Metabolic Adaptation and Restoration-Transcript

[00:00:00] Jenn Trepeck: In prolonged periods of calorie restriction, which is the old adage of eat less, move more. The body adapts in order to survive. So part of how that adapts is reducing that basal metabolic rate. It reduces the amount of fuel or calories. It burns the energy burn for all of our bodily functions. Welcome to Salad with a side of fries.

[00:00:28] I'm your host Jen Tpic, talking wellness and weight loss for real life. We're here to clear up the myths, misinformation, bad science and marketing to teach you how to eat and how to cheat. Are you ready? I'm having salad with a side of fries. Hey friend. Welcome back to Salad with a side of fries. I'm Jen Cheick, your host and health coach here with you every week for wellness without the weirdness.

[00:00:52] Joining me today is rj. RJ is a podcast listener just like you, and he'll [00:01:00] often message me on Instagram. So this is the first time he's joining us here on this side of the mic. Welcome rj.

[00:01:07] RJ: Howdy. Thanks for having me, Jen.

[00:01:09] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, I'm excited for you to be here and for today, especially because this episode was inspired by a message that you sent me.

[00:01:18] RJ: It's awesome.

[00:01:19] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, so I guess let's just really quick for everybody listening. If you're listening and we have never connected in the dms on any social media platform, please send a message. Come say hi. I love it so much, and I always wanna make sure too, in addition to. Connecting on social media. Make sure you're on my email list.

[00:01:43] So this is another great way for us to stay in touch Between episodes. I send tons of great stuff and I promise you, I don't spam you. I send like two emails a month. So anyway, what I'm saying is I wanna connect with you, social media, [00:02:00] emails, all the places. So anyway, RJ, back to you. The message you sent me recently, do you remember what it said?

[00:02:08] RJ: It consisted of something about metabolic restoration.

[00:02:13] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. So you just asked if we had any episodes on metabolic restoration and metabolic adaptation, and I replied, you know, kind of referencing a few where we, you know, talked about pieces of it and then it got me thinking, you know, and so I was like, alright.

[00:02:32] Let's do an episode specifically called Metabolic Adaptation and Restoration. And it's certainly possible that our listeners don't know what these terms or phrases mean,

[00:02:50] RJ: right?

[00:02:51] Jenn Trepeck: So how do you understand them or what do they mean to you? So let's start with metabolic adaptation.

[00:02:57] RJ: Metabolic adaptation. I've [00:03:00] heard those words.

[00:03:01] I've always like, I've studied probably two or three nutrition courses. Surprisingly those words particularly weren't in those curriculums, but, um, for some reason I remember I picked up those words, but I ended up picking 'em up anyway. But, um, I had asked what they were particularly, I kind of lick them up myself.

[00:03:20] And metabolic restoration is, I guess it has a lot to do with your BMR, your basal metabolic rate, right.

[00:03:27] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, so let's start with one, and the reason why you probably didn't see it in your textbooks is because these are relatively new terms that have been given to some very old concepts, right? So we like to put labels on things now, right?

[00:03:40] So metabolic adaptation is essentially when the body adapts to prolonged calorie restriction or weight loss efforts by changing its physiology. So it adapts to the decreased fuel. [00:04:00] So we'll talk about how it does that and why it does that and all of that stuff.

[00:04:04] RJ: Does that have anything to do along the lines of, um, like homeostasis and allostasis and stuff like that?

[00:04:09] That's why I asked you, I texted you that.

[00:04:11] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, kind. So we'll get into it in a second. So everybody is with us. Metabolic adaptation is the body's physiology adapting to calorie restriction. Prolonged periods of diminished fuel, right? Metabolic restoration is then what we can do to help restore the metabolism, to help the metabolism recover essentially from this adaptation.

[00:04:41] So we'll dig into these. You know, both sides, the adaptation and the restoration today. So really quick before we get too far into it, one more piece of housekeeping. We gotta tell our members what they're getting this week. So members of the Happy Healthy Hub, your recipe this [00:05:00] week is for cauliflower rice with pistachio chicken.

