SS 173 – Is Metabolic Damage Real And If So, How Do You Fix It?

Grant and Heavey discuss the answer to a listener’s question about what metabolic damage is and whether you can repair it or not. Interestingly, the theme around all this is that sometimes you need to gain more, to lose more. Find out how this actually works!

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[03:48] Metabolic Damage from a Bad Diet: Is It Repairable?

A person can get themselves into a position where their body has adapted to a lower caloric intake thereby down-regulating their metabolism as a result. The basal metabolic rate is the amount of calories required by your body to maintain internal functions (pumping of your lungs and heart). This way, your body can regulate how many calories it can allocate to that as well as to other parts of your body.

If your body senses that it’s not getting adequate nutrition, then it can adapt. It does this as a biomechanism meant to help keep us alive in times of famine.

[05:00] Ketogenic Diet vs. Basal Metabolic Rate: Do They Work the Same Way?

Grant mentions the concept behind the ketogenic diet where it’s really the body adapting to the different food we eat. We start burning ketones instead of carbs for fuel. Heavey explains this entails changing fuel sources that the body is burning. However, the demands of the body could be technically equivalent. On the other hand, metabolism talks about the amount of calories the body needs to survive to sustain itself.

Heavey adds that a lot of people like to oversimplify the way the body works and treat it like a closed system. If the body is a closed system, weight loss is a simple calculation.

It’s typical advice that if you cut 500 calories a day, you lose a pound a week. It treats the body as a simple math equation. But in reality, for a lot of people, your body will adapt to that.

[07:00] Metabolic Damage and Diet

Metabolic damage is often associated with a crash diet. A study was done on the participants from The Biggest Loser six years after their season ran. Most of them found they regained the weight. Interestingly though, the metabolic rate follows our body mass and lean mass.

These people that had enjoyed massive weight loss on the show, in time, their weight increased again, their metabolic rate did not follow that weight increase. But they don’t have the calorie burn that they should have of somebody that has extra mass. Therefore, their ability to lose weight becomes that much harder.

Heavey mentions that there has been some research that followed people for up to seven years to see if they can recover lost metabolic function. Clearly, it’s possible to do some very serious damage to yourself.

[09:00] Increasing or Decreasing Weight

Heavey cites an example of this young woman who is on the elliptical for two hours a day and eats 1200 calories per day to maintain her weight. In fact, he encounters people on very low calorie diets. They’re wondering they’re not losing any weight. But where do you go from there?

For instance, if you’re a 200-lb guy and sustaining your weight at 1500 calories, you can’t cut down to 1000 calories because you can’t sustain yourself on that. But if you’re going to jump up to 2000 calories, and you’re going to gain weight right away.

[10:30] The Idea of Reverse Dieting

Heavey and Grant talked about reverse dieting a while back. It’s something Heavey has seen as effective in several of his clients who come to him, eating 1500 calories a day and not losing weight. But it’s a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people. He finds it quite hard to tell somebody that they’re just going to do it for six months. Instead, you really have to be deliberate in how you can work out of this position that you got yourself into so that you can restore this healthy function and then allow your body again to to be able to lose weight at a normal metabolic function level.

Nevertheless, people usually under eat for extend periods of time and they exercise heavily. This drives their hormones out of balance. So it’s not always as simple as reverse dieting as there are other factors that need to be considered – sex hormones, thyroid, cortisol. So the approach depends entirely on the indvidual’s situation.

[12:00] How to Address Metabolic Damage

Heavey has seen a lot of people undergo metabolic damage that have irregular hormonal levels. The way you’re going to recover from this is very simple. Find out what level you’re eating your food, like writing a good log. See how much your average intake is. Track your body weight and see what’s happening.

Say, you track your food for two weeks and you find out you’re averaging 1500 calories a day and then your body weight is staying constant. Then you know your body has adapted to 1500 calories as its maintenance level. And if you’re a 200-pound guy, this is a very low maintenance level. So you’re going to want to work your way out of that.

