Metabolism 101: A Review – Ep. 197

For most of us, we know how our body works, how and when we should be eating, and the basics to gain muscle or lose weight. On the other hand, there is something that is not taken into account very often: metabolism. In this episode, Dr. Jade is giving a lecture at a local CrossFit studio where he talks about the basics of metabolism and how we can understand it in a way that helps us reach our goals.

Dr. Jade explains that things like stress levels, sleep, and hunger, are as important for weight loss and muscle gain as counting calories, hitting the gym, and eating enough protein. Going over the differences between slow and fast metabolism and highlighting different strategies for healthy nutrition, Dr. Jade answers questions and gives a very thorough explanation of metabolism and body performance. Tune in!

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Connect with Dr. Jade Teta

Website: www.jadeteta.com

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Jade [00:14] welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast. As a human, you have a job to do. In fact, you have four jobs; to earn and manage money, to attain and maintain health and fitness, to build and sustain personal relationships, to find meaning and make a difference. None of these jobs are taught in school and that is what this podcast is designed to do. To educate us all on living our most fulfilled lives through the mastery of these four jobs. I'm your host, Dr. Jade Teta and I believe we are here living this life for three reasons and three reasons only; to learn, to teach and to love. In this podcast, I will be learning, teaching, and loving right along with you. I'm grateful to have your company; here is to our next level.

[01:13] Welcome to today's show, everybody, and Happy New Year, Happy 2023. Today's show is actually a review of metabolism. Many of you have been asking for more metabolism stuff, I have not done any metabolism shows in quite some time. And this show is actually a recording from a lecture that I did, where this episode rather, is a recording from a lecture that I did at a local CrossFit here in Asheville, North Carolina, CrossFit Asheville. It is a lecture that basically went through all the basics of metabolism, and I thought it would be a useful lecture for the podcast. And so that's what you're going to be listening to today. The audio sounds pretty good. From my perspective, we definitely had a mic there. But hopefully, the quality is gonna sound good to you, as well. And without further ado, let's get in to today's show. We'll make this as informal as possible. But I do want to cover like some basic stuff. First in regards to metabolism. So I'll ask you a question to start out. So when you think about weight loss and performance, which is probably this crowd sort of thing, right? You probably sit in those two elements, I either want to look better, or function better. What do you tend to think of? So if you're like most people, what you're thinking of is you're probably thinking, Okay, this is a calorie calculation equation, right? So you're thinking calories, maybe you're thinking, slow versus fast metabolism, I want a fast metabolism, not a slow metabolism, maybe you're thinking about hormones, I want my hormones to function a little better. And what I would say is that all those thoughts are good thoughts. And they certainly play a role. But I'd also say, they're probably not the right thought. And so I want to present what I think is the right thought, Now just see how this sits with you at first, and then we can talk about it. So to me, the right thought is if you're going to think about performance, or you're going to think about weight loss, then this is what you really should be thinking about. Okay? It's not about calories, it's not about fast or slow. It's not necessarily about hormones, or any of that. It's about stress. And if you think about it, from this point of view, it starts to change the way you think about your training. And it starts to change the way you think about your diet. So let's talk about metabolism just a minute from the perspective of stress. If you think about metabolism, what it essentially is, is a sensing and responding apparatus. So what do I mean by that? What it does is it looks out in the environment. And it says, Okay, what's going on out there? What's the temperature? Like? What's the light? Like? how much light is there during the day? How cold or warm? Is it? How much food is available? Right? How much emotional stress or turmoil? Am I undergoing? What's my deadlines like at work? How much stress Am I putting my body under through training? And is taking all of that in? Right? What opportunities are there to reproduce things like that, right? And it's taking all that information in and then it goes and looks inside the body as well. And it's taking signals from inside the body. What is the liver saying what is the fat tissue saying how are the you know, gut bugs that live in our digestive tract? What are they telling me? And so it takes all this information from inside the body with all this information. From outside the body, and begins to plot a course back to balance. And so when you think about metabolism, you want to be thinking about what are the needs internally, and what is my internal system saying the cells in the body, and then what is the outside environment, forcing me to do or respond. And when you look at it this way, things start to change a little bit. Because when it comes to food, and what you eat, you don't want too much, or too little, right? You want it just right, it's this Goldilocks zone. If you eat too little, that's a problem. And if you eat too much, that's a problem. Both of those are stress, what you want is enough food, but not too much food. And when it comes to exercise, it's the same thing. Right, you don't want too much. You don't want to little you want it just right. And this is the problem with the current model that we all listen to out there in the world. If you're paying attention to podcasts, and books, and documentaries, and all of these things, you're probably hearing you want to fast metabolism, you're probably hearing you want to balance hormones, you're probably hearing that you want to count your macros and all these kinds of things. And none of that is wrong. It's just incomplete if you don't realize that there is a certain amount of food that you need specifically, and a certain amount of exercise that you need specifically that if you go over or under, you're gonna run into problems. So that's the first major rule to understand metabolism is about stress. Now, the second rule to understand is that the metabolism is speaking a language, it does not speak English, or French or Spanish or any of that. But it is speaking a language. And if you understand that language, you will know when it's under stress. So let's talk a little bit about this language. So sleep if you're asleep is difficult, or fragmented or any of that, that is an indication that you are not responding appropriately to stress. Hunger, if you are hungry all the time, or perhaps not hungry at all, but especially if your hunger is very high. This is an indication that the metabolism is saying something is not right here. Mood. If your mood is volatile, unpredictable, sometimes you're anxious, sometimes you're depressed, or you're stuck in any of these emotions. This is an indication that your metabolism is under stress. Energy, unpredictable, unstable, very low. That's another indication, cravings. If you're trying, you're always craving cheesecake and junk food and certain things, that's an indication, your body's telling you something and by the way, this is a funny little acronym that I become famous for that I called SHMEC. Because so the way to remember this is when your schmuck is in check. When your schmuck is in check, this is a good indication that your body is responding appropriately to stress. This is the body the metabolism communicating. The problem with this though, is it's not just sleep, hunger, mood, energy and cravings. This is a catch all phrase for exercise performance and exercise recovery and libido and menses and digestion, and erections and signs and symptoms like headaches and joint pains and all of these kinds of things. All of that is SHMEC. All of that is the language of metabolism. And so if we are listening to metabolism, and our SHMEC is in check, we can say okay, I'm eating enough, but not too much. I'm exercising enough, but not too much. I'm getting the things I need. However, if SHMEC is out of check, this is an indication that perhaps you are not responding appropriately distress. And this brings one very big equation here. We think this is all about food and exercise. Right? That's what we think. But what's perhaps even more important is rest, recovery and relaxation. Like when's the last time you actually planned spa time, or a manicure pedicure or massage or something like that versus your workout and your meal plan. So from my perspective, this is what we're really talking about. So I'm going to stop there really quickly just to make sure everyone understands and just if you have questions about this because if you've never heard this before, you may have things pop in your head and go Jade, I don't get this like what about this or that? So are there any questions here or anything that bothers you know?

