs into all those things. But you'll start to learn how incredibly intelligent your body actually is.

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Okay, so I want to start first and foremost with why we believe we're broken. Why do we have this thought process? Where does this thought process even come from? Where does the belief even come from? If you really want to peel back the onion and try to get to the core of it, it's probably been conditioned in you for a really long time to believe our bodies need fixing. That could stem from childhood. It could stem from the way that you saw your mom diet growing up. It could stem from the things that you saw on the internet. It could stem from books that you read. It could stem from what a teacher told you in school. It could stem from everything that happened when you were young.

Or maybe it happened when you were a teenager, or in your early 20s or 30s, or even something you came to believe 10 years ago. That starts to be conditioned in your mind. You start to believe, okay, my body needs to be fixed. That being smaller is better. Or that if you're tired or you're bloated or you're moody or you're struggling, something must be wrong with you.

And then you're bombarded with quick fixes. You're bombarded with diet detox teas, with extreme calorie cuts, with endless cardio and moving more. And doctors telling you that you need to eat less and eat less. And these miracle programs out there promise you that you're going to get six-pack abs in six weeks or whatever. What I used to say to you guys, and what people love, is you pop your body in a microwave and out in 30 seconds comes a toned body. You're bombarded with that type of information.

And when you do try those things and then they stop working, because they always do, we think, okay, the issue is me. The issue is us. The issue is I'm broken. You put the pressure on you, thinking that something is wrong with you. And then we think, oh my gosh, we lack discipline. We don't have the motivation. We don't have the drive. We don't have the stamina to show up anymore. Or we just have bad genetics. You know how many times I've heard that from people?

But in reality, your body is just so used to surviving. It's so tired of surviving. And I know I've probably unpacked that so many times in previous episodes, but that's the truth. If you think about it from a scientific standpoint, our bodies are machines. Our bodies need energy to survive. Energy comes from food. The majority of society under-eats. They don't eat enough, or they're not eating the right types of food. They're eating excess carbs and fats, and that's how people are overweight.

But all that to be said, we're not fueling our bodies appropriately. And one of the caveats of that is not eating enough. That means our machine starts to operate differently. You spent years telling it to do more with less. Less food. Less rest. Less recovery. And your body, like I said earlier, is just responding to that input.

Your body is just listening. It's learned how to function on minimal fuel. It's adapted to your chronic stress levels. It has figured out how to keep you alive even when you weren't supporting it, even when you're not supporting it. Just unpack what I just said. That's not being broken. That's being brilliant. We live in pretty cool bodies that have the ability to do that.

Even when we aren't giving it what it needs to operate at its best, it's still going to show up on a daily basis, do what it needs to do and function for us. It figures out how to keep you alive even when you're not giving it what it needs in order to keep you alive. Even when you're not supporting it. That's brilliant. I shouldn't say but, because but means none of that even means anything. I should say and: the longer that you stay in that cycle, the more your body's brilliance starts to feel like resistance.

And you think that you're slowing down and getting older, that your body's just slowing down in general. You think that's what's happening. But what it's doing is trying to save you from experiencing burnout. Or what the new term is, crashing out, essentially.

And I think this part is so important to understand, you guys. Your body doesn't care about how lean you are. It doesn't care about how defined your abs look or what number is showing up on the scale. It does not care about that. The only job your body has, and it's extremely simple yet complex, is to keep you alive. And everything your body does, every craving, every energy crash, every mood swing, that is just a survival response.

It's your body being like, yo, hey, friend, knock knock. This environment isn't safe right now. I need to adapt. If you're constantly under-eating, your body slows down the metabolism to conserve energy, dot, dot, dot, to keep you alive. If you are overtraining, it holds on to fat because you signaled physical stress, dot, dot, dot, just to keep you alive.

But let me just make a correlation there, because training can create a healthy type of stress on your body. But overtraining and underfueling is signaling to your body physical stress. And especially if you are overtraining, which a lot of people do, they are moving more and they're eating less. So it's like, okay, signal to body: I'm under physical stress, dot, dot, dot. I need to conserve fat and hold on to fat just to keep you alive.