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[00:06:33] Create your login to access the hub, and you're all set. You'll get this week's recipe for the cauliflower rice with pistachio chicken. Alright, so let's start with metabolic adaptation. So before we were saying this is what happens. When our body's physiology changes in response to prolonged weight loss efforts, or frankly, it's really about calorie restriction, it's about diminished input, and [00:07:00] this is the body's natural way of frankly, preventing starvation, conserving energy, and surviving right, because the body is designed to survive.

[00:07:15] It will always do whatever it needs to do to survive. And in prolonged periods of calorie restriction, which is the old adage of eat less, move more, the body adapts in order to survive. So part of how that adapts is reducing that basal metabolic rate. It reduces the amount of fuel or calories. It burns the energy burn for all of our bodily functions.

[00:07:45] So your resting metabolic rate or basal metabolic rate are the same thing, and it's the fuel needed or the calories burned. Fuel burned to maintain breathing, circulation, digestion, organ [00:08:00] function, right? All of those things. Active energy expenditure, right? Happens when we are moving. This is sometimes also.

[00:08:11] Non-exercise activity thermogenesis or neat. We talked about this a little bit with Philip Pape. So this is our normal movement throughout the day. That's not exercise, so maybe you're fidgeting, right? Those kinds of things. So our active energy expenditure is usually about 25%. Your basal metabolic rate is usually about 60%, give or take.

[00:08:38] Then we have what's called the thermogenic effect of food, which is the fuel needed to digest food, to break it down and use it, you know, convert it into energy. So this tends to be usually about 15% of the metabolism. And what ends up happening with metabolic adaptation is that [00:09:00] all of these things, downregulate.

[00:09:03] Your body will also start to use its own muscle for fuel. Your body will pull nutrients from the bone in order to do what it needs to do. So what happens? Our body overall, it's burning fewer calories from every single piece of this, right? Our energy expenditure, the basal metabolic rate, everything slows down.

[00:09:28] Our hormones change. So our hormones can adjust to signal the body to reduce calorie intake and conserve energy, which by the way, if we are looking to improve our metabolism, this is the opposite of what we're looking for. Right. And right, right. It's interesting because the description of what happens is essentially increased efficiency.

[00:09:57] Normally we would think of [00:10:00] efficiency as a really powerful, positive thing. In this case, increased efficiency means that we're actually not building muscle. It means that our body is actually trying to get rid of muscle because muscle requires a lot of energy, muscles, metabolically active tissue. If we have less fuel, we want to eliminate the things that need fuel.

[00:10:27] RJ: It's like a luxury.

[00:10:29] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah.

[00:10:30] RJ: I explained to my clients, so your body's kinda like your house. If you don't have enough money, in this case, calories to forge your mortgage or your rent, you can't use your luxuries like your air conditioning or your heating, which is like growing muscle or burning fat. And that's kind of how I break it down in my clients.

[00:10:48] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, and the tricky piece is that as we talk about all the time, calories aren't the be all end all. Yet, that's how all of the literature and [00:11:00] anything that talks about this describes it, right? The implication of the way these things are discussed is that as long as it's a calorie, it doesn't matter. And we know that a calorie is not a calorie, that it makes a difference, and it's the quality of the calories that we're looking for.

[00:11:17] RJ: I learned that from you actually.

[00:11:18] Jenn Trepeck: Awesome. There's also psychological factors, so people will talk about. Sometimes it's decreased hunger. Sometimes it's increased hunger, depending on those cravings or feelings of needing to be satisfied in some way. You know? And a lot of this, if you're a long time listener, we've talked about this with the five fat factors.

[00:11:41] We've talked about this with the Minnesota starvation experiment.

[00:11:45] RJ: I think I just listened to that.

[00:11:47] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. Like not too long

[00:11:48] RJ: ago.

[00:11:49] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly. It's really what happens. When the body is looking to survive, removing fat [00:12:00] is not the objective. Building muscle is not the objective. Those are the pieces that translate to health and these pieces of this metabolic adaptation.

[00:12:13] Doesn't necessarily translate into long term health, but in the short term, we can think it's doing exactly what we want it to do. And so that's why I often say it really comes down to when somebody says it works or whatever they're doing works or is working or will work. My question is always for how long and how healthful is it?