Jade [10:00] So that's a great question. So the question is, are all cravings bad? Could it be that a craving is telling you your body needs something? So the interesting thing about that is that there's no research that I'm aware of that shows that we humans can, you know, say, all right, for example, I am low in magnesium, and therefore, I'm going to crave magnesium rich foods like maybe chocolate, right? We're probably craving chocolate because it has sugar and fat in it, and is really tasty. It's the reason why we don't crave chalk, which might have magnesium as well in it. However, that doesn't mean it's not true. Right? It just means that right now, science has not shown us that that is the case. However, there are indications that we are craving certain things that we need, for example, there are things like protein that if we don't get enough of, and this started with research in rats, and what they did is they would give rats regular Chow, and then give them a low protein Chow, and then give them Chow that had more sugar and fat. And what they found is that rats will overeat their Chow until they get to a certain amount or threshold of protein intake. And because protein is one of the macronutrients that is so critical for building blocks of muscle and things like that, this is a really strong potential that perhaps cravings, very strong cravings are an indication that we might need some extra protein, it hasn't been fully vetted in humans. But it is very prevalent in animal studies. And a lot of us believe this is what's going on with humans as well. And there's one other thing with cravings that I'll say is that when you eat highly palatable foods, foods rich in combinations of starch, sugar, fat, salt, alcohol, you'll crave more of those foods. And so one of the things if you're suffering from cravings to moves that you might want to make is up your protein as a percent of calories and decrease the highly palatable foods that might be causing you to eat more you ever have that thing when you go on a diet and you for the first three days or so it's tough, but after that you lose some cravings for some of these foods. It's probably because your brain has downregulated. It's palatable centers. It's hedonistic centers in the brain. And so that's probably what's going on with cravings. But we may find out later that it actually is craving particular minerals we just don't have that data yet that I'm aware of. But it's a really great question. Because if you're going to start speaking the language of metabolism, you do want to ask, why am I having cravings? And what might that signal and what might I need? Why is my energy unpredictable and unstable? What's going on with my mood? Why am I hungry all the time? And why is my sleep fragmented and difficult? So does that make sense to everyone? Cool. It is, it is. Yeah, probably if you for this particular lecture, if you want a book that really gets to the heart of it, because I know a lot of people here listening are really advanced in sort of their desires and understandings for health and fitness. Next Level metabolism is probably the book that has most of this data. Let's see, do I have an eraser somewhere, like maybe a napkin or something. So I want to show you an easy way to think about this, if this makes sense. Because I want to make this easy for you. So I want to show you, perhaps an easy way to look at this for First of all, though, I want to give you if you'll allow me just three roles to remember about metabolism these, these are like what I would call three laws. And if you remember them, you'll understand a lot of what's going on with your body. Right? So law one is the law of what I would call reactivity. And by the way, if you've if you've read my books in the past, you'll probably see this law is something different. I'm always renaming them trying to make them better to understand. Reactivity just says that the metabolism by its very nature is adaptive and reactive and responds to you. So here's something to think about if you have an adaptive reactive system. Right? And you do the same thing day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out. What do you think's gonna happen? Your metabolism adapts to that, right. So it essentially goes, Okay, good try, but I adapted to this diet you're doing two weeks ago. And it's kind of laughing at you in a sense, and this is why we hit plateaus because the metabolism adapts and reacts. And so another piece of the language of metabolism is to understand that when SHMEC goes out of check, and or your results stop And or your performance starts to suffer, you have probably hit a plateau, you've run into the law of metabolic reactivity. And you need to change something it might be as simply as take a week off, it might be as simple as up your carbohydrates a little bit. It might be anything, you just can't do the same thing. Does that make sense? And this is a rule that if you always remember this, then you can understand why I oftentimes tell this to people, people say to me, Jade, I'm doing everything right. And I'm not getting results. And then I say, as humbly as I can without offending them. If you're doing everything right, and you're not getting results, then you're not doing everything. Right. Right. That's the truth of the matter. And it's probably because of this law of reactivity. So how do you know when you rent run into the law of reactivity? SHMEC goes out to check. Right? And body cop? stalls? Or reverses. Right. So that's how you know. The second thing here, and this is perhaps what I would say the most important is the law of individuality. Which essentially says the following, we are each unique. Now, the entire diet industry acts as if we are all the same, the entire performance industry acts as if we were all the same. So what it essentially does is say, follow this diet, and this exercise program, and you're going to lose weight, and it treats you the same, it's very cookie cutter, it's like you're baking a cake. Here's the recipe to bake the cake. And it does the same thing in the performance world. Mostly, it says, follow this diet and exercise and you'll perform better not taking into account the fact that you are different in your physiology, and your psychology and your personal preferences and in your practical circumstances in those four areas. And I'll put them down for you because they are important, because when you're designing a diet, which I'm going to suggest is what you need to do, you need to take these into account. And by the way, I'll just point this out. So most people think right, carbohydrates are the devil right now. We're in this phase where there's always a devil and carbohydrates are the current devil. So here's what's interesting, if I gave each of you in this room, a piece of white bread, and I hooked you up to a continuous glucose monitor, like this one is taking blood sugar measurements, and I tracked your blood sugars, some of you would see very normal healthy blood sugar curves. Others of you would see disturb dysfunctional curves. And this would correlate to SHMEC. And it depends on the person. So this idea that we're just supposed to all not eat this and all eat this, this eat this not that way of looking at things probably is not the way we want to be looking at this. We want to know which foods to eat. So how would you do this? You simply go okay, this breakfast that I eat every morning or don't eat every morning, right? Because fasting is something that a lot of people do. So if I eat or don't eat at breakfast, most of us think, Okay, well that's either a healthy meal or not. What you should be saying is how does this meal impact what I eat or don't eat and crave to eat for lunch? Or what I eat or don't eat or crave to eat for dinner? Does that meal keep my schmuck in check or not? That's how you know it's a good meal for your physiology, not because Jade Teta says so or someone else said so. Not to mention how many people do you know I know people who can have a little bit of chocolate at 3pm. And as a result of that chocolate, eat better and less at dinner. I also know people who have a little bit of chocolate at 3pm and eat more and worse at dinner as a result. And so you want to know what your trigger and buffer foods are that chocolate in your case, if you eat worse and more would be a trigger food. If you eat better and less, it's a buffer food, wine can do the same thing. Some people have a little wine with dinner. And overall they eat less and better. Some people have wine at dinner and eat all the food, drink all the wine have dessert and everything else as a result. And so this is important. And by the way, in a in a setting like CrossFit. What's really cool is we are all very performance oriented. What do you eat that makes your workout better and helps you get through the workout without crashing? Right that's another aspect of this psychology.

