Next Level Metabolism Chapter One – Ep. 166

In this special episode, Dr. Jade shares with the Next Level Human Podcast listeners the first chapter of his upcoming book ‘Next Level Metabolism’. You will listen to the audible version of Chapter One and find out everything you need to know in order to comprehend metabolism and how it can work for you. Oftentimes seen as something hard to understand, metabolism can actually help you reach your goals in a smart way.

It’s important to know that if you are not getting results when it comes to your weight loss (or weight gain) journey is because you are missing something that needs to be addressed. At this moment, metabolism comes into place and that’s why it’s fundamental to know more about this topic. Also, it’s always good to remember that everyone is different and, as Dr. Jade points out in the episode, what works for others won’t always work for you.

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Podcast Intro: [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.

Episode Intro: [01:18] welcome to today's episode, everyone a little something different for you today, I just finished recording the audio book version of next level metabolism for Audible. I don't know how many of you are audio book enthusiast I certainly am someone who over the last five years has read almost all of my books, if not all of my books via audio book. It just allows me to walk and listen and I enjoy audio books more than I ever thought I would. And so I began to record my books in audible format or audio book format. And so this particular episode is going to be chapter one out of the next level metabolism audio book. And that is scheduled to be released on Audible in the next two weeks or so. So somewhere between probably around June 7, to June 14, you'll see that book become available on Audible but for now you can enjoy chapter one for this week's episode of the next level human podcast. I hope you enjoy it. And I will see you next week for a new episode. Enjoy the next level metabolism chapter one read.

[02:43] chapter one, the new science of metabolism. There's one complaint I have become nearly sick of hearing. People say it all the time. You likely hear it too if you work in the health and wellness field. Maybe it's something you've said to yourself again and again your frustration building every time the thought magnet your mind. The most common gripe among people trying and failing to lose weight is I'm doing everything right but I'm still not getting results. As tempting as it might be to use a claim like this to absolve ourselves of any blame for our lack of progress. The truth is simple. If you're doing everything right and not getting results, then you're not doing everything right. Most likely, the reason you're not doing everything right is that you're outsourcing your metabolism to other people. You're expecting your favorite podcaster, or the latest diet book, or some guy named Jay to give you a one size fits all solution to making your metabolism yield to your wants. You think you can do the same thing your friend did and get the same results. You're treating your metabolism like a video game, you can turn on whenever you want and play on your terms. That's not how any of this works. By denying you any real results. Your metabolism is basically grabbing you by the shirt collar and screaming, you better figure me out because if you don't, there is no way I'm ever going to work with you. The new science of metabolism is rooted in the idea that everyone is uniquely different. No two people have the same metabolism working in exactly the same way. Therefore, no two people are going to get results from the same single approach. Furthermore, each person's metabolism always has a reason for doing whatever it is doing at any given moment in time. It never acts randomly. It's never unprovoked. And if it seems as if your metabolism is acting against you rather than with you, I can promise you it is also desperately trying to tell you why. Your metabolism is always talking to you. But before you can ever begin to interpret its message you first have to understand it's a language. The metabolism doesn't speak English. It speaks metabolism. If you hope to understand it If you're going to need to learn how to hear it. When it comes to deciphering the language of metabolism, you need to become acquainted with the three rules governing its behavior. I call them the three laws of metabolism.