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If you are sleeping four or five hours a night, I'd even argue six, your cortisol is rising. And when that is happening, your hunger hormones get thrown off. That is why, if you don't sleep well, you have so many cravings the next day. Because leptin and ghrelin are all out of whack.

Nothing about this is, quote unquote, broken. And that's what I've said in previous episodes. I want you guys to know you're not broken. If you are a WarriorBabe, you've heard me say you are not broken. If you've seen us all over the internet, I'm saying you're not broken. This is what I mean by that.

You are not broken. Your body isn't broken. It is just protecting you. It's protective. Think about it like this. It's like a thermostat. It's regulating the temperature based on the conditions that it's been given. You can't expect to stay warm if you keep the heat off, right? Your body is always responding to its environment.

And you, my friend, listening to this episode right now, whether you're driving, working out or on a walk, you are the environment. If you're in your car and you're stressed out because you were late getting to work, or somebody in front of you pissed you off and cut you off, you are signaling a stress response. If you woke up this morning and you did not eat, and you were like, oh, I've just been so busy, I didn't get to eat before I left the house, you are signaling to your metabolism to slow down and conserve energy because you're stressed out and you've got the day to get through. That's the environment your body is in. You are the environment.

If you are somebody listening to this who has trained six days a week and hasn't taken a day off, you're signaling physical stress to your body, especially if you're not eating enough. You are the environment.

And your body talks to you every single day. But this is the thing: most of us have forgotten how to listen to our bodies. The majority of people, I would say, and I know I'm one of them, live up here in our minds. We just go, go, go, go, go. But our body talks to you multiple times every single day. It's trying to signal you, tell you things, communicate with you. I'm hungry. I'm tired. I need rest. I have cravings. My mood is off. My body is sore. I'm having poor stool regulation with my digestion. I'm pooping weird.

I just recorded an episode about this probably a couple of weeks ago. Your body is speaking to you through biofeedback. It is speaking to you through your energy. It's speaking through your sleep, your hunger, your cravings, your mood, your recovery, your digestion. And when something is off, your body doesn't just whisper, don't worry about it. That constant tension in your shoulders and your neck? It ain't whispering, my friend.

Trust me, because I have that constantly. I am also preaching to the choir in this episode, hoping I also give myself some accountability as I'm preaching to you guys. Your body is shouting at you. When something is off, it's shouting at you.

I can say in a very transparent way that this week has been very stressful for me. It's just been a week of work, of getting ready for some big things that are happening. New opportunities are coming our way, conversations are being had, and I'm holding space to get away from work and be with friends. Then I leave for a wedding tomorrow, and there's the travel and all of the chaos with the flights right now. So my body is trying to be like, girl, you are stressed out.

And I know some of you guys are feeling that same way too, given different circumstances happening in your world. Your body is shouting at you, and it probably has been. It's not even just this moment. It could be that you are under-eating and your body has been trying to tell you something for the last six months to a year. It's shouting at you, but we've been taught to silence it.

We ignore hunger because we already ate, or I just don't have enough time and I need to run out of the house. We push through feeling tired and push through the fatigue because, oh, I need to show up. We just need to be tougher. I need to get this done. I've got to get the kids off to practice. I've got to do a thousand things on my to-do list, right? You dismiss your mood swings or your irritability because, oh, it's just hormones. It's just my hormones.

And we accept bloating. We accept anxiety. We accept exhaustion. We accept all of this as normal. But none of that is normal. Your body is begging you for attention.

And here's the truth. Your body will always communicate with you one way or another. If you listen when it whispers, it won't have to scream at you. But if you keep ignoring the fatigue, if you keep ignoring the cravings, if you keep ignoring the stubborn weight gain, if you keep ignoring, oh, I only eat a thousand calories a day...