Jade [19:36] I might impact stress and I lose my appetite. You might impact stress and want to eat nothing but cookies all day. You should know that right? preferences. If I tell you, you love chocolate and I tell you never to eat chocolate again how likely are you to follow that regime? Not very. So what you want to do is you want to take all the foods you love and classify them as buffer foods or trigger food and then keep the buffer foods and lose the trigger foods. See what I mean? So there's going to be foods you love it make you eat worse and more. And there's going to be foods you love that make you eat less and better and forget about what you think about the healthiness of these foods or not just simply go, will they help me eat better and less, keep all of those foods that you love. Get rid of all the foods that you love. Like, for me, it's pizza. If I ate pizza, not only do I wake up aching the next morning, it was sinus stuff going on. But I ended up wanting more pizza, right. However, if I do something like tacos, which I also love, that can be a really nice thing. And oftentimes I end up stripping it off anyway, and having a big taco bowl, and I feel great with that particular meal. That's what you want to be asking yourself. And then of course practical this just means some people live in food deserts, some people have Whole Foods, we all have different ways that we can orient around foods, some people know how to cook, some people don't. And so you have to be very clear about this. So what I'm essentially suggesting here is that, and this is going to be somewhat depressing for everybody. But it's just the truth of the matter, what we need to do is build our diets create our diets. So this is what I'm trying to suggest to you is a diet built for you, by you not outsourced to someone like me. Right. And I'll explain how to do that in just a minute. And the third law here is the law of rest and recovery. Which essentially means we have to stop being individuals who buy into this notion that we have to go, go, go never stop Do, do, do, what we need to do is understand that the ability to rest and recover is directly correlated and associated with our ability to excel and perform. And if we don't figure that out, we're going to be spinning our wheels constantly. And so you need as much time in rest and recovery mode as you have in work and push mode when you're working out that is when you are doing the damage the adaptation response when you are recovering, that is when you're in a position where you're actually adapting. So let me present a couple more things and then we'll get into the how.

Jade [28:42] And let's get back to the show. So if metabolism is all about stress, and stress management, there are two types of stress that the metabolism does really, really well with, right, one type of stress is short and intense. And by the way, this is where CrossFit is really wonderful, right? Because typically the working portion of the workout is relatively short compared to the rest of the exercising world. Right you get your warm up, you do a pretty intense sort of WOD which is normally anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes max, and then you relax whereas the rest of the world is doing 60 to 90 to 40 to 90 minute workouts. So short intense workouts and short intense diets. short intense fasting things like that work incredibly well for the body. Also, the body does really well with very long and gentle so this would be something like a CrossFit WOD right, or high intensity interval training short intense workouts, and this would be something like walking Tai Chi. Right? Something very gentle. And then all this stuff in the middle, which would be, you know, intense. And long would be the worst. For moderate, and long. These are problematic. Not for everyone, by the way, not for everyone. And actually, I'll give you a one of my favorite studies to quote just to drive this home, this was a study on women, Peri menopausal women, and slightly younger. So from the ages of 35 to 65 years old, okay. And there were essentially, several groups, one group did 30 minutes of shed treadmill, jogging five days per week. Okay. So that's a lot of work out as jogging, cardio. Another group did 45 minutes, five days per week. And the third group did 60 minutes, five days per week. And then there was a group that did no exercise. So here's what's interesting about this study, the researchers told the participants, they told these women don't consciously change your diet, just do either 30, 45 or 60 minutes. So they follow these women, these are the alpha beta trials done in Canada, they follow them for a very long time. So this, they actually have follow up to a year later with these women. So guess what they found? How many what percent, and he guesses on what percent of these women lost weight. So 9% lost weight, more than predicted. Okay, so there were some even lost even more, they did really good on this. However, 50% of these women lost no weight. And 26.6% of these women 25% Roughly, actually gained weight. So total here for the people who lost weight was about 25%. And 9%. Lost a lot. So think about this, you're doing this, this blows your mind, when you think about you're doing 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or 60 minutes of exercise, jogging five days per week, and you don't lose any weight and or you gain weight. Why? Because it's this kind of stuff. And why did that happen? Because SHMEC went out to check, they unconsciously over ate wasn't magic, by the way, it wasn't that the workout caused them to gain weight is that they over ate, and some of them over ate enough to overcome the calorie deficit created by the exercise. And why was that? My theory is and a lot of research points to this. My theory is because this type of exercise does this to the vast majority of people does it for men, too. This just happened to be on women. And so if you want to circumvent this, you do short intense workouts or very long, gentle walking. And it doesn't mean you don't do this kind of cardio. Some people do very well on this. It's just to know, you know, when we talk about my physiology, my psychology, my preferences and my practical circumstances, how does this impact me? And you'll know, it's a matter of fact, how many people here have experienced this where you've done a marathon running program or something like that, and you end up gaining some weight or not losing any weight anyone in this room? Okay, so a couple of you. This is why in my opinion, so before we get into the to do stuff, does this make sense? And any questions about this?