[05:18] Law Number one, the law of metabolic flexibility. It might seem logical to assume a fast metabolism is ideal. But the truth is, you don't want a fast metabolism, you want a flexible metabolism. The reasoning is simple. If you speed up metabolism, you also speed up hunger and cravings. A flexible metabolism, however, doesn't let a lack of food send it straight into starvation behaviors. You want a metabolism that can adapt to the environmental stresses and strains it will experience. Your metabolism should be like a thick rubber band, you can pull and stretch and turn every single way. However, the more you do the traditional weight loss approach of eat less exercise more, which I abbreviate as ELEM the more your metabolism becomes like one of those skinny frayed bands that breaks as soon as you pull on them. ELEM creates an extreme calorie gap, which is the difference in the amount of energy you're taking in and the amount of energy you're putting out. The longer you try to stay in that gap, the more stress you're putting on your metabolism. What does the stress barometer do to compensate? It increases hunger and cravings and makes energy unstable. And that's not the worst of it. It also down regulates your resting metabolic rate. This is a natural protective mechanism against hunger. Some research suggests in average a decline of 100 calories resting energy use. However, certain individuals can see resting metabolic rates declined by over 300 calories daily. Still, others may see no change. So you go on an e l e m diet, bust your butt to create a 300 calorie deficit work like crazy to stay on that diet and your metabolism rewards you by ramping up hunger and wiping out energy. The result? No results. ELEM puts you in a tug of war with your metabolism. You pull on it, it pulls back, you pull again, it pulls back even harder until it literally yanks you off your feet. Do you know the only way to win a tug of war match against a stronger opponent. When they pull you let go of the rope. In this case, that means realizing e l e m can no longer be the only solution you have. If you keep doing e l e m for long periods of time, your metabolism becomes more and more rigid until you make some real changes to get it back to its normally flexible state. Metabolic compensation is also the reason why the cast of the Biggest Loser aren't lining up to do reunion shows. Most of those people not only gained back all the weight they lost, but they also threw their metabolism out of whack. A study of some of the contestants six years after their participation showed most had metabolic derangement that made it harder for them to achieve and maintain weight loss. The good news, however, is that you can't ever break your metabolism. Metabolism will always do whatever it naturally does. You can however, reverse any damage you might have done by adhering to the new science, metabolic compensation and multitasking. To fully appreciate how metabolism functions you must understand to metabolic behaviors, metabolic compensation, and metabolic multitasking. Metabolic compensation is relatively straightforward, but has several elements to it. It is exactly what it sounds like. When the metabolism is confronted with stress in the outside world, temperature, challenges, food shortages, threats to safety, exercise, excess etc it will institute its survival software and compensate in an attempt to regain balance. In essence, it is trying to mitigate extreme calorie imbalances and recoup any large energy losses. For someone who's trying to lose body fat this is an especially important process to understand. Metabolism acts like one big sophisticated stress barometer, and a gap in the amount of energy you take in from food and the amount of energy you burn through activity is a major source of such stress. The wider that gap becomes the more pressure the metabolic barometer registers, the energy gap widens and the metabolism reacts, which is what I call metabolic compensation. There are several ways the metabolism begins to compensate, and none of them are helpful if you want to attain and maintain fat loss. Adaptive thermogenesis is the term used in research to describe a drop in metabolic rate to help mitigate against prolonged energy disturbances. Metabolism has several elements its resting energy expenditure or REE, also called resting metabolic rate, or BMR is the number of calories the metabolism is burning at rest. REE is often used interchangeably with the basal metabolic rate or BMR, but they are slightly different. BMR is the amount of energy that metabolism burns when you're at rest first thing in the morning on a completely empty stomach 12 hours of fasting lying still in the dark. In other words, BMR is a slightly more stringent measurement than REE. But for the purposes of most discussions on metabolism, REE and BMR are considered synonymous unless you are a metabolism researcher. Basically, they represent the amount of energy you would need if you were to lie on your bed all day and do nothing else. Your metabolism uses a large amount of energy just to keep you alive and REE and BMR are measures that tried to quantify this minimum energy use BMR accounts for about 60 to 70% of metabolic energy use and is regulated largely by things outside of your immediate conscious control, such as the amount and activity of hormones like leptin, thyroid, estrogen and testosterone. Immune regulation is also a sizeable component of the amount of energy the metabolism uses at rest. Research estimates then an activated immune system can use 25 to 30% of BMR. Like the brain, the immune system adjusts the metabolisms energy priorities. The brain and the immune system are also peculiar in the way they access the energy they need. Neither the brain nor the immune system requires insulin to access glucose. In fact, this may be one previously underappreciated aspect of insulin resistance. The brain via control of stress hormones and the immune system through the release of inflammatory cytokines can induce insulin resistance in other tissues. In the case of the brain, sympathetic neurons directly inhibit insulin release, and peripheral hormones like