Stop Blaming Aging For Your Slow Metabolism

How is aging affecting your metabolism? Are you looking for a way to turn back the clock and make it work like it did when you were younger? This week's episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast is all about how to stop blaming aging for a slow metabolism, featuring special guest Kate Deering.

 

Kate has been helping women achieve optimal health and wellness for 25 years with her holistic approach that includes diet, stress management, exercise, posture, sleep, digestion, hormones, mindset, and lifestyle. And she knows what she speaks - she holds certifications as a CHEK Exercise & Holistic Lifestyle Coach, Olympic Lifting Coach, and a Certified Nutritional Consultant. Not only that but she also has a degree in psychology and exercise physiology!

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How to recognize aging's impact on your metabolism

- Tips on how to keep your metabolism running efficiently as you age

- What dietary changes can help boost a slow metabolism

- The link between hormones and weight management

- Ways to develop an exercise plan that’s appropriate for your age and goals

- Plus, much more!

 

Join us this week for an informative discussion about how to stop blaming aging for your slow metabolism with special guest Kate Deering. You don't want to miss this one! Tune in now.

 

(00:00): You have to get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to get healthy. Dr. Schwartz fame, stop blaming aging for your slow metabolism. In this episode, I'm gonna tell you why.

 

(00:14): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(01:07): Hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season. Thanks so much for joining me today. My guest today has lots of certifications. She's been dedicated to helping women improve their metabolism, their health and fitness for over 25 years. She's really smart and goes really deep into the science. So I think you're gonna like her. She's gonna help you understand a lot of things. When people hear that I lost over a hundred pounds, they assume that I did it by cutting calories and exercising. And of course I didn't do that at all. I did what we're gonna talk about today to improve my metabolism. I could have just sat there and blamed it on my age, but I didn't. I found out the truth about what truly drove my metabolism and my weight gain, including hormone balance, which a lot of you have heard me talk about.

 

(02:03): So we're gonna dive deep into that topic today and really help you get some answers on why you need to stop blaming your age for your slow metabolism and what you need to do to get your metabolism boosted. And why eating more and not less is key and why eating more carbs is part of the answer. I know you're surprised to hear that we're gonna get into it. So Kate Deering is my guest today. She holds certifications as a check exercise and holistic lifestyle coach, Olympic lifting coach Z health practitioner and certified nutritional consultant. She's worked for 25 years helping women achieve optimal health and wellness, using an holistic approach, incorporating diet, stress management, exercise, posture, sleep, digestion, hormones, mindset and lifestyle. She also has a degree in psychology and exercise physiology. So she's very well-rounded and has a a lot of breadth as well as depth that she's gonna deliver to you today. And I hope you'll help me welcome Kate to the podcast.

 

(03:07): I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. So

 

(03:09): I always like to start with people talking about why they do what they do and you have some unique certifications and experience. You've been in the health and fitness industry for over 25 years and I'm wondering what drew you to get the certifications and trainings that you've acquired and what makes you so passionate about helping women at midlife boost their metabolism.

 

(03:35): ? Well, it's a great question and I, I think the driver for most of us is always, we have our own experience that leads us down a path that we try to look at all the, the, the information that is readily available to us. Maybe it's through the medical space or maybe it's just what nutrition is offered in the, the standard American diet. And you find that that isn't working for you. And so you start going down different paths. And so for me, yes, I've been in this space for 25 years. I've always had an interest in people. I actually have degrees in psychology and exercise physiology and how to improve either performance and your experience here on life and so forth. And I've certainly had plenty of experiences in my life where I thought I was doing the healthiest things for myself because it's kind of what I was taught, especially in down the path of, you know, let's get fit and healthy.

 

(04:28): So maybe go down the eat less, work out more. And did that kind of approach a good bit to my twenties and thirties and then all of a sudden that when I was about to hit 40, it's didn't seem to be working. And the the tighter and more stricter I became, the more walls I seemed to be hitting. And you know, I kind of was thinking, well that must be just what happens in your forties. That's what everyone keeps saying. You hit this wall. And then I started to learn about metabolic health on a a different spectrum and looking through health with a different lens. And until we kind of change the lens of how we're seeing things, we're gonna keep going down the path I believe. So we have to kind of take a different perspective. And the perspective I learned was based on the work of Dr.

