02/11/2022
Metabolism? Meta what? “You gone learn today!!” Let me take you back to our ancestral way of living to explain the function of your metabolism. See back when we humans were evolving as hunter-gatherers we had a much harder time finding a meal, so our bodies adapted accordingly to allow us to stay lean, mean, sabretooth tiger wrestling machines. However, hunting and gathering is a fickle business, and that means that sometimes we ate what we gathered because the hunt wasn't successful, sometimes we ate only what when hunting was successful because there was nothing to gather, and sometimes no one was missing any meals. We also ate fewer calories and lower amounts of both fat and sugar. These were scarce resources then, and our bodies coveted these sources of fuel which are now our two major fuel sources today. All of this combined with much longer times asleep and lots of walking and you can see why being metabolically flexible was a major survival advantage and a part of natural selection. Now before I go too Darwin on you, this is why our metabolism works the way it does, and therefore creating a conditioned flexible metabolism is a key to creating a finely tuned, lean, mean, sexy, grinding machine. In short, metabolic flexibility is the ability to switch from one fuel to the other quickly based on food availability and fuel demand. Now that fats, sugars, and carbs are so plentiful it’s difficult to avoid them, and this is where our genetic predispositions begin to mismatch, and obesity becomes rampant in society. Add in the toxin of alcohol, and you're bringing in a new fuel that is highly detrimental to proper absorption and your metabolic flexibility. Having a non-flexible metabolism not only changes the way we burn fuel, but also causes us to crave more and eat more. Fasting, eating small frequent meals lower in carbs and fat, going vegan, or going keto can all help restore metabolic flexibility. Changing up your diet, exercise, movement, temperature exposure, watching stress, and sleep are all also important in maintaining a healthy and high functioning metabolism. We can utilize all this fantastic knowledge in our venture for weight control.