cortisol antagonize the action of insulin at other tissues. The immune system uses insulin in a different way. Like the brain, the immune system does not need insulin for its fuel needs. Instead, it uses insulin as a growth promoter. Researchers have shown that immune cells are less numerous and less active when their insulin receptors are compromised. This may be a backdoor mechanism the metabolism uses to free up glucose to the two systems most critical for its survival, the brain and immune system, while decreasing glucose use in all other tissues. I realize this is complex biochemistry, but an understanding of the way the metabolism handles stress is essential. Stress to the metabolism includes infections, injury, and extreme gaps between energy intake and output. When the metabolism is under assault from severe or prolonged calorie deficits induced by eating less and exercising more, it alters these metabolic hormones to bring the metabolic rate down. This is why the calorie levels predicted by weight loss equations are never accurate. They are trying to match a moving metabolic target. It is important to address a few common objections related to reductions in resting energy use. Some argue that when a person loses weight, the number of calories they will burn is reduced. Obviously, if you have less body tissue, you will burn fewer calories. That's absolutely true. However, studies show that reductions in BMR are much greater than would be predicted based on weight loss alone. In other words, a person who dies to 180 pounds will be burning fewer calories than if they were that same weight without dieting. Something about dieting, adjust the metabolic thermostat downward. The body of research hints that approximately 5% of that downward reduction can last a very long time, perhaps permanently. Some researchers still debate the degree of this metabolic slowdown and whether it exists at all pointing out that individuals measured in an isocaloric state don't show this effect. Only those in a current hypocaloric state do. This is a point of clarification we need to lead to future studies. At the time of this book, there is no clear consensus. Another common belief is that BMR can be changed significantly with increased muscle mass. However, research shows there is only a six to 30 Extra calorie burn with each pound of muscle. Not a big difference maker. Extra muscle makes its greatest contribution when it is moving, but metabolic compensation has an insidious effect there as well. A final note on adaptive thermogenesis; It does not work in the other direction, when the calorie gap moves from eating less and exercising more to exercising less and eating more the metabolism will adjust its metabolic thermostat upward to dissipate some of the excess energy. That's the good news. The bad news is this metabolic upregulation is less robust and responsive than the metabolic down regulation that occurs with dieting. This tells us something important about metabolism. In the evolution of human metabolism, metabolic compensation was more important to guard against starvation as compared to overfeeding. Our physiology has not had to deal with overcompensation for most of its existence. In addition to reducing the BMR the metabolism also compensates by reducing another component of metabolic output called NEAT. NEAT is an abbreviation for non exercise activity thermogenesis; basically is a fancy term for activities of daily living. When you go get the mail, walk up steps brush your teeth, walk from your car to the store, have sex do the laundry walked a dog fidget or toss and turn in your sleep NEAT is happening. The amount of energy burn accumulated through meat is one of the elements most underappreciated by dieters. NEAT makes up 15 to 20% of total daily energy burn. In comparison, the amount of energy burned through exercise, abbreviated eat in research, exercise associated thermogenesis is only about 5%. This is one reason why casual walking meet may make a more significant contribution to weight loss than formal exercise, NEAT. It is also why NEAT and NEAT, moving and exercise need to be considered as separate things. Exercise is movement that is planned and structured whereas activities of daily living i.e. movement is not. In this book, I will use movement as the word for NEAT and exercise as a word for eat. Be sure to keep these distinctions in mind as you continue listening. You need to both move and exercise. But ultimately movement may be more important. If I had to choose I would rather you institute a walking program than an exercise program. And as you read further in this book, you'll understand exactly why not only does the metabolism compensate by reducing resting metabolic rate, it also compensates by changing neat and eat. To make up the calorie gap created with eating less and exercising more the body spontaneously and unconsciously reduces the amount of need it does. Even fidgeting and movements in sleep may be subconsciously reduced motivation to just get up and move also declines. This is another reason it is crucial to focus on moving over exercising. The compensations against exercise associated calorie burn are especially interesting. Most people think the energy they burn when they exercise is additive in nature. If you normally burn 2000 calories at rest, then go for a 300 Calorie run, you likely assume you burn 2300 calories total. In fact, metabolic compensation causes the energy burn from exercise to be constrained whereas you may normally burn 300 calories on that run. A severe or prolonged calorie gap produced by eating less and exercising more reduces that calorie burn so that other metabolic parameters are reduced by 200 to 250 calories. The exact amount of reduction is debatable. So these numbers are just to illustrate the point. It's like trying to drive your car with the parking brake on the car might move, but it is going much slower than it normally would. This constrain metabolic response is not immediate, but rather kicks in after several weeks or months of continuous exercise. Research has not yet determined if certain types of exercise are more or less sensitive to this response.