 

(05:11): Broda Barnes and Dr. Ray Pete. And it's essentially you're defining health as how well your metabolic rate is working. And if we understand that metabolism is basically the sum of all chemical process in your body or, and or how well your body is taking food and producing energy. And so how can we measure that is the question. And the way I would measure it is your heat production because heat would be a product of how well your body's producing energy, your temperature. So temperature and pulse would be ways to monitor how well your metabolism is working. And then if we think about it as it's the sum of every metabolic process, well then that would be how well you are digesting. How's your cycle? Do you have PMs or do you have a lot of menopausal issues? If you're at that stage in your life, how are you sleeping?

 

(05:58): How's your skin and hair? We know that when you are producing energy at a good rate and you're able to use food and then make energy for yourself, you'll have plenty to run your body optimally. If something starts to interfere with that, then you're gonna start to become compromised. And then what you tend to see is the opposite. Bad digestion, a lot of PMs issues, you're cold all the time. You might have a really low pulse, you have a lot of sleep issues, brain fog, all of those things start to occur. I stop looking at each symptom independently and because again, when we, when we look at how metabolism works, it kind of is the sum of all those products. So from my perspective, if we, if I could find a way to increase the body's ability to turn fuel food into fuel and produce better energy or more energy for your system, then ultimately what happens is your body just starts to function better without addressing each symptom independently. Mm-Hmm . And so if you can basically like say what, what does that all look like? And so there are certainly a series of things that you can do to help that happen. And it's not just kind of do this or that. It's always finding where the invi the individual at is at the process and working with them within that space and then slowly trying things to again help their body produce energy better or there's more accessible for them in their body and their metabolic health so that things just start working better for themselves.

 

(07:24): Okay. So let's start a l with a little basic, cuz I know some people are pretty advanced to listen to the podcast. They're, they, they're all about knowing about their metabolism. But what is your metabolism and why is this an issue as people age? I love how you say stop blaming aging for your slow metabolism, but let's break it down. What is your metabolism to begin with and why is it a problem for women as they age?

 

(07:49): Yeah, that's a great question and you can kind of define it a few different ways. One would be, like I said, it's the sum of every metabolic process in your body. So everything your body is doing takes energy. And so metabolism is essentially how your body turns food into fuel. And it essentially goes through a process. So we can look at it down at the cell level cuz all your cells are basically producing energy in their mitochondria primarily so that, that you have energy to do what you need to do, but you also need energy to run everything in your body. In fact, most of the energy that your body produces is used to run your body. We refer that as the basal metabolic rate. So 60 to 70% of the energy you produce is just utilized to do your systems, meaning digest food to keep your muscle and your, your your, your bones and have your nervous system working and all these things require fuel.

 

(08:43): And if at some point you start to run at a deficit, then your body always goes through this adaptation and will actually slow down metabolic function. And we see this when people diet and if they, they diet long enough, what normally happens, well you don't sleep as well, you're not digesting as well. You might start to feel tired or fatigued or you might start to feel wired because now your body's trying to produce energy via the stress response. And then you start to get a little bit jittery or it might even feel good initially because the stress hormones can feel good initially. So we start to see these responses your body's giving you. But if you're all of a sudden like going into your forties and fifties and saying, I still wanna lose weight, but yet you have a series of symptoms occurring, right? Let's just say you have horrible periods or you have all these sleep issues and you're unable to lose weight or you can't hold muscle tissue or you're getting all these brain fog or other issues, then we've gotta work on those symptoms first.

 

(09:44): Because what I know is that your body isn't providing you enough energy to run your basic functions because either you're too stressed out, you're, you're using it too other ways or it's gone through too many adaptations to slow it down. Cause we always have to remember the number one thing our body is trying to do is keep us alive. It isn't trying to procreate, it isn't trying to really digest your food, it's not trying to do any of those things. It's trying to keep you alive. So it's always in this energy preservation space where if you don't give it enough, it's going to adapt to that. And if you do it long enough, you'll have symptoms and then it'll look like illness and disease and so forth and so on. And so when I look at it say look, we can say well that just happens with age.

 

(10:26): And I say, well usually what I see is it just happens more time on this planet to stress your system out . And so, and that will come with age, but if we actually treat our body differently and actually provide it with enough fuel, minerals, nutrients, space and time to heal, then we can actually reverse that process and allow the system to do what it needs to do. And so we don't have to use the age factor to say, well this and, and there's just succumb to this is gonna happen cuz I'm getting older. We should know that there are things you can do to kind of fix that or reverse that so that you don't have to say that, that it is a product age. It's just a product of how you're treating your body.

