Is your metabolism slowing you down?  As a busy entrepreneur, you may not be paying attention to the signs your metabolism is sending you to communicate with you. There is two-way communication between you and your body and there are many factors that affect how your metabolism adapts depending on your lifestyle habits.  

Before I dive into the top 4 signs that may indicate that your metabolism is struggling, let’s understand the function of metabolism. This is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. During this process, calories in food and beverages are combined with oxygen to release the energy your body needs to function.

Even when you’re at rest, your body needs energy for all its functions, such as breathing, adjusting hormone levels, circulating blood, and growing and repairing cells. The number of calories your body uses to carry out these basic functions is known as your basal metabolic rate or resting metabolic rate.    

It is important to listen to the signals that your body sends you like mood, hunger, cravings, digestion, stress and sleep. These signals can tell you that your metabolism has downgraded in order to preserve energy in the body.  With a slower metabolism, you are burning fewer calories which means your body stores more body fat in order to use it as energy.   

Let’s review the top 4 signs that your metabolism is struggling: 

1. Cravings and hunger

   Are you skipping meals or forgetting to eat because of your busy schedule? Your body communicates to you just like you communicate to your body. When you send the signal to your body that you are not eating enough food or you’re restricting calories, you are sending your body the signal that there is not enough energy so your metabolism adapts. Our bodies are designed to help us survive and it’s very smart!

   Your body will send signals like hunger and cravings because it wants to get food into your body.  You may experience intense cravings, especially sugar because that is really quick energy your body can utilize.

2. Low Energy Levels

   Low energy levels can be a sign that your metabolism has slowed down because your body is trying to preserve energy.  This produces fatigue and a general lack of desire to do most things classified as NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis). NEAT is the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating, or exercising. You may notice behaviors like parking your car really close to the entrance as your body does not want to use the extra energy.

3. You’re on a diet but you’re not losing weight.

   If you have dieted for a long period of time, are undereating, or have restricted calories, your body thinks you are in starvation mode. Your body only cares about survival so when food comes in, it is like a sponge and hangs onto it and that is intentional because your body wants to survive and preserve energy.  The way that your body adapts is by downgrading your metabolism and it slows it down because if you did have a fast metabolism, you would starve faster. Your body does not feel safe enough to lose body fat and it does what it needs to do to protect itself.

4. You have digestion issues.

   When your metabolism slows down it tries to preserve as much energy as possible so it will slow down processes in your body that require a lot of energy like your digestion. It will suppress this process by slowing down the bowel transit time as a way to preserve energy. You may notice that your bowel movements are less frequent or you experience a lot of bloating.

If you can relate to any of these mentioned signs, you may be thinking “Well how do I fix this?” 

The good news is that our metabolism is adaptive and reactive depending on the signals we send it. Just like your metabolism can slow down it can also speed up.  When we start managing stress and eating to properly nourish our bodies and support a healthy metabolism, it will adapt in a positive direction. We can start reversing the signals we send to our metabolism so that we can get it to respond the way that we want it to.

These are four easy ways that you can start reversing those signals and speed up your metabolism.  

1. Reverse Diet

   The goal of a reverse diet is simply to restore metabolic and hormonal functions. This method should be used if you have a history of dieting or you are currently undereating. The best method to apply this is a long, slow approach that consists of incremental increases of your calories to get you to your maintenance calories.

   You can calculate your maintenance calories by taking your body weight and multiplying it by 14-15 (depending on activity level).  For example, if you are 150 lbs. and fairly active, you would take 150 X 15 = 2250 calories.

   Based on how many calories you are currently eating you would slowly increase your calories weekly by 10-20%  until you reach your target daily maintenance calories.  You should have a focus on also increasing your protein intake so be sure to incorporate protein with every meal.   I would suggest using a food tracker app like My Fitness Pal or Cronometer to easily track your food.

2. Get more sleep

   Your goal is to schedule eight hours of sleep per night as this will help with restoring your metabolism and hormonal function. If you struggle to get a good night’s rest or fall asleep easily,  here are some ways you can promote a great night’s sleep more often than not.

   -Commit to a consistent wake-up and bedtime every day

   -No electronics or TV one hour prior to bed

   -Stop drinking caffeine no later than 6 hours before bedtime

   -Establish a nightly routine

3. Decrease stress levels

   Stressors in life cause us to live in our sympathetic nervous system, or our “fight or flight” system.    This causes an increase in cortisol which allows us to handle the stress but also temporarily pauses regular bodily functions and slows metabolism.

   When you can calm the body and show it how to relax, the sympathetic nervous system recovers a sense of control, reducing the production of cortisol.

   Engaging in activities that calm the mind and are easy to do (something that makes you feel relaxed and centered) is a great way to decrease your stress levels. For example: praying, meditating, pilates, yoga, exercise, walking on the beach, or catching up with friends.  As entrepreneurs, it is common to have high-stress levels, schedule some time into your day or week to help bring your stress levels down.

4. Strength Train

   Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, and building muscle can help increase your metabolism. Lifting weights will help you build more muscle tissue which will boost your resting metabolism — and that makes your body burn more calories. This means at rest you will burn more calories each day. Ideally, you want to do strength train anywhere between three to five times per week, 30-45 minutes per workout. To help save time, complete your workouts at home with minimal equipment such as dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, exercise ball and a matt.   You can get in a great workout with this equipment!

Try to tackle one or 2 of these strategies at a time and then move on to the next. If you feel you need further help with restoring your metabolism, hire a nutrition coach to assist you in implementing a customized plan and to get your metabolism back to speed.