You can start by slowly increasing your calories every week. It might just be as low as 25 or 50 calories per week. Then continue to monitor your weight. If your body weight has stayed the same, then increase your calories again. You’ll just ever so slowly let your body recognize that it’s not a famine and that you’re going to have adequate nutrition, and you’re just slowly going to work your way up. Eventually, you’ll probably be able to get to 2600-3000 calories and that point, you’d have this “normal” function. Then at this time you can already think about doing some cut to lose weight.

[14:00] Reversing Metabolic Damage: The “Heavey Way”

Initially, Heavey would start with subjective measures of how they’re feeling to give them an idea of what’s going on. He rarely does lab testing because it’s not cheap so it can be difficult for people to pay out of pocket. Although it’s helpful, it’s definitely not a necessity.

Then they have a food log and Heavey would run calculations based on where he thinks they should be. It’s not exact science but it gives him a rough idea of where they should be for their age, gender, weight, physical activity level, etc. Based on the discrepancy and what their goals are, they proceed from there.

Heavey has seen this play out numerous times where as they’re increasing the intake over time, they’ll actually start to lose weight. It’s not a guarantee though. But even if you gained a couple of pounds over the course of a month, it’s something worth continuing and pursuing. You just don’t want to be adding five pounds. Instead, you want to make sure that if there’s any weight gain, it’s ever so slight as you try to recover that metabolic function.

The idea of eating more and still losing weight is actually awesome as how Grant would describe it. Heavey, in fact, says how this blows people’s minds.

[15:25] What to Do Once Your Weight is Up There

It doesn’t mean that once you’ve reached that goal of increasing your weight up to 3000 calories that you’re going to cut back down to 1500 calories. You also have to consider that your maintenance calories are going to depend on several factors like your activity level, weight, etc. But once you’re up to that higher maintenance level, then you can do a cut of about 5%-10% of your calories. At which point, your body should respond by letting go of some weight.

But over time, your body will adapt and so you have to be careful and possibly do another cut down to 15%. After your body halts out and stops losing weight, then you just have to do the reverse diet. Work your way back up again. This recovers the function and then from there, you can do another cut.

[16:40] Case Study: Bodybuilders and Metabolic Damage

A perfect example of this are the bodybuilders and figure competitors. They subject themselves to highly restrictive diet and go on three hours of cardio per day to cut down for a competition. Then after their competition, they binge eat all the foods they’ve been thinking about. At that point, their body has already down regulated their metabolism at that point even if they’ve put on a bunch of weight. The next time a show comes around and they’re looking to cut weight, then they’ve got much less reserve to work from.

There is absolutely a healthy way of doing this. In the off-season, they’ve got specific training regimens. Their nutrition regimen is to recover their metabolism as much as they can.

[17:40] Eat More, Lose Weight More (Seriously!)

If you’re trying to do a weight cut, you have to be able to eat the maximum amount of food as possible and still be able to lose weight. For your own sanity and for the long term effects and sustainability of the diet, you should really strive to consume the maximum amount of calories that you can while still losing weight if the cut is your ultimate goal.

[18:44] Misuse of the Term “Metabolic Damage”

Additionally, Heavey points out how the term “metabolic damage” can turn people off. It’s like one of those terms like “adrenal fatigue” where it’s not a legitimate medical diagnosis so it gets misused. It may not necessarily depict what’s happening. You think about whether it’s really doing “damage” or you’re just adapting and you can pick it right back up. All this is still pretty unclear as there’s not much research on it.

[20:00] Whisky Time!

Aside from the question Joe submitted, he also talked about must-try whisky called the Penderyn. Grant actually looked this up and thinks it’s interesting. The thing is, it’s not available anywhere in the U.S. First, he hasn’t heard of any whisky made in Wales. Apparently, Wales had been making whisky for centuries but the last distillery was closed in 1887. Then the Penderyn opened in 2000, being the first product that went on sale in 2004. We’re talking about over 100 years without any whisky being made in Wales.

Speaking of new whiskeys, in addition to Penderyn, there’s another whisky distillery opening at Aber Falls and they’ve just started production and it’s set to be released in 2020.

 

Links:

www.healthIQ.com/scotch

SS 098: Reverse Dieting 101