 

(11:04): Right. I love that. It's so true. It's not age and and you know, it's just coincidental that as we get older, but we're also spending more time on the planet getting our body stressed out and yeah really that is the key factor. It doesn't have anything to do with our age. And you know, if you look around, there are plenty of women who are older who don't have metabolism problems, don't have weight problems, don't have health problems. And so what's the difference is that they're probably managing the various stressors that are insulting their body as they age. You know, another, could you share this quote with me before we started from Dr. Schwartz being about you have to get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to get healthy. And really that's how I lost over a hundred pounds. People ask me all the time, well how did you do that?

 

(11:51): Did you starve yourself? Did you, you exercise like crazy? No, I figured out the secrets to hormonal balance, detoxification, mitochondrial function, all the things that you and I both teach about. And then when I fixed that, the weight just came off. So how do you get people to shift their mindset? Women over 40, 50, 60 who are really, I mean we've had drilled into us from the time I was a little kid, I remember having drilled into me, it's less calories and more calories out, right? Cut your calories in, expend your calories. That's how you lose weight. And how do you help people to understand that that's, it's not a numbers game, it's not a math problem.

 

(12:34): That is a good question and it is a complete mind shift. And even for me it took a lot of unlearning cuz I was brought up in that space and that's, it was dug into me and I and it works until it doesn't work,

 

(12:46): Right

 

(12:47): . And that's the problem and that's, and when it does work, you know you can have it work pretty quickly, right? It's also a space, if you just grind it out and you, you know, you're like balls of the walls, you can have it happen but it's not sustainable over the long haul and then, then it's just, and so you're gonna get into trouble eventually and it doesn't work because you're, like I said, your body will go through adaptations and we now know that like exercise is actually not a great, certainly cardiovascular exercise is a great long-term approach for long-term weight loss. Because when you start putting, cuz exercise is a stress on your system, right? You're stressing your system to use fuel faster and if the fuel isn't available, then yes, it'll try to use what's on you, which is body fat. But it also will use a percentage of muscle tissue, connective tissue because those are also regulators.

 

(13:38): You need to regulate your blood sugar. And so when all those things happen, anytime we put a stress on our system, our body says, hey, at this point in time she has more demands than we have coming in. So okay, we're gonna use some of our other resources, however we're going to slow other things down to adapt to this stressor because again, number one thing your body wants to do is keep you alive and it doesn't want you to burn off all your muscle tissue to try to regulate blood sugar so that you can keep going. So it's always adapting to this response. And in your twenties it kind of, you do it and it can fix itself. It kind of goes okay, you know, she's lost some weight and we, we will kind of try to autoregulate a little bit, maybe a downregulated metabolic rate just a little bit.

 

(14:22): But then you do it again and again and again and by the time you're in your thirties and forties and you've hit that system, you know, 30 or 40 times it is now downregulated 20 30%. And now it's just so much harder for your system to push through that cycle. And usually at the same time now you have a bunch of symptoms, right? You have, you've had bad periods for 10 or 20 years or now you're having menopausal symptoms or perimenopausal symptoms and they are horrible and that's not normal, I guess it is, is normal cause a lot of people have it, but it doesn't have to be normal. You don't have to go through those if the body is in a better space. And for me I try to address it and get 'em to shift because I want 'em to look at the definition of health differently.

 

(15:05): Look, health is not just how thin you are and how good you look in, you know, your swimsuit health is a product of, again, it what is your temperature and pulse. If you're 96 degrees and a lot of women are, then that's a problem. You're not producing a lot of heat and that's a factor of metabolic health. So I look at, are you running around 97.8 to 98.6 degrees through the day? You know, is your pulse 40 or is it between 75 and 90 beats? And you know, believe it or not, it's better to have a pulse a little bit higher even though your doctor, you know that when you're running your marathons it's, it's down at 50. But that is an adaptation that occurs to kind of keep up with that activity. And then we wanna look at your digestion again, how your menstrual cycle, how's your libido, what are all these factors doing and what do they need to function?