[00:12:40] Because this scenario. Can work in the short term, if the objective is making the number and the scale go down. If our objective is long-term health, I don't define this as working.

[00:12:53] RJ: Yeah. Right. It's not sustainable

[00:12:56] Jenn Trepeck: and it's counterproductive to our long-term health [00:13:00] because it's diminishing our muscle mass.

[00:13:02] It's decreasing our basal metabolic rate. Right. So it's interesting as we think about what's happening in the zeitgeist. These days all about the GLP medications. I think we've done about three episodes now on them, and I think it's very relevant to this conversation because metabolic adaptation is our body fighting to survive that self preservation and protection.

[00:13:29] When it's doing this, the number on the scale may go down for a finite period of time, and in an effort to survive. It's going to pull minerals from the bone, it's going to shed muscle. It's going to decrease our basal metabolic rate. And then what happens? By the way, when we're in this place, what tends to happen that weight loss plateaus.[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] We get frustrated. We go back to old eating habits. Then we're gaining the weight back. But now as we're gaining the weight back, we have less muscle on our body to be burning that extra fuel and we gain it back as fat. So each time we do this, so if you've listened to the episode about the five fat factors, this is what we're talking about, where we lose it as what water, muscle and bone.

[00:14:25] Gain it back as fat, lose it as water, muscle and bone, gain it back as fat. And over time, we could end up at the same number on the scale. As we were before, but by body composition, we are fatter at that same number, and this has implications for our long-term health, right? If we are consistently removing muscle and regaining fat, that is recipe for chronic disease, right?

[00:14:55] That is what often leads to blood sugar [00:15:00] dysregulation, cardiovascular disease.

[00:15:04] RJ: Will it also lead to hormonal irregulation?

[00:15:06] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly. Without proper nutrients, you know, and by the way, there are hormones like we were talking about before, that are connected to hunger and satiety, and then there are hormones that we think about like estrogen and testosterone and all of these things.

[00:15:22] And there are neurotransmitters, right? All of these pieces require nutrients.

[00:15:29] RJ: A lot of it's from food is that we get a lot of people tend to stay away from like egg yolks and stuff like that too.

[00:15:35] Jenn Trepeck: Eh? I don't know about that. I mean, we've done a nutrition nugget on eggs. Your body maintains cholesterol, your body produces its own cholesterol, and your body produces the balance of the cholesterol that it needs if it's not getting it from food, so not eating.

[00:15:55] Or eating foods that have cholesterol. If our body is [00:16:00] functioning, then our body would then produce less of its own cholesterol because it's maintaining. I think if memory serves, I think it's about 50 grams of cholesterol. So the amount of cholesterol in an egg is a few milligrams relative to 50 grams.

[00:16:17] Like we're not moving the needle here, you know? And. This is sort of a sidebar, but really when it comes to cholesterol, what I've seen in my practice for almost 20 years, what you know I see with doctors that we work with, what moves the needle in cholesterol more than fat is sugar. And the whole idea of fat in our nutrition creating cholesterol was based on one study at one time that's never been able to be replicated.

[00:16:49] So. When it comes to metabolic adaptation, the ideal scenario is to prevent some of this or [00:17:00] prevent living in this place for extended periods of time, right? So how do we do that? Frankly, you do everything that we talk about at salad with a side of fries all the time. We wanna focus on nutrition that supports.

[00:17:17] Every piece of our body's function and maintaining and building muscle and what we hear all the time. Right? A gradual weight loss. Now, I don't use those words. I call it weight management and fat removal. We don't just want the number on the scale to go down. We want to remove body fat.

[00:17:40] RJ: Yeah. 'cause weight loss is not that loss.

[00:17:43] Jenn Trepeck: Right. There are pieces of it that might. Overlap, but one is not inherently the other, and that changes the health implications dramatically. Do you remember the episode? I don't know if you heard this one. So it was from, I [00:18:00] think it was early March of this year with this researcher from the Netherlands.

[00:18:07] It was Your Fat cells have memory, a new study finds. So essentially what the study found. Do you remember this?