Unknown Speaker [33:47]

Jade: [34:01] certainly for me it is but so and that's because I don't have the exercise efficiency to run if you guys ever see me running around Asheville, which you'll see very rarely. I'll look like I am in incredible pain. And I will look like I have no business running. However, I know some of you right like Ryan's not here, but I know when I see him running around is eat Okay, so I know when I see Ryan running around he looks so I see he looks his exercise efficiency is perfect. He looks like he's bouncing, having a great time. You know, he doesn't look like he's in pain. So for him that is not an intense and part of it is he's conditioned himself there but for him I would say that's not a problem. Yep. And how do you feel on it is it's the schmuck go out of check or not.

Unknown Speaker: [34:52]

Jade: [35:00] Yeah. Yeah. So is everyone hearing that? So essentially she's saying, you know, I'm addicted to running mentally and then right? And do you feel like you're you struggle with your weight at all? Or you're trying you're looking for a body comp goals? Because I think for a lot of us who are looking at you, I think, you know, to me, I'm like, you look great. You I see you around the gym, you function. Well, the question for you, though is, is this impacting my sleep, my hunger, my mood, my energy, my cravings, and or not achieving my body comp goals? Yes. Okay. So here's the in the move. So she says, yes, it is. I am struggling with sleep, hunger, mood, energy cravings. Yep. And maybe I would have better body calm goal. So what I would say is perfect, then all you need to really do is began to take this and move it to more of this. And then you'll see very quickly, within about two weeks or so, what it does to sleep, hunger, mood, energy, and cravings and what it does to body comp. So what I would say is do your 90 minutes, but do it walking, and still keep coming in here and doing your intense workouts, right? Yeah. And here's another way to do it, too. If you if you need that metal stuff, right? Then you could do can go out for your run, you can do 20 minutes of high intensity intervals really push and then walk the rest of the 90 minutes. So you to me. So the idea here is sometimes for some of it is a leap of faith to be like, Okay, let me try this and see how it works. But at least now, you know, if you're doing everything right, and you're not getting results, you're not doing everything right. And this might be the move to make. So there's absolutely nothing wrong with running and cardio and all that kind of stuff. In fact, people like me need to do a lot more of it. It's just that for some people, it's not working for their goal set and it is impacting the stress management a little bit.

Unknown Speaker: [37:07] 