[18:58] My theory is the short intense exercise focused on weight training over cardio may suffer less of this constrained response because it is less stressful, less stressful because it packs a large volume of exercise into a short period of time and therefore reduces the overall time spent exercising. Given that we know short lived stresses are generally better tolerated by the body. This makes sense. We won't know for sure until those studies are actually done. The final and perhaps most damaging aspect of metabolic compensation occurs in relation to hunger, energy and cravings, or what I call HEC, pronounced HEC dieting causes HEC to go out of check as you die by eating less and exercising more. The metabolism circumvents your efforts by ramping up hunger making energy unstable and unpredictable and inducing cravings for highly palatable calorie dense foods. If you have ever tried to willpower your way through a diet given into cravings and or had a cheat meal turn into a cheat month. You have seen this heck effect firsthand. The reductions in resting energy use daily activity, exercise motivation and energy burn, as well as unrelenting hunger and cravings are what you are up against. You can't win a battle of wills against your metabolism. The more you die at using the more traditional e l e m approach, the more rigid and stuck your metabolism can become. Understanding all the aspects of metabolic compensation is a critical first step in keeping the metabolism flexible and responsive.

[24:34] and let's get back to the show. Metabolic multitasking if that last bit of reading was depressing for you, this part should provide you with a little bit of hope. Another aspect of metabolism is that it is not a good multitasker. It either likes to be building muscle and fat nationalism, or burning fat and muscle catabolism it can do both but it's the metabolic equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your time For me, it takes monumental focus and a lot of time to practice. This simple fact explains why most people looking for body change end up in a position they did not intend to be in. Someone goes on a running program and cuts calories way back. As a result, they burn fat but burn a lot of muscle too. They end up thinner and flabbier what many refer to as the skinny fat look. Someone else eats a ton of protein and does nothing but weight training they end up gaining muscle and don't lose the fat or even gained some. This is the muscle fat appearance and is a major complaint of females who have been advised to follow diet and eating advice reserved for average male bodybuilders. These women are told it's impossible for them to bulk up. But building muscle under a layer of fat you are not burning or even gaining is like putting a jacket on top of two sweaters, you're going to look bulky. In order to avoid the skinny fat and muscle fast scenarios, you need to understand all four metabolic states. I will get into more detail on each toggle in coming chapters. But for now, you need to know metabolism doesn't simply come down to being either a couch potato or a constant dieter, eating less and exercising more is the dieters toggle, whereas eating more and exercising less is the couch potato. One of these metabolic States leads to being skinny fat and the other to muscle fat. To escape these metabolic outcomes, you need to learn to eat less and exercise less like a hunter gatherer or eat more and exercise more like an athlete. These two metabolic states keep the metabolism more flexible by teaching it to be a better multitasker. A flexible metabolism is able to change and adjust to different metabolic realities. Understanding these different metabolic toggles is going to be a huge part of your metabolic detective work moving forward, and we will dive deeper into each in the coming chapters.