You know it. Especially if you're an avid listener of these episodes, you guys know what I've been saying. I can talk to you guys until I'm blue in the face, but I want you guys to actually do something about it. Go take action. There have been some incredible success stories come back just from listening to this podcast, of people losing 40 to 80 pounds and feeling so much stronger and better. Their health has come full circle and they feel way better. So by now you probably know you should be eating more.

And I know some of you guys know that. But actually implementing it, I get it, can be really hard. But if you keep ignoring those things, those whispers are going to turn into symptoms that eventually force you to pay attention. So I don't want you to think, oh, I'm not losing the weight, my body is broken, my body is punishing me. Your body isn't punishing you. It's trying to be like, yo, girl, knock knock, I need your attention on some things.

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Okay, it's knocking at the door being like, girl, pay attention. I'm trying to tell you something.

So, to break this out a little bit further: how your body adapts when it's under chronic stress, either physical or emotional. There are things women call, quote unquote, broken, but they're really just adaptive responses your body is going into.

When your metabolism slows down because you've been under-eating for too long, that's your body conserving energy, right? When your hormones shift, like your estrogen, your progesterone, your thyroid, and we'll all experience that, ladies, that is because your body is trying to maintain equilibrium with the limited resources it's getting.

At WarriorBabe, we help women in menopause, whether premenopausal, menopausal or postmenopausal. And we recognize, okay, this is a period of time when your body is shifting gears. Now we really have to load it with the resources it needs. We can't continue to under-eat and overtrain. We can't continue to pray that every single workout is going to get us out of a bad diet. We need to double down on the resources and give it what it needs, which is a different protocol than what you were doing in your 20s and 30s.

Okay, getting back on track. When your digestion slows, it's because your body prioritizes survival over digestion. That's conserving energy. When you hold on to body fat, it's not because you're eating too much. Think about it like this: your body is holding on to it because it doesn't know when it's going to get more food. It's perceiving danger and refuses to let go of that body fat.

And these are all things women call themselves broken around. I'm holding on to fat. My digestion is slower. My metabolism is slowing down. My hormones are shifting. I'm broken.

The quality of your sleep drops, and these are all adaptive responses. Your quality of sleep drops because high cortisol is keeping you wired at night. Let me unpack that for a second, because it's all a spider web. If your sleep quality is dropping because high cortisol is keeping you wired at night, it's not just because you were on your phone, couldn't fall asleep, and the blue light is messing with your brainwaves. It's not just that. It could be that you didn't eat enough food during the day.

So it's going to spike cortisol in the middle of the night, which is a natural adaptive response, and that's going to keep you wired, keep you from sleeping at night, because you're not eating enough. Do you see that spider web? Under-eating and overtraining spider webs into your recovery, your digestion, your mood, your sleep. It's this whole mechanism.

One last thing people point to when they think they're broken is that their cravings start to increase. But your cravings are increasing as an adaptive response. Your body is begging you for quick energy. It's begging you for fuel because it's not getting enough of it. So when you have those candy cravings in the middle of the day, it's because you didn't give your body enough fuel yet throughout the day. You didn't give your body enough protein to make you feel satiated.

Every one of these things I just mentioned is an adaptation. It's not a malfunction of your body. Your body is doing exactly what it's designed to do. But it can't heal until you change the environment it's responding to.

Okay, so I'm sure you guys know what I'm going to say. I've said it in many episodes when it comes to the tactical side of things, and you'll see I'm pretty consistent in this response. I was just doing a success interview with a WarriorBabe the other day, and I know you guys have been listening to some golden ones I've been posting on the podcast platform. She said, you know, when I first saw some videos of you, Nikkiey, you just resonated with me out of the gate.

I know that you reword things over and over and over again. You probably say things differently, but they're pretty much the same concept. But it may resonate with one of you guys at a different time. Maybe you heard me say what I'm about to say six months ago, but it didn't resonate then. And now you're like, this is landing right now. My mind is locked in. Everything you're saying is making sense. Maybe what I'm going to say next will make the light bulbs go off, even though I've been saying it in every single episode. That's what makes it all worth it. I don't care when it lands. I just hope it lands.