 

(15:54): And they need energy, right? You cannot run on thin air. And so, and you also need a lot of nutrition and if you're eating crappy foods and we're not enough, we are going to see dysfunction at some point in time. It's just, it's going to happen. And if you just keep thinking, well I still need to work out more and exercise, it's just a matter of willpower, you are gonna make yourself absolutely crazy and, and then you feel horrible and then your whole life kind of starts to crumble down because you don't have the fuel to keep up with it. And so you know, the next thing you know you're going to your doctor and he is putting you on antidepressants and anxieties, sleep medications, everything. And you know, to kind of alleviate some of these symptoms when in fact look we have to address the underlying problem, which from my perspective is you have core cellular function, you're noting energy. Well wherever that is, align the system and that's what we need to improve.

 

(16:46): Yeah, and food plays a huge role in this. What you are feeding yourself and this whole concept of calorie restriction and a lot of diets are poor quality calories. I know you have a free guide that you're gonna offer everyone, we're gonna have the link in the show notes, but you also cover your top 13 metabolic foods in there. Could you just mention maybe three of your favorites that people might consider adding to their diet? That would be something to help with their me metabolic rate.

 

(17:15): Yes. And again, we, from my perspective, I come from the context of always improving cellular function. Now I always, I do have foods I suggest, but all those foods might not work for everybody depending on where they are in their healing cycle. And so, mm-hmm , I am a huge proponent of carbohydrates but the right carbohydrates because carbohydrates are your best source of energy to, for yourself, your cells prefer carbohydrates to run. Now a lot of people, especially women in their forties and fifties say, I eat carbs and I just blow up and then I don't do well with 'em so forth and so on. But if that's the case, then we have to find out, well what is going on in your system, right? Why are you not using those properly and can that be addressed and can that be fixed? Because if your body's utilizing other resources, fats or proteins as fuel, which it can, your body's awesome and it can use other resources, in my opinion, it's not the ideal source of fuel.

 

(18:12): Your body's actually function best utilizing carbohydrates. And so we wanna get the body to use those primarily. And the ones I like are more like fruits and roots, high nutrient rich carbohydrates that your body can help assimilate and there's tons of minerals and nutrition from 'em. And so I like actually a lot of simple carbohydrates cuz it's easier for your body to break these down. I definitely come from a space where we wanna give your body foods that are not super challenging to break down because what I see when someone's in dysfunction, 95% of those people have poor GI function. If you have poor GI function, again, it's another system of your body that requires energy to function. If that's not working and we give it really, really hard to digest foods, you're going to have problems. They're not gonna break 'em down properly, they're not gonna get what they need. Maybe they're filled with nutrition, but if your body doesn't have the fuel to break that system down or that food down, then you're just gonna poop it out. So I love fruits and roots, you know, like potatoes. Those are great sources of energy in my opinion. Just on the caveat. Okay. I never, okay,

 

(19:17): , hold on, I'm gonna, you're slaying a few sacred cows here so let's, I wanna dig into this a little deeper cuz some people are like, what? Eat carbs and lose weight. Wait, I, I like what she's saying but, so you're saying eat fruits and roots and fruits and roots have been fairly vilified Yep. By most people. And then you're talking about things that are easy to digest versus hard to digest. So can you break be more specific? What are you saying is hard to digest that people can't get nutrients out of? And what are you saying is easy and then also break down, why are you a proponent of fruits and roots for helping metabolic rate?

 

(19:55): Yeah. Oh that's a good question. Again, if we come from a place of h how, when you look at optimal metabolism, the fuel source that we are using is carbohydrates. Carbohydrates will run through the system much quicker than fats and to be utilized as energy. Yes, fats will contain more energy, but when carbs are being used, they actually go through the system in a quicker space. And so we want energy that's being used quickly. And so carbs are gonna be your most, primarily the best source of fuel. Now as you age, the body can have issues digesting carbohydrates and it's normally because that system is in a chronic stress state and they're starting to run other systems that are kind of regulating them at that time. But if we can get 'em out of the stress state and get them to utilizing carbohydrates better, then we'll bring those stress hormones down and their body will start to auto-regulate.

 

(20:45): I like fruits and roots because they're, they're high nutrient rich and if they're prepared properly, they don't tax your GI system as much as other foods like breads or grains or pastas or even legumes. Nuts and seeds of course. And even a lot of raw green vegetables, which I know is gonna be very controversial. But again, if you eat a raw salad which doesn't have a lot of fuel in it, it might have a lot of nutrition, but our body's gonna have a challenging time breaking that food down. And because I'm trying to give it fuel to run and I know when your body is under a lot of chronic stress, the GI system is the one of the systems that gets really affected. In fact, the GI system works best in that parasympathetic state. And if somebody's in a stressed sympathetic state all the time, the GI system just doesn't work properly.