[27:01] Pops and bugs. Environmental influences can also make metabolism more rigid, and the two biggest offenders are POPs and bugs, persistent organic pollutants, or POPs are chemicals of industry. Bugs is a term used in functional medicine to describe all the different bacteria living in a person's gut. POPs are ubiquitous in the environment. We breathe and drink them in all the time. Our bodies take these lipophilic or fat loving compounds and store them in our fat tissue. Then when we burn off that fat pops are released into the blood. Pretty horrifying, right? It gets worse. These POPs travel around acting like little computer viruses, targeting things like estrogen and thyroid hormone receptors, and generally wreaking havoc with them because hormones are always responding to their environment, any disruption can cause them to act out. Imagine your body is in the venue of an upscale cocktail party and your hormones are the guests. Everyone is dressed a certain way and acting on their best behavior. All of a sudden, a group of frat guys dressed in togas and toting beerbongs crashes the scene that cocktail party is going to descend into chaos. Once those hormones are out of whack, the metabolism begins to compensate, and everything becomes more rigid. This is why maintaining metabolic flexibility means you have to be aware of the Pops entering your system and do something to get them out. The gut is the second in command when it comes to metabolism. If the brain is the president of metabolic function, the gut is the Chief of Staff. The bugs, bacteria, collectively called the microbiome that live in your digestive tract acts synergistically with us, leading to metabolic health and flexibility. However, they can also have the reverse effect. The problem is that although we know these bacteria are playing a profound role on metabolism, we don't yet know exactly what to do about it. Even though you can find a great deal of information out there in the blogosphere in podcast land and on social media that tells you differently. The truth is that the science is still not completely clear on how to address the microbiome to impact change. It is one of the most fascinating areas of research into metabolism. But regardless of what you've heard, we don't yet know enough to deliver definitive prescriptions in this realm. This is because the microbiome is in constant flux, and relatively stable from individual to individual. We do have some hints that a less diverse microbial population in the gut is contributing and could even be causing weight gain or weight loss resistance. But in terms of the amount and types of bacteria, we are still largely in the dark. This is why supplemental Probiotics have failed to produce much in the way of results for weight loss. We do know that when we eat calorie, sparse, nutrient dense, hunger suppressing food foods such as low carb and low fat vegetables and proteins, the gut microbiome often takes care of itself. We don't yet know how to effectively replicate that using supplements and probiotics. I realize it can be frustrating not to have definitive answers to questions such as these. My promise in this book is to give you the truth about what we do and do not currently know. Sometimes we just have to be comfortable admitting what we don't yet fully understand and work with what we know at this point to be true. Remember that science is always emerging, and new data is coming to light every day. Staying flexible. If you want to stay flexible, the last thing you're going to do is sit in a chair all day, you're going to walk lift weights, do yoga and stretch. Metabolism works the same way to keep it flexible, you have to give it new challenges. That means you might want to begin exploring intermittent energy restriction or intermittent dieting, a technique using diet breaks in between calorie restricted times, you might want to try putting yourself into a new metabolic state. We've touched on the four metabolic toggles eat less exercise more ELEM, eat more exercise less EMEL eat less exercise less ELEL and eat more exercise more EMEM and there is technically a fifth, eat some exercise some ESES, which is basically just maintenance. All of these will be discussed in great detail in chapter five. But for now, I just want you to understand the value of exposing your metabolism to different things. The old idea that you can find one specific approach to diet and exercise and do it forever and ever is wrong. You have to let your metabolism adapt to different environmental circumstances, just as it did back when humans rarely had food readily available. Back then, metabolism was constantly responding to food shortages, unpredictable weather and threat from predators. These challenges forced it to become strong and adaptive. Today, we don't have the same issues to contend with. But we can expose our metabolism to short controlled types of stress to make it more resilient. Most people already do this, even if they're not aware of doing anything at all. It's common for people to expose their metabolism to 1000s of extra calories on the weekend, which is fine as long as they're aware of how they're doing it and not letting a cheat day turn into a cheat month. Similarly, you can put yourself in an ELEL state for two weeks, and then switch to EMEM for the following two weeks. You can do this in a very structured way when you decide ahead of time when you're going to enter each state. Or you can be more intuitive and let your metabolism tell you when it's time to switch things up. And believe me, it will hunger energy cravings sleep and mood will go nuts. And you'll know your metabolism is sending you a very clear message much more on this as well later take your metabolism to the next level. You have to bounce back and forth between these states in a way that works for you. For example, maybe your weekdays are mostly ESES your weekends are more EMEL and you throw in the occasional ELEL. I've switched back and forth between eating six smaller meals when I'm training hard EMEM than basically eating only one meal a day when I'm not working out too hard, ELEL. Again, you will learn much more about each of these different toggles and how to use them to your maximum benefit in chapter five.