[00:18:18] RJ: I, uh, vaguely 'cause I remember starting it and I think it was jogging on a beach, and then I ended up not finishing it.

[00:18:24] Jenn Trepeck: I love it. Yeah. So essentially what they found is that our fat cells, like the DNA, or maybe it was the RNA in the cells, adapted to what's called the obesogenic environment.

[00:18:40] So the fat cells learned and adapted to living. With the increased sugar intake, with the increased caloric intake, with that environment and losing the weight, and I'm, you know, for everybody who's listening and can't see, I'm using air quotes, right? Losing the weight did [00:19:00] quickly, did not allow for those fat cells to adapt to the new environment.

[00:19:08] So then people quickly regained weight. Their fat cells had a memory essentially for this other environment and sends signals throughout the body to create that environment. I see. So it turns out how we go about removing fat is critically important. Giving our body time to adapt is critical. And in this case, I'm using the word adapt to.

[00:19:40] Increased muscle mass not needing the fat stores that it's been holding onto proper fuel and energy resources. Does that make sense?

[00:19:51] RJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the gist of it.

[00:19:54] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. So again, preventing this metabolic adaptation [00:20:00] that happens when we are chronically depriving our body of what it needs, how we can prevent that from happening is.

[00:20:10] Eating quality, nutrition, protein, fiber, quality, fat, sustained efforts over the long haul versus trying to do it quickly. Movement and exercise and activity that build muscle. Increase our energy expenditure, right? And we wanna monitor hormones. Work with your healthcare provider. Look at what's happening.

[00:20:36] We also want to address hormonal imbalances that may be contributing to metabolic adaptation as well. So always working with your healthcare providers and frankly, I think it's just worth understanding that this idea of metabolic adaptation is complex and in an ideal scenario we are preventing this from happening altogether.[00:21:00]

[00:21:00] RJ: Right. I wanted to ask you, do you have, have you ever done any episodes on. On hormones and like their influences on, um, behavior.

[00:21:09] Jenn Trepeck: We have which ones in this moment are escaping me, but essentially, right, anytime we're talking about behavior, anytime we're talking about hunger, anytime the whole body is connected.

[00:21:20] So the more that we try to dissect and unpack any one specific thing, I believe we're actually doing a disservice because for the average person. That's not how we think about it. That's not how we live our lives and it's all connected.

[00:21:37] RJ: Right? I tell my clients all the time, like, first things first is, uh, the body doesn't work the way you think it works.

[00:21:44] 'cause a lot of people would just starve themselves and start running on a treadmill here. We know what's gonna happen after that.

[00:21:50] Jenn Trepeck: Right? Well, the consequence of that is exactly what we're talking about, which is this metabolic adaptation, eat less, move more. The body changes its [00:22:00] physiology in order to need less, needing less fat cells, needing more muscle cells.

[00:22:09] So if we need to train our body to need less, it's going to remove muscle and store fat. Okay? So odds are if you have ever done a diet or followed a plan of some kind, whether the objective was the number on the scale. Or something else, it's likely that you've experienced this. And what it means is that we also must focus on metabolic restoration.

[00:22:37] Right? What does that look like? How do we restore our metabolic health? Was that your next question?

[00:22:47] RJ: Yes. Also, I wanted to ask, um, yeah, so metabolic adapt tissue would probably be like the cutting face of someone's goal. Restoration would be like the bulking phase of someone's goal.

[00:22:59] Jenn Trepeck: Admittedly, [00:23:00] bodybuilding is not my forte.

[00:23:01] Right? Right. I guess, but you're going to have a more difficult time maintaining muscle. If you are in a place of metabolic adaptation, your body is going to want to get rid of muscle because muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain.

[00:23:17] RJ: Oh yeah, of course. Right.

[00:23:19] Jenn Trepeck: To me, it would be counterproductive to put yourself into a place of metabolic adaptation.

[00:23:26] More than that, and the way I would think about it is often with that, I think of it more as shredding. So I used to work with male models and one before he, you know, if he was doing a cover or whatever, he would. Dehydrate himself, you would get more vascularity. Right. Seeing the veins if you would dehydrate it.