Jade: [37:25] And yes, they were they tried to stratify equal groups. Yeah. And let's talk about hormones just a minute as it pertains to women really quickly, because there is a difference here. And there is stuff that goes around and says, Hey, can women intermittent fast? The answer is absolutely. Can women do keto? Absolutely, the issue becomes that there are true biological differences between men and women and their hormones. And estrogen and progesterone play a very powerful role here. So you're essentially talking about this idea of female hormones. So the best way to understand this, from my perspective is to see them as non-identical twin sisters. Okay. They're not identical estrogen and progesterone because they, they don't do quite the same things. But they're twins because they are completely reliant on each other. Now estrogen is the athlete, entrepreneur. The go getter, the type a sister, she's like, let's go see some people raising their hands. But Sarah, that's me. So estrogen is like, go, go, go, go. Let's go. Let's kill it. I'm ready. Let's come on. Let's get the workout. And let's do all this stuff. And progesterone is like, wait a second, Gusau. Calm down, right. She's the artist, right? She's the she's more motherly. She's the worrier. And so these two, you can see how these two work together. And in the female cycle, it's really interesting, right? Because if this is day one of menses first day of bleeding, what happens is, progesterone is like this. And estrogen is like this. And then here, when ovulation hits, you get a little dip in estrogen. That's why some women will spot here and then you kind of get this fall off like that. And with progesterone, it kind of goes like this. So you see, this is progesterone time, post ovulation, and this is estrogen time. So when would be the best time for women to go on an intermittent fasting program, a Keto program, train a little harder, do more cardio, eat a little bit more estrogen makes the female metabolism a little bit more insulin sensitive. So when she's in an estrogen dominant state, she can eat a little bit more without gaining fat or eat a little less without losing muscle. And she can really push sort of hard here. When progesterone is dominating, that might be a time where women need to kind of take it a little bit easy and this is how you want to know how intelligent the metabolism is. Progesterone makes the body less insulin. When sensitive, why would that be necessary because at ovulation a baby might be coming along and the body goes, look, we're gonna need some extra blood fats and some extra blood glucose in case there's a baby coming along, calm down estrogen, let's rest now let's recover. We need to conserve our energy. And so this is how this happens now by the way, it menopause and perimenopause every single time you go through menses, if you're a younger woman you're going through menopause just doesn't last. It's a mini menopause. perimenopause is a prolonged, you know, premenstrual syndrome in a sense. And women who've gone through this, as total have told me this, and I get the fact that this is ridiculous, since I've never had a menstrual cycle. And I'll never go through menopause. But this is what this has been my work my whole life, right. But this is partly what they need to control for to really answer the question. That's why I wanted to go through this to really answer the question, how do we judge this with debt, women of different ages? If they were really going to answer that question, they would need to essentially control for this. And they don't control for this, which is why most research done is done on men. And you want to know why simply because every single woman looks different. It's almost like a fingerprint, I've run 1000s of these hormone profiles, and I've never seen one look the same. And I've rarely seen one from month to month look the same from even in the same woman. And this is why and it is a huge problem. But this is why in research, we tend to want to just say let's not deal with women. That's absolutely insane when you think about it, right? Which is why it took until 2001 for regulating bodies to say look, females are underrepresented in all the research on exercise and diet. Yet they are the primary ones that seek out because men just don't do this. They just let themselves just go and then die. And women are proactive. Right? Women are proactive, and yet we don't have a whole lot of answers. So actually, my entire career has been in metabolism has been essentially understanding this stuff with women. And since it looks like you all are interested in this, I'll tell you one, a couple things to do at menopause and perimenopause. Same Yeah. So here's the interesting. Here's the interesting thing at perimenopause, right, so at perimenopause, what ends up happening is progesterone falls, while estrogen is still there. So estrogen loses her twin sister. So when you think estrogen they'll do she's not gonna be happy about that, right. So progesterone falls, and estrogen starts jumping all over the place. Sometimes it's high, sometimes it's low. This causes hot flashes. This causes mental emotional stuff. By the way, just if you want to write this down to remember, especially young women might who are still menstruating might want to understand this. Estrogen helps with dopamine and serotonin, serotonin, we think of it as a relaxing neurotransmitter, but it's really a self-esteem. It really helps you feel good about life. Dopamine is sort of the pursuit of something. And so you can see why estrogen is sort of this hormone that really helps women feel good about themselves and want to attack life. So when that starts to jump around, and you start feeling like what the hell is going on, by the way, women who are in CrossFit and other things where they push their bodies really hard and lose a lot of body fat can also start to experience this, what they're seeing is a drop in progesterone, it drops first with stress. And then estrogen goes crazy here, right? So progesterone and estrogen both help manage cortisol. Think of it as Joan of Arc. She's got her suit of armor, that's estrogen, she's got her shield, that's progesterone, she's got her sword, that's testosterone, all of a sudden, she gets her shield knocked away. That means she's less able to handle stress. So what's the move here, then move here is more rest and recovery. Which is exactly the opposite of what a lot of women do. Because they start seeing that stress is a problem. They start seeing weight gain around the middle because of this cortisol effect. And what do they do diet harder, exercise harder. And instead, what they should be doing is realizing this is a stress effect. And I need to handle this. And by the way, it is the same similar thing here. For men. It's just that they're dealing with one hormone only now at post our menopause, then what happens here is progesterone falls and estrogen falls. So at this point in time for women, not only do they need to reduce stress over here, but now you're going to add one other component. Now you might want to consider decreasing carbohydrates as a percent of calories, you've still got to watch calories, but now you might want to cut carbs down a little bit, especially to refined carbs because you've lost some of your insulin sensitivity. Does that make sense? And then at post menopause, one of the things that a lot of people don't know is that at post menopause, you start to become relatively more testosterone dominant. Use, testosterone still falls, but it doesn't necessarily fall as much as estrogen and progesterone. So you start to have a little bit more testosterone dominance here. So the move here would be increased resistance training. So you see this 123 punch for this situation. And by the way, it's also very similar for men except for men. One and two, testosterone falls, right? It's just, it's really all three of these for men. It's just like testosterone falls right around here. And they need to do the same three things in a sense, because testosterone is essentially doing what estrogen and progesterone are doing. Does that make sense? So if you want to handle this at perimenopause, you start resting like crazy, more spa time, more meditation, more massage, all that kind of stuff, and menopause, decrease your carbohydrates as a percent of calories. And at a post menopause, increased resistance training, and this is going to solve a lot of the issues and most physicians aren't going to tell you that.

Jade: [46:19] so the question is, if your hormones are completely out of balance, or out of whack, do you recommend supplements? Yes, there are some supplements that you can use here and the first move here at perimenopause, talk to you I am a physician, but I'm not your physician. So talk to your doctor about this. I'm not licensed in in North Carolina, but perimenopause, one really good one is vytex. And the reason why is because vytex makes the hypothalamus a little bit more sensitive to progesterone. And so even though you have a little less than metabolism can hear it a little bit. So vytex is really a good move here. Another great move here is oral progesterone therapy, bioidentical. Another great move here these would be there's others, but these would be the big ones, right? And then at menopause, Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy is something to consider. But here's the thing with this hormone replacement therapy. Here's what to know about this, it does seem to give you a slight gain in weight. Okay, however, it is very clearly reduces belly fat deposition. So you might gain a little bit part of that game, by the way is a little bit of muscle because estrogen is like, like testosterone. It's a muscle promoter. Right? But it may help you gain it may cause you to gain weight here and why here's the you already understand why anytime you speed up metabolism, it's the same reason exercise doesn't always lead to weight loss. It's the same reason cold exposure, you know, everyone getting these cold plunges. You know, everyone's in these cold plunges. And everyone's talking about these cold plunges. And these cold plunges, had been shown to increase fat burning. And guess what they have not been shown to do. They have not been shown to help you lose weight. So you might say well, wait a sec. Jade just said they helped you increase fat burning. So does exercise what else they do they increase hunger for most people. That's why they don't seem to cause weight loss doesn't mean they're not great for you. But guess what else does that bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, even if it's natural hormones will boost metabolism. You think oh, that's a good thing? Well, not if you're one of these people who responds to an increase in metabolism with increased hunger. So when you do bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, there's one thing you can do to keep that from happening. increase protein intake. It's the number one way to have hunger suppression without a ton of calories. That makes sense. And then at post menopause, same thing bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. And one question I know will come up is when for when testosterone therapy for men and women, right? testosterone for women is primarily involved with libido. Right? So if a woman is really having difficulty with libido, and that's an issue, she definitely wants to look at her testosterone. And that's going to happen probably around, you know, the age of you know, late 50s, early 60s If it begins to happen. Now, for men, there is a real problem with testosterone in men in the West. And this can happen. I mean, I'm seeing it in some of my friends. I'm 50. Now they're in their early 30s, some of my friends, and they are starting to already see this. But in general, I would say right around 45-50. If you're a man and you start noticing issues with erection, mainly issues with Drive, and the feeling of winning, it's more that you're going to want to be thinking about testosterone. We don't know. We don't know. And actually there's better reporting in the West. So the question was, why is it an issue in the West? There's better reporting in the west they might be going on everywhere. And we don't actually know we're also seeing sperm levels declining hugely in, in men like it's a huge problem. So part of see later. So part of what we part of what we think is happening. And by the way, this is applicable to women as well as we are swimming in estrogens, persistent organic, pollutants, Falaise from plastics, all of these things are estrogen mimickers. And so in a sense, we are estrogen-ising men, we know that these things are prevalent, and we're also potentially increasing estrogen dominance. And a lot of women, by the way, guess what's the best way to get rid of these things? Sweating, sweat therapy. And actually, you seem to there's a really interesting study, I used to say sauna would be the best. But it was actually really interesting study that's sweating. When you move, which doesn't make sense. Because you get more blood flow, it's less, it's less passive, more active, you actually release more of these things in your sweat. So this, this does lend itself to this idea of when you are and this one of things I love about this particular Gym, in the summer, it is very hot, and you get really, you get really sweaty. And that's actually what you want. You don't want fans on you necessarily when you're working out you want to sweat you want to be and you'll release a lot of these things. And then also this idea of sauna.