 

(21:37): And so if I give it a ton of food and, and I try to push it through the GI and it's hard to digest, guess what? You're gonna see that food in your stool the next day. We're not gonna be able to break it down . And so, so true really irritating to the GI system and we need to give it foods that are not gonna be irritating. So again, I'm certainly not suggesting to everybody go out and they eat a huge bowl of potatoes or fruit by itself. Those foods are not, they shouldn't be consumed. I always balance all my, my carbohydrates with protein and some fat so that it does help go into the system a little bit slower and it can help regulate your blood sugar a little bit better. But we still don't want a tax, right? Because your GI system is the entry way for all your nutrition and energy.

 

(22:26): And if it's in dysfunction, if you're having bloating and, and SIBO and leaky gut and all of these things that are maybe not allowing your body to digest food properly, then even if you're eating the best of diets and the most nutritious of diets, if you can't break that food down, who cares? Doesn't matter. It's just gonna be pooped out, it's gonna irritate your gi, it's gonna make you constipated, whatever, doesn't matter. And so, but if we actually give it some stuff that's easier, then all of a sudden your body's okay, we don't have to work so hard so we can kind of operate, you know, 70% cuz you're not really taxing us so much and we'll actually give you the fuel that you need so that your body can have fuel to run. It is a mind shift, right? Because you have to know, you have to increase your body's ability to utilize energy and that means you've gotta teach it to utilize more calories.

 

(23:18): You've gotta teach it to actually know that calories are available to coming in. Cuz if not, it always is going to adapt to, to it. Your body does not care if you have an extra a hundred pounds on you and it's like, oh look I got a ton of extra weight on me. We'll just use that. It doesn't work that way. Your body will still adapt to a slow metabolism with extra weight on you. And so you have to increase overall basal metabolic rate so it, it starts utilizing that energy better. If not, you're gonna be eating less and less and less and feeling crappier and crappier and crappier and, and, and you can't live that that, right? As soon as something comes or happens, you just binge and eat everything so your body doesn't go into, you know, complete craziness, right? And then you go, you yo-yo yourself all the way, you know, into gaining another 20, 30 pound you're miserable.

 

(24:06): I remember seeing the study on the biggest loser contestants Yep. Right? Showing that how their metabolic rate slowed when they lost the weight on the show, but then it went even lower after and invariably they all gained the weight back within a couple of years. And I don't know what it's gonna take for us women to really get that out of, out of our heads about the, the calories and minus calories out myth. But I, I think you, you are really making some great points. I do wanna jump to another topic cuz you have such varied experience and certification and just the way you envision a person's health. You talk about posture in addition to wellbeing being about diet, stress, exercise, sleep, digestion, hormones, mindset, lifestyle. You also mentioned posture. Can you talk a little bit about that? Cuz that's not something that most people I think are aware affects their metabolism?

 

(25:03): Well I think we can just go into essential structure and again, if you're somebody that is hunched over and you can just see this from kind of today's society and everybody's looking at their phone or they're on their computer, right? So they're all just kind of hunched over and kind of in this kind of kyphotic state all day long. Well again, how does our GI system work and how does all of our systems work when we're kind of just compressing it all day long? So, you know, I always, I I get people in front of me and they, they're coming in and they're hunched over head forward. They got kind of forward head posture, shoulders are rolled, hips are starting to get tucked and I show them this posture a little bit exaggerated. I'm like, well this is your future. This is how you're going to function.

 

(25:46): And again, when our body starts to kind of maintain these structures and aren't ideal for it, the brain gets quite used to that and then it starts to go, well we don't actually need to stand up. So it starts to lose function and it starts to just stay. And, and I don't know if you've ever seen like people that aren't extreme, right? They're like completely leaned over and they can't like even stand up any longer and you're like, how does that even happen? Well it doesn't happen in a month or a year, it happens over decades in time without correction. But what I can say to you is if you were in the compromised position all day and you're leaned over and you're leaned over, that is absolutely gonna affect how well your GI system is functioning. And again, if we know that, that the GI is the entryway from everything from an outside world into your body and that's being compressed and compromised, then we can suspect that somewhere along the lines your body's gonna have some issues with digestion somewhere. Because in that compromise and compressed position. So obviously it's one of, I think many pieces of the puzzle to try to get somebody healthier. Certainly the food and everything else is a, a big part, but working on your backside and maintaining and learning how to sit upright and stand upright and look forward and you know, not looking to your phone all the time is certainly yeah. A big part of trying to improve your