[00:23:49] Yeah. And so some of those things are much more short term before that moment where it's needed versus living in that place. The [00:24:00] piece that I want everyone to really understand is that you do not need to be a bodybuilder to be healthy. Oh yeah. And the things that someone might do, if that is their goal.

[00:24:13] Is very different than the things that any of the rest of us want to do for our goals. And it brings up, and I feel like I've talked about this before, but especially if you're following people on social media, if you are, you know, following what somebody else does for themselves or looking at what you might want to do, be crystal clear on what your objective is and their objective.

[00:24:39] Their objective may be to sell you something. Their objective may be to make you feel like you suck. Their objective may be winning a bodybuilding competition. Right. Interesting. I just had dinner yesterday with a woman who was a female bodybuilder and is now deep in the longevity space, [00:25:00] and we were talking about a few things and it was just very clear that the people I speak to are not the people that she speaks to.

[00:25:07] I'm not talking to. People who are looking to be female bodybuilders or male bodybuilders for that matter, right? So in anything, make sure that we are working with recommendations and guidelines that get us to the same place that we are looking to get. Because to your point, the actions we might need to take based on one goal.

[00:25:35] A cutting phase is different than the actions we might wanna take in a different phase, a bulking phase. Okay, let's pause to highlight our partner for this episode and then we'll discuss metabolic restoration. Oh, and all right, we are our own partner for this episode. So, alright friends, you're here, you are listening.

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[00:27:26] This is a toll free number. Standard text and data rates may apply. Okay. Metabolic restoration. So let's define it again, rj, what do you think of, right? We talked about it at the beginning, but let's define it again here. What's metabolic restoration as you think of it?

[00:27:43] RJ: Restoration. I'm sitting it sort of like a reefy, right?

[00:27:48] Like coming off of a diet and you're adding calories like a deficit and you're coming off of a deficit and you're starting to, you're beginning to add, uh, what, like three to 10% of calories at a [00:28:00] time.

[00:28:00] Jenn Trepeck: So it depends. I mean, that's one approach to achieve metabolic restoration. But fundamentally metabolic restoration is reversing the metabolic adaptation.

[00:28:13] It's improving energy levels, it's improving our metabolism. It's really in my world, to me this supports long-term health, sustainable weight management. Yes. Sometimes people think of it as reverse dieting. Sometimes people think of it as diet breaks. Right. But to me, that's a tactic of this. And the idea is that we're helping the metabolism recover from periods of restriction.

[00:28:47] If we're always in restriction, then we're gonna end up in that adaptation. That's counterproductive. Right? Or the body is releasing that muscle. Exactly. So [00:29:00] yes. One of the things that we do is gradually is more, eat, more regularly focus on sleep stress management. Right? All of the things. And so the metabolic restoration is designed to counter.

[00:29:16] Metabolic adaptation. Now, the more that we go back and forth between these things, that is essentially the yo-yo, the rollercoaster of gaining and losing weight. If we are not doing this in a way that truly supports health, say more about what's clicking for you.

[00:29:38] RJ: Like as the, like the whole body of anything.

[00:29:41] Right. It's not, you're like, you're doing it for you. You gotta kind of do it for a specificity, just kinda like your workouts, right? Like, 'cause I, I was at first, like I said, I was like, it sounds like one's for shredding and one's for bulking, but not necessary, I guess, you know?

[00:29:58] Jenn Trepeck: Right. To me. [00:30:00] The time to look at these approaches of metabolic restoration is not just coming out of metabolic adaptation, but think about your phase of life recovery.

[00:30:15] If you've been a chronic dieter and you're ready for a maintenance lifestyle, you know, think about all the other things that have going on, these approaches of metabolic restoration. Can be incredibly powerful for reasons other than just reversing the adaptation. Does that make sense? Okay. I should, or challenging the adaptation?

[00:30:38] RJ: No. Okay. If like from a health aspect, just from a general health aspect, like, oh, you're, you're always feeling fatigued or like, you know, you're, you're always, uh, irritated or you're always craving stuff, but you're only, yeah. Or if you're twice a day.