Jade: [55:34] And let's get back to the show. So we know what this thing is. And this will be effective from for anywhere from one week to you know, so we'll say one week to four weeks. Okay? So it can be pretty effective up to that time. By the way, some people go much longer with this, how do you know, when my snake goes out of check, it's probably not working anymore, right. So eat less, exercise more. Now, here's the big mistake that people make who want to perform better a lot of CrossFit athletes do this. No athlete in their right mind who was training at a high level eats less and extra exercise is more, they eat more, and they exercise more, right. And so what they do is not this, they also don't do this, eat more exercise less, which is the couch potato. Right? Now most people in the Western world do this, the body reaction, check out a check. And then they do this. And both of these are stressful states. And you oftentimes hear people go, oh, you're not losing weight, you're under stress, some coaches will be savvy enough to tell you this, and then they go. So we'll just put you back here, just do a little less and eat a little more exactly the wrong thing to do. It's taking you from one stressful state to another stressful state, what you want to do is move to eat more, exercise more. This is the athlete toggle. So this is what most people who do CrossFit and love this lifestyle should be doing. By the way, how long will can you do this before it starts to become detrimental about four to seven days.

Jade: [57:27] So nice, long weekend with a family Thanksgiving, Christmas, no problem. If you're training like this, most of the time. In fact, this can be very useful for you, if you've been killing it nonstop in the gym. If you do this for any longer than that it starts to cause issues. And you probably have, all of you have probably seen this happen where you go away, you go on vacation, you take it easy, whatever you want. And you go, I look great, I feel great look great, right four to seven days. That's because it took the stress off of the system. But you do it longer than that you're in trouble in my right. So we all know what that's like. This is where most of us who love this lifestyle want to be living. Then when we want to lose weight, what we do is we come over here and we dip our toe in the water of this for a short period of time, then we come back to this. And we jump back and forth from here to here, not back and forth from here to here. See the subtle difference once you start understanding what is going on with stress in the physiology, and then there's one toggle here that is probably the best toggle for fat loss out of all of them. And none of you want to hear about it. Because this because this is not your lifestyle high on your display Jade Shut the hell up. I don't want to hear about this. And that is this lifestyle here. Eat less exercise less. This is what I would call the hunter gatherer toggle. People think that hunter gatherers, you know, are out there, they actually walk about 20,000 steps on average, you know, the men, the women are about 14,000 steps on average is not that much plenty nurses, you know, people who have jobs, construction workers, they walk about that amount as well. Part of what we know is that they rest a lot. And one of the interesting things about the research on hunter gatherers is they don't rest like we rest, they rest like this. And this is this is burning calories and they sit here and they talk to you and whatever and they don't have chairs and they're up moving around and that stuff burns a ton of calories, but they're walking constantly. Then they have little short bursts of activity, but they're mostly resting all of the time. This is a really great way to approach life. And by the way, this is why when you go to Paris, and you walk around, which is one of my favorite cities, and you see these elderly men and women so thin, right and so fit and they're carrying all their groceries up to their fourth-floor apartments, and they eat very little but they eat whatever they want. They're having baguettes, they're eating, they’re doing all this stuff, but they eat very little and they move a ton. This you can live in this pretty much indefinitely, right? So we can say this is indefinite. This, by the way, for most people three to four months before you're going to need a break. Again, how do you know that you spent too long in one or the other SHMEC goes out of check and or body comp, changes. And so this is actually what you want to be doing for performance. So I'm gonna stop there, because I noticed a lot of we keep going, you're gonna kind of be like, this is probably too much, but we'll cover as much. If you have questions, we can cover as much detail as you want.