[33:46] Law number two, the law of metabolic individuality. The next new law governing metabolism states that every single person is unique in many ways, but in for specifically, physiology, psychology, personal preference and practical circumstances. I call these the four P's of metabolic individuality. Your physiology is not identical to anyone elses. It's the reason you might be able to eat one single doughnut and experience no real impact. You can still work out, eat healthy otherwise and move on with your life. I however, might have that same doughnut and for the next month do nothing but binge on sugar and wine. Three months later, you're fine and I'm basically in an insulin coma. Every human being has a unique physiological response to different things. We all have different psychological responses as well. You may encounter a stressful event and feel alive and energized as a result. I may handle that very same situation with a feeling of overwhelmed panic. A breakup or loss of a loved one may cause me to lose my appetite for weeks while you go on a Ben and Jerry's binge Stress at Work disarray at home negative influence from people in our lives and just our natural personalities, worldviews and perspectives around events in our lives make a huge difference. We must be aware of these unique psychological Tennessee's and work to come up with our own well suited and individualized plans of coping. Depending on our individual personal preferences, a dietary change could be either impossible and miserable, or easy and enjoyable. I like wanting chocolate, you might like peanut butter and brussel sprouts. No matter what you're into, you can't just deprive yourself of everything you love when attempting to master your metabolism. You do have to remember, however, that the things you like are not necessarily the same things your best friend or neighbor or Art likes as well. Therefore, following whatever exact diet worked for them is never going to work for you. Furthermore, you might be a numbers person who loves to weigh, measure, calculate and write everything down. Or you might be someone who just wants to wing it. This is an example of where your psychological tendencies and personal preferences merge. Either approach is fine. As long as you also pay attention to the biofeedback signals your metabolism sends you related mostly to hunger, energy cravings, mood and sleep. If those things are off in any significant way, you might have to tweak your approach. Your practical circumstances also will inform many of your nutritional choices. You might live near Whole Foods with endless access to fresh produce. Or you might live in a food desert where the only place to shop for food is the nearest gas station. Your specific scenario is inevitably going to impact the approach you take to diet and exercise. The law of metabolic individuality says all of these factors matter more than a little bit. They influence everything about how and why your metabolism does what it does. You must take each into consideration when engineering the approach that is going to work for you. Bruce Lee once said, we all must absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically our own. The same is true for creating the diet and exercise program that will work best for you. You have to honor your own uniqueness. Otherwise you have no chance of sustainable success. When you cater your approach to your unique self, the seemingly impossible becomes very doable. My client Dale is a perfect example of this. Dale was a long haul truck driver who was 30 pounds overweight and diabetic when his wife forced him to come see me. Look, he said the minute I met him, I don't really want to be here. I'm not into all this natural food stuff. His main food sources he told me were truckstops gas stations and greasy spoons. I knew his unique physiology given his family history and current diabetes. I got a sense of his psychological tendencies too. He was a simple guy, a hard worker who dealt with the stress of his job by enjoying food, keeping things convenient, and not worrying about too much else. His preferences and practical circumstances were crystal clear. It would have been ridiculous to assume he was going to go from an overweight diabetic living off of fast food to a natural food enthusiast living off organic kale in wild caught salmon. My solution was to make small modifications that would add up to big results. I made him switch from regular coke to Diet Coke and from candy bars to protein bars. I suggested he swapped out his potato chips for Slim Jims, beef jerky or boiled eggs. I told him to eat wherever he wanted to, but to strip off the bones of his burgers and skip fat and carbs slash sugar combinations such as milkshakes, French fries and pastries. Knowing Dale had played football in high school, I gave him a few moves from his training days he could do at rest stops, including one minute sets of pushups or air squats at every stop. He thought all of this was a little weird, but it sounded doable, and said he would give it a try. I was convinced I would never see him again. But a few months later, Dale was back. He walked into my office and I honestly did not recognize him. He had lost over 25 pounds, was no longer taking his diabetic medication and was beaming from ear to ear. He excitedly told me how his regular physician was so impressed that he wanted to know what Dale was doing. Dale said, I told him you put me on the Slim Jim diet, and it has been the easiest diet I have ever done. Although I cringed at the idea of another doctor thinking I put their patient on a diet of Slim Jims and Diet Coke. I also thought it was hilarious. Dale story is one of the most impactful of my clinical career and illustrates how powerful individualized metabolic tendencies are. You simply can't ignore these four aspects of metabolic individuality and expect to make meaningful progress.