[00:30:49] Jenn Trepeck: Actually, yes. And if we're recovering from a surgery or recovering from an injury, right?

[00:30:56] Or we are in a phase of life where our [00:31:00] body needs more nutrients, there are so much more to health than, you know, number on the scale and stat

[00:31:10] RJ: or even just lacking in like iron or something like that, right?

[00:31:12] Jenn Trepeck: Yep. Yeah. So number one is a focus on nutrition. Protein, fiber, quality, fat, right? Protein supports metabolic processes.

[00:31:25] We have to make sure that we are eating enough, by the way. We need to make sure we're eating enough carbohydrates. Quality carbohydrates is fiber, vegetables and fruit. Friends, your vegetables and fruit are carbohydrates, not just grains, right? Grains can play a role. Depending on how we respond to grains and where we are in our health journey and what our health objectives are, grains may be more or less a part of that balance.

[00:31:57] RJ: Right?

[00:31:58] Jenn Trepeck: But carbohydrates [00:32:00] are critical at every point. It's the quality carbohydrates that we're looking for eating regularly.

[00:32:07] RJ: Have you heard that saying fat burns in the carbohydrate flame?

[00:32:11] Jenn Trepeck: No.

[00:32:12] RJ: No. I've heard that.

[00:32:13] Jenn Trepeck: What is it? Fat burns in what?

[00:32:15] RJ: Fat burns into carbohydrate flame. So I guess it takes energy to burn energy, essentially.

[00:32:21] Jenn Trepeck: Yes. I mean, fat and carbohydrates are energy producing nutrients,

[00:32:28] RJ: correct.

[00:32:29] Jenn Trepeck: More so than protein, like proteins. Not as much of an energy producing nutrient as you know, carbohydrates and fat. But I haven't heard that particular phrase of it. In addition to. Eating quality nutrients, we must eat regularly. A meal is going to last about four hours.

[00:32:54] A snack is going to last about one or two depending on how much we have. Eating [00:33:00] consistent meals and snacks, especially not going longer than like four hours without eating helps keep the metabolism burning. It helps keep the metabolism active. It is the counter to. The restriction of metabolic adaptation.

[00:33:18] Some people call this reverse dieting, where we're slowly adding more. I talked about it in an episode called Take your Foot off the gas, which is take your foot off the gas, right? We don't always want to be pedal to the metal and expect the body to respond. So we might want a phase of, you know, not trying to push square peg round hole.

[00:33:43] And part of that is also decreasing stress.

[00:33:47] RJ: Yeah.

[00:33:47] Jenn Trepeck: Right. Stress. The more we're trying to push the body to do something, it's added stress and the body typically doesn't respond well to that. Right.

[00:33:57] RJ: Yeah. Your, your aesthetic load.

[00:33:59] Jenn Trepeck: [00:34:00] Exactly. So number one was nutrition, which includes potentially eating more.

[00:34:06] Eating more often or at least regularly. And then number two is building muscle,

[00:34:13] RJ: right? I think I remember asking you this, if you believe that uh, there's a such thing as not eating enough to lose weight.

[00:34:21] Jenn Trepeck: Yes.

[00:34:22] RJ: Do you? Yeah, that's

[00:34:23] Jenn Trepeck: exactly adaptation. If we are completely depriving our body, it will not release fat stores.

[00:34:29] What it will release is muscle that's metabolically active tissue that needs fuel to maintain it. That's metabolic adaptation.

[00:34:37] RJ: Right. Okay. Because what remains is what you maintain.

[00:34:41] Jenn Trepeck: Right? So with our movement building, muscle resistance training, right? Muscle is metabolically active. Muscle dictates metabolism.

[00:34:54] RJ: I love when you say that. I learned that from you years ago, and I tell all my clients that it's a good way to explain it. [00:35:00]

[00:35:00] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly. I love that you use it. I'm honored. Thank you. So increasing, I tell

[00:35:04] RJ: exactly what I learned. Your program too.

[00:35:07] Jenn Trepeck: Thank you. Increasing our resistance training to build and maintain muscle mass, improves our metabolism.