Unknown Speaker: [60:42] 

Jade: [60:58] So intermittent fasting is one of these things that, by the way, is very healthy with the right person. So here's what this looks like, if you fast. By the way, I would say based on the research, let's just go through fasting really quick. Based on the research what we want, you don't even have to fast you just need, you know, ideally, a 12. 12 is what everyone should be doing, which means you eat for 12 hours, you don't eat for 12 hours. So that's one of the first things to do. Now, once you start going above that, you can start stressing out the system, right? However, a fast of this is what's really cool fast for about one to two days is really kind of beautiful, because you won't lose, you'll lose very little muscle here, if any at all, your body can handle it just fine. It's just a little uncomfortable. If you're not used to it, you release things like growth hormone, and other promoters that work really well for the body. So one or two days here, I would say that is the short extreme version of this. And when I say one to two days, I mean, like a water fasts like nothing else, right. That's how well the body can do with with this kind of thing. And it can be very, very healthy, healthy. Now, you can also do something like a 16, eight, right, where some people can live here. So basically, what this means is 16 hours without food, eight hours with food, and some people can live here. Now again, how do you know SHMEC. And check. This is why it's so important to speak the language of metabolism. And if you're a menstruating woman, guess when you're going to be better able to tolerate this, at times when estrogen are relatively higher. Right? That's when you're going to. And so you might know this might not be a good idea leading up to menses, because you don't have the hormonal system in charge there. So this is absolutely perfect. Probably everyone needs to do this. This is where it starts to get a little iffy to, you know, to your question. And then the further farther you go with this, right, you start going 86 You know, right, or, you know, 24 that's when you can start running into problems. But some people can handle this just fine. And by the way, what I would suggest if you love intermittent fasting, it can be one of the healthiest things you can do. You do this on ELEL days. Now for most of us, we've graduated to a point where we know when we're training hard, and we know when we have days off, so just eat in an EMEM fashion. On the days you train, and eat and an ELEL fashion on the days you don't train. So on the days you train, you might want to just do a 12, 12 type of thing and eat all the food, right? Eat all the things on the days you don't train, you might want to do one of these. That makes sense. And you'll know and here's the reason why the rules are not hard and fast, because you are all uniquely different. But what I would say is that very short periods are very good. Once you start going for almost everyone, once you start going over four days of no food, you're gonna start running into potential issues and you get this rebound hunger and cravings and SHMEC goes out of check, and then it becomes intermittent fattening instead of intermittent fasting. Because you basically you're so hungry, you eat all the calories back and then some. So you want to watch this SHMEC in check here. Any other questions about that?

Jade: [64:42] Yeah, so the question is, what do I think about adaptogens? Well, this is such an astute question, right? Because if we are in a situation where stress is the major culprit, and we have things called adaptogens in the natural world, which by the way do not exist so far as we know so far. We have not discovered any adaptogens in the traditional conventional pharmaceutical world. But in the natural world, there are things called adaptogen. So you might say, well, Jade, what the hell is an adaptogen? Well, I talked about the idea that the metabolism functions on the Goldilocks zone, right? Well, adaptogens help you with that Goldilocks effect. So things like ashwagandha, things like rhodiola, you may have heard of some of these schizandra. These are compounds. And if you haven't heard of these things, these are compounds that they bait, they come from plants, they are have been used for 1000s of years one. So one thing about this is that probably tells us they're pretty safe. Lots of humans have taken these things over long periods of time. And there's lots of good data, I'll give you two since it seems like not Oh, not everyone's familiar, I'll give you my two favorites. My one of my favorites is ashwagandha. For men, and women, this is fantastic. For different reasons, in men, this will actually raise testosterone levels, which is really, really nice. One of the indications for ashwagandha by the way, this isn't the case for everyone. But if you are fatigued with anxiety, everyone knows what this is like in my world. In the functional medicine world, we say you're wired but tired, right? Ashwagandha is great for people who are wired, but tired. These will be the people who are having difficulty sleeping, fragmented, sleep wake up repeatedly in the night. And they don't understand why Ashwagandha is really good for that. Now ashwagandha can in some people have a paradoxical effect. What that means is in some people, where it's calming, and most people and some people can have a reverse effect. Again, this goes back to our unique physiology, it rarely happens. But it does happen because I've seen it happen clinically. So if that happens, you're like Jay, and you told me he's going to calm me down. Now I'm going crazy. You know what happened, right? And the other one is Rhodiola. And Rhodiola is kind of for people who are tired and tired. So they are tired and depressed. This is really wonderful for fatigue. These two are what you're going to see most in this population, people who are wired but tired. Ashwagandha is your first move here. And then people who are tired and tired Rhodiola or people who are like really wanting to push getting ready for the games or something like that. And they're really sort of in a heavy training zone, maybe both of these. Now again, paradoxical effects can happen with Rhodiola. It's really great for fatigue. But it is, you know, can in some people cause fatigue. By the way, what's really interesting about this talking about hormones in men and women adaptogens work at the level of the hypothalamus. So you may have heard this term adrenal fatigue in the functional medicine world is not that's not what we're you actually, there's no real such thing as adrenal fatigue. In that sense. It's coming from the area of the brain called the hypothalamus. This speaks to the adrenal glands. But these are really powerful. And you can go and search adaptogens mattify out, I'm going to do a podcast on this soon, because I get this question all the time. But to me, it's such an astute question, because these are powerful. And I would say most of us would benefit from using these, they're very safe and we'd benefit. Yeah. Yeah. So the question is, is there a company that that you love, so they're in in the in this world, there are companies who primarily sell to physicians or used to now that's changed as Amazon has come along. And because of that, they standardized their products, they do internal testing, they really try to make sure that what's in the product is in there, and any other things that are not? Are, you know, left out. So my favorites are Thorne research, pure encapsulations, those would be my two favorites, you can designs for health. Those would be my three top, you know, sort of favorites, the ones I've used most in the clinic. And as it pertains to ashwagandha, you can look for anything that says ksm 66. That's the type of ashwagandha that has been studied the most. So if you find a product that says you know, it's got ksm 66 in it, that's a good indication, maybe you want to try these but these can be highly beneficial, especially for us this population of people who love to work out, eat and exercise in a way that can be a little stressful at times. Any other questions?