So what do you need to do to create a sense of trust and safety, something your body can feel safe in? It's not about feeling comfortable. It's about giving your body what it needs to function optimally. What do you think I'm going to say? Feed it. Stop starving yourself. Eat your protein. Eat your carbohydrates. Eat your healthy fats. Your metabolism needs that energy to burn energy.

Our bodies are machines. Think of our bodies as cars. What do you put in a car to make it run? Gas. Okay. In the parallel to our body, gas is fuel. Gas is food.

The next thing is: rest it. If you are 1000% exhausted, no workout plan or supplement is going to fix that. Rest is not some luxury that you have to earn. If you are working out, doing the work and fueling your body appropriately, then you deserve that rest.

Rest is a requirement. But you need to make sure you're eating right, moving your body and resting. And you should know that eight hours of sleep is not selfish. It's literally hormonal therapy. The stages of sleep your body goes into help the recovery process of healing your body and your hormones.

You've got to work out, but you've got to train smart. It's not about overtraining. It's lifting, doing strength training, building your body up, not breaking it down with too much cardio or overtraining seven days a week.

And you don't need to earn your food by working out. I know a lot of us have that mentality. That was me back in the day too. You need to eat so that you can train for strength and longevity, not punish your body at the end of the day.

Stress. You've got to manage your stress. Your body doesn't care if it's had a hard workout, or it's busy at a job, or there's emotional chaos. It all looks the same internally. And you can't live in fight or flight and expect to lose fat and build muscle. So take it seriously, with meditation or deep breathing or prayer or walking outside or journaling or just sitting in silence. Man, those are easy ways to manage your stress.

And then you've got to give yourself grace and be patient. You have spent years ignoring your body. It'll take time to rebuild that trust. You just have to be patient. It's not going to happen in a month. It's maybe not going to happen in three months. Maybe in six if you're consistent, maybe in a year if you're consistent. But you've got to be patient with yourself.

Look at every meal, every night of rest, every moment of slowing down as you signaling to your body: okay, cool, we're safe now. We're slowing down. We're not in fight or flight. We don't have a lion chasing after your nervous system. And once your body believes that, it'll start responding the way you want it to.

Okay. So I hope all of this is clicking for you guys, and I hope it's helping you and really hitting home for you. I want you to leave this episode knowing that you are not broken. You don't need fixing. You just need nourishment. Your body isn't your enemy. Honestly, it's your greatest teacher, trying to show you these things. It's trying to be like, hey girl, knock knock, pay attention to me. It's constantly giving you this feedback, and it's constantly adapting every single day.

It's constantly trying to protect you, even when you're working against it. Every symptom you've hated, every plateau, every craving, every mood swing, every pound gained has been communication. Think about it like that: my body is trying to communicate with me. It's not punishment. It's not you failing. It's not you being broken. It is communication. And you don't need to fight harder. You just need to listen to your body better. You need to give it what it needs. That is eating more and training less, moving your body with intention, and having the appropriate workout plan that supports your goals, which is going to spider web into all of the other things like your nutrition and your sleep and your recovery and yada, yada, yada.

Okay. So feed it, move it with love, rest it with intention. Speak to your body with respect. Slow down. Because remember, your body's not broken. Your body is so brilliant. It's so smart. And once you start treating it that way, you'll finally feel like, I've got control, I feel confident, I'm unstoppable now.

All right, everyone. Hope this helped you. I love you guys. Oh yeah, check out that Cozy Earth blanket. No joke, it's still on my lap. I freaking love this thing. All right. Love you guys. See you in the next episode. Peace out.

Hey, really quick before you go, I have one small favor to ask. If this episode brought you value or sparked something in you, take just a moment to hit that review button. Your rating and review make all of the difference in helping more women discover the tools they need to transform their fitness and their confidence. It takes less than a minute, but it can change the path of someone else's journey. Thank you so much for leaving that review. I appreciate you so much.