[00:35:14] Full stop. And then there's two more pieces that everyone tends to ignore but are critical here, and that is sleep and stress quality. Sleep is not just how many hours, but actual quality of the sleep. Getting deep rest. In addition to sufficient amount of sleep, this plays into hormone balance. This plays into metabolic function.

[00:35:41] This plays into detoxification. This plays into appetite into cravings If we do not sleep well. We cannot detoxify well, we cannot repair our systems. We cannot build muscle, we cannot release fat. Sleep is so [00:36:00] incredibly important to this puzzle, and for a lot of us, especially in stress times of life, this goes by the wayside.

[00:36:08] And that brings us to stress, right? The other piece, right? If we are stressed, our body will not release fat stores. Our body will not build muscle.

[00:36:22] RJ: That's what I tell my clients. Tell 'em. I essentially just tell 'em, your body prioritizes stress. And if it's too busy stressing or dealing with the stress, like you said, it won't burn better or grow muscle

[00:36:32] Jenn Trepeck: well, and the reason is right.

[00:36:34] Stress is a survival. Now we need some stress. Let's be clear. Not all stress is detrimental to health. Stress, and cortisol gets us outta bed in the morning. We need that stress. So there's eustress quality, stress. Then there's the counterproductive stress, and that is the fight or flight response that is always turned on.

[00:36:55] And when our body is in fight or flight, and again, we have tons of episodes on stress to [00:37:00] go back to, I think my favorite one is The Mess of Stress. We also have the one, when I was on Mike Milner's show Mind Over Macros, we did a special edition and I aired that interview when our body is in a stress response of fight or fight.

[00:37:14] That stress response of fight or flight is designed to be like 20 minutes. So when we're in that fight or flight, because it's about short-term survival, bodily functions that are not critical to survival of the next 20 minutes turn off. So our immune system turns off, our reproductive system turns off, building muscle, turns off growing hair and nails turns off.

[00:37:36] 'cause those things don't matter if we're not alive in 20 minutes, if we're constantly in a state of fight or flight. Those things are always turned off. We have a problem, right? Our health suffers. I see. So managing our stress, mindful breathing, deep breathing, meditation, sleep, [00:38:00] spending time with friends, doing things you enjoy.

[00:38:04] Figuring out, and again, we have all these episodes on stress that have tons of options to play with to think about your personal best approach. And the one thing I'll say is that we wanna make sure that we have a whole tool belt full of options because what help today may not help tomorrow, and it doesn't mean you're broken.

[00:38:27] It means we need more tools. So we wanna have enough tools in the tool belt so that we can just keep pulling things out to see if they help us in this moment.

[00:38:37] RJ: Right. Thank you.

[00:38:38] Jenn Trepeck: Yes. Alright, the last piece of this is your thyroid. So yo-yo dieting crash. Dieting can impair thyroid function, so especially if we're in a prolonged period of this adaptation, part of that adaptation.

[00:38:57] Is our body function and that connects to the [00:39:00] thyroid. So it might make sense for you to work with a healthcare provider, do a thyroid blood panel, take a look at some of these other things, see what's happening. Maybe even check what's called thyroid peroxidase antibodies, the TPO. The idea here is that we're looking to improve our thyroid function and ensure that it is not impaired because of the choices that we have made at other times that our thyroid hasn't slowed down in an effort to survive because it was learning to live in this state of, frankly, malnutrition.

[00:39:40] Right. All right, rj, we did a lot. What's going through your mind? Thoughts recap, A final thought?

[00:39:49] RJ: I have a better understanding of it now. I don't know how to put it in words, but I do have a, I'm still trying to figure out all of this learning is only so I can apply it to my [00:40:00] clients a thousand

[00:40:00] Jenn Trepeck: percent.

[00:40:01] RJ: So I like to just go out through all the notes, the show notes and stuff like that and then, um, figure out how I can reiterate it.

[00:40:08] Jenn Trepeck: Like

[00:40:08] RJ: proper word association to my clients

[00:40:11] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly. For

[00:40:12] RJ: them, because I'm not gonna, if I say, well now we're, I'm gonna try something called metabolic restoration, blah, blah, blah. I don't know what words to use for them to be like, you know? Right.