Unknown Speaker [69:47]  

Jade: [70:05] So the question is you're moving along just fine losing fat, gaining some muscle. And that starts to reverse, right? So now you started to put some fat on, and your stomach is fine. But you're seeing this change. And then you make some changes. How long do you take to see if the changes take effect? Right? So usually what I like to do is within one to two weeks, you should see that the changes that you've made to diet and exercise are having an effect, right? So you don't want to go if two weeks go by and it's not reversing, then you still not doing everything. Right. You want to go ahead, Sarah, and then we'll go to you next.

Unknown Speaker: [70:47]

Jade: [70:58] Yeah, so the question is, alright, so if I want to intermittent fast, and I want to see how effective it is, for me, how long do I go with the intermittent fasting to make sure that I've properly vetted it? Right, I think that's your question. So the answer to that is, what I would tend to do is I would start with a simple thing of 16, eight, either cutting out breakfast or dinner, one or the other. And I would go anywhere from two to four weeks with that, and see if it begins to throw SHMEC out a check. Now here's what's going to happen. The first half of the first week we our hunger is related to it's like we're like Pavlov's dogs. If we're used to eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at a particular time, we will habitually get hungry at breakfast, lunch and dinner. So give it about three to four days for that to reset, and then give it about two to four weeks to see if it's happening in effect. Now, by the way, here's how you know it's having effect. This is something you might want to write down in terms of being a metabolic detective. Three things will happen if you're moving in the right direction. SHMEC will be in check. Just remember SHMEC is also a catch all phrase for exercise performance, exercise, recovery, and all those other things. So it's not just sleep, hunger, mood, energy and cravings. It's all the other biofeedback. So if you're doing things, right, SHMEC will be in check. That's number one. Number two to Andy's point, right? It'll be you're going to run into a situation where body composition will be optimizing or maintaining at an optimal level. Right? So SHMEC is in check. body comp is good. Then the next piece is your vitals, right? blood pressure, blood sugar, laboratory measurements, respiration rates, all that if you're one of these people that's into tech, like I were in or reading, I know some of you were oops, and stuff like that, this stuff can be highly beneficial to catch some of these vital sign changes along the way. But if those three things are optimized, I don't care if you're eating cotton candy all day. That's the right diet for you. I'm not kidding. Now, we all know it's making fun, we know that probably no one in the world is going to thrive on cotton candy. But if you did, if your stomach was in check, your body comp was, you know, sort of moving in the right direction. And all your blood labs and vitals were optimizing, then that's the right diet for you. And can we all just admit that what works for Jade may or may not work for you in that way. So if you're intermittent fasting, that's what you want to say, is SHMEC in check is my body comp, optimizing. And are my blood labs and vitals moving in the right direction. And then as soon as SHMEC goes out a check or to your point the body caught you hit a plateau, then you might want to back off because now you know, hopefully, and you should just spread the word because people don't know is you just go no big deal. You just put yourself under too much stress your metabolism is under stress and what does the metabolism do when it's under stress? It goes back to the one historical stress it is prime more than any other thing to address and that is starvation. We evolved on a planet where food was not available so what is the starvation response? be hungry have cravings you know have my motivation be up sometimes and down others and slow metabolic rate and all of that. So when that starts to happen, you know you're under stress and something has to change.

Unknown Speaker: [74:14] sauna and cold plunge are so we talked about adaptogens sauna and cold plunge. And by the way, exercise of the right intensity and frequency is also an adaptogen sauna and cold plunge. Thermal challenges are one of the best forms of environmental apoptogenic response we can have. The command-and-control center of the metabolism is an area called the hypothalamus in the brain, it also regulates temperature. So when you're in sauna, your body goes okay, we need to adjust to this stress. Let's up regulate thyroid down regulate other things. You know, it's like exercise for your hormonal system. Then when you go in cold it goes oh, I need to now regulate that. And it kind of goes back and forth. And that is, in my mind, the best way to do this contrasting in the traditional way that the Finnish have done it and other cultures have done it. One of the things that you'll hear about coal plants, like, if you are one of the things about you guys know, Andrew Huberman and the Huberman lab podcast. So one of the things that I, me and him are going back and forth and basically I was essentially suggesting that he talks a lot about he talks a lot about upregulation of fat burning with cold plunge, which is absolutely true. But what it suggests to people is that that's going to cause them to lose weight, and it might, if you don't overeat, right, and so it can be highly beneficial for stress management, it may or may not be beneficial for weight loss, I would suggest if everyone could afford it, I think that is one of the best lifestyle, things you could do. If you want, one of the best things you could do for your body, absolutely get a sauna and a cold plunge, you know, is because it is one of these things that on every single level, it is a passive adaptation response. And you're in here in the gym, you're we're talking about the idea that metabolism is stress responsive, and you have this thing at home where you can get in four to five times per week and balance this stress out. It is highly beneficial reduction of risk and cardiovascular disease reduction of risk. And this is hot and cold. That's why I'm speaking of them the same reduction of risk and Alzheimer's, they released the same, they call them heat shock proteins, but they actually are released with cold too. So the you release these heat shock slash cold shock proteins. And these transcription factors that stabilize DNA that optimize hormonal output, it's about as healthy of a thing as you can do. And you don't need a whole lot, but you need about anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes of cold exposure per week. Usually the cold if you're if you're wanting numbers, usually these cold plunges will be anywhere from 40 to 50 degrees, you don't need to go much colder than that. And you just need like a few minutes, you know, several times per week to get to that, that mark and it's much easier if you come out of a sauna and get into it. And a thermal exposure you're talking about 60 minutes per week would be ideal. You know, so 3–20-minute sessions. And you know what I like to do if you are interested in trying this. We are actually in Asheville, we are incredibly lucky because we have a place called the sauna house. Anyone know that place? So that place is unbelievable for all of us because what it does is it allows you to do this contrast hydrotherapy in the traditional way, and it is incredibly unique out of any place I've been. I mean, I lived in LA and they didn't have one. You know, they're just now getting these and Asheville has one of the best. So I would go there if you all haven't explored that. Any other questions? All right, perfect. Thanks so much for having me, everybody. I appreciate it.