[40:04] Law number three, the law of psychic entropy. This law states that when you are drained, you have to allow yourself to recharge. In this law psychic means brain and entropy means loss of energy. This is more commonly known as brain drain. Your brain is like a battery. There are things that drain it and things that charge it. And it's important to be aware of both. A drain brain is a sure sign metabolism is under stress. Unfortunately, many things can contribute to that drain, our never ending to do lists, negative people traffic, chores, TV, diet, exercise, even our own self awareness and self editing. The good news is, there are plenty of things that can charge it as well. This can be anything that quiets the constant mental chatter, massage, music, hot baths, sex, meditation, mindfulness; all of these take us out of our heads and replenish our energy. Walking in nature is one of the best ways to recharge. By this I don't mean power walking, which actually can drain your battery as you push yourself to walk fast and burn as many calories as possible. I mean, strolling, looking at the trees, taking in your environment, and just enjoying the moment of being outside. When we experience brain drain, we tend to fall back on shortcut bad habits that puts stress on our metabolism. We grab a doughnut, we skip a workout, and we make excuses. Habits are the brains way of creating shortcuts for itself. Those shortcuts are most utilized under times of stress. When we hit brain drain, we revert back to old habits. We blame these reactions on a lack of willpower. People love to claim they have no willpower, when in reality we all do. And just like the brain willpower can be drained or charged. I actually prefer to call willpower skill power, because building any skill requires practice. And you have to practice building the skill of willpower. You need to understand what actions add more power to your batteries, and how to deal with the things that take that power away. Once you do, you are able to create stress band aids that protect you from defaulting to negative habits. We'll dig deeper into the specific ways you can do this in coming chapters. But for now, I just want you to understand that willpower is not something you do or don't have. It's a skill you build over time and continue to strengthen throughout your life. Easy is earned. This lack of a real endpoint is true of your entire journey to mastering metabolism. You've only arrived when arrival is no longer the goal. In other words, you're never going to end somewhere you're always becoming. In fact, the endless attempt to reach some kind of fictional finish line can be one of the biggest drainers of your willpower battery. If you constantly feel as if you need to get somewhere and are failing because you've not made it yet you're ultimately beating yourself up over something that doesn't exist. Comparison is another major energy drainer you cannot view your own experience through the lens of anyone elses. People often say to me, Jade, you had an easy because you've been doing this for 30 years, I'll never be like you. I always tell them, you’re right. You'll never be where I am because I have my own metabolic challenges. I have issues with pre diabetes and cholesterol that you might not have. I have a very specific body type that you probably don't have or want. So no, you are never going to be me. And I'm never going to be you. Everybody has their own journey their walking, and what it means to feel their best and function at their peak is different for every single person. The 4M's just as they are four main factors, making each of our metabolisms unique. There are four areas we can consciously influence to impact metabolic output, mindset, movement, meals, and metabolics. Mindset slash mindfulness mindset together with mindfulness and movement is the key way to take stress off the system. As mentioned in the explanation of the law of psychic entropy, mindfulness is an ideal way to recharge the battery. Again, this can be walking, particularly in green settings, listening to music, cuddling with pets, taking a bath, practicing meditation, getting a massage or stretching. Creative pursuits such as coloring playing an instrument and painting had been shown to lower stress in adults. We'll explore mindfulness in more detail in chapter nine movement. When I use the term movement, I'm referring to non exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Remember neat from earlier. I also often use movement and walking as synonymous as walking is by far the biggest contribution to NEAT. As a reminder, movement and exercise are not the same things. Exercise is a structured goal to achieve a particular outcome. Movement is everything you do to keep your metabolism flexible. Movement is about getting from point A to point B. Exercise is time bound and goal oriented. Movement is far more important and impactful than exercise. The goal is to move as much as possible, and exercise only just enough. Remember that metabolism is always measuring everything, including the tension on your body. When you're sitting in a chair all day, every day your metabolism becomes like a weak frayed rubber band. But when