 

(27:05): Health. Yeah, you know, this first came to my attention really, there was this brilliant chiropractor in Atlanta when I was working there and you know, he was talking about the structural integrity and how it puts when you don't have it, lack of structural integrity puts torque on the nerves, particularly like you say the digestive system, the autonomic nerve parasympathetic nervous system and then they stop functioning optimally and it affects digestion and hormone balance and everything else. But I just wanted to highlight that for everyone because you know, I think everything relates to hormones cause it does and posture relates to hormones, relates to metabolism along with what you're eating and your exercise. I think we're really trained to believe that it's, again, only about diet and exercise. I think most people are getting the stress piece. What are some of your top tips for women over 40 to really get a reign on how stress is affecting their health or mitigate the effects?

 

(28:03): Well I think a good thing to monitor is certainly your sleep. If you're finding that you are not sleeping well, then that's a sign that your system is under fueled to me. I mean, sleep is a, a high metabolic function. Like, you know, young children think about what young children know, they can sleep 10 to 12, 12 hours, they can sleep anywhere and they just fall asleep in our deep sleep . And so it's a high metabolic function and as we age, obviously sleeps becomes more challenging and we don't sleep as deep and we don't sleep as long when you wake up and so forth. So how well your sleeping is certainly a sign that if you're sleeping poorly, that things aren't going in the right direction. Some easy tips are like go out and get morning sun. Your body likes the sun, your circadian rhythm likes the sun.

 

(28:46): So getting sun into your eyes in the morning or at least getting out through the day and getting sun on you is a, a good way for your body to sleep better. Certainly making sure you're eating enough through the day and making sure you're eating balanced meals through the day. One of the things I like to address with people is regulating their blood sugar. If your blood sugar is all over the place, it's going to elicit stress responses all through the day because your blood sugar is what basically keeps you alive. If, if you, there's not enough fuel in there and all of a sudden there isn't any, you die. So there's a, you know, a regulatory system if you're starting, if your blood sugar gets too low, if you start to go hypoglycemic, your body's gonna send out a stress response. Your stress hormones, adrenaline, cortisol, glucagon are all gonna elevate to try and either break down tissue or release storaged sugar to regulate you.

 

(29:34): And if that's happening all day long because you're not eating or you are eating the wrong foods, then you're keeping yourself in the stress response all day. And so we have to get yourself and that's not gonna make you feel relaxed and it's certainly not gonna make you sleep. Well, making sure, and a great way to do that is, you know, having balanced meals throughout the day. So whether you're eating three meals a day or six meals a day, find a frequency of meals, it feels good to you. If you're eating a meal and you're like, I'm gonna eat three, but you're hungry after two or three hours and you probably need a snack in between your meals, we want you to feel satiated during the day. We, I don't want you to feel hungry, especially if you're trying to fix things. And what we have to understand is your body actually needs to heal and it needs to fix metabolic functions then that's a different space than you trying to lose weight in my opinion.

 

(30:27): Sometimes you have to kind of fix the foundation first to get the body like so, so the body can lose weight a little bit healthily versus just trying to stress the weight off of you, which most of us have been doing most of our lives. So it's kind of, you know, people refer to it as reverse dieting where you start to slowly eat more food so your body get used to having more fu fuel available to you. I just say it's improving metabolic function cuz we monitor your metabolic processes to see how well you're improving. There's a lot of different things. So again, I would say getting light, eating balanced meals throughout the day is important. And then of course, adding some of the foods, the, I would suggest, and again, those could be fruits and roots and maybe avoiding some of these hard to digest foods like nuts scenes, legumes and raw feed greens, , which I knew will be controversial. And again, I'm not saying these are bad foods, I'm just saying if you have some GI dysfunction and you need improve metabolic function, they might be better to limit them or even avoid them for a while while you improve those things and then you can slowly add them back in mm-hmm. into something you wanna do.

 

(31:32): Okay. Those are great tips. You mentioned something in there, reverse dieting, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Could you clarify?