[00:40:21] Jenn Trepeck: Which is why, by the way, we've talked about all of these things a bunch of times.

[00:40:26] I never use these words because it's not what resonates. I've never heard you said, but Right, because it's not what resonates. So the idea is for us to, as you exactly as you said, use the words that make sense to us and talk about these things in ways that register, that click, that enable us to do something about it.

[00:40:46] So for me, I think my final thought to wrap this up is that what matters is not just the result. The process, how we go about getting to the result [00:41:00] is critical for long-term health because if it were me, I would prefer to avoid having to deal with this adaptation and restoration and simply use the tools of restoration to improve my metabolism, quality nutrition, build muscle, manage stress.

[00:41:24] Sleep more and better.

[00:41:26] RJ: Right? Right. You've always said prioritize protein and fiber.

[00:41:32] Jenn Trepeck: Yep. Wait,

[00:41:33] RJ: hold on. It was a protein and fiber at every meal makes you removing fat. No big deal. A

[00:41:39] Jenn Trepeck: thousand percent and heard my student protein and fiber at every meal makes you removing fat. No big deal. I know, I know. But it's always there.

[00:41:48] It's how we choose nutrition. Right. We also need quality, fat. And if we focus on that approach, right, if we focus on that approach exactly as you're saying, we can [00:42:00] maintain and build muscle, remove fat, support all of our organ systems, maintain our hormone balance, maybe even improve all of our health outcomes, our cardiovascular health, our metabolic health, our blood sugar balance, all of the things, our bone density, right?

[00:42:17] Every piece of health. Is maintained or improved with quality nutrition movement that builds muscle and uses our heart as a muscle managing stress, right. Getting more and better sleep. Awesome. Alright, time to preview our nutrition nugget. You ready?

[00:42:39] RJ: Yes. I'm sorry.

[00:42:40] Jenn Trepeck: All right. On Friday we're talking about stability.

[00:42:44] I mean stability as in balance, like physical balance. But I didn't wanna call it balance because I felt like you guys would think, I mean, balance in food choices or you know, those kinds of things. But I mean, actual physical balance, like stability on your own [00:43:00] feet, I think, I think this is so important.

[00:43:04] We all need to be talking about it more, and it is, in my humble opinion, way too overlooked. We talk about physical fitness, so we're gonna get into it on Friday and this week's bite-size, bonus episode, nutrition nugget. Be sure wherever you're listening, click the plus sign or the follow button, and your app will alert you on Friday when it goes live.

[00:43:26] Well, as always, everybody, I'm Jen Tpic, your health coach and host. Connect with me on Instagram or all social media. I'm at Gen Tpic. N-T-R-E-P-E-C-K website is a salad to the side of fries.com. Pick your platform. Send a message like RJ who joined us this week. I love hearing from you, so please send a message.

[00:43:46] This is also the easiest way to learn more about working with me as your health coach. And rj, thank you again for joining me.

[00:43:54] RJ: Thank you for having me. This was awesome. I learned a lot.

[00:43:57] Jenn Trepeck: Oh, I'm so glad. And of course, everybody, if [00:44:00] you are not already a member, I invite you to the Happy Healthy Hub. You'll go to a salad with the side of fries.com/membership.

[00:44:08] This does your support for this podcast, this community, and most importantly, it supports your health. On top of the 24 7, ask me anything. Community Chat discounts, curated content, interview episodes in full video. You'll get this week's recipe for the cauliflower rice with pistachio chicken. So until next week, remember whether you've spent decades trying to get your body to do what you wanted to do, or you're looking at these efforts for the first time, remember to focus on metabolic restoration and know that it is possible.

[00:44:41] Well, friends, that's it for today's episode of Salad with a Side of Fries. Congratulations for making yourself and your health a priority. Thanks so much for joining us. Be sure to click subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast platform. Share us with a friend and we'll be back next week. Always remember you deserve it and you are worth it.

[00:44:59] [00:45:00] Happy, healthy.