you're walking all day, every day and constantly using your muscles, which is what our metabolism is used to from our hunter gatherer days, your endocrine system instructs the metabolism to become more flexible meals. Meals refer to what you are putting in your mouth. When it comes to fat loss and body change meals means much more than nutrition. It's about the quality, quantity, timing and frequency of the things you eat, what you eat and when you eat, play a significant role in how your body responds. For example, if you eat most of your daily allotment of carbohydrates after exercise, you may recover better. If you are more insulin sensitive first thing in the morning as most of us are a doughnut early in the day has less of a negative response than a doughnut at night. energy producing macronutrients right before bed might lead to difficulty sleeping, or maybe eating your biggest meal in the evening results in a good night's sleep and healthier eating habits the next day. All of these things matter to metabolism. The bottom line is you can read every study and listen to every podcast about what you should and shouldn't eat. But ultimately, your body is going to tell you we are all different and there is no one size fits all or perfect diet for everyone. Metabolics is a catch all phrase I used to mean anything that tries to move or stimulate metabolism. This includes exercise as well as things like supplements and drugs. Metabolics can offer major benefits, especially when it comes to shaping the body, but they also can easily be overdone. Remember that metabolism is a stress barometer, and metabolics are intended to add only a small strategic amount of stress so the metabolism can adapt and get stronger. Have the four M's metabolics is the least important for most people, and the one that has the most potential for abuse. What many don't realize is that trying to stimulate boost or speed metabolism also usually elevates hunger and cravings. It's not that exercise is and powerful. It is the one tool we have to shape the body into a more athletic form. It's just that it is more of a shaper than a reducer. What you eat should be your focus for weight loss. Exercise, make sure the weight you lose is mostly fat rather than muscle. That and it's usually beneficial response on mood and health is its most valuable contribution to the Goldilocks zone. Although it's very hard to overdo mindfulness and movement, you absolutely can overdo both metabolics and meals. You also can under do each of the M's, you have to aim for the Goldilocks zone in each area. Not too much. Not too little. But just right. Eating too much or too little is going to cause problems for the metabolism as well exercising too much or too little. This is where most traditional dieters go wrong, they do too much metabolics not enough meals and completely disregard mindset slash mindfulness. Once you understand each of these four areas, you should be able to rank how well you're doing at each on a scale from one to 10. Maybe you eat very healthily, give yourself a 10 if you are taking advantage of metabolic but not overusing them. That's another 10. If you're not doing anything for mindset slash mindfulness, give yourself a zero. Maybe you take only about 5000 steps per day. That's a five for movement. Now you know where to focus your attention instead of trying to double down on diet and exercise. You can aim to incorporate some stress reducing techniques into your routine and find ways to be moving more throughout each day. Lo and behold, your cravings and hunger become normalized. Your energy is stable. Your sleep is on track and your mood is up. As soon as you know what changes you need to make you can set yourself on track for all week being at your best. Up until now you probably thought metabolism was just about diet and exercise. This is a huge mistake and the dieters main trap. Now you know, there are actually four areas you must address, not just to, if I were to prioritize eat into a dominance hierarchy for most people, I would say mindfulness and movement come first, as most people are unaware of them, and therefore neglect them. Of course, you must always honor your uniqueness. And if you find either meals or metabolics are your biggest block, honor that. However, if you are someone who scores low in all four areas, it's best to prioritize mindfulness and movement, as those are the first steps to taking stress off the system and controlling sleep, hunger, mood, energy and cravings.

[50:49] Again, this entire process has to be highly individualized, you must understand the three laws so you can know what your unique metabolism is doing and why you have to understand the four P's and the four M's because if you're going to build your own approach to taking your metabolism to the next level, you have to know what areas need your attention and understand that your plan will not mirror anyone elses. There's an old saying that if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. This hits the nail on the head pun intended when it comes to explaining what's going on in the mind of the dieter to truly master your metabolism, you have to stop being a dieter and start being a detective.