 

(31:39): Reverse dieting is a term that's being kind of utilized. It seems right now where it's dieting as we think of it's eating less and, you know, and slowly eating less to lose body fat. Reverse dieting is actually teaching your body to eat more and so that your body adapts to a space where now it's getting more comfortable eating, you know, 2000 calories versus the 1200 calories. And so it's a process that you would take someone through, whereas, you know, maybe if you're, if someone's coming to me and they're eating 12 to 1400 calories and they have a bunch of symptoms, I'm like, well, we're not gonna heal on that. It's not enough fuel. I actually, my clients eating anywhere from 1900 to 2,400 calories before we would actually start to initiate some sort of deficit to try to initiate weight loss or add some activity or something in.

 

(32:27): So I want their bodies to be primed. I want them to have tons. I I really wanna teach people to eat as much food as they possibly can to, to maintain good metabolic function. And yes, with some people initially that might result in some actual weight gain and either a, they might need it or their body just has to go through a a time where it's saying, Hey, you know, you've been starving me for the last three decades, , it's gonna take a little time for me to adapt to this new energy increase and it couldn't come with a little bit of weight gain, but we try to minimize that. But what I look for versus just what's on the scale, I'm gonna look for well how your, well your clothes fit. Because certainly if I can get you enough fuel, you're gonna have better anabolic function, so you'll be able to maintain muscle, you'll be able to increase muscle faster.

 

(33:15): And again, it's something that happens in women in their forties and fifties, sixties is they have a harder time maintaining muscle mass and muscle is incredibly important as we age, we know that women who have the most muscle mass will be most healthiest or have the least amount of bone breakdowns and so forth. So we wanna create an environment, their body that is able to produce and maintain muscle. If the body's constantly stressed because you're going down these stress pathways, it is gonna have an incredibly hard time doing that. You'll end up just losing more muscle mass. And that is not something do as you age.

 

(33:49): Right. Thank you for explaining that. I love that term and it, it really reminds me of Dean Ornish with his eat more, way less, you know, most of us are eating poor quality, wrong macronutrient and micronutrient not dense foods. And so really this concept that you do need to eat more, but also a better macronutrient and micronutrient profile, I think is really huge for women. And, and if you're listening, I hope you really hear what Kate is saying because it's key to boosting your metabolism. Your metabolism is not decreased direct because of your age. So just stop blaming it on your age. You've got to really take a hard close look at the stressors that are impacting your health that we've mentioned throughout this episode. Hormones being one of them. I loved how you tied in the whole cortisol stress cycle to digestion and what that's gonna do overall. So I think this has been really valuable for everyone. Thank you so much for joining us, Kate. You have this free guide, understanding Metabolism and your Top 13 me Metabolic Foods for everyone to download. We're gonna have a link in the show notes. They can also check out your book, how to Heal Your Metabolism, stop Blaming Aging For Your Slowing Metabolism. If you wanna, what would you like to tell them about these resources and where else people can find you and get more information?

 

(35:17): Yeah. Well, I have an Instagram account, it's Kate during fitness. I also am on Facebook at Kate during fitness. My website is kate deering.com. I'm actually working on a second book right now, which is gonna be heavy on one thing I've been asked since I've wrote the first one is a lot more recipe type things and, and kind of a more directional way that people can utilize this information to help themselves. I, you know, I I definitely come from a, a place of specificity, a spec being specific, meaning everyone is a little bit different. You kind of have to find your own path. It's what I provide is a lot of information to help people try to understand their body better so they can learn what to measure and how to keep up with things. And so they can see kind of direct their own path. And I, I think the more you learn about yourself and how well your body functions, the better off you're going to be in life. We don't teach, we don't really teach that anymore and I think it's just a, a really good way for you to kind of improve your health without lots of drugs or supplements or so forth and so on. Awesome.

 

(36:18): Well, thank you for those great resources. Thanks for the wonderful information and inspiration and I hope everybody listening, you'll check out Kate's website and download her free guide, check out her book and all of the offerings that she has. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription and how will you take this information and implement it in your life to make positive changes? Let me know about it on social media. I look forward to hearing about it, and I look forward to seeing you next week on another episode of The Hormone Prescription. Until then, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

 

(36:55): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Get Kate Deering's FREE Guide on understanding metabolism and her top 13 metabolic foods. CLICK HERE.

 

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